This is my response to the recent Dev Journal post about feedback. Knowing that this is the last chance before feature lockdown, I want to give a full measure of suggestions. Now, usually I have a rule about telling devs to just implement stuff that I mod into the game, but there are some key problems with city specialization and monster lairs. I will try to put my ideas in the categories Frogboy gave me.
(3) Magic:
Entangling Forest (Life/Earth) Strategic: Defend your territory with thick murky forests that slow enemy movement to 1 sq/turn. The number of earth and life shards determine how big your forest is.
Poison Cloud (Death/Water) Tactical: An 8x8 grid of the battlefield is enveloped in a noisome vapor; all units within take 6 +1 dmg for each Death\Water shard.
Cleansing Breath (Life\Air) Tactical: All negative effects (spell/poison/fear etc.) are dispelled from all allied units. +1 HP restored for each Air/Life shard.
Lava Ring (Fire/Earth) Tactical: The caster creates a moat of magma around the unit(s) of their choice. Size of the ring is dependent on number of Fire/Earth shards. The more shards, the more units can be encircled. Enemy units crossing the ring suffer 12 + 1 dmg for each Fire/Earth shard possessed. Fire-based enemies are immune to this spell.
Ghastly Shadows: All units on the battlefield are afflicted with fear unless they resist. Any unit that resists takes 6+3 per Deathshard in pierce damage.
Encumber: Unit gains +40 weight and all the penalties thereof.
Mass Encumber: All units on the battlefield gain +40 weight and all the penalties thereof.
Feather: Unit gains -40 Weight and all the benefits thereof.
Feather Aura: All units gain -40 weight and all the benefits thereof.
Call Death: Unit loses 100% Hp unless they resist. (Make this Death V and caster level 15)
Holy Aura: All friendly units gain +30 Spell resistance. (Life V)
Bless: Unit gains +5 Dodge, +10 Max Hp, +10 Accuracy.
Mass Bless: All friendly Units gain +5 Dodge, +10 Max Hp, +10 Accuracy.
Hallucinations: Unit gain -40% Accuracy, has a 40% chance to strike friendly targets, and has a 30% chance to lose turn unless they resist.
Mass Hallucinations: All units are affected by Hallucinations unless they resist.
Hysteria: Unit has a 100% chance to strike a random target and a 20% chance to do damage to himself for 5 turns unless they resist.
Mass Hysteria: All units are affected by Hysteria unless they resist.
Possession: Unit gains +50% damage, but is made vulnerable to magic and lightning damage.
Mass Berserk: All friendly units are affected by Berserk.
Deadly Aura: All friendly units gain +6 to Crit chance and +50% to crit damage. (Air+Earth)
Barkskin: +3 Armor +3 per Earthshard, -50% resistance to fire.
Fearful Flee: Enemy unit saves versus being removed from battle.
Dreadful Prayer: Caster loses all Spell Resistance, as do all enemy units unless they resist for 3 rounds.
Voidspell: All units on the battlefield are immune to magic.
Uplifting Prayer: All friendly units gain +10 Spell Resistance, +3 Regeneration for 3 rounds.
Gale Thrust: Pushes a singly unit back 2 tiles and knocks them prone unless they resist. If knocked prone, does 6 Damage (+4 per Airshard).
Dagger of the Mind: Causes unit to lose mind, skipping their turn until a successful save is made. On each lost turn, 3 Initiative is also lost until the end of the battle. (Star Trek reference implied)
Summons in general need 4 levels of quality instead of a static spell. Lesser, Greater, Dire and the standard summons would add a good level of depth to what we can do without calling for more art. Giving the player some summons at level 2 in each book is a must, except for fire which is already OP. I would like to see each better quality summons get larger by increasing the scale. They should each have better stats, which you would do using the spawn rating.
There are alot more spells to be made just as easy as I did. The trick to an interesting spell is one that has a drawback or lends to a particular strategy. They need to rely on high magic power so that it is only worth casting if you are higher level than your enemies. I also would like to seem some more that do one thing unless they resist, in which case a different, but still detrimental thing happens. This is great for high level spells. There is a lack of spells that target enemies and friends, which is the best way to add diversity to spells. Feather Aura is a great example of that. Maybe making the whole battlefield resistant to cold and weak to fire would be a good one to add. Those kinds of spells are especially cool when the player designs his units to be highly resistant to magic. It totally changes the tactics you can use. And things like Hysteria are just fun to use Add some groovy special effects to garner sales from all those damn hippies.
(4) What sorts of additional quests would you like to see?
I would like to see quests that add lots of monsters to the strategic map. Doing something foolish in the quest should add a whole swath of baddies to the game. Later quests can even add massive armies of humans all over the map.
More humans and fallen. There should be more quests where we happen upon other cites that are neutral. And then end up slaughtering or saving them.
Some proper dragonslaying adventures. And I want a special sword to make it easier.
(5) Random events – yes, we have them but we don’t have a lot. Now is the time to suggest them. Ideally, ones that don’t require crazy amounts of work.
Ice Age: Several locations become snow terrain and arctic monster lairs spawn.
Lost Isle: A ancient island long lost to history rises from the ocean.
World Breaker: Several areas of flat terrain becomes mountains and other mountains become flat terrain. Earth Elementals and Rock Spiders rise from the depth of the earth and random improvements are destroyed in all cities.
Woken Dragon: A Cumbercoil dragon spawns and wanders the world.
Treasures of Heaven: A comet crashes to the earth. Be the first to the crater in order to secure it for yourself.
Age of Fangs: A powerful Beast Lord spawns. Tougher and tougher beasts spawn everywhere until he is destroyed.
Father of Storms: A powerful hurricane ravages the world. All units take 50% damage and are randomly teleported within 15 squares. Air elementals spawn around the world.
Drought: Food production is reduced by 25% for 50 turns. Random areas turn to desert.
Flood: Production is reduced by 25% for 50 turns. Random areas turn to swamp.
Crystal Shift: All shard resources are destroyed. An equal number of new shards spawn around the map randomly.
Shards of Avarice: Each Sovereign is granted a Shard of Avarice. If a sovereign is defeated in combat the winner gets the shard. The first person to get over half the shards wins.
Gold/Crystal/Metal Rush: Several mines spawn across the map. +25% to X resource production.
Tidal Surge: All units within 4 tiles of water take dmg. Water elementals spawn along shores.
Muddied roads: No bonus to movement on roads.
Unnatural Fog: Vision is reduced by 1.
Forest Fires: Random Forests are destroyed. Makes wolves go on the rampage.
Invaders from the West: A invading army spawns by the ocean tile and rampages.
In general we need to be able to spawn goodiehuts from random events. This is currently bugged or not intended to happen. Increasing the ways a quest can be triggered and what it can trigger is really important for great random events. If every .1% storehouse that was built started a global event of a food surplus it would feel more connected to the game. If casting a Shadowgate could have a .1% chance to rip a rift in the fabric of the realm, that would be the dictionary's definition of the word epic. There are so many of these I would like to see, but require some coding or at least troubleshooting to be a reality.
(6) I will be needing your help on strategy for the AI.
Already on it. Watching my Let's Play videos is the best way to learn my strategies. I will begin doing all the factions so you have some good variety on tactics.
(11) I can’t tell you who the Fallen Enchantress is. But you can probably guess.
We all know it is Lord Markin. 
