My first idea is very simple. Distinguished or decorated soldiers are forged when troops get involved in combat when a soverign or leader is not present. When a squad levels up or survives combat it has a chance to produce a leader unit, which can then develop into a commandable hero unit.

A working example of this idea would be this.

You have a group of peasants. They survive a chance encounter with an a strong enemy and after the battle is over you recieve a message. Here is an example.

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"During the last battle a single soldier distinguished himself on the battlefield after his entire squad had been wounded. Charging into the fray, this man/women was able to distract the attackers long enough for the rest of our forces to flank and route the enemy." What should we do?

Ignore his/her actions

Award medal and promote soldier (this wouldn't make him a hero unit, but if you had 5 troops in the squad, one unit would look slightly different, denoting it as a leader unit. Depending on the above text, this unit would then recieve a trait. such as Bravery in the field, which if the unit managed to survive enough battles to become a hero unit, would give him a bonus to leading troops in battle.

However, it could be bad as well such as in the opposite example.

"During the last battle a single soldier distinguished himself on the battlefield after his entire squad had been wounded. Taking charge, this man/women made a suicidal charge at the enemy leading the rest of our forces into battle. Nearly everyone in the squad perished, but the enemy was pushed back and retreated after seeing the sheer tenacity of our forces." What should we do?

Ignore his/her actions

Award medal and promote (this time however, since the outcome was bad, the unit being promoted would then recieve a leader unit whose hallmark in combat is brutal effeciency, at any cost. If he/she survived long enough to become a hero unit, this unit would inspire fear and terror in the enemy, as well as bolster his own. However, such a leader might be considered cruel, and so if you were to marry this unit to would of your sons/daughters the offspring might be powerful, but have bad traits such as cruelty, or insanity.

Punish ( I have no idea. Maybe you dont want this type of crap to happen. there are a lot of Role play possibilities in the options that could be included for you to select. Maybe the unit in question wants to retire, or has a family that needs help. Since he distinguished himself you could award him money and help his family, developing your soverigns traits even more. I don't know.)

--------------------------------End Example.

So, after surviving battles, and distinguishing themselves, hero units can arise. This would allow you to see the process that forges a hero or anti hero as the case may be. A bright shiny knight, or a battle hardened warrior with a darkened heart. You could even have the player base write backgrounds, and generate a random background for the character based on FAN bios, reducing the workload for you and keeping things varried.

You might even discover one of your soldiers has magical potential. Perhaps a goodly wizard or dark brooding warlock will be produced. Who knows?

My second idea is for the soverign himself.  The book of summoning / The Book of death.

Building armies is all fine and dandy, and It's really cool to train up an army...but I'm a freaking sorcerer...I shouldn't have to rely on the silly infastracture of man to accomidate my lust for power... in fact... I should be allowed to produce success from their failures. People die every day - why not put them to use? Allow the creation of skeletons/zombie armies from the dead while the soverign is in a city - and ONLY if he is in the city, or out in the wilderness with an army after battle.

Here's how it would work

 You lead about 6 people into battle. They die. After the battle, or while your on the same tile where the battle was fought you should be allowed to raise a skeleton army/zombie army. Ancient battlefields can have a new purpose to an evil minded soverign. Maybe even allow the battlefields of others who decided not to clean up the dead to be visable on the map screen such as a mine would be. The soverign could stop in and gather the bodies.

At the same time, summoning should be allowed. You can do this anywhere. But it takes time and while its happening your soverign can't move, or participate in anything else. So, if you want to summon a goblin army or whatever - you would select the type of army you want, how many units in it - gather appropriate materials which can be bought from the trader, just like any other item would be such as a long sword (appropriate magical items would need to be researched) and then you cast away. This would have a higher gold cost, rather than a resoruce cost. And you could do it anywhere. I find it limiting to be able only to summon 1 fire giant, 1 spy, or ice lord and have them floating around the battlefield by themselves.

This also has the added benefit of being able to produce combat ready units so your soverign can adventure, if early on you have a hard time training troops to guard your cities and can't bother to have them accompany your soverign.

These are my ideas. I don't want to hear that they're overpowered, or would unbalance the game. These aren't written in stone, they can be changed as neccessary. If you don't like that creatures can be summoned on the fly, then make it so they can't. If you think having creatures along side soldiers makes no sense then make it so putting them in a city causes a production loss to that city, since they're creatures and have no place in a civilized world.

Nothing is unbalanced if it's done properly. The general idea is what I present to you - the details I will leave to the devs and to the readers to fuss over. I however, would very much like to see a system similar to this represented in game by a more accomidating system or concept if you find this one so undesirable.

On a final note, please forgive my spelling. I'm tired and just wanted to put this out there.

Let me know what you think of the general Idea of soldiers distinguishing themselves and real death magic/summoning added to the game in a more commandable way. Also, let me know if you want me to expand on the concept I've presented to make it more managable - I have ideas but otherwise I will just leave it as it is.

Thanks to all who bother to read and leave their feedback. And Thank you to the devs who have put their hard work and effort into creating such a beautiful if not extremely buggy game. I will most certainly continue to support your company. Inspite of the buggy release, I believe you've really created a fantastic game worthy of the title unique and addicting. I've been playing games since I was nine years old...they don't interest me anymore, and yet here I am, having fun once again in the overdone mystical kingdom of yore, medievel knights and crap - it's high praise believe me. Anyway,  You really should consider the necromancy system...after all, you're practically necromancers yourselves since you've brought it back to life - well, for me at least.

 Again thanks alot.