Ideas and suggestions.

Based on streams and feedback from experienced players, the outcome of the game largely depends on which heroes appear in the tavern for each player, especially when playing with mirrored map templates. This has led to a suggestion: give each player the ability to choose a pool of 8 heroes who will appear in their tavern at the beginning of the game. The implementation would look like this: in the map generation settings window, an additional tab appears. When opened, both players see a table with portraits of all the heroes available in the game. Players take turns picking one hero from this table until each has a pool of 8 "starting" heroes. These 8 heroes can appear in the tavern in a random order (or not necessarily random), but heroes not included in the pool will not appear in the tavern until the main 8 have been recruited. Heroes from the opponent's pool cannot appear in the player's tavern. Whether they can appear if they have been killed is another question, open for discussion. It could also be possible to allow players to expand the pool and choose another 8 "reserve" heroes, who will appear after the 8 "main" heroes have been recruited. Essentially, this suggestion is an integration of the already available "invite a hero" function into online battles.