what type of heroes work best overall??

if you prefer to get more beasts and creatures and don't really like regular troops, try playing with a sovereign that has the beastlord profession (Kulan or create your own one). With it you can tame wild beasts and build a nice little beast army. Pick Mage as a hero specialization and you can add more summoned creatures to the mix.

I cant remember losing a game using a custom Altarian Beastmaster.

hmm interesting i made a brax beastmaster i think is the race...man having cave bears is amazing as well as the sliths or w/e i wonder how many different creatures i can tame

Depends on what you're asking. If your question is which of the hero classes you should be choosing at level 2 for early/mid/late game strength, then my answer would be:

Early Game - Damage-line Warriors work well, as those +3 attack traits provide a very significant boost at this stage of the game, though I'd wait to see what high-end weapons I get before picking a weapon specialization. Tank-line Defenders work well, if you don't mind having your champion act mainly as a brick wall, but it requires some care with your supporting troops to hold the attention of the opposing army on your champion. Developing a Defender along the spell-resistance line has some nice active abilities, but the passive bonuses are not generally useful. Assassins are okay but they rely on getting critical hits whereas Warriors just have higher base damage, and dodge is a little unreliable for durability. Damage Mages are weak because you probably don't have the good spells yet or a good mana supply for casting them, but summoner Mages are at their most useful, if you can get enough mana income to maintain strategic summons and keep them alive through a few battles. Support Mages are kind of in the same boat as damage Mages, but if you have Haste or Slow and pick targets well, they can still be very useful, as long as you keep a close eye on your mana reserves. Governor Commanders are useful, and depending on how quickly you level them and what you pick for them could represent a fairly considerable portion of your research or gold income, while Field Commanders provide a mediocre passive boost to your army and have a decent active ability accessible early.

Mid Game - Direct combat champions (Warriors, Defenders, and Assassins) are beginning to be eclipsed by trained troops. If you're lucky and find a good weapon in loot and buy or find a full set of leather armor, then these will still work well, but to keep a front-line champion on the front line you're going to want weapons which would qualify for late game troops (pikes, great axes, longswords, longbows) or you need to find a late-game champion weapon (Curgen's Hammer, the lightning bow that gives +2 damage per level, a few others), and at least for Defenders you're going to want to at least consider getting heavier armor. If you can't find a good weapon for a Warrior or an Assassin, then it's time to start considering using them more as a mage or archer than a part of the front line (I would suggest that using them as a support mage is better than as an archer, as a four or five figure unit of archers with even the first bow is likely to be superior to any archer champion, as my luck in getting the quest that awards an Ignys Shortbow is poor, and bows and ranged staves are rather rare in loot). Governor Commanders who developed the income or research traits should begin to be eclipsed by towns, while if they developed the Administration line you should be moving to the point where you have enough cities that parking a champion for unrest reduction is becoming valuable. Field Commanders should be granting enough of an accuracy bonus for your troops to almost always hit, but if you've got a decent fortress up (and by now, you probably should), the accuracy bonus is kind of unnecessary. The initiative bonus and the active ability, however, are very useful, and you should start trying to reach the other active ability you have access to, as your army should be large enough for this to be a very strong ability. Summoner Mages should begin switching from running around with strategic summons in their army to running around with trained troops, supported by tactical summons, as strategic-level summons don't really seem to scale into the mid and late game very well and you should now have enough of a mana income that you can summon at least one or two creatures per battle. Damage Mages depend on what spells you have access to, but they are starting to become strong. Support Mages should now have the mana available for casting curses upon entire armies of enemies or blessings on your entire army in almost every battle, and possibly doing both. Note though that you probably still need to be careful with your mana supply as any type of mage at this stage.

