Hello,

In Rise of Civilization (RoC) there are many heroes to choose from, the question is the best one?

A good hero is a strong hero. Everything in PvP scales with Commander Power. Of course different factors play a role: Troop size, Talents, Skills and Buffs. Some factors are fixed by the game or your progression, like Buffs and troop size (for the most part), so we'll focus on what you can influence. This begins with your choice of hero.

Like Food, Wood, Stone and Gold, experience and sculptures are a resource too and have to be gathered. You'll get an advantage early on in the game, if you invest in the right hero from the beginning.

Here's my first consideration: Legendaries are the strongest, but not the best heroes. The amount of experience required to maximise a legendary is huge! In experience and statues. The big problem here are not necessarily the experience point as you'll over time acquire enough to get him to level 60, but the sculptures and Stars required to do so. And they're rare if you don't spend the money. And even if you spend big money, you can only ensure to maximise those heroes with the mightiest governors. (Side note for the big players: You need to score first place 3 times and second once or you'll lack sculptures to maximise your hero. If you can check those requirements go for Ceasar! One of the most versatile legendary heroes.)

So an epic hero should be chosen. This hero can't be a specialist for one unit type, because you can build a mixed army faster. A single unit type army is for the endgame. He shouldn't be a defender or a support hero. This leaves the choice between "Scipio Africanus" and "Osman I". Both are solid, but Osman I is better.
First of all, Osmans overall commander strenght is higher than Scpios (Osman I: 88,300 compares to Scipio: 80,300). Although the margin is "only" 8k, the effect is significant. You need to keep in mind that it scales exponentially.
The second reason are their skills. Both have skills for attacking cities, wich we'll keep out of the equation, because you should only Rally cities. And that's a topic of its own. They've also both troop expansion by 10%. So you'll only need to compare their other ones. Osman with "Rising Empire" + "Sword of Osman" against Scipio "Military Life" + "Patient Warrior". Skill damage beats troop Buffs. You'll do considerable more damage with one strike than you'd do over time. This makes Osman superior. He's the best epic hero.

For talents the choice is straight forward. Just maximise his blue skill talent tree, ignore the yellow conquering one and distribute the rest to your liking in the red leadership one. First talent you should work towards: "Rejuvenate" - the blue hand. You basically maximise the damage output of his skills and how often you can cast it. You look for Rage and skill damage with your talents.

And who should accompany him? Sun Tzu. That will be another post though. Quick summary: AoE damage, 10% flat damage reduction and skill damage increase.

Greetings
Fehler

Great information in a well-written guide.

Fehler is King of Kingdom 1014, and a knowledgeable source of game information.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up and share it with everyone.

Hugs,
ShankMcGank

Great basic guide for new players!

Thank you, Fehler, for this guide. As an online researcher who wrote essay shark reviews and other education-related papers, I must admit, that your text is very well structured, every paragraph has a clear main point, feels like you invested a good deal of time and efforts in it.
Did you have previous writing experience?
For me actually, it was quite an insight, that Legendaries are the strongest, but not the best heroes.
Waiting for your next post about Sun Tzu. Keep up the good work!

I also wrote some essays on the topics of games https://writeanessayfor.me/ but I'm not so experienced playing the game of course.

I am not a great fan of Osman. He has a massive damage, 850, most of all epics, but he has only this. Boudica has only 600, but does rage restoration and reduction with your target, and also attack reduction. Once expertise has been reached, Osman gets 1100 damage, Boudica 1000 with a lot of other goodies. Add to her her peacekeeper skill which you may use without developping her peacekeeper talent tree till you got Lohar and I really think Boudica is a much wiser choice than Osman. And much much more versatile.

Same for Pelagius. 300 damage seems not much, but you get it 3 times: twice more in the next 2 seconds. That's 900, plus rage restoration... Ay mammy...
Of course, his expertise skill makes you driving towards cavalry. For f2p/low spenders this may be taking a long time, but I only use my speedups on cavalry (for mina in my case).

Scipio I like. No comments on that one. But I am not the only one who's not a big fan of Osman as I hear in discussions. And, if you're not raiding cities, both Scipio and Osman have an useless skill. Especially Osman. Raiding a city more than 30 seconds will leave you with a lot of dead troops...

I also disagree that a legendary commander is impossible. If you buy vip 2 and vip 5 packages, you can summon Minamoto and max out his first skill. That's direct damage 1400 and 50% chance of additional 600. And this for only 6€/$... More you don't need in pvp battle, and you don't have to make much choices where to spend all the epic statues. Things can get a bit tricky to get to 5 and 6 stars, but it's doable at least 5 stars if you buy systematically the golden stars in the vip shop with wood.

This leaves the choice between "Scipio Africanus" and "Osman I". Both are solid, but Osman I is better.

The topic is something about some event i guess but i don't have any confirm information as the stuff has been shared here on a religious platform for us. He does have edu birdie reviews for us. It says Atticus Finch and How to Set a Watchman so maybe you can able to find some summary elsewhere.