First, all of Xaltotun's (please excuse any misspelling) ideas are good (i.e. I agree with them, ergo...).

Now a few of my own:

Fantasy world (e.g. elves, dwarves, orcs...) not post apocalyptical medieval world.

Real differences between 'races' and 'factions'.

World Creation: more sliders (% land, resource rareness (possibly beyond the current 'extraordinarily few to none at all' range), terrain types(?), roaming monster frequency, etc

Sovereign creation: you pick the point total available; AI gets that value +/- a value dependent on a difficulty (i.e. handicap or cheat)

Wealth: something beyond the current token gold mine and 12 guys named Viy. Taxes won't really work since you need to balance that with (un)happiness, which doesn't exist in the grey world of (select randomly generated sequence of 6-15 letters here). Lack of money is the key tedium generator in the current game. Caravans generating gold is good - sadly the population will all have starved to death before the caravan arrives.

Names: a little more variety in the names of champions. I really do have 9 guys named Viy in my current game.

Adventure Techs - some really should generate a random number of random resources. Within the area you have explored excluding AI ZoCs. Not a gold mine or a bee hive and an apple tree.

Diplomacy: a functional system

Dynasty: I marry off my daughters - what do I get in exchange (nothing, as far as I can tell). Don't say diplomacy benefits until that bit functions (my perceived value '29'; his '18 bazillion').

Magic 'Mana Pool': MoM is an excellent model, global mana pool, available to all (usable amount is minimum of global amount and spellcaster's 'essence rating'). Would be nice to add 'mana nodes' to shards as sources of said mana. Also potential sources from buildings, etc

Make water meaningful: fish, warships, whatever. Historically port cities have always been important; Elemental - waste of time. 

More Lvl1 quests. Some pre-existing dungeons/nodes/ruins/etc from the start of the game. All inhabited by monsters, some easy, some butt kickers until the late game. Rewards commensurate with difficulty (gold, mana, magic items, spells)

Ability to convert resources to gold. Or do a much better job of balancing resources: 4000 materials, 1200 metal, 120 gold: what's wrong with this picture?

Tech tree: Lvl 1 techs should be lvl 1 techs. If it takes 10 turns when I have 1 research point, it shouldn't take 12 turns when I have 24 points 150 turns later. The overall pace of R&D is fine, just differentiate between tech levels (not all, e.g., Tech 1 levels have to cost the same but the cost should be fixed not variable).

Tactical combat - monsters could also come in squads (at least the human ones). Spawning groups of, e.g. goblins, orcs, whatever would also be nice.

Anglophile, some good ideas, but keep in mind this is a patch...they aren't going throw out the existing lore and add elves and orcs in 1.1 or any other patch. Let the modders worry about that!

I think some of your economic concerns are being addressed with 1.1 making population more of an important resource. Go back and read the dev diaries on 1.1, you should be happy.

Gotcha, since this was a 1.1 wish list thread, as opposed to a more general wish list, that is what I assumed you were asking for. Anyways, good ideas and I hope we see some of them in 1.1 and beyond.

I just googled quiver sizes and there's a surprising lack of info about how many arrows were/are actually carried. It varies a lot. The best referece mentioned a couple-dozen arrows per quiver at most in mideaval times, and modern quivers much less. Archers stuck their arrown in the ground in front of them for easy reload. Research also shows a well trained longbowman could fire 12 arrows per minute. It just seems very odd to me that archers would have only two minutes worth of ammo. Other references said mideaval battles were typically very short, like an hour at most. I guess if only a couple of arrows hit their mark out of 24. that would do significant damage to any attacking army.

Of course, in game systems that use the concept of "hit points" 24 arrows wouldn't cut it. Archers would have 8 rounds worth of ammo before running out (at 3 arrows per round), typically this is enough for most monsters, but larger hp squads it would not be enough. If the archers could go to some other weapon when their arrows were out, that might help, but I don't think is historically this is how archers were used, and they should probably be allowed to conduct a withdrawl off-map once their ammo is used up.

I'd be for having a 24 arrow limit if archers were allowed to retreat afterwards, otherwise forcing them to be sitting ducks when out of ammo is just plain dumb.

For 1.1 I'd just love to see weapon/armour differentiation and expansion.

WEAPONS

Weapons grouped into types (Swords, maces/hammers, polearms, bows, crossbows, etc etc) each with different benefits. For example:

Swords provide +1 to combat speed (as they currently do)

Polearms provide a small benefit to defense due to their extra reach, and some of them able to use shields (I'd love to recreate the Greek Phalanx, but currently the only spear in-game can't use a shield, and is exceptionally sub-par).

Blunt weapons provide a bonus against metal-armour

Bows take 1.5 combat actions to use, so if I'm willing to fork out for extra equipment, I can potentially get three shots out of them. Unless I put my archers in heavy armour, in which case I'd need to pay for a LOT of magic items and scout/messenger packs to get three shots, making them even more expensive.

