So I've been playing for a little while now, but certainly not exhaustively. Mostly I like the changes in legendary heroes. The only thing I really dislike is hero leveling, but I know a bunch of people have mentioned that here already. On to specifics...
Leveling
This feels too slow and no fun till about lev 6 or so. (and it's tough to break level 12 in a game)
Skill trees have a bunch of dull passives as prerequisites, so that by end of game you generally don't have a lot of fun abilities. Adding either cost flexibility, or minor situational abilities that come with passives might make this better (e.g. +10 defense while defending AND reset your weapon ability timer after being hit by another's weapon ability.)
• get some cost flexibility in there. Say 3 points when you level. Passives may cost one or two points. Fun actives like eviscerate or rescue could cost 3. Again, not saying this is the exact balance, just a direction to look.
• remove the mandatory xp enhancer skills. These are terrible - you have to take them, and they make it so you lose 1-3 of the most interesting levels (because they're early when combat is still challenging and the use of sovereign abilities can still make a difference) to utter boredom and supreme annoyance while picking them up.
Weapons:
First, let me say that I love the new active abilities on maces, axes, spears, shields
However, we need more non sword special weapons, especially Bows and spears.
In addition to new non-sword weapons, we could enjoy some new special abilities. These are the things which make weapons special without necessarily being massively more powerful, and are very appropriate for mid game. Here are some random examples only partially thought through, but they should give an idea of what I'm thinking of:
• +1 atk permanently for each 2500 damage done (on the weapon, not the character if possible)
• step back one square after attacking
• 1 gold per 25 or so damage done
• when you pass in combat (defend), +10 init until next action (could be a shield or weapon ability)
• shield bash which hits with an attack value which is equal to some portion of an opponent's initiative or defense instead of normal atk value
• switch places with target when you hit them
• heal 5 or so points when you get a critical hit
Level requirements for good weapons are often impossible to reach before getting even a conquest victory on a huge map. Please lower them or speed up leveling.
Quests and random events
I both love & hate the quest event that spawns skeletons until you clear a quest node. Needs to either be easier and less annoying, or come a bit later and have a much better reward - that hammer sucks. This event comes up every bloody game, and all I can think when it does is "oh, great, now I get to run around cleaning up skeletons for 20 turns"
Some random events (especially the one that causes everybody to go to war) are really extreme. Either provide a way to turn off specific events, or grade events by severity and give us a slider for max severity.
Tactical combat
I like the variety of battlefields and starting ranges, but we definitely need some more control over initial placement. At least back/front/middle settings per unit. Maybe combine this with an ambush ability with a chance to reverse the order of your opponent. Anyways, I'm sick to death of stave-armed mages ending up on the front lines every time. I've resorted to giving them all ranged staves or bows.
Swarm is interesting, but needs some counter abilities. Perhaps make units move directly away by a step if they dodge an attack? Another possibility would be to mute JUST the everybody attacks the same unit part of it by giving a bonus to dodge per attack suffered (or per point of damage suffered) since a unit's last action. This last would mean that keeping a solid battle line was still very valuable, but would spread out the damage a bit. It should also be pretty easy for your existing AI to take into account to help with the spread.
Outposts
I want to love outposts more. At the moment, they seem supremely annoying & expensive for what you get. I literally never buy any outpost upgrade beyond high tower or the growth improvement upgrade, and those only rarely.
Outposts should either be easier to make (not costing population), or be able to train up their own upgrades in a queue with a nominal production value without bothering a city.
Outposts with upgrades should have a more graphical footprint.
Would be interesting to have an outpost upgrade which shoots an arrow at the nearest enemy stack within the outpost's influence area each season. Not a ton of damage - just enough to annoy and drive off single scouting units.
Tech/research/spell of mastery
I never even turn on the spell of mastery win condition. It's too easy to get & extremely dull. Blah. Move this to the end o' the graph & make it cost more.
