Slitherine

Playing AK at General level and arriving at British India, I noticed the distribution of the heroes are strange.
-Of 8 scout units (5 lost - 3 remaining) only one got ATTACK - would expect (and favor...) one/some for SPOTTING.
-Of 6 artillery units 3 have SPOTTING which I dont need - only 1 got a RANGE, which I would prefer.

Am I correct in noticing heroes getting lost when a unit is damaged? I was 100% sure several units had a hero, but suddenly they're gone...

Perhaps (or even for certain...) these questions have been answered in differents posts, so sorry about that - but the search "heroes" delivered almost 100 pages of hits...

No a unit is not losing heroes if it gets damaged. You can only lose heroes if the unit get totally destroyed but this is pretty obvious. If you turned on the "reform unit" option under advanced options you can even circumvent this. A destroyed unit will be then put into reserve with 0 strength and can be rebuilt which revives it with all the heroes it had. All you lose is the experience of the unit.

The distribution of the heroes (except the preset special heroes) is totally random. When a unit get a hero it can be of any type available for the class (for example range hero is only available on the artillery and Anti Air classes). Attack and Defense heroes can have values between +1 and +3 and all other hero types (spotting, range, initiative, movement) come only in the +1 version. While the distribution is indeed random sometimes strange streaks happens. I remember myself having a game where around 50% of my heroes ended as spotting heroes for example.

P.S. The list of hero types is possibly not complete. It is very possible i forgot a hero type ... i am not the youngest anymore.

Have to chime in & agree that spotting heroes on artillery are a total disappointment. It almost warrants a scenario restart.