https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/hf1da1/1st_attempt_at_what_we_know_about_aoe_4/
You can find the info there and they put sources at the end of the post as to where they got them from.
Wouldn’t be the first melee cavalry that does some kind of AoE damage.
Cataphracts, Slavic Infantry and most AoE3 cavalry can cause trample damage.
Multiple melee units also have AoE damage in AoE3 like Curassier, Spahi, Doppelsöldner, Samurai etc.
The British explorer can have a Swashbuckler Attack ability that damages multiple units around him.
The icon could indicate a big sword swing attack that damages multiple units.
A single target ability would also be possible but I think kinda boring when you can just take out 1 enemy unit instantly ever 2 minutes or so. (Like Eye of the Assassin in AoE3)
Campaign Heroes also had similar abilities.
I think it’s more than likely that it’s an melee attack ability that damages multiple units. Seems like the most generic Hero ability.
Realyl depents on the implementation, of which we currently know almost nothing about.
I don’t think they will have heroes like in WarCraft 3 that level up, have a wide variety of abilites to micro and take on an entire army just on their own. Plus in War3, the armies are much smaller than in any Age games, which focues more on large scale battles, especially in later stages of the game. In War3, even in the very late stages of the game, you have rarely more and couple dozen units in a battle.
My guess it that they will end up somewhere close to the explorers or Daimyo from Age3: stronger than regular units, with a limited set of abilites. In the early game, they can be quite strong and important to micro, but will become less and less important as army sizes grow. Except something buff to other units.
I personally liked the auto-abilites from Age of Mythology, where the hero units had each one ability, which was triggered automatically at a possible time (and had a cooldown). But that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Just guessing from the screenshots, I would say the fist is a heavy meele attack, the second somd kind of buff and the third a healing ability.
For multiplayer, that could be different. Campains don’t need such a tight balace, and designers can experiment with different mechanics, which I would like to see to keep things interesting.
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