So here are my many, many suggestions for improvements to what is already a great game. I love FE and LH and want to see both be become better and better. 

UI -            

Select all button in the town menu to select for all units in a town.

Be able to expand the hero/army/town sidebar on the left into two or three columns. When it gets later in the game scrolling through this can be extremely tedious.

Spellbook with MORE tabs – Curses, Unit enchantments, Summons, Strategic Offensive Spells, etc.

Move the enchantments screen to the spellbook. I always go to the spell book first even after ages of playing, in addition, you should be able to filter through unit enchantments, curses, buildings, etc, on the enchantment screen.

Champions – What can I say here that has not already been mentioned. Champions need to level quicker throughout the whole game, especially at the beginning of a game. The skill trees need reworking too, they need to more exciting. If Stardock are willing to do the work, each champion should have individual skill trees, same skills but slightly different trees. Armour proficiency should not have any pre-requisites other than the level of armour before it!

Administrators - should have more options for example some which increase production, food, certain percentages such as research and reduce rush costs. Special skills might include adding an essence to a town or building outposts on the map (an ability with a long cooldown).

Quests –

Should have more choice in them in two different ways.

One: Reward. Some quests have already have choices and this should be opened up more so that a player can adapt to whichever needs they currently have. Do I want metal, crystal, an item, a unit, fame, stat increase, a trophy for my town, or even a unique mount.

Two: Abilities. When doing quests a hero with unique abilities can end quests in unique ways by using that ability, which then unlocks a greater or unique reward. E.g. a necromancer could make a deal with a demon, a assassin could kill quickly to avoid battle, an administrator could talk down a mob.

MORE QUESTS. I know this is the beta but I am fed up of doing the same quests over and over again. There should be hundreds.

Unique Mounts – this has already been mentioned. Special mounts solely for heroes would be sweet. They would level with the hero, have special abilities and be available through a quest or conquering them on the map. Griffens, unicorns, manticores, chimeras, dragons could make LH truly legendary.

Upgrades –

Weapon upgrades to be split again so my spearmen remain spearmen and do not become axemen.

Able to upgrade units so that they become mounted.

Choice about whether you wanted to upgrade your men to the next level magical or normal weapons.

Less gold cost for armour upgrades (or the ability to offset the cost with more resources). Currently these are too large to be sound, it is much more economical to train a new unit than upgrade an old one. The cost should be cheaper or equal.

Ability to add items to units that did not previously have them. So that a unit can have amulets added after it has been trained.

All this can be achieved by adding a totally comprehensive UPGRADE SCREEN that would allow all the above and add more player control instead of letting the computer choose for you. It is annoying when you cannot upgrade a unit’s armour to plate even though you have the gold but because you have researched Champion armour and have no crystal they must stay with Chain. So sad.

The screen is already been implemented, it just needs a little refinement.

In addition to the above, any items you find in the game world can be given to a unit. This consumes the item and gives the unit a piece of unique equipment that you have found in the world, but not been able to create or buy for that unit. So I might be able to have unit with shadow daggers, or elemental staffs. Of course, some items would not be able to be given to units - artefacts and other paraphernalia.

Weapons -               

Bring back blunt/slashing/piercing and give certain equipment a small bonus to defence against those attacks. Chain +10% defence against slashing, robes +10% dodge vs. piercing, etc.

Repower swords so that they cause full damage on counter, one counter, make certain abilities counterable, e.g. Crushing blow, wraith touch, not impale, etc.

Reduce the initiative penalty for bows slightly, 2 or 3.

Put advanced daggers in the tech tree, and magical daggers too so I can finally create my advanced assassin units!

Many of the skills such as wraith touch or magnar’s firetongue are so far useless and need to be improved with level scaling, research or buildings, so they remain viable as the game progresses.

Defensive Buildings – Both the town and the conclave should have something in line of a defensive boost in buildings. Magic tower for conclave could be offensive or defensive (gives spell buff depending on race). You can only build one or the other in a town. A rallyingBellfor towns that gives an initiative bonus, or mercenaries guild gives an extra defensive unit and allows troops to be hired for a short while with enough gold.

Shops –

Cannot shop until a merchant/market has been built in a town.

Can trade items in for a larger gold value than you would get from selling them.

Can offset high prices by using other resources.

Prices to be readjusted for armour so the pieces are less expensive for champions – I think 20% less.

Unique and Strange items appear more regularly when you shop at your own towns. Possibly one unique item that changes every 5-10 seasons. (I have never seen any unique items in the shop!)

