Why should the most common type of champion be considered a waste of XP? That's an odd design choice. You would think that leveling them would increase their usefulness in roughly the same proportion that it increases a thief or adventurer champion's usefulness. They're called champions, not "losers that give an okay bonus by early game standards and then become worthless".

About the unit groups. It needs to be represented that those groups consist of individuals rather than being a singular Voltron-like construct. If you have a 40hp group consisting of four 10hp soldiers, once the group takes 10 dmg it's attack values also needs to go down by a single soldier amount. The current situation with groups is quite poor for the reasons already stated.

Maybe groups could gain bonuses through use of formations and such but we need to feel that the soldiers are individuals.

I agree that champions need a little more buffing to make them more important. I've got my Abilities Mod (in the mod section) to do just that by improving their traits and such. To me champions are just one person. They shouldn't really be able to defeat an entire army by themselves. They should, however, be able to at least stand up to them.

I think of all the action-adventure movies where you have Jack Sparrow or someone fighting an entire base of enemy soldiers. He's not taking them all on at once but usually 1-4 at a time. He can beat them, individually, like this. He cannot, however, do this forever and must retreat or get reinforcements. That can be done in Elemental.

We need the above suggestion about army attacks implemented.

Also, I'd like to see traits and abilities improved. I've got my mod that does this by making most traits and professions gain a "passive bonus" that usually benefits you while stationed in cities. A merchant, for example, gains more gold stationed in a city then in the wilderness. He also gives the city a small multiplier bonus. This makes more sense instead of him scouting the landscape he is remaining in the city trading.

HOWEVER, I've been trying to tie these bonuses to the character's attributes with no success. I need someone to fill in the blanks in the coding here. For example, I want a merchant to gain .2 gold + (1/100) wisdom + (1/25) charisma + (1/30) intelligence/ per turn... how do I code this into the <Modifier> in the .XML. I'm stuck.

I'd also like merchants to gain XP for being stationed in a city. No idea how to implement that either...

Legolas can fire multiple arrows in a single shot.

(probably not the example you're looking for, eh?)

I really like your suggestions.  It would be nice to have them gain experience some how vs. adventuring.  What if they had "contracts" or "quests" to travel to other cities and establish those caravan routes (or trading routes).  Or they provide a bonus to trade routes - like they're the fat cats who are great at managing trading empires and provide bonuses.  Afterwhile that extra gildar is trivial isn't it?

What I really found interesting are the negatives that sovereigns could take where they provide negative impact to cities where they are at.  The people are like "we appreciate what you're doing but would prefer if you keep your ugly mug out there adventuring, sire".  I don't know if those same traits are found on heroes but that would be interesting.  Offer more gildar for an efficiency penalty?

The way to even it up between stacks and champions in my mind is to simply not have stacks gain more defense, they're already getting the HPs stacking, no reason to let their defense stack as well.

Let's not forget that we are talking about a fantasy world here.  Warrior Heroes and Combat MAges should be able to hang in combat.

Maybe some sort of "outnumbering bonus" would work.  If a hero is facing off against a group of regular units the regular units would get a bonus to their attack based on the number of units.  For example, if a champion faces 6 "regulars" the regulars would get a bonus (let's say 50%), but each would still compute their attacks individually.  Instead of one big attack, the unit would get 6 smaller, but still better than their individual attack.

That seems like an interesting Idea. And then have certain large creatures (like Dragons) immune to this penalty.

although, even without good stats, the ABILITIES of a Dragon KICK ASS!!!! Dragon Inferno ftw

I just tangled with a Drake. It wiped out my entire veteran army. Annoying thing was my last remaining unit (Sovereign as it happens) got it down to one hit point; I hit it with a Titan's Breath in the hope of either finishing it off or at least forcing it back out of threat range, and not only does the damage "miss", it drops it right on top of it's map exit where it promptly runs away. Gah!

I really don't think that's a problem - if you're sending poorly equipped soldiers with 10 attack each against some godlike creature with 100 defense, sure you won't even scratch it 90% of the time, but isn't that the way it should be in such an extreme situation? Practically speaking, it's rare to get single units with 100 defense*, and it's much more common to get single units over 10 attack, so that's taking a rare and extreme case and complaining that the results are.. well, extreme. Really that's exactly the result you should get, given unusually small attack vs. unusually large defense.

[*Edit: or perhaps not so rare, haven't encountered the 891 defense Snathi myself.. jesus, that's ridiculous. Clearly some other balancing issues going on here My point still is, though, that an enemy with defense 10x one of your soldiers' attack should be difficult to kill, not something easily solved by training a stack of 10 soldiers.]

Not necessarily - pooling health together and treating the squad as a single unit for defensive purposes is ok, the key is not stacking defense values. That is to say, a squad of 10 soldiers with 5 hp and 10 defense each should act as a single 50 hp/10 defense unit when it gets attacked. You could think of the first 5 hp as the "first" soldier defending with 10 def, and at 45/50 he's incapacitated and the second soldier is now defending also with 10 def, but that distinction is abstracted away - in gameplay terms a single 50 hp/10 def unit has the same effect. The only difference is whether this unit loses attacks as it loses health - at 45/50 do you stop getting that 10th attack from the soldier you've lost, and get 9 attacks instead? Or just give it 10 separate attacks regardless of health? I'd favor the latter, it's simpler and gives you a reason to still want stacks of units. But either way, it's a massive improvement over the stacking attack/defense values that lead to 10 individuals forming a 50 health/100 defense/100 attack ubersoldier that is exponentially more powerful than the sum of its parts.

Anyways, Salrog the Dragon can eat away at the HP of any insane NPC that has uber defense.

Honestly, only HP should stack imho (attacks should be separate, with maybe a +1 group bonus to attack)

I mean, Attacks should be separate ... (and defense non-stacking ofc), yet maybe a +1 to attack (for each soldier) for being in a unit, and maybe have differnet formations (with various bonuses and some penalties) only accessible by larger units.

Basically, it should be the formations that add strength to the large units, not the fact that their attack adds together like a giant amoeba.

and yea, bringing soldiers with 10 attack vs something with 100 defense ... no way thats gonna work without some serious magical support.

You guys read Wheel of Time or played Warhammer 40k? I think we can learn something from both.

In WoT (fantasy book series) there's a bit where a single Aiel, completely unarmoured and unarmed, takes out 8 fully armoured, sword and shield wielding knights, without taking a scratch. And this is just a normal adult Aiel. 

This is a fantasy game, why shouldn't a champion with 40 attack and 40 defense be able to take out a squad of 10 units with 10 attack/defense? 

Warhammer 40k, a fantasy sci-fi tabletop game, has heroes too. In that game, they're pretty damn invulnerable to basic troops. You need high damage or armour piecing weapons to take them out. They also generally one shot basic troops, and have several attacks a combat turn.

The numbers do get one advantage in 40k, and that's bonus attacks when they outnumber their enemy. It's something like 1 extra attack per 4 units. 

40k heroes are also completely balanced even tho they're about 100x stronger then a single basic troop. The catch is they're about 10x more expensive.

Right now, it costs like 10,000 gold to get a champion up 40 attack and 40 defense, yet a 200 gold 60 iron unit completely rolls it. 50x more expensive, yet WEAKER.

Champions aren't balanced AT ALL. They need to be like 5-10x stronger then they are right now (and the multiple attack change NEEDS to be implemented). 

I don't think the Sovereigns should be demi-gods (in combat at least).  they should get their asses kicked by 10 well trained knights/beasts in melee.  What they should shine at is magic. From afar they should be able to burn, freeze, and shatter a group of ten men to their knees.