Ten problems with the balance in Elemental

Yes, I disagree with point #3 comletely.  #3 is what's at the core of Elemental.  The reason there is no variety as you put it is due to lack of balance and umique identities for each faction.  Like Gal Civ 2 was at the onset.  Once that is addressed, the game will be unique each time you play.

My responses:

1. Concerning weapons, you need the huge leap to match armor. Armor comes in sets (chest, leg, arm, and optional shield). Since these each go up with each tech level, and you are adding 4 item, your defense goes up somewhat exponentially. You only get one weapon, so this has to go up to match equal tech level armor.

2. Large stacks are a problem in any strategy game, and in real life as well. However, consider that if you put all your eggs in one basket, the enemy can send our several smaller armies to decimate your cities. (Of course, the AI may not be smart enough to do this right now, but any strategy game with good AI will do this. It's just exploiting your weakness.) 5 small armies can decimate cities 5 times faster than one large army.

3. I actually like all of these elements. It's what makes the game unique. Rather than being too complex, I think each of the aspects is a bit too simple right now and needs to be fleshed out a bit.

4. I haven't noticed the stack size problem, probably because I usually finish the game without using 12 unit stacks. However, I can agree that cities would benefit from some type of automatic defense. However, many strategy games (like Civ & MoM) use units as the sole defense for cities.

5. First hit worked fine in Age of Wonders, and I don't see a problem with it here. What I would suggest (and what this game severly needs) is special abilities for units based on equipment. In this case, create a polearm (pike) that gives the defending unit first strike ability. I totally agree with the 1dN thing though. That absolutely HAS to be fixed.

6. A good point. In most strategy games (again, Civ and MoM), taking a city by force damages it. I agree.

7. There are penalties. It's called starving people and micromanagement headaches. Seriously, this game does a bit too good of a job in limiting empire size through the food mechanic.

8. Agreed. Spawning 6-unit groups of monsters with strong attacks, or one super-troll with 100+ attack right between two of my cities is ridiculous. I can't count the number of cities I have lost to groups of strong bandits. I simply can't afford to build strong enough units to defend against these guys.

9. No comment, since I have never done this. This seems like something that should be fixed, though.

Thanks for the comment.

I think you have misunderstood what I meant in point 3 because you seem to be drawing the same conclusion when you say 'Once that is addressed, the game will be unique each time you play.' I'm not saying 'Get rid of the ideas.' I'm just saying 'Get the basics right before implementing the ideas.'

The races aren't unique at the moment so the question must be asked - why not? At one point in time the Kraxis had their own unique abilities because those files are still in the XML So during development (and hopefully again in the future) the races were going to be more unique than we have at game launch. My guess to the question 'Why aren't the races unique?' is that it became too hard. Taking this a step further I'm assuming that because of the 'Design your own units' feature takes a lot of art resources it was/is going to be too expensive to make the races truly unique.

Imagine on the other hand that the game started with pre-set units that you could build based on buildings and that there was no 'Design your own unit' feature. An undead race could start with skeleton swordsmen and skeleton archers. Then a building unique to that race would allow the building of zombies. Then later on vampires, werewolves on so on. Personally I think the game would have been much richer for it and the art resources would have been easier to produce.

Now, the game would be even better if you could have both. Being able to start with unique racial beings and then design their armour and kit would be the value-add - but it needs to come after the basic game-play is working.

And with regards Dynasties as another example. Why add them in at the start when many strategy gamers expect a lot from this aspect because the RPG side of the game. Add it in later when the game works.

Some really great points and suggestions!

1. Drastic shifts in numbers

Stats are truly one of the great weak points of the game, honestly.  Ridiculously out of control multiplicative ones (such as temples of essence in 1.07) and the additive ones you mentioned.  And good starting luck (multiple libraries and a couple of "research" champions) and you'd have a massive advantage over other players insofar as a tech rush.[/quote]

2. Exploits

Some of the item exploits have already been addressed (no more 15 rings of sight) but the "Mr. T Effect" is still in force.

