Make heroes a lobby setting (off in ranked or scenarios by default)
Give every civilisation a hero
How to give everyone a hero
Missing space for a button in the Castle
There are 3 possible solutions
Rework Cuman Mercenaries to just automatically train the free units
Move the Petard to the Siege Workshop
Move the Hero behind one of the technologies (like Elite Unique Unit, Imperial Age Unique Technology or Coinage)
If the Traction Trebuchet should be moved back to the Castle is another topic.
What heroes to choose
Most civs already have a campaign named after a Hero so that would be the obvious choice.
This would also be the perfect chance to add new visuals to some of the classic heroes.
Hero abilities
Giving every hero a unique ability seems like an almost impossible task so some heroes would have overlapping abilities like having the same aura.
Some heroes could maybe just be a strong unit or some heroes just buff the civilisations unique units. An Elephant hero might already be strong enough by simply being immune to conversion and regenerating health.
None of the heroes should have active abilities though. This is not Warcraft.
Just keep this thing inside the Three Kingdoms. The easiest step is renaming the 3 heroes to “Lord”, so the hatred can be eased a lot since they no longer the certain historical figures. For more, find something generic that can be reasonably trained over 1 unit to be the replacements for the heroes, such like Wooden Ox for Liu Bei, typical Chinese chariot for Cao Cao, and Night Raider horseman for Sun Jian.
If every civ could have their own hero, certain historical figures, better make this into a special game mode beside Regicide, Battle Royale, King of the Hill, etc.
Who would like to turn it on? I mean, those people might also prefer a special mode that allows every civ to own their heroes, so we don’t have to make it a setting of normal games.
Not necessary to be available in the Castle.
It could be the TC or Wonder.
I don’t think that would really be necessary because completely removing them would have little to no impact on the actual gameplay.
Yes and no.
I think it would be nice to have as an option for skirmish. Having an alternative version of the regicide mode where you have a hero instead of the King would be cool though.
There could also be a gamemode where everyone starts with a hero instead of scout but that would need more work with like a hero unit that gets stronger every Age Up. Also would require a lot of balancing. A horse cavalry hero sounds like it’s a little better for scouting then an elephant one.
Same as turning on full techtree, cheats, team placement and so on. Just another checkbox.
I mean it’s not that different from full techtree since it modifies the civilisation without modifying the victory conditions.
TC is a too cheap place I think and Wonder is way to expensive especially in the amount of time it takes to construct.
Plus it’s the place where the current heroes are already trained in.
TC would certainly be the best alternative and that’s where you train heroes with the Spartans too.
If removing is indeed a way they are going to do, you don’t even create this topic since we gonna say good bye to them.
As long as the removal may not be a choice in a maybe short time, renaming is the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective move for easing the hatred.
Then, why don’t we have a setting for allowing King available in normal mode or for a Monument at the center of the map in normal mode, with normal victory conditions rather than Regicide?
Like the King as the feature of Regicide and the Monument as the feature of King of the Hill, the Heroes should be the feature of the Hero mode. Look at the hatred for the Heroes, people dislike them even they seldom get trained. We don’t really need them remaining in the normal game
You can try more creative things than just putting heroes into a normal game. Like, it can be more RPG-style, allowing the heroes can level up not only as time goes by but also by defeating enemy units, healing friendly units, paying costs, finishing submissions…
It wont impact the balance but it would reduce the content of the game.
Making them a setting would keep them in the game but just remove them from ranked.
Then no one is forced to interact with them but you can still use them in your own games.
Banishing them to the Scenario editor or to mods would completely remove them for Console players.
I’m not against renaming them for sure. But I still think adding heroes to everyone would be an interesting thing.
The King has no effect outside of regicide. Just a funny scout.
The Monument has no effect at all other then a tiny bit of line of sight.
I think most people would not want to see that in AoE2 plus that sounds like a lot of work to implement.
It was just a suggestion. Not that people use Petards much at all.
Also they should be removed from none gunpoweder civs. Aztec petards make no sense.
But that’s a different topic.
Then a Hero mode with more creative design for a niche RPG-style gameplay may even be more interesting and be enjoyed by more people than being a setting in normal mode that nobody would turn on.
People still hate them even though they practically seldom get trained, so simply not allowing them to be trainable is no help.
I think a lot of casual players would love to be able to add a hero to their army in their skirmish/coop vs. AI.
People love waiting for Imperial Age before attacking. Give those people a cool unit to train.
Petards from SW means = cheap unit = easy breaking stone wall from early castle age = more ressources for army instead of stone = balance change in close maps.
Nah, with this you are just hiding the problem under the rug.
The real solution is to remove 3K from the base game and move them to its own game mode, but that will never happen. Way to go and ruin the game.
I agree with this suggestion – here’s what I said about it in another thread:
My preference would be to remove heroes from standard games and introduce a new game mode in which every civ gets heroes, and they are better integrated into the gameplay instead of only being available in Imperial Age. I think this would give a better experience both for people who want to play with heroes and people who don’t.
The suggestion to make it a lobby option is perhaps better than a game mode, since you could combine it with other game modes – e.g. you could play King of the Hill with heroes, Death Match with heroes, etc.
They could be available from the Town Centre, possibly requiring a Castle. I would make them available earlier in the game so they can play a bigger part in it (1v1s often end before or very early in Imperial Age), probably no earlier than Castle Age though to avoid people soloing an enemy’s Feudal Age economy with them. They could be weaker in Castle Age than Imperial Age.
I’d have removed them completely with the release either of HD or DE. They were originally a joke cheat unit and were presumably only added to the tech tree to increase the number of “new” units ES could advertise for The Conquerors. Evidently no thought went into which civs should have them or how they should fit into the tech tree. No idea why they’re available in Castle Age and without Chemistry, although I suppose we have quite a few gunpowder units in the same situation now…
Funnily enough, I think Aztec petards actually feature in the campaigns and represent the Tlaxcalans using Spanish gunpowder.
If they do a “hero mode” for all civs, do NOT give heroes the name of a historical figure. Give them the name of a commander in chief from their civ (marshall for western european civs, khan for steppe civs…)
It still doesn’t make sense that only Wei Shu Wu has a lord. Heroes has no reason to be available in ranked to begin with (and neither do the three fake civs honestly)
How is that a complicated solution? How could it be easier?
Other then just remove heroes and give nothing back in return?
The civs are already in the game and there are already enough people that like them.
Now taking them away would make a lot of people very upset.
You have to accept that the game is not just made for you.
It wouldn’t be that much of an effort because there are a lot of campaign heroes to chose from already.
Why not? We already have a lot of elements of civilisations existing next to each other that were centuries or even millennia apart in real life.
Franks have Throwing Axeman next to Paladins and Hand cannons while whole civilisations like Huns and Spanish are over 1000 year apart from each other.
I don’t think that having a game mode where heroes that never lived at the same time fight each other would be that much of an issue.
A ranked queue for 3 civs seems kinda pointless.
Or do you mean one ranked queue with all civs and one without 3 Kingdoms/Chronicles?
This would also just split the player base, increase the queue times and make matches worse.