[Taqwus]

Minor bit:

Messages that involve a commander dying (e.g. Seeking Arrow nails somebody) should at least mention the province; it would be even spiffier if it mentioned his Last order ("Foo, while researching in The Promised Land") or something like that. That way it's far easier to determine who needs replacing with what and where. With some, like Seeking Arrow, you can't even determine the location from a battle replay 'coz there isn't one. Not a big problem with a small game, but a long game on a huge map might have issues with this.


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Medium bit:

Distribution of themes is a little uneven. R'lyeh, for instance, has no extra themes. Perhaps an expensive theme ("R'lyeh Ascendant"? "Dreamland"?) that caused unrest, R'lyeh cultist attacks, perhaps even offering a slight risk of causing insanity among your enemies in the dominion, or make that Last bit a theme-specific global for better balance. One could also imagine a theme prior to the war with Atlantis; perhaps more illithids and friends, stronger ties to the Void, no Atlantian-derived slaves, no Traitor King hero.

Atlantis, prior to the Fall? Hm.

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MAJOR bit:

On cavalry, perhaps armies with a strategic move of 2 or 3+ attacking an adjacent province should have an option of "Attack and pillage", saving them a turn and allowing them to live off the land more effectively, at the cost of unrest. That, plus a phased system allowing faster armies to intercept slow armies, might encourage the use of light cavalry. Maybe even a plains survival skill (can this be weighted so basically the horse doesn't much impact supply on plains)?

Along with this, I'd encourage putting limits on how fast province defense can be raised per turn, especially if the province is ungarrisoned, and perhaps having unrest affect both this and the efficiency of constructing buildings; these might slow down how fast one can consolidate territory so while light cav can run around, pillaging and causing trouble, you still need to -hold- land to do well with it, and that should be difficult (at least if the citizens worship somebody else or were happy with their previous ruler) if few troops stay around. Tricky, tricky to get right and logical however.