Late Game - Unless you found good equipment, all of your Warriors, Assassins, and Defenders should be used like archers or mages. If you were unable to find good equipment, then trained troops probably outclass your champions by so much that they can probably knock them out in one or two hits. If you found the kinds of equipment that late-game troops use, then you might be able to keep the champions on the front line for a little while, but they won't be able to deal as much damage as a late game unit of front line troops, and they cannot take hits as well either. All kinds of mages are fairly good at this point, although if your enemy has archers and you can't kill them before they act, your mage will probably fall, so make sure your mage has high initiative (if possible, buy your mage all the initiative-granting equipment they can wear in the shop despite the cost). Summoner and support mages should start branching out into damage spells, and summoners should look into support spells, since only the late-game summons are really worthwhile in battle anymore and there are only so many friends to bless and enemies to curse, and you should have plenty of mana. Field Commanders with the active that makes the whole army go are great, and the Command ability is still useful, but aside from that they should be looking into support and damage spellcasting or perhaps archery (but again, bows and ranged staves seem to be hard to find in loot) since they cannot compete directly with the troops they lead.

If you were asking which sovereign profession was best in each phase of the game, then:

Beastlords are good early and mid game if you develop them as curse spellcasters - tame needs to overcome enemy spell resistance to work - but start to lose out late game, as there are not a lot of beasts that are really able to combat late-game troops on equal terms, and the ones which can tend to be difficult to find, few in number, and hard to tame.

Bandit Lords are mostly good at the early game, as even by the late part of the early game your trained troops should completely outclass any bandits you can find. The starting units are nice, but nothing extraordinary.

Warlords are more mid and late game, as they essentially allow you to maintain two armies for every one you'd normally have. The bonus is still very useful in the early game, though, as you can field your normal early armies with a much stronger economy than you'd otherwise have, or you can keep your normal economy and have about twice the army.

Generals give no direct bonuses, but the longer you can keep them and their army alive, the better they and their army become.

Summoners are all about the early game. Shadow Wargs are virtually useless mid- and late-game, and the +2 level bonus to summoned creatures isn't bad, but it isn't great either.

Noble is always useful, but more so when your empire is large, so they're more a mid or late game profession.

Adventurer is more of an early-game bonus, though it might also tank your economy if you use it to get lots of champions too quickly.

Warlocks are for the mid and late game, when you have potent damage spells and the mana supply to be constantly casting them.

Hunters are for the early game, because extra damage against beasts isn't very useful at any other time.

Diplomats, in my opinion, are never useful, but that's more a result of my dislike of the game's diplomacy mechanics. I would expect them to be more useful in the mid and late game than in the early game.

I can't recall what other options do, if I've missed any.

Also note that this is my opinion, based on how I play. What's fun for me might not be fun for you, so I suggest experimenting to see what you like.

wow thanks for reply dam very long informative

I'd add that with the way summoning is now pretty much a separate research tree with any decent results far off on the event horizon, Summoner is worth very little. To me, it's only benefit is providing a shadow warg from game start: useful if you're running a mage leader for a Pariden-like race with no melee ability to speak of.

I always pick 'mage' for my Sovereign and 'commander' for all my heroes (if I can select one).

Joeball gave a nice overview, just to be sure I'd like to point out that some professions are really subpar:

Hunter, Banditlord, Adventurer are underpowered. Warlock sounds nice, but if you play Kingdom and don't select Fire spells, you'll have to wait a long time before you gain any damage spells. 

hmm i see beatlord seems to work for me but people say its over powered is that true?

Beastlord is strong early game. Once you get out of the "clear the wilderness" phase of the game, it's almost useless.

Also just want to plug that assassins are completely worse than warriors at everything in every phase of every game, except POSSIBLY super late game with a dodge focused assassin.

