[licker]

I think I agree with Johan on this one. Adding more upgrades and buildings just does not seem to fit into the general scheme of Dom. Already you can upgrade your defense of a province with your castle type, and by uping the defense value of the province. Adding more 'junk' would only complicate matters for the AI I think, and while it may confer some kind of 'cool' feeling to the game, it doesn't really add much to the overall gameplay. Any changes to the system should be kept on a very macro level I think, like the defense for a province. One simple solution would be to split the defense from the castles to the province and call it 'fortification' which could be increased in the same way the local milita is, and give some kind of crude defensive barriers for the defenders to use (pits, trenches, crude wooden walls, ...). The presense of a castle would still give the stone walls and allow for seiges though.

As to ships... I always hate them in every strategy game I play, it is seemingly impossible to get their mechanics right, so I say don't add them in... ever!

Army formations are all fine and well, but I think it would be better to expand the scripting power, add a few more commands (harass from another thread is a good one), and allow for units to also get stackable orders ala commanders, or allow units to follow the commanders orders (more than gaurd commander anyway).

Anyway, I think mostly from a SP viewpoint, and I don't like complications for complications sake, that may improve the feel of an MP game, but wind up shafting the AI because it becomes more difficult for it to keep up with all the new variables.