Just let every single unit and hero slowly accumulate experience for merely existing, like it is done in the Civ4: Fall From Heaven 2 mod, and let Path of the Governor heroes gain double this background XP/turn when stationed in a city. Suddenly a PotG hero benefits the player if he actually does what his name suggests and he gets better at it by doing it.

Let the adventurers' guild likewise double the background XP/turn gain of heroes stationed in a city with the guild (stacking with PotG bonus) and the <whatever-the-name-is->army-building double the background XP/turn for non-heroes.

That resolves any number of hero-related issues and reduces the value of high-xp doomstacks, since other armies, though more slowly, will over time increase in levels even if they don't participate in battles, but will require a recalibrating of the XP-levels to advance.

It's actually 1 exp per season with adventurer's guild, the description lies. You can use the adventurer guild to get the first couple of levels fairly easily. It's afterwards that it slows to a crawl.

As for passive exp in general, I think they don't want it because it tends to encourage turtling.

Which is THE BEST strategy when trying for Civ (alliance) or Magic (research/construction) wins. Why force people to engage in combat if they aren't going for a conquest victory?

Yes, if you want to place cities and outposts favorably, protect against wandering monsters, and defend against sovereigns that will go for conquest victory.

Because there are governor skills you can only use while not traveling, and those skills can only be gained or improved by traveling.  I understand that this is a strategic choice on the part of the player.  I just fail to see (as one player) that it's a sensible choice.  Perhaps one solution would be to allow the skills to be exercised while a governor-style sovereign is on the road.

Then perhaps one answer is to provide level-ups to governor-style heroes that split each level in two, both very mild combat improvements and very mild city improvements.  With no benefits from simply sitting in a city.  Any number of answers suggest themselves--but I can't help feeling, like you do, that the current system is a failure.

I'd suggest they're being used when they sit around like that: as the equivalent of buildings.  I just don't think it's a very interesting or attractive dynamic, since heroes are the most active and individual part of the game.

Good to know, it seemed so miniscule that I hadn't bothered building it.

By that logic building things is free money and research. Sitting your heroes in a town to level them is an opportunity cost- they aren't doing anything else productive, like warring, exploring, or clearing the countryside. If you're selecting governor abilities, then your combat abilities won't be up to par even if those champions are only three levels behind your frontline as opposed to five or six.

The problem is that leveling PotG champions is counter-intuitive as it is, and (IMO) PotG should be a legitimate gameplay choice. It seems weird that the best way to become a better governor is to kill trolls, and the fact that you can't simultaneously improve your chosen trait line and actually use it strikes me as borderline absurd.

I don't like passive XP that much (though I think its a useful catch-up/underdog tool) but I personally find the OP's suggestion a little too abstract and am not creative enough to come up with something more elegant.

Soryy, i guess i don't see what's abstract about what i was suggesting. I was trying to get the option to declare someone as an administrator who takes a personal hand in the running of a city using the current known sysetm in place, without knowing what changes the devs are making to the city section of the game in the next beta.

Path of the governor seems to work well in my opinion, i was just trying to present a way it could be improved within the current framework of the game. I like to point of problems with the interface, and suggest ways of improving what i believe to be their intentions. I am not trying to impose my vision onto the game, that would be impossible.

The Govenor should get a little experience for every unit/building being built in a city, and combine that with the bonuses suggested by seanw3. That would make me put a gov in my major cities.

IN agreement with joasoze; if the path of the governor trait allowed the hero to gain xp from the city building or training things, that would sort the problem out.

I like it better than the OP's suggestion. It would give governers more meaning

Actually, prestige is a rather scarce resource. There are only a select few sources, the biggest of which is your sovereign's level (divided by two), which is why "collecting" surrendered sovereign is so powerful. Aside that, you have a couple (literally) of techs that gives it, and a few buildings, most of which are 1 shot wonders (aside from the almshouse that you have to select for lv3 cities and have to give up other useful choices). Most of these are actually quite hard to get early game, when the 1 prestige makes the most difference, because your global prestige is divided by the total number of cities you own, and becomes the cities' base growth (I don't know why you say that that's opaque?). So early on, if you have 2 cities, turning that first hero into a PotG is essentially the same as building an inn in both of those cities (and it's not that hard to get to level 4, especially when you can recruit them at lv3). This makes PotG very powerful in that early portion of the game. If you manage to do it for 2 or 3 heroes, you can completely outgrow your competition, and since population affects research and production, it soon results in a steam roller effect as long as you can keep expanding. I suppose you can argue that it needs better documentation or explanation, but this bonus is definitely not something to scoff over.

Then, if you want, you can level them a bit further, they give monetary and research bonuses along with administration. All of these are powerful early, and not quite as useful later, so you could argue for some kind of percentage base bonus (maybe for the 3rd trait?), but I certainly wouldn't call them broken or needing to be toss aside. I mean, honestly, the biggest influence on your combat abilities is the equipment you wear anyways. If you deck out a governor in awesome gear, they will still be a force to be reckon with. It's not like you suddenly become completely useless the moment you select PotG. Even without the great battle gear, they can still cast spells, buff/debuffs, etc. I'm not sure why you feel like it doesn't work and needing to be tossed out, but I sure don't agree with that mind set. To me, PotG is something that is powerful early, but becomes less useful later on... and that's okay. If you don't want to give up something for those early bonus, don't choose it, there are four other paths to pick from.

The biggest problem I see with people suggesting things like giving PotG free exp per season, or exp per things built, is that I think it would essentially turn all PotG into city guards. It's like they got hit with an arrow to the knee and retired. Heroes are meant to be wandering the country side fighting stuff and doing heroic things, not watching stuff being built. I don't care if it makes more sense, it's terribly boring, and that's bad in a game. That's why I kept saying that the problem lies in the administration line more than it does in the path... but I'm not going to go around suggesting it be removed just because I don't use it much... unless I start with Bannon.