Now, on to the gameplay issues :
The main problem I have currently is that the nation vs nation wars are a bit dull. The funny part is mostly exploring and reclaiming the land, and battling the varied NPC monsters that each have their specific abilities. Battling other nations is always the same : everyone has armies that behave the same (giving some of the warhammers, and other spears won't change the problem : they need to behave very differently in the field.
Boring early tech tree, and limited tech choices
There are very few options to design troops in the beginning of the game, and you always spend your first turns researching the same items : bigger squads, leather, spears, bow + metal, crystal + brewery.
The problem is that once you have researched all of this, the game is virtually over :
in this game, I had razed Tarth and Altar with bowmen and conscripts only. I had not developped chainmail by the end of these wars. Once I had conquered all of their cities, the game was already over. It means most games will pit spearmen and bowmen against each other, and be decided before anything cool is unlocked. That was not the case in Master of Magic at all, as you did not have to research mundane tech.
To add insult to injury, the warfare tech tree has many prereqs from the civic tech tree, and the magic one has preres from the warfare tree. There is even less room for diversification there.
There should be many techs removed from the tree and added to the beginning. All cross tree prereqs should be removed (You could still have prereqs from 2 trees to develop some items, or each faction should have access to a dozen tech from the beginning.
I'd rather have all tech trees deal with magic (one would be instant spellcasting, the other units and weapon enchantment, and the last one, overland spells). Magic does not feel like it is the main driving force behind the world in the game (except for the overpowered magical enhanced items).
Maybe if technologies gave overall stronger benefits, other nations would not be cakewalk compared to the NPC monsters.
It's all Keynes' fault
The economic model of the game is terrible right now :
Taxation incures a severe linear penalty, making it very unworthwile, and most buildings have maintenance costs far exceeding their usefulness. It cripples the AI, who does not seem to realize how little benefit it gets from that much upkeep (but in ridiculous, money is not that big an issue for the AI anyway), and it makes managing cities terribly boring, as you don't build anything most of the time.
I should not have taken inefficient, there were far better negative picks, but it was not a big deal anyway in the end, as there are not that many useful buildings to construct.
Taxation is pretty ridiculous the way it works now too : there is no incentive at all to not changing the tax slider every time you need. It should be better to spend all the time at 5% tax than half at 0% and half at 10% (so that the best way to play is not to keep taxes to 0 until we are broke, and then raise when absolutely necessary), the lower tax rates should be much less marginally penalizing than the upper ones (it should be much worse, unrest wise, to go from 20 to 25% than from 0 to 5).
Sacrifying spearmen, there is no problem it cannot solve
Troop upkeep = x*labor cost is a bad decision. It makes crappy fodder the best units in the game. Making conscript worse won't magically change that. What would would be to make upkeep = A+x*labor cost for instance, where A would be a fixed value. That would make good units more valuable, and limit conscript spam. conscripts would still be usefull because of their low labor cost. Conscripts have to eat to, so it even makes sense.
Upkeep should be lowered in garrison (it could be an effect of barrack, or any building).
The pen is mightier than the sword, especially when it can cast a fireball
There are several major problems with the way troops are handled right now. Even if we put aside the astonishing speed at which we lose troops, there are other underlying problems !
Slippery slope
Once you lose your experienced troops and champions, you have virtually no chance to come back : the replacement troops you will muster will be utterly crappy (level 2 at most, or 3 if you are really willing to sacrifice both upkeep and a trait slot), and your champions will be badly crippled.
It is a big problem, as it makes wars entirely depend on the first few battles. There should be techs to allow you to train troops at higher level. That should not be a trait, but an options when training troops in some cities (higher labor cost for higher level). Or having lost experienced troops could give an xp boost to the next few units trained (because they would be led by the few survivors of the destroyed units) in order to mitigate casualties.
Designed in Europe
Unit design is pretty lackluster at the moment: there is very little to chose from in the beginning, and even after that, the choices are not that meaningful, as there are very few benefits in having a diverse force.
High materials should be the reason why not everyone in the army don't wear plate, not artificial limitations. Same for axes and spears: they should be there because they require much less metal than anything else.
We need many more customization options for troops. More traits that would define the role of the units, and not just slightly alter some stats. I'd like to have several stat templates for each faction to add some diversification (like conscript, regular, seasonned, or countryman, citizen, noble) so that not all units have the same base stats (I know you can differentiate them with traits, but I don't think traits should do this part : they should add passive abilities that completely define the role of the unit).
Something like counter attack, bonus vs cavalry (I'd like to have some weapons only useable from horseback too), ignores terrain penalties, magic immunity, kamikaze, cause fear, stuns, knockback...
Some of these traits could be unlocked by the magic tree.
More often than not, we only have to chose between a few variations of the same weapon, that only differ by their quality. In Master of Orion, on the other hand, you had many more crucial choices to make to fit a ship according to what you wanted it to do (fleet support, Point defence, long range support, missile boat).
There needs to be more options beside weapons and armor. At least, more options attached to weapons and armor, like regeneration, life stealing, Arrow magnet (this one would be really cool, you would fit conscripts with shields of arrow magnet, and they would be killed instead of your elite forces).
All roads lead to Rome
Overall, I find the champion progression path way too uninteresting. The traits should all be strong enough to shape the hero's role. I don't think evoker should be toned down. I think every other trait should be on the same level.
I really like Tasunke's proposals in this thread .
Wizzard's first rule
Magic is terribly lackluster right now, and NOT because there are not enough spells, but because most of them don't do enough :
There are no counter spell, overland speel, or dispell, which is pretty weird. It is a tried and tested way to add some interaction between wizzards.
Same goes for the lack of overland enchantment (or battlefield enchantment for that matter) that could be dispelled and would have game changing effects.
Many spells don't scale well (the buff spells are not boosted by anything else than shard, so they rapidly stop mattering). The summons are lackluster at most (very few different things to summon. Why limit us to 1 summoned creature /battle?).
Fireball is completely overpowered. It should not completely destroy the opposing army. Increasing the casting time is not the solution (if the AI was not retarded, it could easily spread out and force the player to waste it in 3 turns, turning the spell from overpowered to completely useless).
It could have a chance to miss for every figure (maybe resistance and penetration could apply to damage spells too), or just have its damage toned down, and the casting time made reasonable again : a spell with a casting time of 3 should affect every ennemy unit, not just a 3*3 grid (but 3*3 is way too big if the opponent is not allowed to reposition his army).
Maybe if we were able to position our armies before battle, fireball would not be such an issue.
Some spells and abilities are not resistable (withering for instance). I don't see a good reason why it is the case, except to make intelligence matter even less than it does now.
There should be an upgrade mass version of most of the buff spells. Why have so many champions only spells when units are already struggling to serve any purpose? There should be some spells to really boost an unit effectiveness.
If there were more useful mage talents (like one that would improve buffs and debuffs for instance), the buff/debuff spells could be made useful again.
My kingdom for a dragon
I really liked recruiting a pet drake (and I would have loved playing with a pet fell dragon, but I didn't find any recruitable one. Are there really fell dragon camps?). Ogres need to be made more useful (poor single figure units...), but overall, we need more varied creatures to recruit, as they add character to an army, and they are cool (while mounted guys with spears in chainmail are not that cool, as far as I am concerned).