Shops buildings found in the game world, Armourer, Weaponsmith, Scroll Scribe, Artefact Collector, etc, that sell items at reduced prices and cycle their stock sometimes offering rare items every 30-40 seasons. Furthermore, items stocked become more powerful as the game progresses.

More unique resource buildings – Arena +1 attack for units trained at connecting town, Armourer +3 Defence. Brothel +10% Unrest +2/3G Gold per season.Crystalconverter -2Metal or -5Gold(whichever is available)+1Crystal per season. Garden of Eden -5% Unrest and +1 Food (requires tech). More allies buildings such asSkathSwampfor skaths, Graveyard for Skeletons (empire only), Fantastic Glade for unicorns, etc. This list goes on, and on. Buildings like the Brothel and the Crystal Converter would give players more strategic scope and leave themselves asking - do they want to offset one resource against another?

Spells –     

More spells would be nice and a revamp of some underpowered ones, did anyone say ‘Thunderstrike?’

Some more movement based spells, since tireless march can only be cast on one unit e.g. Guiding Light – move through swamps and forests without penalty.

Unique spells available from quests, or found by visiting goodie huts.

What’s more, most spells should receive more benefit from possessing shards. +1’s are not enough for having a shard. Your earth magic should be feared because you have or three/four earth shards.

More items – in a sandbox game such as this I should not be encountering the same item twice in two or three games (regular weapons/armour/items being the exception of course). There should be so many more items. 1000’s in fact.

Boarders Treaty – Allow access into another factions lands.

Monsters destroy buildings – Monsters destroy buildings in a town first before razing it completely, or if more powerful destroy a number of buildings. I would suggest one a level. This would stop you losing a battle to wildland monsters by a tiny amount, sometimes one unit/creature, and then losing a whole, well developed town. Thus, a level three monster left at the end of a battle causes enough destruction to burn down three buildings. Of course, monsters might wonder in the direction of your town and attack again next turn, but by then reinforcements might have arrived.

Level Up – should increase the stats of both champions and units much more. Increases of one on accuracy or hit points every level is a joke. These stats should be reworked so that high level troops are much more valuable to you.

Also, the one time use items should be boosted as some are as much worth as toilet paper. Ironeer Ale +1HP whoop-de-do! Experience books should increase your level by one. Do you save it for later when levels come few and far between, or get an early boost? You cannot make that strategic choice with +25XP.

Random Events – should happen more often and some should have both negative and positive effects. Firestorm causes damage everywhere, destroys buildings but also spawns 1-5 fire shards on the map. Earthquake same, flood similar, Storm, etc. Where are the random troops that come to your door to help, or the lucky stumbling over a magic item. What about rebellion, where some of your troops defect and have to be dealt with. A shift closer to the sun causes everyone to gain +1 fire shard and increases the size of deserts. A bitter winter cools the world giving everyone the effect of +1water shard and increases snow across the map. An overworked mine collapses. Royal Tour – whereby having your sovereign visit every town within a certain time limit gives them a slight bonus. Caravan raiders! Captured spy causes a breakdown in relations between two factions. These are just off the top of my head. If you do not want the chaos of these turn event frequency down or off. Finally, some of these events could again have multiple endings and rewards, depending on how well you deal with them. (see quests)

End Game –         

Spell of Making needs to cost a lot more to cast and be at the end of the magic tree and/or some of the towers at the end of the civ/weapons tree i.e. Tower of the Sword at the end of the weapons tree.

Wearloga should be a lot more powerful too. An alternative win is via conquest so if your army can take out him, it should also be able to conquer the whole map, by itself, in one turn!

Other suggestions that I whole heartedly agree with: (this list is by no means comprehensive, I know I’ve borrowed and possibly stolen some of the above ideas and sorry I have failed to give credit were it is due)

• Flying units can fly over units in tactical combat, in other words, move as many squares as their movement allows over the top of units.
• Minimum XP values from battles. Furthermore, this minimum should increase with the level of the units because of the exponential nature of levelling. This would allow larger armies later in game to at least advance slowly from many smaller battles.
• More fame from world wonders, AI more likely to build them and multiple factions can be building them at the same time.
• Horses/wargs as a resource should support a limited number of mounted units a la Civ 5, or have their production hugely reduced, and cost more to maintain. I even think 50% more gold in wages than a non-mounted unit, these things need NERFING.
• Be able to hotkey strategic spells that are used often.
• Be able to select multiple units to cast strategic spells on.
• Global Enchantments!

Thanks for reading. If any of these suggestions make it into the final version I will be extremely happy.

P.S. Should have been posted a lot earlier!