What Makes a Good Hero?

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, I disagree about limiting human heroes more than supernatural beings.

There are mythological human heroes that won against SC gods or would qualify as thugs. For example Siegfried or Perseus.
Besides combat heroes make little sense if they are only a beefed up normal unit.

You could make these extremely rare though.

[Trumanator]

Can you really make a hero more or less "rare"? Obviously you can decide not to make them multiheroes, but that doesn't effect the likelihood of their showing up, right?

[analytic_kernel]

AFAIK, you can't control the rarity of particular hero events. In one of the "heroes" threads that I read, someone suggested that there seemed to be a preference for certain kinds of heroes given certain scales. But, I never saw any statistically-significant evidence or anyone's analysis of Dominions code to support this or any other kind of preference or weighting.

I think maybe Illuminated just meant that one should create "superhumans" sparingly in mods.

[Sombre]

With the Lizardmen mod, I intended to add some weaker heroes to balance out the really amazing ones. So for every ubermage demigod you get, there are other games where you'll get the incredibly stealthy scout guy. Of course I wouldn't go making any heroes worthless, but you can certainly make amazing ones rarer by adding more average or below average ones to the same nation, along with multiheroes that aren't anything special.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by analytic_kernel

I think that this does raise a point though: how do you make acceptable fighter heroes for a human nation which are better than the nation's elite troops, assuming some of the elites are already in the 13-15 att/def range? Maybe adding special abilities is one way to go. Using demigods might be another way. (EA Arco has the Son of Titans, which is more in that vein.)

Well, there are a lot of reasons why a guy would have supernatureal abilites.

1) He's actually demi-human (Like Son of Titans), son of gods/demons/undead/angels/moose or whatever. Just give the guy demon/undead/magical tag and you could give him att & def 20 if you wanted to.

2) He's somehow blessed by supernatural forces (Green Knight)

3) He has found some sort of artifact (Frodo? King Arthur with Excalibur?), should be combined with kick-*** custom weapon or armor.

4) Magical experiment gone wary? A wizard did it?

5) A mount so awesome that the guy riding it couldn't possibly be human. Tiger? Dragon? Giant Crocodile? A chariot drawn by Wyverns?

6) He's just that badass. Jet Li reincarnate.

The basic idea is that once you manage to free the character from the weak bounds of humanity, he can have the stats you want him to have.

Originally Posted by analytic_kernel

My feeling is that I want fighter heroes to be thuggable, and so I need to find some good role models for them.

Hmm..

Hard one. I've made a few that I think are okay, but those probably really don't count.

Seriously, I can't think of any decent* human fighter heroes. Some help guys?

Bernlad the Green Knight (Man)

Man, I have a rant about this guy. He was actually beheaded in the legends and he gets regeneration? Understatement of the year.

Originally Posted by Sombre

With the Lizardmen mod, I intended to add some weaker heroes to balance out the really amazing ones. So for every ubermage demigod you get, there are other games where you'll get the incredibly stealthy scout guy. Of course I wouldn't go making any heroes worthless, but you can certainly make amazing ones rarer by adding more average or below average ones to the same nation, along with multiheroes that aren't anything special.

I can't agree with this reasoning. Getting a hero is pretty rare (even with luck scales) and everytime you get something that you just instantly dismiss just isn't really fun. It kinda sucks all the luck out of your "lucky" event.

"Oh sweet, I got an hero! But apparently I wasn't lucky enough... *sigh*"

Not that every hero needs to have 10 picks of magic, but each and every one of them should be awesome in their own ways. I have hard time thinking of a scout hero doing something couldn't be done by regular scouts.


*decent = being actually glad about getting the hero, instead of just going "okay, he can ferry troops, I guess".

[Agema]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

Man, I have a rant about this guy. He was actually beheaded in the legends and he gets regeneration? Understatement of the year.

The Green Knight would be useful with a few more HP and regeneration (20%?) as well. Alternatively or additionally, make him immortal, so you can feel free to chuck him around in friendly Dom.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

The Epic Heroes mod might provide some good material. The heroes in it might be a little more powerful than you want, but they're all interesting.

I hated something in this mod, though: Almost every nation had wizard heroes, but if you're the one with a warrior kind (Arco's elephant), it's really bad. I wouldn't recommend these.

In my opinion you need one of these:
-a thematic special ability (immortal for Ulm vampires, stealthy or assassin, sqtandard, good researcher, even patrol bonus),
-an otherwise unobtainable magic path or H3/4,
-boosting a strong chassis (van/giant) - for fighter chassis, add an aura or magic item to make it worthwhile
-autosummons
-recycle an existing monster theme or summons to give a thug to a nation that lacks recruitables (I always thought that Asterion the minotaur was a cool idea for Arco, even though his combat stats are not that good - T'ien Ch'i could have a Celestial Servant hero too)

[Agema]

Oh, I don't know. The EH fighter heroes get you expanding very rapidly: at least, Beowulf can take pretty much any non-trampler indies straight away (might need to be a little circumspect about heavy cavalry too), and would have a decent chance of defeating an early SC if you get rushed. You wouldn't want to take most of the mage heroes expanding, as they need to research necessary spells to be effective.

By and large, the EH heroes seem a bit too tough for an ordinary national hero, though.

[analytic_kernel]

Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts.

I detected some recurring themes in the responses, such as mage heroes who provide a magic path that is unnatural for a nation. I will try to follow some of these suggestions in the mod that I'm working on.

[sector24]

I think if you want heroes good enough to warrant taking luck scales, they have to redefine the nation in some way. Things that do that are:

New magic path(s) or ability to forge new boosters
Forge bonus for non-earth nation
Stealthy preacher, or L3 holy for a nation with weak priests
Assassin with good default equipment
Hero that attracts chaff units each turn
etc.

For a slightly boosted human hero, most of the time I'd rather have someone with high leadership/high movement and possibly a standard to boost morale. Human units are just going to die, it's not very useful to have a hero who is basically an inefficient thug. Hope this helps.