Combine it with cruel and we really speak overpowered. The you get one more sovereign point, one more attack, and 50% plus recruitment cost for heroes (that means nothing). It should not be possible to combine natural leader and cruel, it's just obvious so I'm sure the developers are on it.

And no, I don't think the trait itself is overpowered compared to other traits like starting with 1000 gold or long terms one improving your sovereign more as he levels up. Remember you need the tech for those heroes, and if you want it fast it means you have to forsake alot of other things, like the whole military tree.

 Edit: Read your post again. What did traitors do again? Might be an overpowered combination too. I was just commenting on the natural leader trait here, sorry. Is traitors the one that let you recruit both kingdom and empire heroes? Perhaps those shouldn't be allowed to be chosen together either, I don't want to jump to any conclusions on that one. But natural leader and cruel together is just exploiting the game. Of course I'd never make such a gamey hero myself.

He meant Betrayers, the faction ability, combined with Natural Leader from sovereign traits. The first allows you to recruit either Kingdom or Empire heroes. The second gives you -100% costs (free) when recruiting. Basically, it allows you to gobble up any loose heroes. Personally, while I think it's a very powerful combo, it requires you to reach the target before somebody else does and sorta forces you into pursuing the hero line so you get the most benefit you can from it.

I've started playing this combination of late, and I don't find it overpowering.  It's basically a tradeoff: you have to build more scouting units at once to find champions, sacrificing useful early game turns spent on important buildings, which in turn affects research speed, army size, and even the level of heroes you can grab.  Understand, I'm not stating the combo is without value.  If it were, I wouldn't be using it. But while it seems so good, there are other combinations that are just as powerful in other ways--such as Pariden/extra mana/research.

I agree with this change for betrayer, even if they leave natural leader the same. A +50% could even be +25%, but some gameplay testing is needed to know what the correct balance would be, beta 5 anyone.

This seems to be changed now. Natural leader is no longer a talent. It is now called adventurer and is a profession. So you can still combine adventurer + betrayers to recruit as many heroes as you can find at no cost but with a profession pick. Hmmm this is a little better but still seems possibly overpowered to me...

Here. Here.  You can't use "overpowered" and "custom" in the same sentence in this forum.

IMHO it was overpowered but is no longer with the recent changes of armour values, costs, etc..  But still very good, especially with the "many heroes" setup. Under 0.992 and higher difficulty settings it's nearly impossible to win with Heroes alone.

Good work of the balancing team!

Ahemm, I forget to mention: Ironman, no reloading except after crashes...

Good luck!

It's an entirely single player game.  Either something is game breaking or not.  "Overpowered" is nonsense.   This isn't SC2.  

Betrayers and Adventurer is not a very good combination at higher difficulty levels.  It depends too much on chance.  Sure, if you see Thannata, and manage to research the tech to hire her before someone else kills/hires her, you get a huge boost.  But on ridiculous, the AI expands very quickly, and knows where the heroes are, and beelines for them.

In my last playthrough, I had "Betrayers" and "Wealthy", not because I was going for the combo, but because people challenged me to win with standard Karavox on ridiculous.  How much did "Betrayers" help?  A tiny bit.

First of all, I never saw a high level hero that I could hire.  I hired my starting level 1 hero, a level 3 hero that was close to my starting location, and a level 3 who was in an impossible to reach without fighting area.  There were also three level 5 heroes who ended up deep within my borders, so that I could keep them out of AI hands.  At some point, while I was engaged in a five front war, I hired two of them.  I did not bother with the third, despite having plenty of cash.

On high difficulty levels, heroes just do not do so much, unless they are really high level. My 'main' heroes ended the game at levels 23, 21, and 19.  The secondary heroes led troops and barely reached levels 9-10.  Sure they were useful, but not very influential.

In .992, ridiculous has been made more ridiculous.  I would say to the point of being a chore to play.  Betrayer+Adventurer would be a inefficient combo.  Heroes need to be power leveled to matter when your opponent is rushing everything in one turn and can put 8-9 traits on units, doubling traits as it feels the need.  You cannot powerlevel too many heroes, and the hero techs are a waste of research otherwise.

So... Effective at lower difficulties? Yes. Overpowered at high difficulties. No.

Damn this is harder than expected on ridiculous, especially when surrounded by dragons Don't have the patience to find the right map either, so atleast there are some maps where you can't solo the map with your sovereign anymore. (Still, I did get to level 6, before I was surrounded by ogre, dragon, river skags, and some coalstones mage-o-mancer).

Sincerely
~ Kongdej