3. Too many ideas

The irony being that most of these have been done, and in many cases quite well, by previous outings.  Reinventing the wheel just to say you did only gets you a very bumpy ride.

4. Stack sizes

I love where you're headed here.  Reward defensively well developed cities with more troop capacity!

5. Tactical Battle Process

Sadly the entire combat system is ludicrously simplistic as it stands now.  No special abilities, nothing to counter "first strike", insanely overpowered single defense stat, squad nonsense, etc.

6. No city damage

One of the things that AoW did very well...  you have a multitude of options when taking enemy cities (though also no lasting city damage either).  Changing it to the race of ANY city under your control and making the conversion time based on proximity to the nearest city of said race is 100% win.

7. No expansion penalties

Outside of potential food issues (due to not researching building enough in the civics tree), there is no penalty and nothing but gains from massive, unchecked expansion.  This is mirrored in the no upkeep for spamming city boosting spells.

8.Random monster spawn

In my experience, by the time they start to really back up you're already quite capable of steamrolling them.  And that just adds to your coffers and sovereign/champions levels.

9. AI

Sadly, there is no real AI.  I have yet to play a game (normally large, 5 opponents, "ridiculous" setting) where at least one sovereign never makes a town and another makes a starter town and never builds a thing.  Suiciding sovereigns is a sad joke.

10. No diplomatic consequences

Given how  few options there are insofar as diplomacy, I guess their Prozac inspired cheerfulness isn't that odd. =D

I'd love to see lots of these areas either "fixed" or compared strongly to past notables like MoM and AoW and draw from the best of either/both and give it Elemental's own unique spin.

If the meat and potatoes of TBS standards could be brought up to spec, then the new stuff can be really fleshed out... unit design and dynasties have such huge potential but are bland and/or ridiculously overpowered (the latter in reference to insane essence and mana regen progeny).

edited to fix horrifyingly out of control quoting

This is the kind of thread that is great for the community.  You guys should feel free to give your ideas and suggestions. I don't necessarily agree with all the idea (especially #3) but it's still a good discussion.

This is the point. The numbers in the game force an escalation like an avalanche. Reduce the escalation and make the game more manageable. The underlying problem is that the many of numbers need to increase exponentially to keep up with other numbers. So why not just reduce the numbers that caused the problem rather than add on to the other numbers and thereby cause more imbalance?

At this stage the AI can't match the Essence exploit. I'm usually splitting my forces very early but each stack will have a number of over-powered summons units in them.

First hit worked in Age of Wonders because of the other factors around it. Units could move much more than two squares so it was difficult to ensure you got first hit all the time. Special abilities would be good and also to make sense of the weapon/damage types.

I do not disagree here but I suspect it would require a hard look at armor, hp, and defenses to make this work.

I do not see recruiting and imbuing as an exploit.. I think the AI needs to better utilize/react to this.. However if we were reduced to less imbuing and children for casters I do not see a real bad thing there.. I just want more from the magic as a whole and I suspect we are going to see it..

Have to agree to disagree here .. when creating a game like this you have to plan from the get go for some of this in order to develop it to work well together.. could what we have be better flushed out? yes and it will be. I can not imagine the task of creating this tool set for this game while creating the game any other way that would work well..

As has been said 12 seems fine to me..

1dn is going bye bye with 1.08 i believe.. and we are going to a infinitive system where fastest unit goes first then next fastest no matter the side so that gong to change as well..

I agree here 100%

Disagree here but i have always balked at this type of restriction.. If they do come up with a limiter I hope its a toggle or at very least a slider so we can support both styles of play...

I agree this needs work..

Yup AI need so love especially since we have so many of us beating the hell out of it..

Agree here...

All in all some good stuff here its all worth talking about..

Be careful with #6. I don't want a situation where cities could take ages to get productive as a result of things like culture choke + building destruction + revolt time all adding up, and I REALLY don't want a situation where quickly reconquering a city after a surprise attack leaves it barren and crippled.

