Hello Stardock, thanks for the opportunity to play in this beta release.  Overall this game has some great strengths and potential, but also some real weaknesses.  I’ve been playing for about the past two weeks, and have some definite opinions how the game could be improved.  I'll focus on one particular issue here, though, and that's monster or creature units.

One of the things I felt let down on is how quickly monsters are exterminated from this fantasy game.  They are essentially like the barbarian villages in civilization.  They exist early game, are quickly wiped out, and almost never seen again.  The rest of the game then centers on pony battles between factions, as if we were playing civilization, yet limited only to building "knight" units.

It would be great to see monsters become an evolving threat.  Not so easily wiped out early game.  Becoming more dangerous as the game evolves, and sometimes even being recruitable as a troop unit, to supplement our late game pony armies with lichs, undead soldiers, demons/angels, and elementals.

To that end, here's some suggestions:

1. Monster lairs should level up, and produce stronger units as the game goes on.  

• Often games start with an impossibly strong monster, like a dragon, sitting near your town.   After a few short games you learn to carefully avoid your faction’s boarders from disturbing the dragon’s lair.  Then, along comes the AI with its pioneer unit spying unsettled land and it “stupidly” (and by that I mean cleverly) disturbs the dragon by building an outpost over it, which in turn causes your kingdom to be annihilated around turn 30.
• Instead of dragons and similarly powerful creatures existing at the very start of the game, I think lairs should “level up.”   Early game, even dragon lairs would produce not-so-threatening pack dragons.   By mid game they would produce full-fledged dragons, and late game it leaves the opportunity for even more fantastic variations to emerge.  
• On high difficulties, this lets you really ramp up monster power / game difficulty as the game goes on.  It fits the fantasy plot well, with the cataclysm rupturing the vary land, and magical energies escaping making the world more and more dangerous.  On high difficulty, the player shouldn't be thinking of victory, but rather how long his kingdom can survive...  

2. Barriers to destroying monster lairs

• Monster lairs shouldn't be destroyable unless they are within your faction boarders, and removal should cost resources.  This prevents wandering armies or quick expansion from exterminating them early game, and allows the world to be "gentle" while the factions get their foothold.
• There should also be benefits to keeping a lair inside your kingdom   The downside is obvious, they can spawn powerful armies that attack you.  An existing upside is those creature armies are an excellent source of experience for your armies and heroes.  But additionally, I think they should provide opportunities to recruit monster units and be an ongoing source of loot, by defeating spawned monster units.

3.  Monster Lairs as strategic resource for Creature unit Recruitment

• Where pray tell are my undead, demon, and elemental armies???  Vacant monster lairs in your territory should provide a small chance of spawning allied creature units.  There can be rpg elements to this.  For example, a death demons portal may cause a demon to appear and ask you to sacrifice 100 population of the nearest town, and if so he will follow your command.  If not, a full demon army appears and attacks the town.
• Allied units spawning from lairs should be rare, but they should also be powerful elite units for your army.

4.  Don't tie loot to destroying monster lairs.

• Monster lairs should get new loot every time a new army spawns there.  Looting it, should not however cause the lair to be destroyed.
• By keeping monster lairs around, it lets the player find items even during mid/late game.  Often the joy of discovering new loot is over early game, once the lairs have been exterminated,  This provides players who preserve lairs an ongoing source of loot.  You could tie late game success to preservation of lairs, as better items tend to drop from high level lairs.

• Let me explain why nobody likes knights of asok ,mercs, or ogres --  they are weak!   Unlike trained units, they don't benefit from high end armor/weapons researched by your faction, improved squad sizes, trinkets, training enchantments, or perks granted from nearly half a dozen buildings your cities can build.   
• Monster lairs, like Recruitment nodes, should all be leveling up with the seasons....providing better and better allies when they appear, and in the case of monster lairs an increasing threat to your kingdom. 

6.  Allow upgrades for recruitable units that use items

• One way to immediately make knights of asok and merc units more useful, is allow us to upgrade their weapons, armor, trinkets, and even squad sizes....  Let us upgrade items for any creature that uses the applicable item (e.g. skeletons with chaimail proficiency)