Ok, I'm going to list a few points (they've probably already been mentioned but hey, at least you know more than 1 person wants these fixed). I hope this doesn't come across as a wall of text because I want this to be easy to read. But these points are from a person kinda losing patience with the game, and fixing these would be a sure fire way of getting me and others like me to keep playing (and buying expansions). I know a lot of this will sound harsh, but it's completely constructive in intent.
EVERYTHING I'm going to list in this section, hopefully, is able to be done in the vanilla game. Nothing here should require an expansion.
1. Make defenders attack first. Everywhere, cities, overland map, everywhere. Why? If I have a "super stack" of units, I've won the game. I just finish everyone off on the first tactical combat turn, and it's over. If defenders attack first, especially against sovereigns and strong units, you will DEFINITELY have to think before attacking.This will also get rid of super stacks and spread units around the map more. As a byproduct: combat difficulty will increase (good thing).
2. A Big One: MORE UNIQUE SPELLS!
I'll be honest, the game is called War of Magic, and there's like 30 spells to learn, maybe. Look, make a thread in the forums if you want, call it "spell ideas for the next patch," I don't care (heck, I'll start if off if you want me to) just get some new spell ideas. Jeez, there would be like 10 pages of new ideas for spells in a few days, just pick your and the dev teams favorite 100 and add them to the game and rebalance the existing.This should not be a hard thing to do, they're all xml anyway; once you have the ideas for them, you can just copy and paste them in the game. But you NEED to add some more and more variety (and not just low level crappy spells, I'm talking about global enchantments, high level spells, etc (costing 20, 30+ mana, etc)). If you're worried about getting ideas from forum members like this ... who cares. It will make the game better; just think of it as "magic beta" and we'll come up with ideas for you.
3. Fix movement speeds. if organized is gone, make some heroes have it (even low level heroes) like in MoM "path-finding" so that it's easier to get around the map. Right now, without organized, to be honest, I fell asleep playing last night. If organized can be removed in a patch that easy, then you can add some things like this just as easy, I hope.
-organized is too tough? Limit pathfinding (organized) so the party size is smaller (4 or 8, not the 15 or whatever it is right now).
4. Resources: there need to be more of them. I saw in the patch notes that you decreased them, which is the wrong way to go (if you can lower them, then you can raise the number in a patch, but tweak them too). If you want, you can lower the benefit of each resource square on the map, but the world is WAY too bland as it is. You need more resources on the map, and different varieties. Think MoM, where each square would have some small benefit, then you would have the big ones like food, mana, adamantium, mithril, etc.
5. More abilities for heroes/sovereigns. I don't want a hero who's only unique ability is that he/she provides 1 gold a turn. Whoop de doo. I want a hero who can cast his/her own magic, has a spell I don't have, and will never get, and even has some abilities that are passive, and some that are "1 use" per battle.
6. Fix the name generator in the game. Seriously, c'mon? I usually don't care at all about the names that games generate, but Pottlyfingledor or some such is not what I would name my kid.
7. Heroes and sovereigns need to level up faster. They need passive experience gains (again, ala MoM) because otherwise they are worthless and only provide the 1 ability on their card. I WANT the enemy sovereign to be insanely tough, no matter what difficulty I'm playing on (relative, of course; ridiculous difficulty will make him harder of course). I don't want to be able to one shot instant kill him, I want his to pose a challenge and threaten my entire army (this is where point number 1 will help, making defenders attack first will help make the enemy sovereigns much tougher).
8. Release the mod tools. I know the game has some, I talking the good stuff, including the code. People need to get their hands on this sooner rather than later because if people lose interest, the mod community will be kaput.
FOR LATER EXPANSIONS
1. Resistance: this needs to be a stat in the game. Change the name if you want, dress it up however it needs to be done, but all units need this. Heroes and sovereigns need a HIGH innate magic resistance (i.e. 1-shot killing an enemy sovereign with a magic spell: not fun).
2. Make factions more unique. If not, then at least make kingdom/empire more different so they're that much more unique. I'm talking Protoss/Zerg different.
That's all I can think of right now, but I hope the above points help. Thanks for listening to our ideas.