Having no penalties at all isn't the best idea and some things like immediately getting control of all influence are silly but the developers should definitely err on the side of "not harsh enough" if they're going to try to add city damage, rather than go too far like say civ4 did and make mid/late warfare vs a competent opponent a horrible drag.

Besides, fixing the combat mechanics and the AI's understanding of them should by itself really help bandage this problem of conquest being overpowered.

A.I.  With each race being unique, each A.I. has to be unique-ish enough is my best guess.

Sure, but I want to make my own unique skeleton, zombie, werewolf unit.  I want each unit to look different.  That's one thing I loved about GC2, the ship designer. Every time I played I designed new ships. 

Not agreeing with you there.  I do not want to rehash several old arguments and point fingers like some like to do.  I'll just say that SD needs a little more time to polish this game up.  I'll give it to them.

Dynasties are a key component of the game I think.  Granted it's incomplete and needs lots of work, but it's one of my favorite parts of the game.  I also love the tactical combat, but it to needs work.

Actually these are 2 of the 3 reasons I got the game. 

I agree with both of you on point three, I like all the elements but... IT NEEDS WORK.  The dynasty system is the reason I got excited about the game and then felt let down by how badly it was implemented.  (I think a toggle for whether you want dynastic succession or not would be great as it would keep both camps happy).  Also I don't think there are enough.  The main thing from MoM that I miss is item enchantment.  I'd love to see that added into the game.  Remember there were two spells a weaker and stronger version.  Personalised magic items that are part of the game (instead of mods) would be amazing.

There's also things like the quest battles.  I'm playing on a netbook and it doesn't give me the option to autoresolve.  Every quest battle I have to hope and pray that it doesn't break before I can hit the autoresolve in the tactical combat screen.  I have to agree on point 7.  Expansion should have some sort of penalty and/or tech workaround to maintain large empires.  I tend to just expand like crazy in the beginning of the game and after a few wars, NOBODY can catch up with me.  I like the idea of their being something similiar for armies.  Limiting the max stack until you research the tech.  Bigger doesn't mean better, not when you exaggerate (look at the history of ancient greece vs persia).

Gav

(Who now does own Elemental but is waiting on an account merger from his friend who bought it for him on behalf of his girlfriend for their anniversary).

Regarding the following...

6. No city damage

When taking over an enemy city there is no damage at all. This means you just keep rolling on without being required to rebuild and stabilise. And if you happen to take over a city from the opposite faction, all their buildings still function and you can still build your own faction's equivalent buildings around them.

This is completely unrealistic and there is no benefit to use diplomacy in any situation. It is just much more easy and rewarding to take the cities one after another.

Here is my take...

Damage considerations to a city that has been conquered should depend on what type of warfare was conducted. For example, if I conquered a city fortified with some archers by sending in some warriors armed with clubs or swords, what type of real damage would be done to the city itself? Very little or, more likely, none.

On the other hand, if I conquered said city by utilizing magic or catapults, then I can see real damage occuring to the city. In this case, the damage needs to be randomized among the various buildings. Perhaps no damage is done to any of the buildings. Maybe, one or two buildings is destroyed. Maybe, just maybe, depending on the power of offensive spells used (Inferno, for example, or Hurricane, etc.) tremendous damage is done to the city. Perhaps there would be a chance of leveling the city when these spells are employed.

I think history would disagree with your statement that an army of people with swords invading a city would not cause any property damage.

That is not precisely what I said. The amount of real damage that would cause a given building to need to be repaired or rebuilt to be useable again is related to the type of warfare conducted. I'm sorry, but if you send an army of archers (say 100 men or perhaps more) into a city to conquer it, and you succeed, what damage was done to the buildings besides arrow strikes? There will be holes in some buildings, windows broken out, etc. No damage that would really require it to be repaired to make it useable again. Now, if those arrows being used are on fire, well, now you're talking some real damage.

Yes, an army of soldiers armed with clubs or swords would cause property damage, but what type of real damage that requires the building to be repaired or rebuilt would be done? If the intent of that army was to kill the enemy army while trying to avoid as much damage to the buildings as possible, then they could succeed in doing little real damage, especially if they are a disciplined army. On the other hand, if they are not disciplined, I can see the possiblity of real damage being done. For example, in the heat of battle, they might choose to set a building ablaze to drive the enemy out. Thus, doing real damage to that building which will require it to be repaired or rebuilt to be useable again.

