What races do people want this time?

Azracs: Jyri
Orcs: Southern
Lizardmen: Bookwyrm
Dwarves: Thereunto
Goblin: Arnuz

I'm leaning toward Lizardmen, though I'll accept Azracs or Orcs as well.

I'll shoot for Dwarves again, but I'm fine with whichever race.

1. goblins
2. orcs
3. lizards
4. dwarves
5. azrac (no other reason than I've just played them)

No preference.

Tried it in hot seat, there's still weirdness going on with the scV heroes. They attract other troops they don't need to go around and convert them. I've seen the karaghs from the 4square town move to the hero who had already moved to the closest tower. I'm guessing that the troops then convert the hero AI as he's not recruitable. Perhaps for this reason the hero becomes unrecruitable. Then even if other troops join - from a recruitable town - the stack becomes recruitable... But not the hero!
It'd seem that the hero moves to the closest tower and the troops then move to the hero. I've seen this happen both with the manually placed troops set to fortify and the auto-generated ones from the garrison. I've tried moving the hero to the tower but the same happens. Guessing that to be 100% sure you need to place the hero trapped somehow, maybe on an island close to an empty shipyard? Watch out for the lizards though that's not enough with them.

Edit: I saved over the usual game out of habit :facepalm: I hope that's not another restart :-/

Maybe an unguarded dungeon. With a sign.

When I try it in SP I have no issues with any of the 5 heroes (using cheats to see them all). They're staying put like they should now.

Try an MP game where you control all 5. Maybe something about it being MP is the difference?

Too much effort, can't enable fog disabling and explore disabling cheats in multiplayer.
I'll put them in a prison but also leave a priest on refuge nearby as a test.

I have the impression the towers are right there. Seems like you'd just need to go look.

Mmm I have the feeling that these behaviours are range activated, that'd reconcile you not seeing them move. Try running towards the heroes?

The priest doesn't seem to create any problem. Maybe these unmounted heroes are used in the campaigns and have some action hard-coded?

The unmounted heroes aren't in any of the campaign scenarios that I've seen, and I've played through those pretty thoroughly. I think the unmounted heroes are random assets added to the game at some point but never used in the base material.

In the editor the infantry-heroes are called leaders, the normal leaders are called leader-heroes, and heroes are called heroes. So I think they added the infantry heroes and normal heroes first, then added the leader-heroes (which hold a staff like the infantry ones and ride a mount like the heroes), then decided to use the leader-heroes instead of the infantry leaders.