First, why does there have to be a static balance at all points in the game?

Secondly, heros/sovs can use magic, which increases on it's own during the course of the game outside of their particular development.

The main cause of this "issue" is that weapons don't really scale properly. They jump way too high and are disproportionately powerful. Bringing them down to a better damage progression will help a lot.

Second, unless Sovereign/Champions will count towards the army cap (I haven't heard anything suggesting they'll uncap it), then it's not necessary and actually not so good to balance them out to be an equivalent of a full company. For example, if you're limited to 10 stacks in an army, including Sovereign/Champions, then yes they do need to be comparable in the late game to the best stack of units you can get at the time. But this doesn't necessarily mean pure combat stats. Since Sovereigns and Champions can have spells, they can easily act as force multipliers for the armies (mass buffs or mass debuffs/AoE damage), and so it's not necessary for them to be as "strong" as a company. But if the Sovereigns and Champions count as extra units on top of the cap, then buffing them strongly to compete with whole companies is actually bad, as the player would basically have to bring them or else his army would be outmatched. In this situation, the Sovereign and Champion units should be helpful to have in the battle (magic, etc), but not tip the balance as much as an additional company of your best units.

You master of magic example is not quite correct. The hero would get to roll his 12 defense 5 times, once for every attack. That results in about 0.065 damage per figure, or 0.33 damage on average for 5 attacking figures. Far less then the 2 you implied in your example. That hero is nigh invulnarable to such weak units, and can easily slaughter masses of them. Also, unless the hero had first strike, all 6 figures would retaliate, since attacks happen simultaneously in Master of Magic by default.

You can imagine that these rules made properly equipped high level hero's nigh invulnerable.

Agree with OP. 

Yeah but by the first time your running with 4 individual guys and come across a party, who's power is more significant, you'll be researching Party, and Platoon, and Company sized advancements too.

I agree, this does need a little more balancing. I understand the reason a sovereign/champion's importance drops late-game (ie. men vs. armies) but it could be balanced. For example, your champions could evolve into generals or governors and have passive bonuses to armies or cities. For example, in the beginning of the game a champion named Gregory could be great against wolves and individual soldiers but later on when he's fighting armies he is overwhelmed. He should evolve into a leader of men and possibly gives moral or speed bonuses to troops in his stack. Maybe you could also improve the abilities of the non-adventurers so that their bonuses increase (but only when stationed in cities).

Just needs a little work, that's all.

I like the idea of bodyguards, henchmen, familiars, pets, and retainers related to leveling. Have you ever played the Medieval Total War series? They had a good way of adding all of the above to your character for actions and events that occurred. They gave small but important bonuses and I think something like that would work for sovereigns and champions in Elemental quite well.

Also, I just wanted to agree about the additive method being overpowered. Personally, I think that each unit in the group should attack and "defend" individually with their individual stat and not the group stat when you attack something. Dead units could be visually removed slightly lowering the group stats until they heal. That way an army of spearman wouldn't be ridiculously overpowered but still powerful. Power in numbers.

I agree with the sentiment here, so much that I may be repeating some things already mentioned.

Let me answer this first. Why does there have to be balance at all points in the game? Because Heroing and Conquering are both tech trees. If heroing is only useful at the beginning of the game, there should be no tech tree for it and all heroes should be removed after turn 100. Equal investment = Equal reward. The two should be equal, if not necessarily the same.

However, before continuing, I have to say that if Elemental is as you say, common sense took one look and jumped headlong out the window. You're saying that one guy - one, single, guy, can:

1: Guard a whole town by himself.

2: Conquer a town. Again, by himself.

3: Prevent said town from simply revolting and reaffirming its former allegiance.... Again, by himself.

And this isn't even a heroic guy. This is a level 1 swordguy who for some unbelievable reason can do all that?

This is absurd.

I fully agree with the idea of using squads entirely, and no it isn't unreasonable.

This is post-apocalyptic, and therefore populations must start (for the minimal amount of incest) at about 100 people.

For a single squad of warriors - the absolute minimum of which should be about 10, this consumes around 10% of your starting population (so let's pretend that it was 110, because I'm lazy and it's easy) . Two squads in exchange for a lower starting population would give 90 population in exchange for two squads of guys. So at maximum, your starting army of guys is conquering populations ten times its size, not a hundred times.

Midgame can have twenty units to a squad, and with a late game squad, this can go up to, say, 50 people each. Note the progression is not ten times as is the current 1 > 4 > 10, but exactly half that. The default attack rate should be 1 per, and 2 for the end game, so attacks increase from 10 (1 each), to 100 (2 each and size 50).

This makes a lot more sense already. When the population increases, army and squad size must also increase, though not proportionally as larger populations become comparitively harder to mobilise against invaders. You need an army to conquer a city. One man units are not armies, they're don't even constitute an organised militia.

Secondly, however, I'd argue that the same logic applies to a hero. How does one person keep control in a town? Sure, the hero might be able to kill a bunch of them, but if even one in ten hurt him, he's dead. A lone hero should not be able to retain control of a town. In fact, unless units were actively left in a town for several (ten?) turns (during which time the town is "occupied" rather than "captured") the ownership should immediately revert to the previous owners - Would you remain loyal to your conqueror without any conquerors around? Occupied towns shouldn't be able to create units themselves either - a military squad is loyal. If it's not, you just armed the people who are fighting against you.

