What is balance of the game? May be it is the value of how much the winner may be stronger than a loser? If I begin to win the game becomes uninterstingly easy.
I build 7-men units, I equip them with best bows, I equip them with best artifacts, I build them in enchanted cities, which give +4 to fire damage, +4 to initiative, +4 to armor, they are able to act first at the beginning of the battle - and they simply wipe away any enemy unit with 1-2 shots. Enemy rarely has a chance even to hit me.
What I suggest for LH:
1. Remove 7-men units. 5-men units should be the maximum group. Huge units also make heroes-warriors almost obsolete. They deal huge amounts of damage while heroes do about 1/3 of that damage even if they have the best equipment.
2. Strengten heroes! Give them few more hit points, better equipment and few more traits to be more personalized. Place more special and unique equipment in the places of interest on strategic maps. It would be nice if heroes wear unique and strong equipment which is not available in shops.
3. Make low level weapons stronger for 1-3 points, while high level weapons should be for 1-3 weaker in damage.
4. If not remove spells which enchant cities for building enchanted units, then restrict these bonuses to 1/2 per essense, so that in a city with 1-2 essense units are enchanted with +1 bonuses to fire damage, initiative and armor, and in cities with 3 and more essense bonus should be +2.
5. Ranged units should have limit of shooting distance. Not only throwing knifes should be limited in range.
I've played beta LH for a while - and first feelings are nice!
New mountains are better - new forests are worse. Waypoint system was very needed and its good that it exists now.
Now armor doesn't have weight - perhaps this is good for AI, as it doesn't count weight properly when equips his units. But I don't know if Light Armor or Elite chainmail are needed, because now plate armor is obviously better.
Heroe's skill tree is toooooo long. It's impossible in most cases to reach high level traits and they are not so needed.
It's good that battlefields are smaller now. This should reduce dominance of ranged weapons.
It's also good that camera is set for better zoom. It's always nice to see biger figures of heroes and soldiers, to see their faces. LH is not the game of Total War series, it can use all benefits of closer zoom.
Crossbows seem obsolete. Why they are weaker than bows? It's nonsense. They should be slow but armor piercing and deal more damage while their range should be less than of bows.
'