I think there are lots of good hero types because there are so many possible combinations.  They did a great job on this aspect.  Here are some types that I have found the most fun or powerful:

a ) Summoner - unlike others in this thread, I have had great success with Summoner and choosing all the summons.  What's great about Summoning is that you can create a permanent summon by using the strategic spells (i.e. Air Elementals make great permanent summons) or create temporary tactical summons that come with an additional spell benefit (i.e. Crag Spawns create stinking mud all around them).

b ) Fire Mage - this is probably the worst kept secret in the game

c ) Defenders (esp Henchmen) - as Trainers giving the entire army experience

d ) Warriors with bows - I think they intended the Assassin class to be the great bow users, but Warriors do great amounts of damage with their bows.

e ) Healers - Healers are awesome ... almost too awesome.  Don't tell Derek cuz he'll probably nerf it if he finds out.

This should be Commanders. Defenders don't get the Trainer traits.

My experience:

Traits:
Fire Mages are great through the whole game, as long as you make sure to have plenty of mana. Just make sure your army is not all fire, as fire resistance is not uncommon in mid- and late-game.
Air Mages are weak in early-game, but can be great in mid- and late-game. The damage of their spells is actually very random(despite the ensuring tooltips), but they have several spells that will be useful most of the time, and their Thunderstrike is not to be underestimated.
Life Mages are weak in early-game, useful in mid-game and great in late-game. They really buff your armys durability. Give them a ranged weapon or damage spells early on, to get full use of them.
Water Mages are very situational and random, which is why I usually don't build them at all. It's hard to know what effect you'll get for their spells.
Earth Mages don't have much fighting power and rather situational combat spells, but they can be very useful in getting around the map and harassing opponent races.
Defenders are ok in early-game, weak in mid-game and potentially good in end-game... Their use is very situational, depending on the rest of your army. With enough ranged power you will never have any use at all for a defender. With several good melee DPS you will barely have any use for it. In any other cases, it can be good.
Commander is not what I would pick in early-game, as I consider combat skills more important in this stage. In mid- and late-game they are very handy, as they can either boost your army considerably or boost your research and economy as much as any city would, on it's own.

Weapons:
Axes are always great, because of their cleave. It can be hard to find axes that match the damage of mauls, but I prefer an axe to a maul with a bit higher damage.
Spears are good in early-game, but usually weak in mid-game and end-game. You'll often have use for their impale, and the impale can also be used to strike foes that are just out of reach. One of the biggest problems is to find spears with decent damage, compared to the other weapons.
Hammer\Mace are good throughout the whole game. Their advantage is damage, which is both because of their Crushing Blow and because it's one of the easiest weapons to find with good damage. Their disadvantage is reduced initiative.
Swords are good throughout the whole game. Like hammers and maces, their advantage is damage, because it's one of the easiest weapons to find with good damage. They also give additional initiative, giving them more base DPS than hammers and maces.
I usually don't have much use for the extra counterattack.
Daggers are a joke. I see no reason at all not to use some other weapon, because every dagger I find has way too low stats to compete against any other weapon I have. They're even rather rare, while at the same time being weak... what's the point??
Bows are ok in early-game, weak in mid-game and great in late-game. The problem in mid-game is that you usually don't have any good bows by this time, while melee units tend to have good damage and good gear to withstand your shots. In late-game you will have new bows and accessories, which greatly boosts your ranged power.
Crossbows are a joke. Their Power Shot has a 1 yard range - who puts a ranged unit right next to a melee foe?? It would also require you to run out and meet the foe before you can use this ability. Except their Power Shot, I haven't figured any advantage of these.
Ranged Staff: Ok throughout the whole game. Their disadvantage is of course the low damage. Their advantage is to have pure elemental damage, which is useful against several types of foes. I noticed that several foes are invulnerable or have resist versus fire, but I seldom find the same versus frost, so I prefer frost staves.

Beastlord doesn't give you much use before you have established some mana regen, as the spell costs 40 mana and can fail. Once you have enough mana, they will be great throughout mid-game, when there are still poweful beasts around. In end-game there are usually only dragons and elementals around, and your beasts will be replaced with better geared units\heroes.

Initiative. No other weapon has as high an initiative value as a dagger. It isn't something you put on your front-line warrior champions, but rather on your healers, support spellcasters, and damage spellcasters. Possibly also on Commanders, if you want to get lots of use out of the Command and Battle Cry abilities and are not using the Commander more like a Warrior, Assassin, or Defender.

