The biggest killer about this game for me personally is the lack of diversity in the factions, units, races ect. I know that this has been mentioned often in the forums but this is one of the biggest issues for me so I wanted to mention it again.

   How about allowing units to train special abilities. This could have a few positive effects. First of all you could finally get some real choice when you decide to design a unit instead of simply putting on the best armor and trinkets you can buy and have the resources for. Secondly you could beef up your tech choices in the Magic tech tree which is woefully inadequate. In King’s Bounty, units could train certain abilities when you spent gems upgrading talents in the talent tree. How about having techs in the magic tech tree that would allow you to train units to get special abilities. You could have several “classes” of abilities as well such as “priest” abilities for healing type stuff, “wizard” abilities for offensive damage spells, “summoner” type abilities for Summoning monsters during battles, “Bard” type abilities for combat buffs to troops within a certain range ect.. You could have combat abilities as well for combat units, researchable in the combat tech tree. You could also have a number of tiers for every spell with each tier allowing you to train the unit with a more powerful version of the spell/ability. Example:

Tech: Fire Wizard Training

Allows: You can design units with the following skills a) fireball firestorm (aoe fire damage spell) c) fire shield

Allows: The building of the temple of fire

Next tech in the line:

Allows you to design units with an improved version of the three spells

Next tech in line:

Allows you to design units with an improved version of the three spells.

   Units can be designed at any time but in order to train them the following must happen. The sovereign must travel to a city and spend essence to build a temple of fire. Once that is built in the chosen city, you may begin training your wizard designs in that city. Each ability (fireball, firestorm or fire shield), you decide to “teach” your unit adds time and money to the training costs.

   Units that are designed with one “class” of abilities cannot teach their unit abilities from other “classes”, thus you won’t have fireball shooting priests. You could also have ability boosting items which could be researched in the magic tree, once again providing a much needed boost to that tree.

   The above was just an example off the top of my head. You could create all kinds of “class” abilities.

   Now as I understand it, this may not agree very well with the “lore” (magic being restricted to channelers ect). Personally I don’t have an interest in the lore, just game play so maybe this is an area that may need to be bent in order to improve unit diversity.

   Anyways, just an idea.

   Have a good day all.