Strengths: 1) Hostile world idea: Wildlands and Boss creatures, quests, random events.
2) Fame mechanic for hero recruitment and Sov/Hero Classes and skill trees.
3) Shards influencing spell power/effects aside from just giving mana.
4) Custom sovs and races. Sandbox and random maps, the World and opponent options are perfect.
5) The modding features while not accessible to all, have enabled the talented among us to make some great additions to the game.
Ideas that were implemented but not to their full potential (imo):
1) Troop traits- just all there at start of game, none earned via quests or research. None brought by conquering other factions. Or earned by defeating Wildland bosses or gifted by a Warrior hero upon recruitment.
2) Heroes' back stories integrated into quests and special events. A scary demon gates into camp one night and tries to steal the soul of one of your heroes. The "Troublesome Adventurers" quest sorta scratched this itch, but a lot more could have been done with this. Perhaps a cool hero defects from another faction but it could cause war, etc.
3) Tactical combat- adequate, but a lot of inconsistencies with playing it out vs. auto-resolving, dumb troop movements (I click to attack a unit and it puts my unit in a square where it can suffer attacks from 2 enemy units instead of just one), and while the special attacks were great, there were just not enough different varieties to make it exciting. Line of sight, terrain modifiers, a real siege mechanic, etc have been brought up multiple times. If I camp my army on a swamp tile, my enemy's cavalry should suck, etc.
4) Loot drops were always a little shaky. And defeating an enemy sov or hero should have earned me Fame and a random magic item from their inventory that fell as they were carried off the field of battle. The injuries were all tremendously clever, and a great addition.
5) A better/more consistent use of magic motifs: The ice spear should slow your enemies like a hit from an ice elemental. Lightning damage should have a chance to stun an enemy using metal armor/arms, Fire should burn a unit for a few more turns etc...
Weaknesses:
1) No creature editor to let modders easily create new monsters. Lots of peasant hair and shirt options but no tentacles?
2) The loss of the dynasty system.
3) The loss of cross-school spells.
4) The lack of truly flying units (why are they following roads?!? can't fly over terrain blockers in combat), the lack of water/amphibious creatures.
5) The Diplomacy/Trading screens/features.
All in all, a good game that has eaten 500+ hours of my spare time over the past 2 years. The next iteration can only improve on a solid foundation. And I learned how to do some .xml stuff!
And the whole response to the Elemental launch is still a high-point in personal/corporate accountability. It should be taught in b-schools.
Edit: camera rotation can go away in favor of performance
