How heroes are recruited will definatly be one of the focuses in this expansion. I suspect they will be hired in the capital now under certain limiting rules, and that you will need a building before starting to hire the lowest level ones.
Benefits;
- This way it becomes one of the things you have to choose when to prioritize in the build queue, with the tradeoffs that gives the player. Ability to recruit heroes will depend on the development of your capital too.
- It may take longer to get many heroes up, and that makes armies more important in itself.
- You can not have a heavy Champion focused game without at the same time focus on growing and developing at least your capital City. (Founding alot of cities already makes a unit focused game easier, so this is a balancer. Growing tall earlier gives some benefits in Champion-recruitment). They can make better champion-classes reliant on better buildings that again need huger city levels. This will make for more importance on growing your capital (They may make these buildings buildable in capital only).
Growing capital early instead of building as many cities as possible becomes a slightly better strategy then today. (Combine it with stop in population growth while pioneers are getting built, and it becomes even better, because this way it will be possible to actually be able to get an edge in city level growth.)
- All players are garanteed a certain number of champions (if they do the investments needed and the effort to grow their capital).
- By limiting the amount of recruitable Champions more equally among the factions, a potential dynasty-system will be easier to balance off.
It could work something like this:
Capital: Building: Abilities:
City Level 1 Pub Makes it possible to recruit one level 1 champion
City Level 2 Tavern Makes it possible to recruit one level 1 champion
City Level 3 Residence Makes it possible to recruit two level 3 champions (or maybe just 1)
City Level 4 Estate Makes it possible to recruit one level 5 champion
City Level 5 Manor Makes it possible to recruit one level 9 champion