This is the only part I kinda don't agree with. The problem isn't too many ideas, it's that the ideas we have in game aren't finished or fleshed out or balanced at all. Skills and abilities don't work. Mechanics for half the options are way over-simplified. That's what the problem is. The stuff that's in game needs to work as intended first.

I agree the game has a lot, but none of it is finished. Not finished to the point of not working well. It needs to be expanded on ten fold. Not simplified more.

When cities are invaded, damage is done. Cities are not invaded by  100 people, they are invaded by large armies and civilians get slaughtered, things get burnt down, fires rage out of control and general havoc is caused. Now I realize elemental abstracts combat by only showing a few archers firing on enemy troops, but if it's supposed to be representing actually medieval/fantasy warfare then it's safe to assume there's a lot more going on then that when the city is taken over. Cities do not get taken over by 100 archers firing from outside the walls.

Even ignoring realism though I think the point of the original poster was to cause city damage to prevent the steamroll effect so he's proposing it as more of a balance change.

Having lived in the middle east I've seen the ruins of many cities which were destroyed with bronze swords, axes, and bows. They can actually do a ton of damage, especially if you know where to strike with it.

Roman soldiers routinely leveled cities they invaded (including Jerusalem which wasn't small city) and lacked heavy equipment. Much of the time they didn't even use pack animals as they weren't fond of them.

It is a good post and great for the community, but is it good for the game?

I would really like to sit down with one of you who find the game so appalingly easy to beat. I have used some of the tips I have gotten here (thanks!) but am still struggling.

I started a medium map with ytthril as my only enemy and a new kingdom faction I created so that I could have good guys with archery.

I began in an area with several resources not too far off and surrounded by mountains with three valley exits. I built my city and grew as fast as I could build. I felt fortunate to have a magical sword forged for me and was able to sell a flute for enough to buy a cedar longbow for one of the few NPC's that came into my AOI (area of influence) Funny thing about that too... I chose a female sov and ALL of the initial NPCs were female. Janusk was no where to be found. I got my sov to level 4 or 5 and a couple female NPC's for melee and another archer with me. I went around killing all the level 1 stuff I could find.

To the east was an NPC kingdom blocking passage. I decided to leave him alone since my stack wasnt strong enough and I was hoping to build up things to a level where I could have really nice techs, magics, and units.

I was able to start a second city not too far from the first to use a gold mine. I went looking for a third location and found lots of empty map. I had to go back often to heal my stack and regen mana and to ward of barbarians.

I thought I was progressing alright. The NPC kingdom was not harrassing me. But then the evil empire began demanding tribute. I paid 3 or 4 times hoping to avoida costly war. I built archers in my towns when I could afford them. But there certainly not enough. The evil empire then declared war. I tried trading with his caravan but I had 39 units of materials and 69 gold. He had much more of both. When I tried to 'purchase' 10 materials from him, I found out that he valued them MUCH more highly than mine and I could not afford to trade.

So... again, even though I trained up diplomacy alot, it did me no stinking good. He conquered the NPC kingodm and I found another huge city to the West after mapping the barren wastes and having to run back for healing etc.

Then he sends the troops.

This really irks me. Once I get an AOE spell, I can often turn the tide when reading the odds of me with CR 110 vs enemy CR 256. But I notice he is coming after one of my two cities and I port there to protect.

I have CR 190 and he has 330 or so. I stay in side the city since I build hedge walls and he attacks. He has 3 squads of archers, an earth elemental, a fiery fiend, some singleton warriors and a hero/leader unit.

My archer hero fires off two volleys. Both miss. crud.

My sov with 27 mana casts blizzard, and is able to target two of the three archer squads. MISS. dang. Cast again. MISS! what the heck??

Then all of my units have a -10 floating above them. And they are spread in a skirmish line much longer than the 3x3 square blizzard gets for AOE.  Three of my lesser units croak.