This leads to the idea of "presence". A hero hasn't got much military presence. He's just a guy. He might be able to raid a town for loot (but not much, since he has to carry it himself), but he's not going to be able to conquer it; even if he did, he'd have to stay put for ten turns. This seriously limits any potential for hero-rushing with a super-sovereign, whilst rewarding players with specialised "police" units who have more presence to let them control large cities easier. Armies can't complete a quest without a hero, why should a hero be able to conquer a city without an army?

As an aside here - I hope sovereign "level" to be a settable game option. I'd get more satisfaction from levelling up an initially weak, low level sovereign into the all powerful demi-god than having him at some arbitrarily high level from the get-go only to fall behind more useful heroes later on. Sovereign combat should be high-risk/high-reward in my mind.

I also agree that, for starters, every unit must be handled as an individual. Early discussions waaaay back talked about a squad of swordsmen against a dragon - one hundred soldiers can't beat a dragon, neither could a thousand. This makes sense. Just because there's a thousand swords doesn't mean any of the people behind them can hurt a dragon. Has this approach been forgotten?

So an elite group of knights isn't a 1500 attack, 800 defence, 1000 HP army of fifty. It's 50 x 30 attacks, times 2 each (or 3, though that many attacks on a basic unit with normal guys is fairly ridiculous). And every attack is against one unit of the group, with only sixteen defence, though - unlike MoM - this doesn't have to all hit the same unit each time, but the one with the most health (making the unit overall longer lasting with spreading damage). Sidenote: Special unit ability that allows them to target the most injured unit instead of the least would be potentially very powerful.

To compete a hero who starts out at, say, 12 attack, 6 defence, 8 HP and 1 attack - about three times more powerful than a regular unit - only needs to increase at a comparatively small rate - 60 attack, 45 defence, 60 HP, 10 attacks at max level without gear.

The key for lone units I see to be number of attacks, just 60 attack makes even an unarmed hero inherently dangerous all by themself, even though it's a smaller increase over nine levels (starting at level 1 up to 10) compared to a military unit, but with ten attacks as well, he's a unit all by himself.

On its own, this isn't going to cut it against multiple squads of high-end units, but a hero shouldn't be balanced with just stats alone, but with special abilities plus stats, a max level hero should pose a high threat to any unit in the game, even dragons, whose high def/attack is better against the death-of-a-thousand cuts that a military unit offers.

One such ability, Magic, is great for heroes that have it, but magic should be only one of many special talents heroes have, so the special abilities are another must-have.

Finally, cohorts is a great idea - but I think it's so powerful better as a skill rather than by default. Cohorts themselves don't even need to be particularly powerful to provide a large amount of security for the hero whilst the hero does all the damage. A hero with the appropriate ability naturally accumulates a cohort with a size equal to their level - 1. This even gives the hero a little presence for holding territory.
A lesser cohort options would be an equippable "pet" or partner which basically serves as a single additional unit to share damage with.

Combining this all together makes heroes adequately powerful alone, at a broadly consistent (but not necessarily even) level of advancement (thanks primarily to the number of attacks they get) compared to squads they might meet over the course of a game. But even if they could take on entire stacks of squads (and the law of averages still doesn't work too well in their favour there), they wouldn't be able to hold anything and any invasion led by a hero would lose units to hold the territory every town they conquered.

It's nice to see such cohesive thinking going on about this.

I've long since said that cities should be able to defend themselves. Not against Sovs or overwhelming armies, but small scouting parties, bandits or occasional monsters? yes. 

I just want to put a plug in again for some other way to rebalance.  I'm especially a fan of how master of magic did it (ie 6 soldiers in a unit has 6 times x attacks, whatever x weapon is).  This really is key... the current method of just adding it all together doesnt seem balanced currently.

I wouldnt mind a bodygaurd or 'attach a champion to a unit' method was used either.  I just really hope this is changed before the game comes out this month.

I've also been quite annoyed by the relative uselessness of my sovereign and entourage in the late game.  Sure, the sov gets more moves than a standard troop, but deals pitiful damage in comparison and will die if anything so much as looks at them.  Yes, the sovereign gets better magic, but what if you want to focus on martial prowess instead of magic?  Personally, I'd get a kick out of being able to have a sov who can't cast that well but can wade into the midst of enemies and send them flying all over the place.  Sure, it doesn't make a lot of logical sense, but we're talking about magical, near-immortal heroes here.  I think that just adding automatic HP buffs could go a long way to alleviate this problem--automatic buffs to all stats, plus still assigning a "specialization" bonus at each level could also do it.

Tasunke- think of one attack as an instant of battle..not a single swing.  That attack could have a swing, a shield bash, a kick, a dodge etc.  The point - a powerful melee warrior should be able to kill multiple individuals in a single attack.  A supremely powerful warrior hero with magical weapons and speacial abilities should be able to even kill tens of units in a single 'attack'.