Crowwbows take 3 combat actions to use but are exceptionally strong, so common crossbowmen will only get one shot, but if I pay for the extra equipment (effectively making them elite crossbowmen), they can fire twice.

Maybe even 'offhand' weapons, a dagger of some kind that goes in the shield hand, that supplies a +1 to damage and a +0.5 to combat speed. Obviously the animation doesn't need to include its use, and I know how unrealistic it could be, but this IS a fantasy game with dragons and fire raining from the sky.

ARMOUR

As for armour, I'd love to see the lighter metal armour being something more than just inferior versions of the heavy armour. For example, I'd love for chainmail to be a bit more expensive, but not give the combat speed penalty or give less of a penalty.

Similarly, I'd love for some kind of 'refined' non-metal armour. Some kind of advancement in leathers. I realise this one is a long shot, but I've love for the option of some kind of magical leather armour (in the same way as the magical metal armour exists), that actually provides bonus', such as an increase in combat speed at the cost of being quite expensive both in gold and crystals.

MOUNTS

It's been mentioned there may be more work done on mounts, but here's a few requests. Beyond the simple "This is a horse" horse, I'd love for specialised horses that cost extra gold/materials/metal. Such as the Barded steed that gives a smaller combat speed bonus, but an attack and defense bonus. Or a lighter warhorse that gives a smaller defense bonus, but a slightly larger movement bonus, so I could equip horse archers effectively.

A lot of requests, yes, but it'd be a nice change and provide some more tactical options. Now armies could have Phalanx spearmen in the front to absorb the enemy attack, then skirmishers flank around the side to strike the enemy archers and mounted Knights charge enemy forces in the flank, or horse archers flank around and target the enemy spell-casters.

actually with regards to the greek phalanx, it was well armoured for its time but it had limited offensive strength because they held the spears overhand above the shoulder which does not lend itself well to producing a lot of armour piercing power, so when the heavier armours started to show up, the phalanx got out-teched. I don't know my history well enough to go into more detail than that but iron > bronze so that was that.

(technically the civ iron legion should have been better then 3.1.1, probably 3.2.1 but they want a fairer fight between the two unit types i guess)

This is my limited experience talking, but I was under the impression historians weren't actually sure how they held their spears. Some evidence depicts beneath the shoulder, others depicts below the shoulder, and both have advantages that makes it difficult to tell for certain.

Although as it stands the current spear is quite a good representation of a weapon that does a poor job of harming people. Even leather armour is enough to confound it unless there are dozens of spearmen.

I would like this:

1) Fix the memory leak bug

2) Make it so that you can learn some abilities on your heroes that you recruit. Archery, healing, spell casting, entanglement, etc.. basically steal the stuff you can do in AOW

3) Make the maps more interesting, with far more bottlenecks and things to slow the game down a bit. More mobs, mobs that guard the mines and stuff so you have to kill them first. Rivers with a bridge so you have to go to the bridge to reach another part of the map, etc. Again, basically copy AOW.

4) Add several more spells. Entanglement, healing water, group heal, etc.. again... copy AOW

I think if you did that, it would probably end up being on a par with AOW2:SM, if not a bit better. And then further patches would make it the clear winner.

This is probably an expansion in the future Elemental: The Wet Magic (tm)

The only thing taht must be improved in 1.1 is the AI, strategic to tactical. I could care less about all the rest as it can come slowly if the AI would just be challenging and fun and proper difficulty by difficulty levels like GC2.

Yeah, but they would auto-replenish after a battle, that's what archers did back then according to my research, they picked up arrows after a battle. Thus, arrows would be limited only on tactical battles not the strategic map.

Overpowered Archers & unlimited ammo is just as bad an idea too. Personally, I'm all for realism. Archers that have 24 bow quivers that can fight as footman when their ammo runs out, as #36 suggested, would be great from my POV, which knocks down two birds with one stone: one, it's more realistic/logical & two, archers are now only overpowered only while they have arrows, just perfect from my POV. Quivers of different sizes would probably be a good idea too, since my reasearch indicates no "standardized" quivers, and only a mention in a encylopedic article that some mideaval archers carried 24 arrows in their quiver. "Modern" quivers have as little as 6 arrows. So, my opinion is that a range of quivers sizes, say 6, 12, 18, 24 arrows would be great .. maybe a 30 arrow quiver but it should be tied to portability somehow (say strength + constitution must >= 30 to use that one ... just an idea anyway).

I am talking about a single battle.  Fighting a force that takes up 90% of the free spaces on the battlefield and if you lose your archers due to ammo, you almost have no chance at winning.  So this would mean either not having archers, or go into battle at a disadvantage.

I'm for realism, but this game is not about realism, unless people could throw fire balls, make lightning storms come down, or teleport in the middle ages.   

I mean the whole story is about fantasy, magical monsters coming and making armageddon a reality? I read much more than I post, and I agree with most of what you say, and you are active and have good opinions, but on this one I must agree to disagree.