If we follow the CPT (Competitive Playtesting) guidelines,
2. we should add a few equally powerful units to the game. This option is obviously the best, and it's the one the HotA team is focusing on.
It's also clear that this option is quite complex to implement. And it's also
practically inapplicable for SoD (because when implemented, it's no longer SoD).
The problem with damage dealers in the current Heroes is the ability to capture the Mage Guild from an opponent. If you can do this, it's a very strong move. Especially in HotA, where capturing an opponent's city with a tower just once in a game is enough to make the guild completely useless, simply by agreeing to some nonsense on turn five. And the control issues in HotA are even greater because there are usually fewer treasure locations (there are sprites, guilds, towers, etc.). In Utopia, the chance of gaining control is slightly higher than in SoD (the Kesh and water units seem to have been removed), but this is a minor detail. Nevertheless, in SoD, there are sometimes battles for the guild after the opponent captures it (I remember Lucky-Dave's great game in the final of FB), but in HotA, this is completely pointless. So, I believe that HotA HL+U (High Level + Undead) is much more unbalanced than SoD HL+U, given the current trends in Heroes.