It amazes me that so many people are against the art style... I personally love the art style, and it's one of the most unique things that keeps me coming back.  In my mind, it truly sets it apart from every other game that does just plain old 3D... whoopdiedoo...

Regardless, there are other things I do agree with.  Things like tactical battles could use with a bit more depth like LOS, limited range, flanking, attacks of opportunity, etc...

City building should have more impact.  As it is I just build pretty much every building in every city, and don't really give it a whole lot of thought.  The choices don't really seem to matter.

Factions do need more differences, although I'm happy with the races... we don't need no steenkin high fantasy elves & dwarves...

The magic, to me, has always seemed rather bland. And finally unit customization should have more real customization options, and have more impact than just outfitting units with the best gear.

What I like least about Legendary Heroes I dislike SO severely, that I do not play Legendary Heroes. I play Fallen Enchantress only, and lament the fact that I cannot purchase the DLC, because (I expect) it only works for Legendary Heroes.

That which I so dislike is the restrictive class system for heroes. In Fallen Enchantress, it was basically a huge list of 'skills', some of which were prerequisites for others. If you wanted assassin abilities, you had to start purchasing from the bottom of that tree, but nothing stopped you from buying skills from multiple trees. In Legendary Heroes, we are restricted to a single tree, a single 'class'. Now some no doubt will argue that this makes for a better game, that it makes for greater replayability or whatever. For them, I am sure they are right. However for me, it adds nothing to a game, it only detracts.

I have scoured Nexus hoping for a mod that addresses this, maybe a 'cheat' mod that simply rolls all skills into a single profession or whatever. Sadly, it appears no one has built such a thing. I've perused the data files somewhat myself, trying to figure out if there is some way I could do it myself, but I have been unable to divine a way. I am not exactly a hotshot coder/hacker.

Lack of Faction Differentiation

There are subtle differences in the factions, but would like to see radical differences, it is very bland, that each fraction had same weapons, equipment type with a few minor exceptions.  Would like for the factions to have a radically different look and feel, have armors and weapons that look different.  The ability to customize units, although a game-within-the-game, is probably a handicap for the AI, which already is not so good.   Other games suffer from this as well, such as Paradox Plaza's Hearts of Iron III, the AI can't handle dealing with optimized human player builds.  Would like to see more faction specific units.

Fantastic Mounts

I understand horses, and Wargs are fantasy staples.  But how about some fantastic mounts?  Griffins, pegasi, Wyvern (or think Fell Beast from the Lord of the Rings), heck, even bear, or something really interesting like a chariot pulled by bears or giant lizards.  Just anything to make things more interesting.  Granted the diversity will require changes to the standard warg/horse resources.

End game become tedious

Towards the end the game becomes tedious, sometimes I find myself building the structures casting the spell of making just to end the game.

Cities

I agree with an earlier poster about being against the three city archetypes and that cities just naturally evolve.  I understand in some respects why Stardock went the route they did with the Conclave/Fortress/Town.  However, I'd like to have more diverse options, there are times, in particular in the early game when it is hard to know just how ideal a city location is, but you are stuck with your specialization choice.  I'd like to see more options with some of the buildings.  For example it would be nice if the alchemist guild would have other benfits, to perhaps buff troops, like an accuracy boost to reflect 'enchanted' weapons, or maybe imbue armor/weapons with benefits from shards (earth shard increase blunt, defense, air add lightening damage, increase dodge, and so forth).

Make the map more lively

Some games like Heroes of Might and Magic the whole map is alive with animation.  FE the map just seems dead.  It would add to the immersion to spice up the game map.

I think these would be at the top of my list also.     And the fact that the AI doesn't use some spells.

I'd like more info on this please.

[ Usually, when a player can conquer a wilderness, he is already strong, and the reward is worthless. ]

For wildlands there may be a part by part rewards. Mini bosses with smaller areas to clear. Big boss still sends out new spawned monsters after the "cleared areas". so player must keep the fight. Rewards like resources ( iron mine , crystal mine , wheat etc ).

[Road-building.  Now, this is a shame.  The algorithm is poor, roads often get doubled with ridiculous crossroads, especially after destroying and rebuilding outposts.  We must have a way to design roads.  Ah, and while on this, I miss enchanted roads.  They can have a great strategic impact. ]

I agree that roads should overtime get removed if outpost or city is destroyed. lets say in every few turn half of the remaining non connected roads disappear.