Then rock-boy sends an AOE my way and damages more of my units, and my hirelings are getting low on HP

I open the TOME to cast the MASS HEAL I learned a couple turns earlier. It aint there. WHAT? My bear has moved up into position and mauls the enemy leader. miss miss miss miss. My archer hasnt it a thing yet. I cast another blizzard and this time I get a couple of damage points on an imp .. everyone else dodges the snowstorm.

The enemy leader unit is now up to my melee line and 3 of them get tossed like rag dolls. My archer takes aim at him. Both a clean miss!

The bear attacks him again, not one 'hit'. Each time, the leader puts a smack down on it and it dies.

Rock boy has destroyed my spider units and is chasing the archer. I bring my sov up to the enemy leader since she has an attack of 20 with her magic blade and MISS! 

To bad her armor and defense were not enough to stop the immense bitch-slap that sent her flying back on her arse!

*******

I am beginning to wonder if the only way to beat the AI is to use exploits.

You waited a long time to build your second settlement.  Land is power.  Start a pioneer as soon as your first city hits 1 population (2nd turn).  Don't stop building pioneers until you've settled near all available resource nodes.  Then, start building an army and take the rest of the resource nodes by force.

On #4, I really think towns with the proper warfare tech should have an intrinsic militia.

Egalitarian should give a bonus to militia.

I think #1 will be improved with patch 1.08 and i hope the damage of the weapons is reduced as you suggested, because this would make the HP more important and it would improve #5, because one unit cant be killed with one lucky attack.

#6 is in my opinion only important if taking over an enemy city and razing it has a negative effect (riot in your cities, all AI players declare war).

This is really worrying. It supports my suspicion that Elemental is linear when it comes to unit design. You don't develop technologies and weapons which allow you more options, with tradeoffs (such as bows, shields, horses, polearms requiring good formation and facing the right direction...). You just develop strictly better versions of previous weapons. Technology wins battles - not strategy (using the right units), tactics, positioning (see AOW:SM for superb implementation of ranged combat). This isn't just potentially unfun, it's also unrealistic. The Zulu were able to successfully fight the British with inferior weapons. Badly equipped forces like terrorists and freedom fighters use guerilla tactics and can be very difficult to defeat for a conventional army. I'd rather be worried due to not having an answer to cavalry or pikes than not having an answer to +24 War Hammer.

This power spiral makes other things difficult. Buffs need to be exponentially more powerful, just like direct damage spells.

While this may be true to some extent, the developers didn't have the benefit we now have. They didn't know from the start how Elemental would end up. Sometimes you can't understand your work properly until you finish it. Only now we have the bigger picture and can evaluate individual ideas' strenghts and weaknesses, and their interaction.

My point is that it would be a waste to abandon these ideas completely. Instead, they should be worked on until they fit together. For example unit design is nice if there are reasons to design units differently. Stats in Diablo2 were largely pointless, because every build ended up being nearly identical. They were two ways out: to make stat gain choices more interesting, and to remove stat gain choices and make it automatic. Blizzard chose the latter (which I don't like, but it will work).

There are many ideas for boosting dynasties, including "extra lives", poligamy, customs that require your death if your spouse dies, succession wars, splitting empires into parts.

And 'KISS' is overrated and stupid. KISS is what causes Wesnoth to be Wesnoth - a game with, for example, no armour representation. A knight simply has more HP, with all of its drawbacks, like taking longer to heal. Make no mistake, I understand that not every feature adds to the game. Some (like nobrainers) actually substract. They overshadow other options to the point of making them useless. In many a game developers put a lot of effort into a fake choice that's not a choice at all. Evaluating which options and features make the game more interesting without complicating and cluttering stuff is an art.

I agree, the topic is too big to elaborate now. Just one simple idea: Polearms like pikes and halberds with "negate first strike" ability. That would be a very useful ability and people would see a reason to use pikes instead of something else. But what if a pike is two-handed ? And a squad of pikes can be easily killed if flanked ?

