I like the idea of a flying unit with an anti flyer bonus. In all good strategy games, no matter the genre, there is some sort of air vs air strife for air superiority, which is fought over for other flyer units to be able to deliver their damage. It would introduce another bit of strategy depth.
I love the idea of an amphibious unit. The discussed Kraken sounds good to me. A strong 3 turn unit, slow on land, fast on sea, water and swamp bonus. KGB, why do you believe it would be game breaking if such a unit could land and embark anywhere? Wouldn't the 3 turns of production limit the possibilities of some kind of brutal abuse of the unit?
As for the drastic raise of the strength values. Yes, you would be able to fine tune individual units, but that's the only positive of it. As KGB stated, it's traditional to keep these values low. But not only that. I strongly believe the original design used such low values purposely. What I found compelling and attractive about all Warlords games was simplicity. At least that which was visible on the surface. Yes, having the strength value in the range of 1 to 14 is quite limiting, but at the same time, it's the advantage of the system as well. The player can easily calculate and estimate powers of their and enemy units if low numbers are used. It's much easier to learn and estimate values in this range than in a range of, say, 1 to 70. The same goes for the fact that there is only one single value that defines a unit's combat prowess - the strength. The depth comes from another fact that this number is often altered by many factors such as terrain, other units' bonuses, etc., in various conditions. So it's still simple to understand, but deep enough for strategy to crawl in. Many strategy games use several values to define a unit's combat power (attack power, defense power, armor, blabla...), because that's much more popular, but in my opinion, in most cases, it has no real reason - it only complicates things and the player needs to calculate all sorts of things before they have any idea of the final strength. In Warlords, however, it was always a matter of seconds for the player to get the idea. And I consider it a strong positive of the series compared to other similar games. So, I suggest to stick to the low values and only one combat parameter (strength). You already can make units more powerful when attacking or defending via bonuses. No need to change that.
Banding. I love banding. Make it.
I believe there were Barbarians and Giant Rats with this ability in DLR. I just loved it. Be simple, go one type of unit en masse and wreak havoc. Tactical battle screen. I can't imagine this to work in this environment too well. Only the attacker would be able to make decisions and it would further complicate things regarding both code and interface.
Moonknight wrote:Having less options to upgrade for each hero would make it look cleaner and make each hero more unique.
Agreed 100%.
Overall, I feel the game is really good as is. You have added a good deal of quality content and features and maybe it's time to stop adding anything new for the time being and polish what you already have. By polishing things, you will get a more finished product, more accessible to the player, more understandable to new players, and more, well, polished.
I'm saying this because 7 years of professional game development have taught me something. And I can tell you that it's always better to have a 1/3 of planned features finished and 100% working than to have it all with bugs, inconsistencies, flaws, etc. This works both for players and potential investors.