[ It is a small concern, but it has always bugged me.   It combat, why is movement restricted to one click.  If my unit can move three spaces, but I only move one space, the units movement is over, even though it still has potentially two move spaces to move? ]

solid idea. Up until you do the attack or cast the spell keep the remaining movement usable.

* how about mines/resources that get robbed if no one specifically guards them? a few turns of income get lost?

I just want to say that I found a mod that completely fixes this issue for me. So in effect, the designers fixed my problem by ensuring that their game was built to be modable. Kudos.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallenenchantress/mods/1338/?

After playing a few more games with 1.6, I will just add how FOW is revealed at the end of a units movement (i have to click tile by tile to see what is around me lest i finish near a powerful enemy) and the pathfinding that will allow your army to destroy a newly gained enemy improvement if you are still in the same turn.  

Also the AI never attempts to offer gold when suing for peace.  And the diplomacy having separate screens for treaties and trading is terrible.  If I can use a big pile of crystal to buy research, why can't I use it to get a peace treaty? 

1. Pathfinding.  It's so bad it's unusable.  It frequently sends your unit along a longer visual path (you expect straight, but the program doesn't know the difference between straight and diagonal), ending the turn next to some big monster that's going to kill it.  It often picks a longer actual path, turning what should be a 2-3 turn move into a 6-7 turn move.  Sometimes it routes your unit around your cities rather than through them, or only through part of them.  When in friendly territory, it will always move you out of friendly territory instead of through it.  Sometimes they'll path off a road for no reason at all.  I've even had instances where I sent them 2 tiles away, and they went the complete opposite direction for no apparent reason.  As I don't expect pathing will be fixed ever, it would be nice if we could use the numpad for movement, and if it only did movement so I wouldn't be forced to use pathfinding to get past friendly caravans sometimes (no, I don't want to talk to them through the caravan).

2. Autosaving.  I shouldn't have to wonder what's changed when I load an autosave.  For instance, if something would've finished building/training that turn, it's just gone, and all the progress towards it is gone.  Did a monster attack before?  It probably didn't now.  I've posted about this many times before, and how I suspect that the autosave is running while things are actively changing between turns, when it should start and complete autosave before anything else happens between turns.  I currently hit Ctrl-S at the end of every turn before ending my turn to get around this problem, because Quicksaves work fine.

3. Bugs, bugs, bugs.  Just game-affecting bugs, though.  I don't care about ogre crotch or things appearing with the wrong color (if that's something that happens).

Lack of Ships and Siege combat.

Something like the siege battles in Age of Wonders 2 would be great

:EDIT: also, if I wanted to be picky... the lack of multiplayer (complete with tactical combat)
I always prefer playing 4x style games with family/friends. It is fun conquering lands with them (and occasionally stabbing them in the back >=P )

I find that one of the primary proponenets to this is that the buildings have no maintenance cost associated with them. If there were some kinda of limiter, difficult choices would need to be made in order to best design your city.

And maybe maintenance cost isn't quite the right way to address....

Here is an idea: Building Support

Each level of city has a 'building support' level. Each type of city has a modifier to that support level. Building can be built that provide additional support.

The thought would be that each city has some natural infrustructure limitation based on it's size and type. Perhaps it's 'tax revenue' or urban sprawl...whatever the justification...the point is that it should be almost impossible to build every building available. Choices must be made as to what buildings you want in what cities. Here is an example (note that this is not tested for balance...the values may need to be changed to make sense):

Towns: Receive +2 building support
Fortress: Receive +1 building support
Conclave: Receive +0 building support. 

Level 1 Cities: Have 3 building support
Level 2 Cities: Have 5 building support
Level 3 Cities: Have 7 building support
Level 4 Cities: Have 9 building support
Level 5 Cities: Have 11 building support

Then have some buildings that can add additional support. For example, the Town Hall could provide an additional +1 building support. The Tower of Dominion could provide +1 additional building support.

Thoughts? Comments?

1) VERY interesting idea...but not sure how that would work effectively unless you did the following:

Towns cannot build units that require Iron or Crystal.

Only Conclaves can build units that require Crystal.

Only Fortresses can build units that require Iron and Crystal. (Seems odd that Crystal is added here, but does allow for the strongest units). Maybe have an available building that's Fortress only and grants availability to Crystal...

2) I have preference to Mages defending conclaves. Having different elementals feels too similar to the Binding trait. That said, it is an interesting idea.

Please don't stop.

That wouldn't solve anything- people generally don't build units much outside of fortresses.