Have you played it without the XP split, or is this all hypothetical? You can mod the game to force an XP to be more linear, by granting a spell that is autocasted by every champion at the beginning of the battle. It would raise the bonus by a certain amount with only 1 unit, but with 2 it doubles that bonus. This could be placed in the game to allow for a shallower XP split. One of the bigger factors is the less dynamic world around. It is a clean the land around me and boom I've got myself, a clear area and saftey until that random event happens. But once you clean your area you have lost all XP potential from that area.

Maybe one should focus on creating a modded game where the XP potential is not removed when clearing your area, in fact it is increased the more you clear out the area. I've been contemplating on how to do this, but the creation of all the icons for the tiles I need just makes me dread the idea. But I think I'll get that done.

Yes I've played without the XP split and I could take it or leave it. It didn't help me much in leveling my heroes. By the time I get a second hero anyway I've already got a second army waiting for him to travel with. My 3 and 4 heroes also have armies by the time I get them as well (not just one units I'm talking at lest 2-4 units)... Also, when I get these heroes they are all the same level. Without the XP split... it's the same for my style of gameplay. The heroes I've got are Legendary, just not invincible.

Legendary? Really? When I can spend the whole game leveling them and barely make a dent in their skill trees? We're not asking for them to be invincible, we're asking for enough xp to be available to actually get all the cool abilities at the top of the tree that we want. Currently it's almost impossible to get a well rounded champion with a couple high level skills and one maxed out magic school. You might be able to get one high end ability unlocked if you beeline for it but that's about it.

Lol, that the expansion is called Legendary Heroes doesent mean that the champions should be Gods after a few battles. Some strange arguing by some here.

The steamroller effect is something a game like this have to have mechanisms to soften. Without the XP-split of heroes the game would be pretty unchallenging pretty soon, and the way to victory would be pretty one-sided; heroes leveling en masse. 

There are a bunch of issues that, imho, ppl is trying to fix using the wrong mechanics. Before explaining the ideas I need to clarify how I perceive FE/LH... This is a Fantasy RPG strategy game which means that the only way to be fun for every1 is to add variety so effective challenge difficulty is based on the particular combination of strategies used/liked vs particular scenario you have to face.

Party Convergence. This is what ANY XP spliting algorithm should focus on: Dealing with different level heroes facing the same challenges together. It's important to have an independent mechanism like this so your single Hero leveling progression can be carefully adapted to the World Pace XP production. A Convergence Spliting XP algorithm should work like this:

* There should be a minimum of Challenges needed to get a level up. This could be translated to a max proportional XP earn a single challenge could yield. Example: If your only source of XP are fights, and you set your XP Cap at 50% Level XP, this would mean that a fresh Hero entering into Epic battles been "tutored" by more powerfull heroes would require at least 2 fights to level up.

* When a challenge is defeated by a team of heroes an even split should be applied but then each hero that is below the max should earn bonus XP. The details of the algorithm depends on how you define a "challenge". Example: Suppose your challenges are labeled by Levels and you have a very simple XP reward table based on the difference between hero level (HL) and challenge level (CL): 2+ = 10, 1 = 100, 0 = 200, -1 = 300, -2- = 500  (Notice that I do HL - CL, so positive indexes here are "easy" fights). This works nice and dandy with a single hero... But lets see what a Convergence split would do when 3 heroes A(10), B(8) and C(1) beat a Challenge of level 8. Each hero will earn 1/3 of what they would earn alone so the XP earned by each would be: A(10/3=3.3), B(200/3=66.7) and C(500/3=166.7) (For as long as none of the Heroes hit the MAX XP per challenge cap). Don't get too focused on the numbers but on the effects on the long run... The ABC party will, overtime, converge to the highest level while at the same time, the "XP creation" will self regulate itself as the difference between heroes become less and less.

Stack of Doom. XP spliting algorithm has nothing to do with this on a strategic context, and any attempt to "fix" this strategy by tweaking Hero progression is bound to fail. The solution lays into the core of any Fantasy setting... Power variety. Which is the Main Difference between Heroes vs Troop stacks? Individual versus Group. How about adding powerfull debuffing/disabling powers that affect 1 target? Example: A single target fear... Could be devastating applied on a Hero because all his/her fantastic capabilities will be lost for the duration of the Fear but... On a 4 men stack? It would just imply the stack will function at 3/4 power for as long as the Fear lasts. See? Variety beats world-wide rules ANY TIME OF THE DAY... Because it forces ppl to gather intel, think and adapt their strategies based on the enemies they have in front.

With the above 2 mechanisms in place, then you are free to adapt your single Hero leveling curve to the world you have and, in particular, to what a "Level up" means in terms of effective "power" increase, which is what LH is about, to increase the impact and customization of what a "level up" means. Meanwhile Troop stacks will retain their value because of their inherent resistance to Single Target effects (Notice that I just mentioned Crowd Control effects... But the Main Difference can also be applied to direct damage effects: The Ultimate Ray of Doom can do gazillions points of damage to a single target making it the Definitive weapon Heroes toss at each other but... What effect has to smelt a poor footman belonging to a hundred square formation?).

