Now that is some bear cavalry!

I like it, I can imagine the creation being interesting in the game... maybe you could use magic to merge two resources. Eg. bears and horses, iron and horses, marble and hawks, with some preset merges, otherwise I can see problems scaling and with the hinge regions... or just what happens.

For a non-visual change you could have merges simply giving cavalry a meele boost or defense boost (with a prefix, Bearataur)

Or creating a mutated-creature design template could cost some essence, and training a Bearataur or what have you, would use up all your mana for the turn, or something. And would greatly deplete your supply of x creature or human, based upon accidental deaths and such (high mana cost at least) ... say for instance I wanted to fuse lizards or snakes with my soldiers (or regular citizens) in order to make lizard-people or snake-people.

To make 1 lizardperson, probably 10 humans would die, to to experimentation and accidental deaths. Meanwhile it would probably cost 10-20% of my mana (something decent but not too expensive, as its a medium sized humanoid), and maybe 5-10 essence for the creature template. No further essence cost would be used, and I could make as many lizzie-people as I wanted based on ... I suppose a nearby forest or swamp with plenty of high quality lizards, 10 people per one lizzie-person, and a good bit of mana. Eventually I could get about 50 lizardmen roaming around, at the cost of many people of course, and then train them as a unit, since they are so expensive, I would probably train them as the highest-form of elite/longest to train unit currently available, but yea.

Of course, the population cost would be too high to have a good number of these creatures moving about ... and say to make a bear-ataur it requires 5 horses and 5 bears, or something, or 6 horses and 2 bears, just whatever sort-a thing. Not really sure how we can determine what sort of animals we have access too, but if there are local populations of various wildlife (or if its a terrain based thing that can be opened by some sort of "creature editor" page, and while u cannot see them they are a part of the terrain value, or something) ... although number of people, and number of horses, will of course be present, so at the least we could mutate some centaurs, but having some lizardmen archers for higher dexterity, or a different type of lizardman heavy-infantry for increased natural defense and strength (and fatigue perhaps) .... in the creature editor, I think you should be able to add bonus stats to the unit, on top of what that unit would normally recieve.

Although I understand that having such things graphically represented would require more unit models, so I won't be sad if they don't get in ... although having some tribal lizardmen scattered here and there, in swamps or caves (n possibly deserts) to interact with.

That is a BAD ASS picture Tormy, good find brother.

Druids need their pets after all...

She's about to pistol-whip that monstrosity, that's what.

That Bearataur would be quite nasty in battle... it's even wielding a weapon which looks like a sledge hammer with spikes thus the creature has higher intelligence than the average bear.  It's primary weakness is no armor... even some leather would help.

The image Tormy posted appears much more deadly.  A quick glance indicates at least 5 heads which usually corresponds with multiple attacks, 50feet tall or more, chains matching the rest of the creatures skin thus some type of construct most likely metal.  It's difficult to determine whether or not it's immobile. 

That's my review. 

I think you should be able to take Dragon scales, or the Corpse of a defeated Dragon ... and magically mix parts of it with horses (or bears or Boars or Camels) ... and to create some sort of "wyvern" ... like a smallish flying mount with magical resistances and some sort of magic breath/mana. Would probably require sacrificing many horses for experimentation, perhaps the better the breed of horse the better the chance for survival ... but either way, being able to create lizardmen, wyverns, triceratops(rhinocerous + lizard/dragon), and other such scaly beasts if I have enough lives to throw away, and mana to cast ... it would perhaps be slow going, but you could get some really cool looking things (ah, fleshcrafting) probably essence cost to build a blue-print ... nothing you build could rival anything close to a dragon, but would still have better stats than a man or a horse or a rhino ... and better abilities too. (plus most likely magical restistances/immunities if mutated with dragon genetics)

I would personally rather Stardock not spend the enormous amounts of dev time that would be necessary for allowing players to mutate creatures or make hybrid creatures. The graphical component alone would be prohibitive, and the algorithms used to determine what the outcome would be in terms of functionality would be just as bad...

I think it's much better if they just give us tools (broad sense) to change/add attributes of units, so that we can make whatever Bearboar we want; and include any fancy Blender graphics too!

+1 For the OP .

Bearataur!?!? Oh my god!

Well, I suppose if there was a bank of body parts for each pre-existing creature (as parts of the object of "body") ... then if nothing else you could re-arrange body parts of the two or three creatures involved in "fusion" and perhaps have an automatic blender to render the textures to look half-way decent. Then as far as stats are concerned, you have a certain (stat bank) related to the relative power of the creatures, and an HP bar using averaged? combined? HP of the 2 or 3 organizms, or perhaps size based.

Just something as simple as possible, perhaps even only a few pre-determined creatures with set stats. As long as no creature could use weapons it would help the Dev team ENORMOUSLY because I think creating two sets of weapons for Fallen and Human has been a huge task (or rather for armor to look good on both body-templates)