I see two interesting solutions:

1. Use this to differentiate factions. More savage factions would have less disciplined armies and would damage cities more when they conquer them. I always wished Master of Magic had this, Gnolls could destroy most of stuff in their path.

2. A separate Warfare tech: Occupation for reducing the damage done to a city during a siege.

1. Drastic shifts in numbers

I'd like to nerf those numbers even further, and replace the combat mechanics in the process. Instead of +2 for each improvement, I'd like it to be +1.

Give every actor the following offensive skills: Melee, Missile, Magic

And give every actor the following defensive skills: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Life, Death, Blunt, Slashing, Piercing.

Further, reduce the skill baseline for mundane units to 1, keep the skill baseline for heroes at 10, and go crazy with the monsters.

Make every point in every skill equal a roll with a die, preferably a die with just two sides; side "success" and side "fail".

Continue to use opposed "rolls" (current is "rndAttack-rndDefence=damage"), but of a different kind that involves more steps, like this:

An attack consists of two rounds of opposed rolls.

The first is an opposed roll using the skill relevant to the method of attack (melee, missile or magic). The difference between the number of success rolls of the attacker and the target, are the number of hits inflicted. If the difference is positive the attacks are made on the target as intended, if the difference is negative the hits are inflicted on the attacker instead, assuming the target has the appropriate method of counter-attacking (a peasant can't counter an attack with a spell). Otherwise a negative difference is ignored.

The second round of opposed rolls is to determine the damage inflicted by the hits, if any, and is rolled against one of the victim's defence skills (according to the type of attack the hitting unit made). The side inflicting the hits rolls a number of dice equal to the number of hits inflicted. The victim rolls a number of dice equal to its relevant defence skill. As before, a positive difference is the hitpoints of damage inflicted on the hit unit, but unlike before, a negative difference is always ignored.

A system like this is vastly easier to balance. It also has several other neat advantages over the current mess, of course.

2. Exploits

The exploits are just an extension of the badly designed game mechanics and the lack of balance. Depending on your starting resources, another exploit might be tech'ing to bowmen parties and using 2-4 units of those to steamroll everything. It's often faster & even more overkill than the early ball of summoned doom.

3. Too many ideas

I neither agree nor disagree exactly. I think the problem is that whomever designed the game didn't do any designing beyond a lit of bullet points, and never actually got around to try playing the game.

The unit designer and the tactical combat are a total waste right now, but only because the game mechanics don't justify them. If, for example, you used the game mechanics I just suggested and gave equipment multiple skill modifiers, both positive and negative, both unit designer and tactical combat would suddenly be justified. The former would be useful and the latter would be fun.

4. Stack sizes

I have a couple of suggestions regarding this as well, though it's really more an extension of "too many ideas" thing that I prefer calling "bad design".

First, increase the minimum size of trainable units to 4. Or better yet, go metric and make the size categories 5, 10, 15 and 20. It's way easier to remember. Anyway, increase the minimum size of trainable units.

Second, differentiate between army stacks and adventure stacks, based on the size of the units they contain. Army stacks are stacks with unit sizes greater than one. The rest are adventure stacks.

Third, make different rules for what each type of stack can do. Adventure stacks shouldn't be able to attack army stacks and cities. Army stacks shouldn't be able to attack adventure stacks, monster stacks or go questing.

Fourth, to make sure heroes can join army stacks, introduce the Vanishing Retinue Extraordinaré. By which I mean: throw up the unit designer every time a new unit size is researched, and ask the player to design a retinue unit for each of his heroes. Once he's done that, conjure up a gratis retinue of the player's current maximum unit size-1 and make it part of the hero unit, whenever the hero is in an army stack. Likewise, make the retinue vanish without a trace whenever the hero isn't in an army stack (or a city).

These are 4 fairly simple ideas and as far as I can tell they solve the stack problem, the quest problem and the hero problem.

