Yes, the general unit was a cool concept, but poorly implemented because he should have been a hero (no human units have special ability aside from passive abilities like regeneration or bonus against building etc.).
The remaining human units are either redundant in what they provide or borderline useless, so again: straight-up garbage design.
I think human units should be able to have special abilities.
Not like fancy ones but simple ones like a simple charged attack or something.
I also think the General should not be a hero. Heros are people that slay myth units and a general is just a person with good training who is a good leader.
Also there are other human units like Jarls that have bonus damage vs. Myth units too.
The units being useless is a balance issue and not the issue with the idea of all the units being bad.
Even hersir were not technically heroes, but norse need them anyway, against myth units.
The Tale of the dragon chinese had the most boring heroes ever made, the general would have been a better hero than the monk for example, the conversion mechanic was there just to publicize the Aoe2 DLC.
I don’t like the Chinese heroes either (nor the Norse ones tbh.) but there is a lot of potential for very cool hero units in Chinese Mythology and legend that could as inspiration.
Not just simply a General.
I liked the Chinese heroes (or rather, their basic idea), but wouldn’t mind if they were redesigned to play differently. The immortals, as I understand, do come from Chinese folk tales and are very fitting as the Chinese heroes.
A hero that can fight with a Ranged attack or melee attack was great.
Immortals are all the same in Tale of the dragon, devs should make a new model for each of them in Retold, at least.
Your logic is flawed because Egyptian and Norse already have generic priest/hersir as heroes, atlanteans have even more generic human units as heroes, only greek have unique heroes by design.
In Tale of the dragon they tried to make chinese unique in almost any regard (1 pop cav, cav stronger against infantry (cataphract), archers stronger vs cavalry (mounted archer) etc.) and they failed miserably, not everything about a civ has to be unique in order to succeed.
General woul be a great hero unit and more faithful to the original game design wise.
Egyptians have Priests which are a religions unit that is trained in the Temple. Makes sense and feels correct. The Pharao is essentially just a strong version of the Priest.
Norse have the worst heroes in my opinion with just having 1 hero unit that is just a melee Infantry.
Athlantians feel like they run out of ideas.
Chinese had a lot of potential cool Hero units, that don’t have to be named heroes.
You said it yourself.
Immortals shouldn’t just be 10 identical duds.
Yeah but it was strangely implemented.
I think the mixed range/melee units should work like in AoE3. They automatically switch to melee when attacked in melee and also have the option to manually switch to melee.
Immortals are a seperate case because, in mythology, they were vastly different from each other so making them with different appearances (and possibly diffent stats too!) would make a lot of sense.
For example, It would not make sense to make Odysseus the same as the other greek heroes.
Immortals as unique heroes (again, with new models and, possibly, new stats for each of them) and replacing Monks with Generals as generic heroes would already be good in my opinion.
If we have 10 Immortals (each with different stats and visuals) do we need more heroes for the Chinese?
Greeks only have 4.
8 immortals*, but probably devs will balance them (I’m thinking about making Immortals trainable only from towncenter again, for example).
So a hero trainable from towncenter (hard to mass) and another from castle wouldn’t be the end of the world to handle.
And I think that hero generals should be limited in how many of them you can create as well, at the moment you can create max 3 generals at once, if I remember correctly, so it wouldn’t be a huge change.
I personally prefer religiose units like Priests and Monks as heroes over military units like a General.
Military leaders are good at fighting humans.
Religious leaders fight mythical beings instead.
My guess:
I feel you. Even I love the Hersir design with the wide horns and especially the hammer (no other unit has a hammer 
) and I also like the funny names but overall I never really liked them as hero choices and that they are less “rare”. (Also never was a fan that priests are heroes and spammqble) as a unit both are cool and fitting but as heroes…I hope(ed)they come up with something different
I think Hersir should be redesigned to have their weapon depend on the Major god.
So only Thor ones get the hammer, Odin ones get a Spear and Loki ones a Sword or Axe.
Cool idea! (20 characters)
I think someone else suggested that in some other thread a while ago.
I just remembered that we have 4 Norse gods now.
Something like that?
Stats could just be the same.
Remember…not preorders…
The Chu Ko Nu and the Fire Lance are fine…the Chu Ko Nu is from the Han Dynasty and after aka Three Kingdom period. The Fire Lance is from the 10th century (like the Viking apex aka the Norse) and last until the fall of the Song by the Mongols…
For me is:
*AoE 2 dlc = August
*Retold = 4th September
*AoE 3 dlc = October after the RBW (like saying "sorry for being out of the RBW)
*AoE 4 dlc = November
*Chinese dlc in Retold = December
Chu Ko Nu are a weapon that was only used in rare cases while normal Crossbows where extremely common and are very culturally significant for China.
They even still use some Crossbows in the Chinese Army to this day! Not joke.
The Norse are 10th century because we don’t have written text of Norse mythology that are older then that.
But China has more then a Millennia of recoded history before the 10th century so the game should use those not the very end of the time line.
Yes, Chu Ko Nu was almost never used on battlefield but only for occasional assassinations.
And the first, real attestation of Fire lance in combat is even more modern than 10th century (we’re talking about 12th century or more so), furthermore given the range of ancient sieges that Chinese used in their millennial history there’s no reason at all to retain Fire Lance in Retold.
Whether you like it or not Fire lance (and probably Chu Ko Nu as well) will have no place in the revamped Retold China.