I have been playing strategy games for a long time and REALLY enjoy Warlock.
With some improvements, the game would truly be legendary. Here's my wishlist after about ten playthroughts on impossible. When I state a problem, I will also try to state some possible solutions.
1) "We have found a portal to another world!". The other universes could be improved in many ways.
-First, more variety in tilesets, monsters and loot. Currently the alternative universes are a bit repetitive.
-Second, universes of varying difficulty levels so that one does not know what to expect.
-Third, the AI needs to be able to explore and conquer these. Currently they grant a massive advantage to the human player. (For example, in my latest game I conquered one universe, built 10 extra cities there and reqruited a Gold dragon by turn 70).
-Fourth, these universes should have more than one entrance, so that the universes could be used as a means of travel, and so they would be more difficult to defend. This would add to the strategy and also help the AI to attack these dimensions.
-Fifth, I would make the alternate universes smaller, so the advantage they give is smaller, and the exploration of several universes is possible. Smaller universes would be more balanced. However, I know that some others would prefer them to be larger. Maybe make it possible to change this when starting a game?
-Sixth, (as a wild idea for an expansion) maybe there could be an AI race comparable to the Antarans in Master of Orion 2 which could spawn in one of the alternative universes, conquer it over time and start attacking Ardania.
-Seventh, give portals to different worlds different colors, so we can remember their destinations easier.
2) AI weak points need to be fixed.
-First, the AI often expands too little. Sometimes AI's do get a decent number of cities, but often even on Impossible I fight against AI's who don't bother to expand beyond their initial 2-3 cities.
-Second, the AI can't handle temple units / blessed and upgraded units well. It emphasizes quantity of units of quality. In the early game this is ok, but even on Impossible the AI tends to always fall behind in the tech race. Three suggestions for fixing this.
A) Some of the problem may be solved by nerfing some of the divine blessings, damage blessings and purchased gear somewhat. 50% damage increase on Vampiric weapons and Fire weapons is a lot, for example. And Fervus' blessings are extremely good for their cost.
B) The problem may be further solved by making the AI prioritize dispelling highly buffed units, and making good dispel spells more available than they are. Right now dispel is divided into too many categories, and its difficult to get to a really well working dispel which would dispel all / at least the majority of buffs from a unit. Maybe even the earlier dispels could remove more than one buff, but it could be a bit random - for example, the first dispel removes 1-3 random buffs from a unit, the next one more and so on. Or the earliest dispel could work on any spell, but have only a 50 % success rate, while the next one has 75% and so on.
C) Program the AI to get high level units, or even make it cheat a bit on impossible?
-Third, the AI tends to lose units on the ocean a lot, often losing high value units while in boats to shooters. The AI is generally not very good on island maps. Not sure what could be done about this.
-Fourth, the AI sometimes makes demands when its in no position to attack, and then makes peace on the following turn for much less (sometimes even giving me cash for making peace). On the other hand, the AI also makes small demands sometimes when it really should just attack and take my cities. I tested and in the early game, I can expand pretty safely without making any offensive units. The AI's can outnumber me 10-1, and yet they will not attack as long as I keep accepting their demands. And their demands will be very small as long as I keep spending my money and mana. So, make the AI more aggressive in the right circumstances, and less aggressive in the wrong circumstances.
-Towers need to have some sort of upgrades to make them better, since the AI likes to use them so much. Maybe building a military academy or some other structure could give a global improvement to towers, and some local buildings could give similar benefits? E.g. the number of buildings in a city could affect the towers' effectiveness. And cities should not lose population when towers are destroyed (this is currently a major drawback to towers) - rather, lost towers could be automatically rebuilt after say 3 turns of their destruction.
3) Some interface fixes:
-hotkeys for unit tasks
-units that have been made to sleep should not wake when units of a friendly mage come near
-screen for an overview of my empire, with unit list and city list would be nice, but is not really a top priority.
+edit: Oh, I forgot: an AUTOMATIC CITY GOVERNOR /manage is totally needed for maps larger than small. For many of the cities, I will simply want to optimize the building of one resource. So the game could allow me to set a city to focus on producing gold, food, or mana/research. This would eliminate a lot of tedious and repetitive micromanagement. To make this work even better, make the game inform the player about these building projects similarly to the way it currently announces completed projects. E.g. make a new icon for them, make it show some text on the map rather than taking us to the city screen (e.g. "New Garona is now building Market"), and make scrolling through these announcements optional.
4)Other random ideas:
-Some single player scenarios would be cool, as in the Civilization games. Fantasy Wars and Elven Legacy include many excellent scenarios, so I have no doubt that the designers can create these. Give us the map of Ardania or a portion of it to fight over. I would be willing to pay a little bit for a good scenario DLC.
-Please tell us what your plans for the future of Warlock are. Will there be expansions? Will there be patches? What is the direction you are taking this game in? A developer interview would be cool.
-victory screen with stats, hall of fame and achievements would be cool.