Unless, of course, you're using your spellcasters as frontline combatants, in which case you'd want a more damaging weapon, or as archers who can sprinkle a few spells in to change things up.

I would say that Haste is one of the best spells in the game, in every part of the game. Sure, it isn't going to wipe out an enemy army like a good Blizzard or Fireball, but it's cheap, it never fails to stick, and it boosts one of the more important attributes of your units. Also, in the early part of the game, I rarely have enough mana to make much use of damage spells, and probably won't get very much damage out of them anyways. 20 mana for flame dart from a low-level champion to deal a few damage just isn't worth it to me as opposed to eight mana to hasten two units in my army, especially when the troops will probably end up doing most of the damage in the battle if my champion is a spellcaster, anyways (realize, please, that I'm specifically referring to the early game, with low-level champions; with high-level champions and a decent mana supply or mana income, the spellcasters get to be much better).

Slow is a good and reliable spell for any support spellcaster (unless you have absolutely terrible spell mastery or are facing highly resistant opponents), Blizzard is great for wiping out armies, and Mantle of the Oceans is a great enchantment for any primary spellcaster.

It isn't an "extra" counterattack - it's the only counterattack you'll get unless you develop the Warrior's sword specialization through all three traits, or find one of the handful of other weapons that has a counterattack thrown in. These are most useful on the tank-style defenders, because with them you'll probably not be moving often due to heavy armor and a preference for making use of defensive stance for all the defending bonuses you can get, since otherwise you either pass up fairly significant defense bonuses (which are accessible even early in the game) or won't be dealing any damage at all. And since the AI won't move melee troops away once they're in contact with an enemy, you can run that tank-style defender into a mess of enemies, put them into defensive stance, and contribute a little damage while your supporting troops nibble away at the flanks or rain arrows and magic bolts down on the AI units.

Weapon choice is going to come down to personal preference and how you use your champions, but I don't consider most melee weapons to be good choices for champions past the early game. Direct-combat Champions just fall too far behind regular troops in terms of damage potential, durability, and expendability for me to seriously consider risking most champions on the front line past the early game. If regular troops fall in battle, I can get something nearly as good (or potentially even better, depending on when and where I trained the previous batch of troops) out of the nearest fortress without too much of a wait. If a champion falls in battle, it costs that champion all the experience they would have received from the fight, they'll gain an injury which may impair their combat utility or the entire army's combat utility or reduce their ability to gain levels, and if they were in an army with at least one other champion, they'll still count for dividing experience up after the fight, which penalizes the whole army.

have to agree with joeball. pretty good explanation.

some random comments:

don't underestimate life mages. i've played a ton of very hero centric games and life mages IMO are the single best champions in the game, especially in the early part (probably won't need that much healing later when your troops can kill stuff quickly enough to take almost no damage at all). don't underestimate the effect of not losing production time for replacing lost units. with a dedicated healer, you can keep them alive. combine with some heavy defense units or a defender champ for a superpowered early army that clears dangerous lairs or conquers whole nations 50-100 turns before you could safely tackle them normally. they use up some mana to do their job, but quite frankly, burning 9 mana for 24 healing is a lot cheaper than wasting ~4-8 seasons of production replacing the unit you would have lost without the healing. also, don't neglect their spellmastery (the "prodigy" line is recommended, since that also opens the way to savant which will make your AoE heal instant cast) with decent spell mastery, they can shrink even the most powerful creatures and make them harmless.

