How to use your hero.What's a hero good for? There are many answers. A hero is the single most powerful unit in an army. A hero can wipe out 10, 20, 100 opposing units singlehandedly depending on his level. A hero makes a sensational offensive weapon to smash a defense. On my Teuton villages, my hero runs around with a roving pack of Axemen and decimates any resistances from my farming zone. A hero can take over an oasis. Oases make huge differences to the production capabilities of a village.
A hero is constructed once you have built a hero's Mansion. The hero can be made from any troop that you currently can build in the village (except rams, cats, chiefs, settlers, scouts). You must also start your hero construction while the troop type is present in the village.
Selecting the hero type is not as important as I think a lot of people make it out to be. My number one selection criteria for a hero is the speed of the unit. I choose a hero type based on the speed of my primary offensive units. It doesn't hurt to pick up a hero early on that isn't the strongest type. You can go back later and make a second hero.
Remember you can ultimately have 3 heroes, but only one active at a time. What does that mean? If you get a hero killed, you can make another hero of a different type. It's also important to note that to swap a hero, your active hero must die so the other may be resurrected. I tend to kamikaze a oasis with a solo hero if I want my Hero switched.
Once a hero is created, you receive 5 points to spend on various stats. The stats are managed in the hero's Mansion. Each level afterward you will receive an additional 5 points. An interesting note is that while your hero is level 0, you can reassign his skill points as you see fit, as often as you see fit. At level 0 your hero is at his most flexible. You may send him on an attack with 5 points in offense. you can immediately switch to 5 points in defense to counter an attack. then switch to 5 points in regen to heal him back up.
Defense vs Offense? Personally I feel that a defensive hero is not the way to go early on. Reason being is that defense is not going to get your hero leveled up. A offense hero is going to be a much better asset early on, to help punch through a farms defenses, and later on you can start dumping tons of points into defense. If I were to build a defensive hero, I would build at 3 parts offense, 2 parts defense until I got my hero to the point where he was at or above 3000 offense. Then I would switch over to maxing my defense stats.
Offense vs Offense Bonus? Offense adds 50-60 stat per point to your hero only. Offensive bonus adds 0.2% per point to the offense of your entire army. Early on, your armies will be so small, that the offensive bonus is miniscule. Even at 1%, with say 20 clubswingers (40 offense), that's a total of 8 more offense. the same 5 points into raw offense of the Hero is worth 250+ offense. You'd need 600 clubswingers in your army to make offense bonus worth more! The same arguments can be made for defense vs defense bonus.
An important note about offense bonus and defense bonus. These bonuses compound with the wall bonus and with armory and blacksmith bonuses.
Regeneration is vital to a hero. It is how your hero heals in between combat rounds. At level 0 I keep my regen maxed whenever I am not on an attack. At level 1, I assign 3 points into regen, and then get to 5 points at level 2. 5 points of regen is 25% per day, which I feel is sufficient for a long time.
So to recap points:
At level 0, use points in whatever application your Hero is currently serving in Offense or Defense, then switch to regen between rounds to max healing.
At level 1, I go to 7 points in offense, 3 in regen.
At level 2, I go to 10 offense, 5 regen.
The first 2 levels I feel strongly about, after that, you can start playing with your Hero for your individual need. Personally I start trying to max out offense, then offense bonus.
Last thing. Your Hero is a unique unit in that it can be reinforced to another village with a Hero's mansion and then be deployed out of that other village. All other units are merely reinforcements at this point. Why? Because, your hero at the second village may then be used to go take over an oasis for that second village... Bet you were wondering how to do that with only one active hero.