What is the difference between a horse and a warg for kingdom/empire factions, other than the image? This would be one basic uniqueness which is already present in the game but is ignored ... has anyone ever seen an AI with horse or warg mounted troops? I haven't.

I'm all for unique units, and it doesn't have to be monsters, It could be a unique class of character, some spells that are available perhaps to one faction but not another (the spellbooks in this game are way too similar in my opinion .. teleport should be only in one spellbook, say air, spells should have unique counters between books, i.e. the "water" book should have some specific spells that weaken fire based spells such as fog, haze, rain even ... conversely these things should "amplify" the power of electrical based attacks, such as from the "air" book because we all know water conducts electricity, and finally, earth book should have some counter to "electrical" attacks, say earthen mount, metallic rod, which would help to defend against "electrical" attacks because we all know that earthen ground "grounds" electricity). Also some specific buildings for factions would be great.

All these things would be great in theory, but in reality are probably way beyond the ability of AI programming. There's no reason to add a "special" unit if the AI doesn't use it or just uses it in a stupid way. The AI already doesn't use most of the spells it has now, so adding more would just be useless.

It's like a part of me says, yeah I'd like to see aligators, but not if the AI does nothing but charge forward with it to die, because what's the differece between that and any other mace man unit?

A unique unit needs to have an observable difference (as to/vs any other unit) in the game beyond just a jpg "image," because otherwise what's the point?

If they want different faction they need to go MoM route and make REAL differences. Having flying units or regenerating units, or faction that has no mages is different, have a different mount is just more of the same.

I agree with what you're both saying but was hoping to get specific ideas of what you'd like to see for other factions. I only have time to play about an hour a day so haven't used factions aside from Tarth much. I think gators would be a good unique resource for them. It could be used as a mount or a food source, maybe like forest from MOM is +1/2 food, +1 production, its a hybrid resource. Gators could provide tarthans with amphibious assault and movement capabilities. For example on land they would work as a worg or horse, so I could create a gator farm resource on a swamp tile which would provide 1/2 food and 1 mount per turn. Once I had enough gators I could buy 1 in the shop for my sovereign and champions Troy, BigT, and LittleT  (Do you watch swamp people on history? its a hoot) in addition to acting as a mount it would give them the ability to cross oceans, like water walk from MOM.

Just thinking out loud

.... I can agree with this, but I think it's more important that an alligator be different from a maceman which in turn is different from a cave bear as to gameplay. If they all just run up and swing at the closest unit until it or they die, what's the point? If the only thing that's different between them is HP and attack, then the game might as well just model "adult" and "juvenile" versions because otherwise they're the same thing.

At the very least, bears should appear in woods/hills and alligators should be limited to sea and river squares, perhaps marsh and swamps too. they should have different combat traits too: alligators are an ambush predator, bears are not. Wolves are "pack hunters." The game should be able to model these differences in some logical way.

By the way, I don't think humans should be able to outrun most animals & monsters, something is wrong with this in the game. Even a bear is incredibly fast for short sprints. I'd be amazed to see any animal that was programmed to do something other than charge headfirst & die. Animals are actually not that stupid. Most would retreat or hide if outnumbered, or if the opponent was bigger & scarier. 

I'd like to kick this up a notch and say i'd like some units inspired by the gatormen from Titan's Quest. As to unique abilities for units, I am waiting for what comes next for after 1.1. Frogboy mentioned that they could rewrite the code for units so that they can be automatically upgrade when tech is unlocked rather than having abilities added by equipment and waiting for the units to be built in town. However rewriting the code will take some time and will push 1.1 back if they decide to do it now or not, but i think it is something they definitely want to do.

So far I like all these ideas, particularly the non-magic faction. Reminds me of the bloodguard in the 3rd chronicles of Thomas Covenant. I think the key point is we need some thing to differentiate one faction from another, something that makes each one unique. I just came up with the gator thing since the Tarthans are supposed to be the swamp people and there were gators in the original concept art.

The problem is that it's really rare to get horses/wargs, and when you do, it's usually the wrong ones.

I'd say just let everyone ride horses.  Wargs could be a little better, but very rare.

Correct! I read them about the same time. The schict was he had leprosy and wore a white gold ring (and they called him 'half-hand'). He would black out in our "real world" and awake in the fantasy world, where far more time would have passed between his black-out periods. Leading to things like him meeting the child of the woman he raped. There was a lot of very, very screwed up fantasy in the 80's now that I thiink about it. Good lord think about anything by Piers Anthony by today's standards, now I feel dirty havnig read them (when I was 12!).

Oh and to be back on the topic if you search the forums there used to be all sorts of posta about bear calvary, unicorn calvary, X_weird animal as a resource, etc. I think we will start seeing stuff like that now that they are beyond fixing thier new engine and actually thinking about gameplay.

perhaps we can all hope for more mounted units in the future. 

That being said, I recall seeing 2 warg mounted troops in an army before. 

That's right I vaguely remember that now, he had leprosy!

That's it!! I know I read the first three, I think I read the 4th too if it was out at that time.
That's about the time I read all the Dune books too, loved that series.

I remember this one book I read in those years that I though was cool. It was from a relatively unknown guy, about the earth getting wiped by a plague. But, it turned out the plague was the weapon of an alien species, and this species ended up turning the earth into a hunting resort. They populated the earth with monsters from different planets that they would hunt. The human survivers were used as "bait" by the aliens for hunting. I think it was called "The Hunters" or "The Hunter"? I just can't remember now, and I can't remember the author's name. I remember thinking, 'this would be such an awseome movie if the studios did it right'.

Old school Inception....

I had to do a little research, can't leave something that's on the tip of my tongue in limbo. Found that book, the author was Jack Lovejoy and the book' title was "Hunters." here's the link that I found:

http://www.amazon.com/Hunters-Jack-Lovejoy/dp/0523485239/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

I thought it was very good book back in '82/83 when I first read it. I'll have to read it again just for the hell of it to see if I still feel the same way.