I want to make my own heroes

Play as a custom Altar based faction, henchmen are customisable heroes, and they don't leech XP. Try designing a commander, a life mage healer and a defender to lead your army groups, works quite well. You can max out the xp traits in your build, they'll level like wildfire.

Um, you can totally design your own hero units.  Copy this, paste into Notepad, save with file extension XML in your mods folder and boom, you have a rockin' Mord-Sith on your side.  Unless you're playing as Empire, then you've just given the enemy a rockin' Mord-Sith.

<UnitTypes>
    <UnitType InternalName="Champion_CaraMason">
        <DisplayName>Champion</DisplayName>
        <UnitDisplayName>Cara</UnitDisplayName>
        <Class>Adventurer</Class>
        <Allegiance>Kingdom</Allegiance>
        <CreatureType>Champion</CreatureType>
        <RaceType>Race_Type_Mancers</RaceType>
        <Unique>1</Unique>
        <CanBeDesigned>0</CanBeDesigned>
        <Gender>Female</Gender>
        <WageOverride>1</WageOverride>
        <IsNPC>1</IsNPC>
        <IsChampion>1</IsChampion>
        <IsSovereign>0</IsSovereign>
        <SpawnRating>1</SpawnRating>
        <NPCSpawnLikelihood>1000</NPCSpawnLikelihood>
        <GameModifier>
            <ModType>Resource</ModType>
            <Attribute>Unrest</Attribute>
            <Value>-5</Value>
            <Provides>-5% Unrest in the city this unit is in</Provides>
        </GameModifier>
        <LevelMilestone InternalName="L1">
            <Level>1</Level>
            <UnitStat_Accuracy>75</UnitStat_Accuracy>
            <UnitStat_CombatSpeed>22</UnitStat_CombatSpeed>
            <UnitStat_ChanceToCrit>1</UnitStat_ChanceToCrit>
            <UnitStat_HitPoints>15</UnitStat_HitPoints>
        </LevelMilestone>
    <SelectedAbilityBonusOption>Blood_Mancer</SelectedAbilityBonusOption>
    <SelectedAbilityBonusOption>Impulsive</SelectedAbilityBonusOption>
    <SelectedAbilityBonusOption>Hardy</SelectedAbilityBonusOption>
        <AutoCreateEquipment>Shortsword</AutoCreateEquipment>
        <AutoCreateEquipment>LeatherBreastpiece</AutoCreateEquipment>
        <AutoCreateEquipment>LeatherVambraces</AutoCreateEquipment>
        <AutoCreateEquipment>LeatherGreaves</AutoCreateEquipment>
        <AutoCreateEquipment>LeatherBoots</AutoCreateEquipment>
        <Equipment>K_Female_Head_03</Equipment>
    <Equipment>Sovereign_Parted_Right_Hair</Equipment>
    <Equipment>TightBoots_Light</Equipment>
    <Equipment>Sovereign_Female_Warrior_Shirt_Pleated_ID1</Equipment>
        <Equipment>Female_Basic_Pants_ID1</Equipment>
        <Quote>'Why is it that when I'm hunting down a man I never have to look further than the first brothel past the city gates?'</Quote>
        <Backstory>I am Mord-Sith. Mord-Sith are always ready to embrace death. We do not wish to die old and toothless.</Backstory>
        <AnimationPack>FemaleSovereignAnimationPack</AnimationPack>
        <BattleAnimationBehavior>Melee</BattleAnimationBehavior>
        <ClothMapScale>1.6</ClothMapScale>
        <ClothPoseIndex>19</ClothPoseIndex>
        <Color_Clothing1>107,15,15,255</Color_Clothing1>
    <Color_Clothing2>166,28,28,255</Color_Clothing2>
    <Color_Hair>170,138,65,255</Color_Hair>
    <Color_Metal>128,128,145,255</Color_Metal>
    <Color_Skin>255,204,153,255</Color_Skin>
    <CutSceneDataPack>ReliasCutscenePack</CutSceneDataPack>
        <InfoCardBackground>BG19_Field</InfoCardBackground>
        <ModelPath>Gfx\HKB\Units\K_Female_Mesh_01.hkb</ModelPath>
        <ModelScale>1</ModelScale>
        <MovingSFX>TEMP_KnightMarching1</MovingSFX>
        <OnHitParticleName>Bloody_OnHit</OnHitParticleName>
        <SkeletonPath>Gfx\HKB\Units\K_Male_Skeleton_01.hkb</SkeletonPath>
        <SoundPack>SoundPack_Generic_Female</SoundPack>
        <TacticalModelScale>1.5</TacticalModelScale>
        <Texture_Eyes>gfx\eyes\blinks\eyeblink_f3_blue.png</Texture_Eyes>
    <Texture_Skin>K_Female_Thinbrows_Texture_01.png</Texture_Skin>
        <UnitModelType>MancerFemale</UnitModelType>
    </UnitType>
</UnitTypes>

