Hello rather new to actually using these forums but I felt the need to be creative and I have been with the game since war of magic so I thought I would look for ways to make it as good as possible. so time for a gargantuan post on potential changes after reading though a lot of forums that were popular over the last few two days, and having played a large number of games. Do note that many of these ideas are non-original and I don’t claim them as my own.  I am not a programmer and know very little about the setup of the game so I have no idea about the practical ability to implement any of these things. Also any examples I give are just to get my idea across not what are likely the best solution. I broke the post up so much to make it easier to respond to a particular part so please make it clear what you are responding to.

TL/DR: Just some niceties and disclaimers all my suggested changes are nice and itemized below

1.)    Hero overhaul

1. Two ability points per level with more level restrictions to prevent end of tree rushing
2. Every number of level like five, or at set levels you get the choice of a special trait based on the class/ classes you already have or an additional class.
3. Non-spell strategic abilities. Swarming makes it very hard for a hero to fight a larger force, which I like, but they should have other ways to engage them. Maybe an assassin could split one form the pack, a warrior could challenge one unit to a dual, and a commander split a stack that is bigger than his own and fight it piece mill. Thus making it so they can fight stacks of doom more strategically. Obviously costs cool downs and reticence would have to be consider, but this could also make the non-caster classes much more interesting without having to increase their tactical combat ability’s .
4. Replace low level traits with higher level ones so instead of a hero having lethal 1 giving +2 attack and lethal 2 giving +3 just have lethal 2 give +5 and replace lethal one while on the trait tree barrowing the interface form upgrading buildings so on lethal two it would show +2 - +5 not important but it seems like it would clean up trait lists quite a bit and give a nicer view of just what you are getting form perks.

2.)    Monsters ( I just posted a ugly version of this on a another thread but it’s at the end of a long thread that got derailed so I will repost it here cleaned up.)

1. Monsters are more aggressive when they don’t have a home, their lair has been destroyed or is “full”, and will attack towns or improvements more aggressively depending on what type of mob they are.
2. Some monster will attack resources or outposts and turn them into lairs maybe even special lairs. For example bandits will take a gold mine or an outpost, dragons may go for anything shiny like a gold or crystal mine
3. When a monster attacks a town, after the mob kills the defenders, it takes say 5 damage per city level, and does some amount of damage to the population. Every turn they stay in the city they the same exchange happens.
4.  Different monsters stay different lengths, a bear might leave after one season, bandits will stay till at 50% strength, dragons will stay till they or the town go down etc.
5. Also would be cool if different types of monsters did different things to city's they destroyed, bandits and ogres make it a neutral city, dragons turn it into a layer escaped juggernauts just destroy it, and elemental lords convert it to their bad land.

3.)    Other

1. Customizable hotkeys, and/or a hotkeys tab in Hiergamenon
2. A strategic spells or abilities quick bar for often used spells.
3. More reason not to have all units mounted especially late game, from what I saw on that thread I like the, can’t defend and horse upkeep cost as  solutions.