Questions and Answers about Hero Bonuses:

NOTE - THERE ARE STILL SOME UNRESOLVED ISSUES ABOUT HEROS FLYING WITH NAVIES.

>Three spiders in water, a hero and a bat.  The hero and bat are a separate
>group - not grouped with spiders - flying above them, but inhabiting the same
>space.  How do you score/compute the fight (defensively)?  The spiders are
>all definite fours, and the hero and bat are (minimum) 7 and 3.
>
>Also, what happens if you group them, even though the hero and bat flew out
>to them separately?

In both cases the result is the same - the spiders fight first, the bat
fights last, and the hero is in the middle.  On defense all units in a
given space are treated as a single stack and share bonuses.  However,
it turns out that navies do not receive any bonuses, although we had thought
otherwise until recently.  Thus this stack defends as a 4, 4, 4, 7, 3,
in that order.

>> When checking the stack Info for the heros, I noticed that the Battle items
>> are included in the heros strength and the command items are added later. I
>> assumed that the cancel hero ally would cancel ALL items, including the
>> Battle items. Am I correct?

Nope!  Only the hero's command bonus is cancelled, the extra strength given
by the battle items is never cancelled.  Trust WarBOT...  :)

If the additional strength conveyed by the battle items leads to a higher
hero command bonus, that command bonus is cancelled along with the rest
of the hero command bonus.  But the hero's base strength does not get reduced.

>I have a question as to when a Hero is given extra strength from becoming a
>Cavalier, etc.
>On turn 9, Ra has enough experience to become a Cavalier,(strength 6), but
>my turn is before Red. For the purpose of calculating battle odds, does
>Ra's strength remain 5 until his turn comes up? This was my assumption, but
>I want to make sure.  (It makes a big difference on my next move!)

A hero's strength doesn't increase until that player opens his turn
and gets the message that the hero's strength did in fact increase.
So if you are contemplating a move and you open that player's next turn,
and see the message that a hero gained enough experience to move up a
level, you can discount the extra +1 strength for your own move, but
you have to assume that they'll have it on *their* move.

In other words, for your own offensive purposes the enemy's hero
doesn't have the new level yet, but for your defensive purposes you
have to assume that he will when it comes time for him to attack you. :)

>When a hero has a flight item and he is grouped with another unit, should
>the hero be put in front of the other unit in attacks over the mountains?

Only if one of the creatures is a flying unit.  Warlords will always
put a flying unit after the hero in the fight order when a battle is
fought over mountains or water/shore, even if the hero has a flight item.
WarBOT knows about this and will work properly.  Note that this means
the hero will fight and die before that flying unit - this has been used
to kill unsuspecting heroes!  This is an unfortunate bug in Warlords, but
it is the way Warlords works, so we must live with it.