I think this has changed some in .87.

If you get a good weapon early one, a defender, warrior or assassin hero can be useful, depending on how things go.

If you get an early shard and the right champion, a mage hero is useful.  Healing especialy.

An issue here is warriors are gear dependent, mages are shard/level dependent (best fix here would be a rework of the mage tree), but commanders always useful, either for unrest and +Research (never +gildar, merchant tree needs to be buffed) or for army buffing.

I do think that getting it right is in reach now, .87 is getting there, I've spotted some real improvements- but the fundamental flaw of the game is the hero advancement trees having too many "empty steps"   There are still "knock-on"  legacy issues, where old mechanics/items that worked ok in the past don't work as well with the current changes. 

One idea: allow champions to pick from general traits (and expand them some) and class traits on each promotion, or maybe allow it on some levels.  So 2 traits per level.   Another option would be to lower XP needed to level up overall, and nerf the XP level up spells (which I really wish would go away, not a fan of those)

Are you seriously making the argument that stack-of-doom should be buffed?

I understand that having multiple armies is strategically better than having only one army.  That is the reason I try to build up a second army as soon as I can so that I can do more questing/monster-killing.  That is as it should be.

You are over-thinking this.

I'm already on record supporting changes to the game that provide more XP for heroes and give more interesting selections when they level.  If you think that's what this thread is about, please read the title of the OP again.

There's a lot of angst about XP-spltting, but not much consideration that XP splitting is not the problem.  The problem is that monster-killing and questing don't give enough XP to begin with.  The problem is that the skill trees have too many redundant choices.  The more subtle and endemic problem is that leveling and other events aren't entertaining.  None of that is addressed by changing XP splitting.

The only thing that removing XP splitting would do is make the Stack of Doom a mandatory play-style.

Which is why most of the posts here sound to me like: "I want LH to be simple."  They want the game to reward them for jamming all their champs into one stack and marching around the map roflstomping.  And I have little patience for that. Stardock are pretty clearly not interested in making LH simple, even if it would result in a better Metacritic score.

With over 200 hours of playing in this beta so far, and countless time spent reading every thread on these forums, these three sentences may best summarise my overall experience and opinion on this subject.

I want to be able to get not just one, but multiple heroes to the upper levels of their chosen profession. As is now, even with the densest settings for events, monsters, etc., pursuing every quest available, buying and utilising quest maps, farming lairs to the point of declaring war on any AI who wanders near your farm, and finally laboriously converting mana to XP via spell, if I try using multiple 1 hero per army stacks it's just not possible. At best, I can get my sovereign to the upper 20s, with some dedication, luck and LOTS of war I may get another hero or two above level 10-15.. And this is playing on Epic speed, my typical games are at least 20+ hours.

Thus, I find myself playing an Altar Mage General sovereign, parking or soul stealing my heroes, and building my own heroes via henchmen. With the right perks and buildings, henchmen outclass all but the top tier champions, and will catch up to them quickly. Legendary Henchmen?

I don't know what the fix for it is, but it certainly seems to need fixing.

Personally, I like sliders. Anything that lets me tinker with game parameters is good to go in my book. Give us sliders for adjusting the ratios of monster xp, AI xp, and quest xp, as well as a slider for lair spawn frequency.

Or, give everyone the henchmen ability as a facton trait, spruce up the unit trait selections and build your own heroes. Champions could be available via quests, techs or some other milestones, and should be truly legendary, maybe scaled to your sovereign's level.

My two cents for the morning, now it's time for a cuppa, a pipe and a game of LH.

People are focusing on the XP split mechanic because on the surface that is what's driving them to focus on one or two heroes and leave the rest at home doing nothing. People want to be able to have two champions in an army without feeling penalized for it. 

But you're right, the underlying cause of all this is that XP is just far too scarce a resource. If it was abundant and people could get all their heroes to a level they were happy with before the game ends we wouldn't be having this discussion. As someone else pointed out, it's not uncommon to win the game without a single hero making it past the low teens.

I don't want the game to be simple, what I want is for the Heroes to be much more interesting and engaging. So I'll just go on record as well that I'm all for looking at alternative solutions to this issue that don't involve changes to the XP splitting, such as increase world XP availability, reducing hero level scaling, or shortening their skill trees so there is a better match with the amount of points we actually get to spend.

I appreciate modders, and mod friendly games. I tinker a bit myself, just can't help it. I love playing mods, a mod is what introduced me to Derek's work with FFH, and set me to wanting the kind of game that Legendary Heroes is shaping up to be. I expect there'll be some amazing mods once the beta is complete, and I look forward to playing them.

But respectfully, I can't imagine that in a game callled Legendary Heroes the developers mean for rank and file troops to be the star players, and that is the situation currently in the vanilla game, as I see it. Whether it's by adding sliders, increasing base xp, doing away with the xp split in whole or decreasing the penalty, xp producing buildings or techs, or some combination of these or other ideas, some way of creating opportunities to play with multiple high level heroes seems to be needed.

Well, I believe "very easily" and "modding" cannot be in same sentence regarding this game.