Splitting the post and adding some more:
I often daydream about what would be the right direction to develop the series in, if it was freed from Ubisofts clutches.
I definitly think some matter of branching upgrades is important. Having 7 units is cool, but morale often gives a rather strong incentive of staying within your faction troops, and so having variability within the faction is good.
4's approach is too expensive. Sure it would be cool to have alternate units for every single tier, but more units means more of the most expensive thing in game dev, models and animations. Playtesting and Q&A also goes up a lot.
5 Tribes of the East has a neat solution with the branching upgrades, as they are basically palette swaps with new abilities. Cheap enough to not blow the budget, and adds quite a bit of customisation to each faction. System has its drawbacks aswell, often an upgrade is significantly superior to the other one, and some are plain busted, again as it increases strain on balance and testing.
6' approach is retarded. Changing it so that mobs have three different power tiers (basic, elite, level7) from the prior 7 power tiers, makes getting newer units feel much less exciting, and takes out a lot of interesting moments of strategy, like going for level 3s immediatly, waiting a bit and going for level 4 building instead, or forgo your economy and rush level 5s.
7' takes the retarded approach from 6, and makes it a tiny bit better. Now there are 5 tiers in total (basic, level3, elite, level6, level7). Still inferior to 7 tiers of power, and I think this is an overlooked reason as for why HoMM 7 feels less exciting than 3 and 5, despite being almost a carbon copy with low budget of HoMM 5 on paper. Alternating units only for tier7 units is an interesting idea however.
What I am thinking about, is wether 7's idea of having branching upgrades only for some of the tiers can be expanded or combined with the Tribes of the East system.
A system where there are 7 tiers, each with respective dual upgrades a la Tribes, and with branching units for tier 7 would only need 8 indiviudal models and 16 statblocks to be balanced, as opposed to the 7 models and 14 statblocks from Tribes.
That or make a system where there are no branching elite upgrades, but alternate units on 3, 5 and 7. Then you would have 10 unique models with 10 statblocks for a faction.
Then again, having the final unit on 7 being alternate in Homm7 was maybe a mistake aswell, since them being alternate units makes them less impactfull. I can barely even remember all the tier 7 units in HoMM7, only by the factions I played a lot. Maybe the right decision would be a 7 tier system with alternate units on 2, 4 and 6. Tier 1, 3 and 7 have always been very defining for a faction imo, and having them consistent would make for more unique factions.
Ah, daydreaming about Heroes always makes me sad. HoMM is like a Northern myth, things have been good once, but now everything has gone to shit, good is corrupted, evil reigns, and all that there is left to do is not lose hope and despair.
