What would be excellent is a "hardcore" mode where you can't save. You save only when you quit.

I think an ironman setting should keep a backup a fixed number of turns in the past, which it will let you access in case of save corruption (hopefully a rare occurance, but you can't always account for my accidental kicking of the extension cord).

I suppose life magic may have ways to bring your heros back?

I think there's a fair point to be made in making whether a Hero unit lives or dies into a tactical/strategic choice for the player.

One of the initial analogies used by Brad was that of a Hero stirring up trouble in your kingdom, much like the heros from a D&D (or any pen & paper RPG) often did. To perhaps expand on that thought, the heroes from both books and movies often only die as part of grander gestures. They buy time for someone else to escape, scarifice themselves for the greater good, etc. For the 'evil' side, they are often sacrificed by their higher power (evil god, evil commander, etc.) to further that being's overall goals.

So perhaps Heros in this game should be similar. They shouldn't be immortal, but I think we can agree that their deaths should always be important and memorable (and likely allowed by the player) and not just that they were numerically overwhelmed. In such a case as they would be numerically overwhelmed, having them appear some number of turns later and perhaps grievously wounded would be far cooler. Even throwing in some element of chance that their capabilities have changed in some way (think Gandalf and the mines of Moria). I'm not suggesting that they come back weaker or more powerful, but potentially different in some way.

You'd lose the careful care and feeding of your Hero, but perhaps strategically/tactically it was important to do so. That way you can't, for instance, defend a city with a single Hero, but perhaps you could allow your Hero to die, which turns the tide of a battle (for that turn) and allows your reinforcements that are 1 turn away arrive.

I'm much a perfectionist type of strategist-I like to retreat indiv tanks in C&C, in Age of Wonders I train my heroes with the utmost care. I consider every unit loss a personal failure lol

Now I don't like when my heroes die, and I would like a way to bring them back, but it would have to be difficult, I suggest you have to sieze some specific tactical point, like a summoning square or something to make it a bit easier. Of course, these things would not be portioned off to each player-you would have to decide how much your going to sacrifice for your favorite heroes well being. Decisions like that make the game for me.

In MOM you didn't have any control over how your heroes changed when they leveled up.  In AOW they gave you the ability to distribute points as you chose. I found a problem when I played Aow, which was that after a few levels my heroes started to all seem the same.  In MOM this never happened.  This was because when I leveled up a hero, I thought of certain things as being important, so I often strengthened the 'weak' parts of the hero, which tended to make they all the same.  I would argue that not allowing choice here would be better.  MOMs heroes felt much more unique then AOWs.

I would really dislike a "closed" system of experience. A level cap is just silly. Is there a moment we stop learning things? A decay system for experience would be interesting, but in the limits of initial training. If a unit does nothing (not defending, attacking etc..) it should lose some xp.

Why not thinking in "reveers". you don't really gain much xp, just "temporary" abilities. And they become permanent only if you fight enough to make them persistant That's the way we learn

I agree about heroes in AoW:SM becoming more and more alike the higher level they get. I only just got the game recently, but all my heroes end up with the spell caster ability, high hp, attack and damage... So I'm all in favor of the game forcing different heroes to evolve in different ways. I'd like some input as to how they change with experience, but not too much.

What about a system that uses the personality/specialty of a hero combined with how you use them? If you recruit a hero who's famous for knocking people's heads in with a hammer, and you primarily use him to knock people's heads in with said hammer, then he should get better at knocking people's heads in  . On the other hand, if you use him to explore uncharted or scout enemy territory, he can gain scouting abilities - but relatively slowly, because even if you force him to go scouting, the driving force in his life is knocking peoples heads in with his hammer.

On the other hand if you recruit a forester with renowned scouting abilities, and use him to scout he will quickly improve his abilities. But if you including him with your main army and he ends up in the midst of a lot of fighting, he could slowly improve his combat skills - but not as fast as the guy with the hammer would.

In other words, the way your heroes evolve depend on the way you use them - but each hero has certain areas that they improve faster in, so it would be difficult to get a scout strong enough to go head-to-head with an equally experienced warrior hero.

Edit: I just wanted to add that I'm against hero abilities/stats/experience being temporary unless you continually keep them in practice. I think that in general, if you give something to the player, taking it away again because of some technicality is a bad idea. To me it's a case of too much realism being a bad thing. I play games to have fun; most of real life isn't particularly fun -> games should not mimick real life too closely