5. Tactical Battle Process

If you combine my various suggestions up to now with appropriate terrain modifiers (as in: related to the actual terrain and in the form of +/-dice rather than a percentage), a pre-battle deployment phase (preferably one that remembers the last deployment), a 500% animation speed option, and spells redesigned to work with the new combat mechanics, I believe it would end up being fairly enjoyable - with the caveat that every unit under the sun needs at least 1 special ability, and that specials for non-trainable units have to be unique. I don't mind if all guys with shields can shield-bash (or whatever), but I do mind if 5 different monsters all have the "hurl boulder" special.

Incidentally, by redesigning the spells along the lines of the combat mechanics I've proposed, I mean stuff like giving a fireball spell +5 magic skill for every size category of the target, or give a melting touch spell +1 damage dice for every hit, or making a spell of Brittleness modify (bonuses and penalties) the target's defensive skills instead of its hitpoints.. Or whatever. It's Yet Another Reason to use such a system instead of the current one: it allows a whole lot more fun stuff.

6. No city damage

Total agreement here. Cities should take damage when they're conquered. Moreover, they should suffer various culture-based penalties. A bunch of goody-two-shoes Kingdom guys presumably wouldn't be very happy & productive under the iron-fisted occupation of some malicious Empire guy.

7. No expansion penalties

Agreed. At the very least I think captured cities should be cut off from the global resource pool unless/until they have a caravan route to a player-founded city. But giving captured cities size-dependent piles of negative modifiers that has to be off-set in specific ways, I think, is a very good idea. Force us to raze cities and make the world hate genocidal tyrants, so we're afraid to do it.

The only expansion penalty to speak of right now, is the built-in deficiencies of the Sins tree thingy (wutsit called, dammit?) and that's a usability penalty, not a gameplay penalty so... Please remove it, yes? Thank you.

8. Random monster spawn

Monster spawns would - in my opinion - be cooler if they couldn't be attacked by army stacks, didn't spawn so often, couldn't attack cities, and were much more prone to eating resource buildings & caravans. It would be a great reason to invest in a couple of adventurer stacks, and keep those stacks relevant throughout the game.

9. AI

This is the one thing I have total faith Stardock will get right, eventually. I just hope - but currently strongly doubt - it won't be done at the fatal expense of the gameplay.

10. No diplomatic consequences

Yes well, the AI is a bit on the stupid side right now. As for what I'd like to see, once diplomacy becomes relevant because half the game mechanics have been redesigned from the ground up, the game has undergone at least a single balance pass, and the AI has learned to play at least a little bit... Are things like global consequences to player activities, and unintended consequences from mixing bloodlines. I'd love to see the world uniting against me when I'm an ass, and I'd love for some Enemy ruler to try to claim my throne through some combination of the right blood ties and diplomatic capital. Either would be a hugely satisfying way of losing the game.

Edit: @ Damon_Lundy contrary to what you apparently believe, collateral damage becomes more of a factor the lower the level of technology of the involved parties. When your warfare tech is at the melee level, the best weapons are the ones that stop the other guy from getting into melee. Without technology, those are weapons like diseases and wildfires, and what made them so good isn't just that they are indiscriminate. Their greatest advantage was that nobody had the technology to control them. Pond-based bucket-lines & blood-letting are, at best, ineffectual in the face of such things.

Specifically for summons, I'd say that they should remain powerful, but summoning them should use up your essence like Imbue Champion does, though it should probably return the essence once the summon dies/is unsummoned. That, along with having a global mana pool, should do well to make them much less abusable.

3 is actually correct because each of the things listed seems only halfway finished.

Designing your units only has a few customizations available. I'm talking about clothing, faces, gender , hair, etc etc. I love the poses but I wish the other things you could choose from were fleshed out as well.

Dynasties seem to be useless as well. I wish they were more like Crusader kings and had fully implemented ideas, including letting your faction heir take over when your faction leader dies. It opens up more strategic and roleplaying abilities. ("I will hunt down the Wachovia Family to their last cur!")

Finally, it only seems that there are a handful of quests, and they are all fed ex ones I feel. Go to these witch huts and get this. Bring me these stones. Go here, go there. And thats it. Surely there can be more exciting quests for heroes to do?