Out of curiosity, why not just limit yourself to two traits max?

I disagree with essentially everything here, and in fact I almost NEVER take the strength trait.  Horses are not very far down the tech tree, give you the strength trait for free and a bunch of other incredible bonuses.  To boot, horses are practically everywhere in a dense material world (so I'm assuming they aren't hard to get in other options- which I usually don't play) and adding them to units costs nothing but your horse count.  I'm ALWAYS trading my horses for tech.   I like Potential I, II early game and later III (when it shows up).  You can get get ridiculous levels with extra XP.

The whole game is based on weapon initiative.  it is in fact one of the better implementations of tactical combat, I feel, that I've ever seen.  Homogenizing all the weapons initiative leads inevitably towards simply picking the weapons that does the most damage.  I find having to make the choice based on more than one variable far more challenging and rewarding, thank you.

As for the use of one large army -- in context that's pretty much how pre-modern campaigns were run.  I think we take "damage" a bit too literally sometimes.  Army damage could be anything from death to wounds to supply shortages to morale.  An army might be beat-up after a fight, but over time the army gets the ball rolling again and is able to move and fight effectively.

Have to add that I too disagree with 90% of this post. Strength trait exists to multiply the cost of using heavy armor without horses, and also to use one of those trait slots which is very valuable.

Also, and this is nitpicking, I want less 'racial' traits and more custom faction traits. Only Quendar can take slaves is ridiculous to me.

We all seem to want more weapon options and armor options early game. I agree with that as well. Right now its all...

Leather, Leather, Leather, Heavy Armor, and then I've won before I need the bigger badder armor and weapons.

Its a tad droll.

Heck no!  That would take away half the game for me!!!

Now that's an idea -- how about breaking out all of those racial traits into individually selectable ones for custom factions.  That would add some spice to faction creation.

Except it wouldn't. You would still get initiative penalties, just from encumbrance and not directly. So there would be a trade-off between heavy weapons and armour.    

But it doesn't. Compared to armour the strength trait costs absolutely nothing. All it does is make some units un-upgradable and add some pointless micro. 

I'm talking about unit traits unlocked through race, not faction traits. Like Quendar breathing fire. I totally agree with you about the Quendar and slaves. 

The initiative systems based on different weapons does have its quirks, for example de-equiping the staff my mage starts with and equiping a +4 dagger asap to allow more spell casting. The non-magical dagger allows me to cast more spells due to a faster initiative. I think the idea of the weight affecting initiative solely through the light-medium-heavy categories more intuitive but would (barring the use of initiative boosting equipment) the initiatives of most units be the same? (thus kinda wrecking the system)

I do like the idea of perhaps starting with only one extra perk on a unit and that expanding to three through tech research, building upgrades or magic. But does the unit creation aspect of the game become too messy?

I like the idea of reducing the traits you can pick to 2. Better yet, I'd love it if every trait had its effect tripled; right now the choices you make just don't have a noticeable difference. Think about it, when you face enemy troops, do you examine each one to see which traits they picked? Does it really matter if they have the +2 initiative or the +3 health? Right now you get 3 traits that each add roughly 10-20% to a single stat; if we had two traits added 30-60% instead, it would actually be important and noticeable which ones you picked.

It'd also leave room for adding some very game-changing faction/race-specific traits without them being too overpowered; currently it's difficult to come up with an interesting racial trait that doesn't completely outclass mediocre bonuses like +2 initiative.

Ugh, what?

• Strength is a good trait. What about muscle? Strength is good on units with lighter armour, for initiative bonus. NOT having strength would make the units even less unique. And I wouldn't suggest giving it to all units either, there are other options you can take to make sure you have enough carry weight and initiative.
• Use blood lust instead of precision and produce them from a fort instead. Moot point anyway. 2 allows for less flexibility at the same time as 4 would make your units all end up with the same perks.
• You don't want strength, then you want weapons to weigh more... The meta would shift to mages and ranged units (bows are light, but have high init penality mind you) so fast.
• The races definitely need more substance, but I think that's for a later expansion/DLC or content mod. I would like to see perks come from research as well.
• I don't like this idea at all. Traits and Bloods that add effects per level would become weaker than they already where. Why take Discipline over Precision when you're even less likely to get anywhere close to the 10 Precision provides despite having to work for it. Not to mention an army who managed to get a level advantage over another one would have an even BIGGER advantage, and it would become harder for another army to catch up.
• I guess I wouldn't mind another armour choice. you have a lighter option though magic tech. But I doubt I would use it anyway. Wooden/Lacquered armour could be okay, but nothing equivalent to a 'heavy' set, just different set of strengths.
• Actually I think they heal pretty slow. When I'm steam rolling I always cast regeneration on my vanguard. Specially when I'm taking on wild lands and getting attacked by a lot of enemies.

I disagree with pretty much everything in the original post.  My units do not have the same traits, strength is present in only one of my three main lines of units, having fewer unit traits is really bad, etc, etc, etc...

The only thing I agree with is that we need a lot more racial traits.  Hell, take the amount of 'normal traits', add the same number of research-unlockable traits, and to that add the same amount of racial traits for each race... as long as we are wishing, and the developers have fixed all the bugs in the game.

I disagree too.  In fact, I was about to propose to give one more trait (once new traits are added)...

I think an issue with the unit designer is that the penalties for encumbrance is minor compared to the gains from more armor, at least for melee. A melee unit at 80% encumbrance (more armor) is almost always better than a unit with the same traits at 40% encumbrance and +2 initiative. This leads to armies that are dominated by melee troops with the heaviest possible armor, since they have superior or equal survivability in every scenario.

A possibility is to have encumbrance penalties for other stats, such as 10% hp penalty for medium and 20% for heavy. This will make lightly weighted units more effective against mage units/tactical spells/armor ignoring attacks/curse than their heavier counterparts.