Earth mages: in my experience, there's no real reason to make a primary earth mage. the school is solid as a secondary school for a support spellcaster, or as an alternate route for melee heroes (sacrificing some of their class traits to gain diamond skin and giant form instead). the first 3 levels are really only there for the buffs; the tactical spells at level 4 & 5 are brutally expensive, so it's not a good idea to build a pure "earth mage". pick the first 2-3 levels up when you can afford them and delay  4 & 5 until you have enough mana to not care about the high cost of giantform and diamondskin.

fire mages are terrible in the early game. you won't have enough mana to warrant casting that lame 10 damage flame dart that will probably get resisted and only do 5 damage. they become viable in the mid game when you get them to a higher level and have a more stable mana supply (and/or some other champ who unlocked water 3 for mantle of oceans). towards the late game, they can become super powerful, killing whole armies single handedly.

Defenders: don't underestimate them. while they are in def stance, they can tank whole armies that would just eat any of your trained units alive. i've had mid level defenders (~level 8 or something) with mediocre gear tanking 3 freaking umberdroths at once. those defender guys are rock solid. not very interesting to play, since they don't really do much besides passing turns and occasionally move a tile, but very very efficient. 

as for champion weapons:

axes are pretty solid for warriors with axeman - 75% extra cleave damage on top of some 40 attack value can be pretty powerful; other than that - meh

swords are great for the init bonus and the counter attack. standard weapon for defenders (slap on an item with poison damage over time for some added benefit); warriors with swordsman specc can be rather hilarious, though. swordsman warrior with guardian blade is a fun spec (decent baseline damage from lethal traits, so the low base attack of the item isn't such a big deal - and huge bonus to counter attack damage with 3 counters per turn )

daggers are perfectly useless for melee (except for the early game when an assassin knife is probably better than a rusty axe or something). they make very good stat boosters for spellcasters, though. a dagger with high init and a bonus to crit chance and crit damage can make for some fun moments when that flamedart unexpectedly crits for 300 or whatever.

bows: the equation is simple - shocking longbow (+2 lightning damage per level) - awesome, every other bow - somewhere between "ok" and "useless"

crossbows: haven#t seen a magical crossbow yet. don't think they are very useful. the only saving grace is that they are one handed, so you can have a shield in the off hand, but that's no compelling reason to use a weapon with -8 init penalty on a champ.

ranged staves: useless for champions. if you have to kill a banshee, just bring 1-2 units of trained troops with staves, or a champ with a damage spell.

melee staves: useless as a weapon; the stat bonuses are the interesting part (bonus spelldamage or bonus spellmastery can be more useful than the init bonus and crit chance on a dagger)

@Joeball:

Haste is not very powerful in early-game because you are likely to not have any air shards. The bonus isn't very big without any shards, and other factors can easily make a much bigger difference in my experience.

Slow is somewhat the same - in early-game it doesn't make a big difference because the reduction is low, everybody is already slow, and other factors can easily make a much bigger difference in my experience.
In late-game it's not much better, because late-game is all about "offense if best defense" and maximizing your own output, and there's usually more than 1 threatening unit in the other army.
Of course there are situations where slow can be very handy, and that's where "situational" comes in ;p

As you noticed, I hadn't yet fully figured out counterattacks. Thanks for clearing that up, and it makes the swords even better.

Melee champs do have an increased risk of dying and having permanent debuffs, which can ruin the game if you're unlucky.
However you do have several options to keep a melee champ alive, like armor, shields, healing, defensive accessories, kiting, etc.
I think it's mostly a question of playing style.

Hunter should give food when you kill beasts for your nearest city or capital.  That might power it up.

Banditlord- might be nice if it improved loot rolls/gave better chance of loot

Adventurer- maybe it should allow a 10% chance of being able to pick 2 traits on all your champs when you level up?

I wonder if anyone has tried warrior+decimate+high init as an anti-army unit.   That's an experiment for my next game.  Unsure if decimate is automatic or a skill.

