I think there should be some external tool that allows you to design your units outside the game. Like pre-setuping your civilization/unit tech tree before you play to let you play with the options and finetune them. And perhaps then you could upload civ templates online and share them with others? :)
I hope they won't have a system like you see in most RPG games where you just have only a few basic spells, that upgrade over time. I rather see a huge spell pool like D&D (Baldurs gate, Neverwinter Nights) or a game like Dominions 3 where you have about 600 spells to your exposal, where you can pretty much do anything you want with magic as long as you are powerfull enough
Cool ^_^ What I realy do like is the free-form world, most modern TBS games (HoMM5 etc) you can only move around on predesignated paths, while in older games you had way more freedom to move around (Age of wonders series and older HoMM i believe). Btw. how big can the maps get? I would love to play this in a huge world :D
Mmm if we don't have to fight battles I hope you can preconfigure your armies, like in Dominions 3 where you can script and place every squad of units so while you don't fight the battles your self they do use the strategy you lay out for them. I hate it with the Total war games when you do auto-resolve battle it's just a bunch of numbers and you don't have a hand in it yourself (Don't get me wrong, I do love TW games ^_^)