Hero Units with special abilities - how far should you go?

We can see that Hero Units will probably have 2 special abilities (you can see them in the bottom with shortcuts “w” and “e”). Maybe there are more passive abilities. And maybe “e” isnt a hero ability but a monks ability to heal. What do you think about the hero balancing and options?

I think you should be able to recruit a hero starting in feudal or castle age with a dedicated building. There you can upgrade there special abilities. I think it would be right to choose between 2-4 hero units but you have to decide on 1 per game. If he/she dies it will respawn after a time. But you can’t recruit another one.

A nice feature from my point of view would be that each hero brings in a special unit (like Condotierro or Genitour) that you now can create from the regarding building. Nothing OP but it allows you to extend your room of answers to other civs so it’s more unlikely to get a “civ win”.

Of course heroes can bring in small passive bonusses into fights. I hope they are not game deciding. Furthermore they each hero could grant a different civ bonus (5% faster wood income; 20% faster building speed; 10% faster attack speed for infantry). So you have even more possibilities to adapt your strategy to the matchup.

What do you think?

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I LOVE that idea ‘BerndRakell’ It sounds Great!!
I hope that comes out.

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Tbh, I don’t tink there will be many civ wins in 4, as the civs are going to be(in SoTL words) leaning towards SC2 instead of AoE2 to civilization

I assume that this screenhost is from the campaign (or Art of War or even Tutorial) and not from normal Gameplay.
I think it’s likely that players will only have one Hero that might just be named King (because of the very obvious crown symbol)

The fact that the other two special units don’t have a hero glow in game might mean that they are just special normal units that appear in the campaing and not real heroes.

Not sure what you mean.
You mean that there is only going to be 4 civilisations that are very different?
You can already see France and England in that screenshot having the same units types.

AoE4 is a history game. Historically the armies of England and China weren’t that different.
Chinese pole arms might look different than English ones but function nearly the same.
Not like they are literally aliens like in SC2.

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Tbf I dont really like this heroes idea. I hope they are only for single player campaigns and scenarios. I don’t want MP games to revolve around heroes which have special abilities or, even worse, you level them up.

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hero units are confirmed to MP since XO19, mongols start the match with a “Khan” that can send a eagle to scout.

No I mean that the civs are going to be more different(they have already claimed this that the civs are going to be quite different in playstlyes)than AoE2 civs are.

It was never specified that is a special ability from a hero, that scouting eagle flying in the old trailer could as well be a civilization ability. Actually I kinda remember them saying something like that. Or correct me if I’m wrong with proof.
And heroes were never confirmed specifically for MP, on the contrary, they said they would like to move away from the hero thing:

Heroes have always been a fascinating thing about Age – there have always been heroes in it – but, you know, time passes. And as we talk about civilisations, we thought more about making the civilisations the heroes. That doesn’t mean there won’t be missions that focus on certain people in those civilisations, but that time moves on.

from the gamerstar interview

in the interview it was under the “Crunch Point Campaign” which they were talking about campaign, so i presume those are for campaigns

Where did you get this info? can you send the link?

I really like hero units to be added in AOE 4 but I also hope that they’re not too OP to ruin the game.

If we are adding special abilities it should be like the ones in StarCraft II.

Lets say the Hero on the screenshot has 3 abilities and the other two Hero like units don’t show their abilities unless you select them.

  1. Attack that causes AoE damage
  2. Inspiring nearby troops making them stronger
  3. Heal nearby troops

Those seem reasonable abilities for an Age 3 Hero. There can possibly up to 4 abilities.
I think direct damage abilities like the first one should be rare, this is not Warcraft 4.
Heroes should be a support for the army and not an army of their own.
Maybe the can have a permanent aura like War Chiefs in AoE3 or only a temporary one.
A global ability cooldown could also be an interesting option because it would reduce ability usage and make it more of a strategic choice instead of trying to use every ability on cooldown.

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agree. I really like hero units to be added in the game. but I also hope that they’re not too powerful to break the game

My wondering is, it shows that you have 3 heroes selected, but you only see one. Where are the other 2?

Veterans Units in the new footage?

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That sounds reasonable, thanks

if they want to add a hero units into multiplayer at very least they shouldn’t make them as strong as dawn of war and warcraft heroes or have a crazy abilities and can be easily countered by counter units(e.g cavalry hero gets hard countered by spearmans) and the game shouldn’t focus on hero units just to win or necessarily to play a normal aoe game, but otherwise it’s a bad game design because hero units were never that strong or important in any age game or never part of the classic ones, for example age of mythology hero units can pick up relics and hard counter myth units but they are indifferent against human soldiers and can be beaten by them.

i’m still confident that heroes units won’t be in multiplayer, but i guess i should wait and see the event

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How can that be reasonable ability in a historical medieval game? Don’t tell me you want magic in the game.

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