Opinions vary. In my experience, even without Air or Water Shards, haste and slow are each usually good enough to allow my units an extra move, or to move sooner than the opponent. But how good they are is highly dependent on the balance of initiative between your army and the enemy army - it doesn't do much good to haste your troops if the enemy has three times the initiative, but bringing your troops up to equal initiative with a slightly higher initiative opponent, or getting them just ahead of an equal-initiative opponent, can change the way the battle plays out significantly. Also, if you manage to pick up a group of archers, hastening them can also be very beneficial early on. Haste and Slow are also spells that I can probably cast one of per turn even in the early game, at least for a while, as I get at least two mana per turn from the sovereign, and can put Meditation on a city if I need more mana or don't have anything better to put there. Four mana per cast is far, far more affordable than twenty, and also means that I don't need as large of a mana reserve going into a battle, if my strategy relies on being able to cast spells to tip the battle my way.

Also, when all sides have low initiative is precisely when minor bonuses and penalties make the greatest difference.

And in order to get those shields, pieces of armor, and defensive accessories, you either need to be lucky with your looting, or you need to spend huge sums of gold at the shop. Healing only works if the champion can survive the first hit (or the first round of hits), which tends to be difficult unless you've spent those huge sums of gold on armor or managed to find good armor in loot, while kiting requires high initiative and preferably high movement, and doesn't help if there are enemies with decent ranged attacks in the opposing force, assuming that they focus your champion (and from what I've seen, the AI prefers to focus on units with the least health and defense, and front line champions can quickly become such). In a game where I've rarely had more than 10 gold income per turn at the point when I can field troops armored in chainmail and wielding boar spears or other similar weapons, spending several hundred gold to outfit a single champion when I could wait a few turns to train some troops to do the same job just doesn't seem worthwhile. And that's several hundred gold just for the stuff mid-game troops are given, yet to really stay competitive a mid-game front line champion needs a weapon at least on par with what late-game troops get (not usually a problem, since there are usually enough decent weapons in loot to equip a few front line champions) and armor at least equivalent to that which the mid-game troops are wearing (leather is okay, but if you really want a champion to sit on the front line, then by mid-game they should really be looking at chain or perhaps even plate - though plate should probably be reserved for tank-style defenders at any stage of the game because of the heavy initiative penalties - unless you've managed to find some really good leather-type armors in loot).

I could go with it providing a faction-wide or single-settlement permanent food per grain bonus, but any such bonus would have to be permanent for it to really be useful in my opinion.

The difficulty you describe just doesn't match my experiences... I've been using melee champs in every game, and although I sometimes fail at keeping them alive through early--mid-game, I usually don't have much trouble.
I wonder if this could be due to monster difficulty settings, or some other settings. I usually play with lots of monsters, but not very hard monsters.
If you play with less and\or harder monsters, then this could explain our different experiences - it means I get both more loot and more experience, which makes it all easier.

It's probably because by the point I consider mid-game, my focus is shifting from fighting monsters to fighting AI factions, and so I'm concerned about champion performance against troops (granted, AI armies may not be the best designed in the world, but they probably have access to equipment at least as good as your own, and if they haven't fallen behind in research and aren't primarily fielding old units they generally can hit harder and are tougher than your average monster). Also, I tend to find that by mid-game weak to moderate strength monsters are all but wiped out, especially in areas close to a faction's territory, and the few remaining monsters tend to be of a strength that I don't yet want to mess with.

The only monsters I'd really be particularly concerned about using mid-level, mid-game front line direct combat champions against are things like drakes and dragons, or perhaps the tougher skath. If I don't have an army backing the champion up, or if the champion is for some reason weak (for example, if I stuck the first champion I received in a town to wait for an army and then decided that the army I built for that one should go to the higher level second champion, so I left the first champion in town for a long time), then large armies of weak monsters or mid-size armies of moderately strong monsters can also be concerning, especially for champions like Ascian, who rely almost exclusively on dodge for their defense.

A personally always use adventurer.  Heroes have uses in all phases of the game and more fame = more heroes.  I have considered (and probably will try) creating a summoner leader for empire.  The mass skeleton summon is uber powerful with late game troops.  The ai wastes its turns banging on the skellies while you destroy them.  I've taken down dragons with no life lost with this method several times and recommend always taking the necro path for mages.