This is great, don't get me wrong, Thank You So Much!! & ultimately i'll end up doing it that way...but I'm sorry I want to play the game not manually add feature into the game that should be their in the first place. Not everybody who buy the game is a game programmer or cares to be. I want to turn on the game & be able to do this from within the game, no directory search, add this value for that, substitute,paste,copy,save. It time consuming and it's lazy on the part of the developer to have the consumer to come up with the solution (or work around) when it could be worked right in the game itself.

I love mods, but most gamers aren't modders. Comments concerning henchmen above aside, I'd love to see a greater degree of utility from the Workshop tools, a custom hero option would kick ass, add a lot to the game imo.

Give Altar a fame boost to complement their XP boost instead of the henchmen ability, let everyone build henchmen, and increase their abilities to be just shy of pregenerated champions and sovereigns, or even on par. I think a lot of 4X gamers would appreciate the opportunity to tailor make their support crew to suit their particular playstyle, and it adds another layer of strategic choice.

Not sure i understand - why this feature "should" be in game? Why is it "lazy on the part of the developer" not to satisfy your demands? 

Play strategy games over 20 years, and have a hard time remembering one game in which ALL heroes can be designed by player ...

I suppose that it is possible to whip together some sort of basic hero creator utility but honestly, you don't need an instruction manual to go poking in some XML files.  For the visual customisation part you can even use the in-game sovereign creator and then (with some minor editing in the XML file) switch them over to Champion when you're done.

Once you've done this a few times and got it to work, it isn't very hard.  Would I like to be able to do it in-game?  Hell yeah I would.  But I imagine that sorting out pick points for things like armour and weapons so that heroes are sort of balanced when you get them, that's not straightforward.  I mean you wouldn't want to get a level 9 hero and have them clad in just their skivvies, would you?

 Well it would just replace the newly created Heroes with the attributes of those already created for the game. Just a Picture change really, keep everything else the same.

Just a idea not a demand, just something I'd like to see in the game

If you want to customise your very own hero but you just want the gear and stats from one of the stock heroes, do a Ctrl-F (Find) in CoreUnits.xml, highlight from <UnitTypes> to </UnitTypes> and copy, then paste into Notepad.

Design the look of the hero as a sovereign in-game, exit the game, open that file and copy just the parts which relate to appearance, paste over the appearance section in your new hero file and save as before with an XML extension.

It wouldn't hurt to come up with your own backstory as well but I suppose if you're in a hurry and just want to see if this works, you can do that later.

Obviously, as I said before, it would be a lot quicker to be able to do all these steps in-game.  You never know, it might make it in there, looking at the release date I'm not sure it will scrape into a 1.0 release but you can look forward to some more updates after that.

Thing is, not everyone gets why this is needed.  I'll be blunt and say that after seeing some of the heroes on the select screen I'm just itching to create more because the choices are often unsurprising.  However even if I had the time I still have to go through that horribly complicated process I just wrote, unless I know exactly what appearance to use in which case I save myself one trip into the game.

Long story short, when you're finished making some new heroes for yourself, throw us some screenshots of them and maybe the mass of players will start to demand this feature as well.

The process I tend to use is to customize a sovereign or a unit in game then use that appearance data as the base to create a hero. So, in effect copy the first half from a hero and then the second half of a customized unit I just made. It makes making the second half a little easier to handle.

I think it would be fun in the main menu to have a Create Hero function so that you could add a few heroes into the game...  but not to customize them in the game world.  The reason I say this is that the way LH is working Heroes are attracted to you because of your fame as a great Sovereign and your work to recreate civilization in the world.  

The ability to create heroes and add as you like into the game as you play it may appeal to some people... but it would change the random nature of which Heroes you draw...  You don't get to pick a hero with say Plate Mail skill or Life magic.  Being able to create each hero you attract may appeal to players who like to run an army of heroes... I can't see the harm if it is a matter of Take Hero A or Hero B or pay X Fame to Create your own though...

I agree with this game needing a a create hero button for a faction or allegience.

I also think there needs to be an "Edit" button for Champions, factions, units, where it would actually overwrite the game files.