They did this in some of the "Tactics" games (like Suikoden and Final Fantasy) - and I think they did it in King's Bounty (I only played the demo, but I remember going into a cave or something getting into battles with spiders).  This can be a fun diversion, but if it happens too often it can derail the momentum of the game.  Especially in multiplayer (and even more so if they put in time limits)...  I do like the idea and hope they do implement it, within reason.

If you are shooting for multi sectional Dungeons, I would approve.. However you should only be able to take champions and summoned creatures inside, no army or 'Units'.

What he said! Only summons and Heros in there, no units...

Maybe this would only be implemented for SP...

This is actually a good argument for treating multiplayer as a separate game with its own rules and play mechanics, but when Brad suggested that, all he got was whining from people who were upset that multiplayer was being "gimped".

What's the xml for this?  I must have missed it when I was going through the files.  Or could you point me to a current quest that does this?

This would be awesome.  I wouldn't care if the dungeons weren't all that big either.  Just a small maze, a few random encounters, some loot, and the quest encounter.  This would be a nice change of scenery to break up the city management part of the game.

Since I was wanting to mod the max army size I asked Brad about increasing the tactical battle map sizes in addition to increasing the army cap. I know the army cap is in the XML but he stated that creating larger tactical maps was in fact possible but just too complicated to explain in the IRC window at the time. So making a full fledged dungeon map should work. Getting the enemy armies to treat it like a dungeon and not just a battlefield to rush across is something else entirely however.

Stalagmites "grow" up. Easy way I once used to remember was in the name. Stalagtites have to hang on tight to the ceiling in order to not fall. Stalagmites might one day grow to touch the ceiling.

/end cave lesson

I see what you're saying with cheesing it for now, could definitely work.

There were RTS games like Earth 2150 which had tunnel systems underground that offers strategic options to ambush enemy base.

An uncharted unknown randomly generated tile based maze filled with monsters is a nice way to open up gameplay options where armies can march underground undetected by enemy forces on ground from A to B. Tunnel entrances should be dotted around the map but may need researches to recover their locations.

In addition, dungeon can offer loots in form of monster drops or treasure chest. Hell you can even design specific 'lost technological' structures of old civilization in a dungeon that offers dramatic game changing advantage such as terraforming the terrain, cause starvation by changing weather system etc.

It was an old 4X game but there was one that essentially had three layers of overworld. There was the surface, there was a layer of caverns below, and then a layer below that. That might be workable for a MP dungeon as it would be part of the map itself rather than something running in isolation.