I’ll leave it to the devs to figure out which stats or whatever need balancing. They get paid for it.
But for quick ideas…
- Maybe some units in every civ have a buff against heroes. You know, counter-units… like most any unit has in the game. This would be the most logical route, imo. (No, don’t make new heroes just to counter other civ heroes.)
- Maybe once heroes die, they are gone for the rest of the match and the entire civ weakens a small percentage overall. They’re great while they last, but at least there’d be some risk with using the civ and losing the hero. Once hero is gone, either nerf defenses or nerf attack strength, as a ‘lost morale’ component… as much as I’d hate this stuff for AoE. But, hey, heroes in SP/MP games opened that can of worms, sigh.
- Actually, I hope heroes die for good, and don’t just kneel down providing a perma-spotlight to light up the map and track enemy movements, like I think Explorers do in AoE3. That’s one of my least favorite things about AoE3; the explorer is some immortal creature, as if we’re playing Age of Mythology or something
- Maybe heroes are extremely expensive. Maybe heroes are slow moving. Maybe heroes are quite susceptible to a certain unit type (archers, or infantry, or cavalry, or siege). Maybe heroes are good in bursts, but then have a cool-down period (like monks cooldowns)… as much as I don’t like the thought of, essentially, stamina meters for non-monk units in AoE
Maybe you, the community, and the devs can think of better, more “Ao2 appropriate” ideas that stick better to the AoE2 canon of gameplay mechanics we’ve all grown and love.
Hereos aren’t the first or only powerful unit to come to AoE2. And we’ve never had to take up multiple population spots for them. There are many ways the game could be balanced. Some ways are more annoying than others, and I think taking up multiple population spots is one of the most annoying ways possible
PS: There’s not much that I can find, but I might have found the tiny AoE2 community sparks that resulted in heroes coming into AoE2 SP/MP civs. As with other things in the DLC, maybe not the most requested idea ever: