I know many of us started posting here around the release of Gal Civ 2, which was a magnificent game, the best computer strategy game I had played up until recently. I think it is important to be aware of the different reasons we play strategy games though. This is the crux of my argument, which really has nothing to with xp split per se.

I personally play them casually, usually for the stimulation to the imagination with just the added bonus of it being a strategy problem to solve. I play chess as well though, and it is my outlet for a serious strategy in game form. Some people here use this game for their pure strategy diversion, and I respect that. Your arguments are good, sincere, and well thought-out.

Chess is a pure strategy game, there are no graphics, rpg elements, or neat fictional settings. The thing is it is nowhere as complex strategically as computer strategy games, it just is complex enough that it is beyond human limits as we know it to be perfect at it. I wrote a post here https://forums.elementalgame.com/438446/page/1/#3300617 analyzing how hard FE is from a strategic perspective, in the context of designing an optimal AI solution for it.

Now I concede my argument is not superior to yours as far whether exp split or anything I have mentioned is a better idea than what is currently implemented or the ideas expressed in your views. I only make the case that given the rpg aspects of this genre, if they go for perfect strategy game at the expense of highlighting these aspects it will be a sub-optimal experience for fantasy strategy fans as I understand them. Just as preemptive defense, I don't think playing to these aspects entails that the pure strategy experience of the game must suffer. I just think if you want to please a wide audience who likes this genre, it would be wise to err in that direction, instead of the one they have been going for a very long time.

I posted this analysis a while back, and I want to repost it here. I know some fans of these games may find it contentious, but here is how I view FE and LH:

I just want to justify saying LH is the best strategy game I have played by comparing it to the other big names in the fantasy TBS genre. I think what people liked the most about these games is something that LH could focus on a bit more and steal everyone's hearts, especially people who get annoyed at rough edges. 

I think what is making LH work so well now is that it has more game elements than any other strategy game I have played, and they are accessible and user-friendly. Deep tech, spells, heroes, quests, goodies, resources, wildlands, events, diplomacy, designable and upgradeable units, as well as upgrades to all player resources. (Edit, so much stuff I didn't remember it all) Not to mention the world as a hostile actor, that just isn't in any other TBS I have played (at least to a remarkable level). This game is hands down a far better strategy game than any other fantasy TBS.

Dominions 3: Other games use far less and are less user-friendly, Dom3 comes to mind. Dom3 is hardcore though, I got in to it for a while, but it is just too complex (not in the good way, it was plumbing through hundreds of pages of manual to figure out how something works) and so abstract you really need to use your imagination way too much. The whole god candidate thing was an amazing part of the attraction, a lot of the other stuff was just a lot of work. Take that ego attraction out of the game and I wonder how many people would want to play it.

Master of Magic: MoM gets adulation for being awesome years before any other big fantasy TBS was available, but it is fairly empty and slow compared to LH. I think nostalgia is involved with its place. But it did really make the wizarding element personal and immersive, and that made up for a whole lot of stuff that wasn't as much fun. The spells and how they made a big deal of it with cut-scenes is pure immersion. The game played like a stripped down early Civ though. That's why I think sovereign leveling and a little ego love there would steal the thunder of that game. A little more sparkle and dazzle around the sovereign would hit at people's egos, and that kind of fun is deep and spreads over turn after turn, immersed in the idea of a wizard gaining power to rule the world.

Age of Wonders: AoW series really did the wizarding element well too, and had very neat tactical battle graphics. Not balanced at all, and tech and upgrades were there but not that involved, but the game was carried by the ego fun of the wizard you were using. It had a cool story, cut scenes, and champions that basically rocked the world. Units were there but blah. People get attached to individuals, so I really loved overpowered champions that ripped the map up. It was shallow though, because heroes were so overpowered they were one man wrecking crews with all the empowerments you could give them.

So LH is the most complex and accessible of all of these, it plays way better than any of these. How in the world you got so much to work together so well is a feat I am floored by. I think the only weak part that makes people notice the rough edges so much (and every one of the above games had huge rough edges, except AoW 2 and Shadow Magic were pretty polished) is that leveling and power acquisition for the sovereign and heroes isn't rpg immersive enough to get that long-lasting ego immersion fun. Who cares if some small part has a bug when you are having such a blast? Some bells and whistles around magic, having every level something to look forward to, and making something more explicitly unique about the sovereign would increase the fun factor way out of proportion to its implementation cost.

I totally agree with this sentiment.  But I think looking at the rate that experience is gained will not get you to the promised land.  Reading your post helped me put my finger on exactly what I think is missing from FE/LH (other than a competitive AI).

As you say FE/LH does so much right: the RPG elements are extensive and intuitive, the strategy and civilization building scale, the game's balance needs tweaking here and there, but overall is very keen.  The one thing that's missing from the overall experience is...

Zinga.

That company mastered the visual, auditory and tactile reward system that's part of the key to RPG success.  Of course, they used that skill to provide their boring, pointless and uncomplicated games with the illusion of being fun.  Sure, they're entertaining, but they're not fun.

The problem is that LH/FE is a great game that does not entertain. 

It's not going to happen, I know that.  But IMHO LH should focus on providing immediate, unconscious, temporal rewards for leveling your heroes and towns.  It sounds stupid but the game needs fireworks going off, a parade, or something like that to make these big moments feel big.  The game just doesn't do non-interactive-celebratory-animation-things to encourage the player to acknowledge each achievement.  (Which is what I see at the core of the RPG experience)

Whenever they try to do it, you get a dialog or an interstitial screen.  In other words, an interactive-work-static-thing that prevents you from playing the game.

They've made a few moves in this direction, like the post-battle XP counter, and the trait selection screen is so slick that it carries an element of reward, but the game is still mostly in the TBS mindset which IMHO does detract from the RPG experience.

What is even less fun is that they do scale XP due to map size. They scale XP rewards down the larger the map.

The answer isn't to force me to have all my hard won heroes sitting in town(s) getting paid to do nothing because I can't afford to build enough troops to run them.

So lets run down how the Beta has progressed.

1) I must expand exceedingly slow, between pop caps and unrest and I'm capped at total number of cities at a round 5-6 unless I jump through hoops.

2) I can only afford the troops to run, sorry horses/wargs were nerfed, walk, one hero at a time in a single stack, because doing anything else means that because of reduced XP, you can't get over level 6.

3) New monsters are nice and tough, but you can't face them until after you have spent exactly how many turns doing nothing waiting until research is complete so that you can produce troops to face them, or else just lose troops in a revolving door fashion.

4) It seems as if everything in the game has been contrived to make everything into an excruciating grind and if you are smart enough and patient enough when you get to mid/late game, you walk through everything by beating things over the head with an axe.

5) All my heroes are drinking beer and laughing at me, while I pay them to do so.

At least in FE when I won, I had lots of different ways of always winning and lots of things to keep busy with. Currently this thing is sort of like watching paint dry. It funny though because I like the new quests and the new monsters, the new gear and even the new Hero's. The rest of it though is like ick poo. I also don't play 'quick' turns. I love really long grinding games, but somewhere this just did not become fun.

So if I can't run a stack of heroes because the AI would be forced to do the same, even though not being able to has not helped it at all. Let me run them as a two man team. It will speed up the beginning game a bit, it is simple enough to let the AI do the same, and I won't have quite so many of them doing absolutely nothing.

I don't agree with OP and other peeps sustaining his point of view.

XP split is a very good mechanic. It forces you to make choices, do I want 1 super duper hero, or a pack of mid tier ones?

Let's compare:

1 Level 10 hero will have less hp, less defense, less attack than 3 level 4 heroes. He will be able to use higher level items (weapon mainly) which will give him better attack, true. But having 3 different types of heroes (a spell caster, an assassin and a defender for example) gives you more flexibility and more options.

Almost all loot you will find will be put to good use with more heroes than with a single one. In this game gear plays a major part in strength of a unit (be it hero or trained units). 

So think about it from all points of view. There are spells to increase the XP, same as skills (which you should pick first before specializing in other things, as you should mainly explore & gather for first part of game and not warmongering or fighting every wandering mob stack on map).

The beauty is tho that you can play the game both ways and be successful, either focusing on a single hero / champ, or growing more. I've finished games with a level 10 Sovereign and several level 3-7 champions, without ever warmongering, either by casting the spell of making or diplomatic victory, while still venturing deep into wildlands (like scrapyard, beating some dragons and stuff as well etc). I never was in a scenario where I felt that my Sovereign or champions are underpowered, hit like sissies, get 1 shot from random monsters or what not. You have spells to augment them, you can craft magic items to empower them, you can switch gears depending what you're facing (to improve a specific element resist, or dodge, or defense, or spell resist etc).

I am just stunned at so many people missing very important point : This game is 4X + RPG, not just RPG nor just 4X.

Even before we are talking about modern RPG xp system and MMO mechanics, the most obvious problem with XP split is that RPG elements (sov and heroes) have to compete with 4X elements (troops), and such drastic change on XP system does not fond well because one element will overshadow the other very easily.

Currently, other than first sov, all other heroes are simply uber-expensive-to-maintain scouts. Even adding just 1 more hero with sov will cut the xp by 50% and both heroes become highly noncompetitive against troops. By the time they reach level 10 (which barely maxed out one magic tree or got some traits here and there) they would be against horde of fully-armored horsemen with 30+ damage (on expert level or higher difficulty).

In current state, only mage-type hero with correct path (maxed out XP gain traits and specialized with either full magic damage or full utility) or a hero with incredibly good armor/weapon/artifact is useful. Rest of them are really just a waste of gold. You really do not need more than 1 hero.

"But that's why they should have troops as escorts!" Not to mention they die first anyway by archers' focused fire, but soon you realize that heroes hardly contribute to the battle, realize it is better put one more well-made troops instead of heroes on the army slot, and finally realize they are just good for goodies grabbing and quest grabbing, and eventually, realize they are just one hell-of-expensive scouts.

Actually, they are very decent scouts that they never die thus do not disturb build queues on your cities. They are completely expendable in exchange for high maintenance fee.

Even in very late game where you can finally deploy multiple armies, and decide to put some heroes to decorate your armies, they are struggling to level up because pretty much all of monster lairs are gone at that point, and heroes gain very small amount of xp from killing AI troops.

The best solution is remove XP split (which, most of rpg/MMO games these days do not have such outdated mechanic anyway) with reverted damage of troops (0.80) and reverted damage of hero weapons (pre 0.87).

If we are really going to keep the XP split, then XP gain from killing AI armies should be back to WoM level and monsters/lairs should be re-spawning like WoM, and all factions should be able to buy quest maps. Without such large amount of XP flow from early to very late game, the RPG elements just cannot compete with the 4X elements. 

And please stop bring D&D. It is good for table-top, but really horrid rule-set for computer games, hence bloody no one uses it anymore and it should stay that way. 

It's not true that all heroes are useless.

A lvl 5 commander who specializes in unrest is useful, as is a high-level commander who specializes in troops and can get +init.

I think the .87 changes make being stacked eq-wise much easier.   Also, hero spam has been toned down due to the movement of the Adventurer's Guild out of the early game entirely.

I do think .87 does a good job in fixing some of the imbalance between classes, though it might be a bit of a lottery (not necessarily a bad thing)

I think the only change I'd like to see, is for the Drills tech to enable a building that gives the XP bonus impact of the adventurer's guild in each city.  It should be expensive.  I think that would get things to the sweetspot- I do think it's now on the dartboard instead of having the dart in the wall somewhere.

*This is a long post, my last effort to appeal to the devs to change course*

I would like to propose a metric to make a point, I'll call if fun per game minute (FPM). So imagine some quantification of fun over the player's head as he/she plays the game, and then taking an average of that per minute. I will say that I think this what has changed the most from WoM release until now, the game plays to the experience of the player much better.

For someone who plays LH like Gal Civ 2 in a different setting (I'll call them universal strategy player, USP), they will not be affected much by the "problem" I am describing. Heroes and sovereigns are more like tools to ultimately win the game to them than what I would call the more exclusive fantasy strategy player (FSP). To the former type of player the goal is first and foremost to win the game. Their FPM does not fluctuate greatly around heroes and sovereign events, not nearly as much as strategically defining moments where they have clinched a major milestone toward victory.

I (and I believe FSPs) do not play first and foremost to win the game. If I won the game in 100-200 moves, I would be unsatisfied. I do play not to lose, but I mostly play to enjoy the content. I play the game like half-rpg, which means my heroes and sovereign are more important than the AI opponents to me. Quests, wandering monsters, and wildlands are are more my obstacles than killing AIs. In fact, this would be my ideal mode. https://forums.elementalgame.com/443154/page/1/

My FPM numbers are constantly affected by my heroes and sovereign, my numbers go up significantly when I am overpowered (to a limit), and they plunge when I am underpowered. Other sovereigns are mostly abstractions, winning the game is something I would put off if I could do it. I do enjoy wars beating other sovereigns, but the wars as implemented aren't that satisfying and they put me in danger of winning. I only want to win when I have had a good amount of fun. My goals are getting powerful heroes and especially a sovereign, and then using that power on an appropriate challenge. The AI is almost never this challenge, because their troops fall en masse in a turn or two to the stacks I have.

Apparently many (maybe most?) on this forum want the ideal strategic challenge, and their FPM plunge when they discover a strategy is overpowered. Mine does not, I would use the strategy if it was fun, I would ignore it otherwise. That is why there is an overflow of emotionally charged posts about balance. Their FPM in a game they love is being affected.

Now I want my way, and they want theirs. But I can get my way by just modifying the game files (I do it regardless), they would have a far more difficult time solving their problems this way. I understand this, but I am going to use the dirty sales numbers trick anyway, because I want to see at least one enormous expansion with as many full-time people on the job as possible. This is only possible if the game makes an unexpectedly large amount of money.

I think the forum is not representative of the potential fantasy strategy audience as a whole. Gal Civ 2 was a completely different type of strategy game. The rpg elements change everything. There are two types of players to entice I am talking about, a fantasy strategy player and an rpg-player looking for novelty. The first's numbers are not huge, the second numbers in the millions on Steam. Superb AI will not be fully appreciated by this audience, empire building and teching will be undervalued by this audience, and heroes, the sovereign, and quests will be overvalued by this audience. What this audience overvalues is underwhelming at this point, what is really superb about this game is undervalued. They will be confused by what is intuitive to the audience on this forum. They will put all their champions together, and their FPM numbers will plummet as they realize this is ruining what they value. They are rpg-players, they will not want to deal with complexity of dealing with empire-building and building a 20-30 turn army for each champion to get what they want, if they even realize this is how they have to do it.

Sell out to this audience. It comes cheap, in terms of not changing the overall vision much and time to implement. Focus on the experience an rpg player would highly value, and give them what they want. Let them play simply without penalty. You know the beauty of it? It hardly affects the wonderful pure strategy experience you have invested so much effort in. It is a show, it is the appearance, and a good portion of the pure strategy players will be enamored as well by the rpg focus.

It may mean you have to move back the deadline, especially since in my estimation you are far from the point where the pure rpg player looking for novelty will pick up and love your game. That audience is in the millions, roll the dice and see how big your name can get.

For someone who is all about the FSP, you sure are obsessed with min-maxing.  Tell you what, stop thinking about maximizing XP gain and just play the game the way that feels the most fun to you.

If you want to have your champs in a stack, put your champs in a stack.  They will still gain XP and still level.  They probably wont even level that much more slowly.

Champ A attacks an enemy and earns 10XP

Champ B attacks an enemy and earns 10XP

How much experience would each champ get if you put them both into the same army and attacked those same two enemies?

10XP!  The exact same amount.  IT'S A MIRACLE!

The game is not forcing you to employ this one-champion strategy you say you hate; you are doing it to yourself.  Stop it.

Having said that, there are some really bad ideas where the game lets you fiddle with XP gain (specifically the +XP traits) that throw off the XP curve for the game entirely.  Unfortunately, the way the game is now, you should always pick those traits first on every champ.  Stardock should do away with those traits entirely, have mobs and quests provide more XP in general, and leave +XP for rare magical items.

I have the sovereign plus two other champions relatively early on in the game and feel like I'm forced to bench them in favor of the Sov running around on his own with the available regular joe units. I agree entirely with the OP about the feeling of being strong armed into having champions in separate armies, but this simply isn't viable early on. Not when you need bare minimum 5 units to combat the early monsters reliably.

In other aspects, the greatest fun in RPGs is not from playing the sole hero, it is the party dynamics. Something which stems from pen and paper rpgs of old, and have carried over into the modern day RPG and MMORPGs which emphasizes this aspect. Just about any Final Fantasy game under the sun have one main character in focus, but there is a large variety in the support cast throughout each game. The champions of LH should be that support cast, to the Sovereign.

In terms of balancing, there are clear pros and cons versus a party of 3 or more champions vs a mixed party of champions and regular units to support them.

tl:dr the XP party penalty is ruining the game.

First, I never park my champs.  They should be questing/exploring.

To answer your question, though, no.  I don't always have backup troops for my champ.  I put champ #2 (that I get immediately when I build the beacon) in the army with my sov and quest.  By the time champ #3 comes along, I am usually able to provide him/her a second army.

The last couple games I played with a summoner and then with a Sov with the Tame ability so I always had a pretty good number of support troops.  In that case, I split my armies up because I want to explore/grab goody huts/quest over as much of the map as possible.

As soon as you stick that second champion in, the reduced leveling speed, combined with the over all reduced available XP in LH, means that your leveling pace drops to a seeming crawl. At which point you will always be under level when facing AI sovereigns/heroes and it takes nearly twice as long to become able to actually successfully face Strong critters, packs of which are roaming everywhere fairly early.

For me, I get that third champ fairly quickly because I make sure to do the beginning 'weak' quests. I also build clerics. I never have enough troops for my third hero. I just can't afford to do it. I end up with two heroes sitting doing nothing.