well most of the hereoes have some skills for very specific situations, really pretty much all of their well rounded skills are spells. The one i feel got the least active skills was the warlord, I felt most if not all of the skills was buffs or passives.
Where is the cleaves or the knockbacks I'm pretty sure that warlords are suppose to be like warriors in an rpg. Just presonally I think if heroes can alter the battle by making obsticles or forcing an enemy unit to move just at one or two spaces off whould change the importance of heroes. I can't remember how many body blocks i ran into in the game and have even made to defend archers and heroes.

I would have too admit though I'm a spammer "goblin warlord."

Yes, I've really not found value from the leaders/hero's.. They are there, but they don't provide much to the gaming experience, aside from someone that I can't let die (Which in my play style means they sit in the main town most of the time)

As for armies, it just felt like the core of the game was to spam units and land grab. For me, that really doesn't cut it as an 'RPG' title.

Maybe that's enough for other players.. but for me, I have the expectation of a storyline that I can follow, almost like a good book.

One game that comes to mind that did this well was Eador (despite it being buggy now) - they had a really good balance between unit management and rpg / character buidling for the hero.

so u feel like they should do more than just cast spells and give the party unique buffs, like skills in combat that only a hero can get? I see that perspective cause alot of the leader and heroes abilities are just abilities of normal units.
like why have 1 really good unit at a job when you can have a bunch of them that are just plain at it?

In regards to the rpg aspet being shallow:

There is a limited amount of character development, but from my play experience, equipment doesn't seem to have a major impact on the outcome, nor do your hero's stats. It feels more like civilization, where the number of units makes the difference in combat, more so than the hero/character unit.

Also, unit experience hasn't really been an issue.. I feel no 'loss' when losing experienced units. In most maps, I simply skip the Tier 1 units all together.

This leaves me feeling like the character development is far less important than the army building.

For me.. a solid rpg experience gives me so sort of depth/connection with the development of the hero throughout the campaign. In this game, I didn't get any of that.. it felt like a less polished (UI wise) version of a fantasy mod for civilization.

can u explain how the rpg aspect is shallow?