Imo, the FE chain could still incorporate more aspects of MoM into its game without betraying it's unique nature, style, and gameplay.
More summoning creatures
Capital Buildings for each faction.
More Fantastic creatures/mounts.
More spells.
More unique equipment that encourages path specific growth.
It's open source. It's just a matter of taking a solid read through the manuals and tutorials and gameplay and borrow the best parts of it for the game.
Why can't we have waterwalking ?
Why can't we have a floating island?
Why can't we enchant our roads?
Why can't we summon a bear during tactical battle?
Why can't we ride unicorns?
Why can't we make pacts with demons?
Why can't we move our capital to another city?
etc
For whatever reason, SD isn't into making magic/spells a big part of their games. I note with amusement the game Worlds of magic has the initials WoM same as War of Magic....
But in this case "Magic" really is the focus, unlike the SD line of elemental games.
Still, I think that one of the things that makes our system unique is our take on spell schools. As I mentioned before, we call them circles and there are twelve of them. Six of the circles sort spells according to the element from which they draw power, fire, death etc. The other six sort spells according to their effects, summoning, destruction, etc. This allows players to focus on a single element like death or a single effect like summoning. We wanted to offer players as many viable spell strategies as possible. Our spell circles were the result of that desire.
It's really interesting 9 tiers by "Effect" (eg Destruction, Summon) and "Elements" (Fire, Air etc). So if a level 9 spell is classed as Destruction & Fire,
if you have say Destruction 9, or Fire 9, or Destruction 1, Fire 8, or any combination of Fire+Destruction = 9 you can research it.
There is also combos that require you to have at least Nature 4, and other complicated combinations, but the basic idea is beautiful and shows a commitment to making magic and spells the focus.
Elemental is a good game in many ways and it has improved a lot since WoM days, but it always lacks the focus on spells and magic that MoM had. The lack of summoning and many high level epic spells (improved but still a far cry from MOM) pretty much dooms it as a MOM2 spiritual successor.
Personally, it was pretty obvious to me, this was going to happen, but back then, there was a dearth of fantasy TBS...
That said, the production values of World of Magic definitely won't be as high as Elemental, maybe a bit higher than Dominions, but that's okay, if it is fun.
