Hi, I'm creating a new discussion in order to avoid clustering up the comments section. Since I have played quite a few games with your mod and I absolutely love it, I have a few ideas which I believe would make the mod even more enjoyable.

First the context: I play either with just your mod and the Merchant Shops mod or I play with your mod, merchant shops and my own mod that sharply empowers heroes - gives them two skill points per level and also extra 5 skill points at level 1. I.e. it's either the standard setup with just your mod or it's your mod with much faster hero progression. Thereby I'll split it into two separate sections for standard hero progression and for fast hero progression.

For the standard hero progression the thing is as follows:
- the hero needs 6 skill points to get through the archetype tree and reach the hero class
- then it's 9 skill points to get the ultimate
- i.e. the hero can reach the ultimate at level 15, which is very late
- if the hero wants the ultimate (not necessarily true for all classes), there is little to no room for any other skills
- this is particularly painful in the case of very useful skills from cultures and tomes - e.g. Defensive Mastery requires at least 4 skills in the Combat tree, which would pretty much disqualify getting the class ultimate
- in some cases it opens up interesting dilemma - e.g. as a Paladin with Industrious culture, do you want to deeper into the class tree, or do you want to just grab the class and the unique defense mode and go for Defensive Mastery? That would give you a hero that automatically heals itself and all surrounding allies for 30 HP each turn - that's probably better than what the rest of the class skills provide
- overall, though, you spend a lot of time just going through the archetype and it takes it a lot of time before you even unlock the class you want to go for

For my faster hero progression (extra 5 skills at level 1 and then 2 skills per level), the points are very different:
- if I reset the skills, the hero can get their class immediately
- the hero can get the ultimate by level 6
- this leaves the hero with enough skill points to get more stuff - usually it's even possible to grab the ultimate skill from another tree - most commonly I go for Killing Momentum
- this is much more fun than the standard progression, but the game then becomes very hero-centric and kinda unbalanced, as AI can't use the heroes as well as the player can (although I must say it's surprisingly competent)

I believe that the best experience would be somewhere in between. How can that be achieved without using my hyper accelerated hero progression? I'd suggest the following:
- drop most archetype skills and only leave the juicier ones, i.e. the Expert skills
- hero class can be picked without needing any skills invested into the archetype

This would essentially make the archetypes optional. I believe that would be a good thing, as right now the archetype feels more like a mandatory part that only becomes interesting once you unlock the Expert skills (except iirc the Priest +20 HP aura, that's iirc Adept). With the suggested changes the hero would only pick the archetype skills if they were useful, i.e. it would introduce a meaningful choice between the archetype skills and class skills.
Of course it would also significantly speed up hero's progression, i.e. higher tier class skills would become available much earlier. I believe it would make the hero more interesting earlier. Also it would be more feasible to grab skills from other trees.
Imho this would make the game faster paced and sharper, but it also would give the player more meaningful decisions to make.


Now I'd also like to specifically mention a few classes.
Wizard is imho broken in both formats. In the standard progression the class spends most of the time by being underpowered, but then once it reaches the ultimate its power skyrockets and a single Wizard can clean the whole map. In my fast progression format the Wizard gets to the ultimate much much sooner, which makes the class insanely OP. It's at its strongest when combined with Illusionist who also has the ultimate. Then your Wizard fires away the free firebolt and then hits a group of enemies with Fusion. Illusionist can reset it with Time Warp, so that your Wizard can fire off again. Is there anything still left standing? Not a problem, the Personae Reflection can use another Time Warp, so the Wizard can use Fusion for the third time.
I believe that Firestorm shouldn't be available at Master, but instead it should be staggered, i.e. split it into Firestorm 1, Firestorm 2 and Firestorm 3. That would give the Wizard a useful ability for the earlier levels and at the same time it would tone the class down a little, as you'd have to use more skill points for Firestorm rather than the passive + magic damage boosts. Then I'd either make Fusion much weaker or just replace it with something else entirely.

I really like the Illusionist class - its most signature abilities are available very early, it's fun to play and very different. I like your debuff to Personae Reflection and how that debuff steers the class more towards the buffs / debuffs part.

The Fighter archetype feels weaker than the others. I'd consider adding an Expert skill that makes the hero immune to normal Charge (not sure if such a thing is possible?).

Last but not least - if you have a hero who uses bow, you pretty much only have 2 options - Ranger and Warden. It would be nice if there were more options - all other weapon categories have much better class selection.

Once again thank you for making such an amazing mod!