Gods and Heroes

We have thought of two different possibilities of introducing gods and heroes in the game.
The main idea is that each town has three heroes, an offensive one that will give bonuses to attacks, a defensive one that would help in defending the town, and a wizard that would improve spells and give new ones. All heroes will have their skills organized in skill trees (three of them) from which the user can pick.
We have thought of two different ways a user can gain the skill points and we need to decide which would be the best one.
The first method is the classic one, the user chooses a god in the begining of the game and the god influences the hero skills and maximum levels. The heroes gradually gain experience from their field (e.g. an offensive hero from the attacks made by the town) and when experience reaches a threshold the hero gains a new level and a skill point that the user can spend for upgrading a skill or buying a new one.
The second method is for the skill points to be given by the gods. A user no longer chooses a god in the beginning of the game, instead the town knows of three gods and prays to all of them. The three hero skill trees will belong one to each god. All "deeds" (attacks, spells, rejected attacks) done by a town can be dedicated to one of three gods in order to gain favour with that god. When the favour reaches a certain threshold the god gives a skill point that can be used for one of the heroes in the skill tree belonging to that god.

Please leave a comment about the method you would prefer and also, if it's not too much trouble, why. :)

Introduction

Strategica is just a temporary name for a browser based strategy game.
In the game the user will be able to choose a race, build a town and buildings, create an army and fight other users.
We will not have the entire concept here, just parts of it that we are debating how should be done so that the users would like them better.
Please read the ideas and post your opinion as a comment if you are interested.