Spot on!

To add to this: fighting the AI is less fun than fighting monsters. Ai armies are very generic, with no special abilities and no spoils after you beat them. Prolonging these fights by adding sieges etc likely hurts the fun factor of LH more than it adds depth.

Quaterly is fine. As already said, quality over quantity.

Sieges, new unit perks and types (recruitables!), new loot, new factions. I do not care that much about dynasties, it´s not Sims after all

Abob, you are reading my thoughts, aren´t you?

EXACTLY THIS. I think nobody wants some kind of revolution that would make combat suck - you can simple create few maps with walls between attackers and defenders, give that wall HP a make it destructable or create chokepoints, give units behind wall some kind of ranged/magic resistance and there you go!

Special units with double attacks vs. cities (ogres?) is even better

P.S.: In the meantime, please rebalance the dead so AI can actually play them. At least give them some minor growth when played by AI.

THX!

Another thing that wouldn't be super hard to add to sieges might be some sort of unique city defender. All you would need is the art. Something more unique then militia, like maybe a unmoving archer tower. This would just a be a normal ranged unit that spawned back with the archers and couldn't move. It could have some special characteristics like resistance to normal physical attacks, with catapults being an exception. This would be much easier to add then say damageable walls which would require new tactical maps and a bunch of other stuff.

This is more wishing and brainstorming then DLC ideas but...

Minor factions would be cool but they would actually have to do something interesting. I think it would fit the lore more if they were refugee camps or shattered cities from the cataclysm more then true minor factions. They could spawn troops that fought nearby monsters and have unique champions that led them. You could use them in several ways; ally with them using diplomacy, conquer them, or complete several quests to get the city and their leader. Again this would be a a fair bit of work and C++ to make so it is unlikely to be DLC. 

What I would love to see personally is for caravans to come back in a fun way. They were gutted early on in FE. Something like a system were you add in new trade resources like silk or silver that spawn randomly. Having a trade resource would allow a city to build a caravan and create a trade route with another city. However the gold bonus on the caravan would depend on the combined trade resource in both cities. Thus you would want to create caravans between cities with trade resources even if they belonged to other players. Unless you had a gold producing city you really wanted to have the bonus, but ya depth. 

I'll have one of those thanks.

And one of those too please.

Where do I sign?

- Really excited for LH 1.6 and very glad you are taking the time to release it only once you've thoroughly gone through it.

- LH 2.0 is another milestone that has me drooling. Imo, that the update is free I think has a downside. Don't get me wrong...free is awesome and appriciated BUT you'll be upgrading from 1.9 to 2.0 as if it were a regular update. Players will not have the choice to choose not to play with the changes and if the changes deviate too much from what LH is about (like FE was to LH) or if there is unexpected crashes or balance issues, there may be many players that would rather not play with the changes and stick with 1.9. Steam does not let you install earlier versions of a game.

- If I could offer a suggestion? (I'm going to anyways...so you can choose to ignore. ) Aim to have 2.0 the last patch....the polish patch. That would perhaps mean 1.9 or even 1.8 would be 'the mega release', fully expecting some updates to be needed. This way, IF players are having a difficult time with the transistion, adjustments can be made...

- Thoughout these patches, are you going to attempt addressing AI concerns? AI building Outpost Upgrades? Special faction abilities that the AI can't manage at the moment (Arcane Monolith as an example)?

- I think I'll really like monster lairs having ZoC. I'd love it if that extended and changes how Wildlands work. #3 @ https://forums.elementalgame.com/452034/page/1/

- Changing how tech trees are handled? This one worries me a little. I really like the tech tree system in this game; one of the aspects I thought MoM was missing. Please don't remove it. 

Now to your DLC questions/comments:

-  You ask how often we would like to see DLC releases. I would answer with 'it depends' on a few things. First: on how willing you are to go back and improve existing DLC. I've noticed in the 1.6 changelog that some changes are being made...but they are pretty minor. There is an entire mod from the community dedicated to trying to make the Undead work...I would have thought those efforts would have come from SD's end. Second: I bought DLC 1, 2 and 3 to keep the game driving forward however I don't consider them DLCs...more like small addons. They don't impact the game dynamically enough. DLC4 was the first that accompished a dynamic release. Thus, if quality is sacrificed for the sake of quantitiy, then I would not be in favor of rushing out DLC releases. If you have the resources to release once a quarter, you'd have my money.

- As to what I would like to see:

a) Stamps. Definately! (though, I would have thought some unique undead style stamps would have been released with DLC4)

b ) Tactical Battle Maps. Maybe. If battles could be more closely tied with strategic map enviroment and/or if tiles could start having modifiers, then yes. If you just want more tactical battle maps, I'd recommend including them in a stamps DLC.

c) Magical spells. No. As part of a larger release only. Toss in the odd new spell to a new faction...or new battle map... or something like that.

d) New factions. Absolutely! New factions mean new abilities, spells, quests, loot, weaknesses, traits, music. DLC4 was an awesome attempt, but has some balance and mechanic concerns. The AI needs to be able to work.

e) Loot. No. Imo, loot should be naturally embedded within other types of DLC. I was pretty dissappointed with the first go around on the loot pack as there were not enough items and they were not unique enough. I also like serious fantasy...so no lollypop and bunny slippers. Imo, the Black Market Bazaar mod has accomplished way more than the loot pack mod.

f) Quests. Yes please! More quests. Unique quests. Quests. Quests. Quests.

Other suggestions (sorry I don't know if these will require C++...not a programmer):

H) Music. I'm dying for some more music in this game. I'm NOT saying the existing music is bad....quite the contrary. Just saying that there isn't enough good. DLC4 should have some of it's own too...as well as any other faction release DLC.

I) Cutscenes. Any excuse to have a one-screen cutscene and there should be one. The first time you conquer a city. The first time you lose a city. The first time you raze a city. The first time you sneeze. The first time you make a treaty. I simply love little cut aways that progress the story further!

J) Classes. A new class or two in which to level your heroes. See the Ranger mod for an example. Have some new loot and new quests, etc. 

K) Minor Factions. In GalCivII, I really loved that there was the occassional minor faction. Sometimes the faction would even join your cause. Sometimes they would join someone else's cause against you. LH could have something similar. Lone Cities that cannot produce settlers, yet that can involve themselves with diplomacy, alliances, trade, etc.  

Keep up the excellent work!

ps. sorry for the wall of text.

Is there a downside to the unit? Perhaps 0x when attacking non-city battles?

Imo, I wouldn't mind if the general tree were modified to be hero specific however I really love the class trees design. Wouldn't want to lose that.

In WOM monsters would respond in unoccupied territory which made leveling up your NPC easier in late game. I would like to see that come back if possible.

In LH I would get a low level NPC late in game it is very hard to level it up when there is no monsters left to kill.

cheers

Very exciting news!

For DLC, I'd go with quarterly as well, as it seems an appropriate frequency with which decently-sized DLCs can be made (Crusader Kings II has probably the most successful DLCs I've ever seen).

As for preferred DLC, I'd go with a (stamps pack), b (tactical battle maps) and f (quests are gold). However, I'm much more interested in new mechanics. Crusader Kings II kept adding new mechanics (sometimes with factions) that always made playing fresh, even if you're just playing the more familiar factions.

That said, I'd throw in a request to fix The Dead DLC. It's a great DLC in principle, though I still think its implementation is lacking. I really look forward to the day my Improved Undead mod becomes obsolete, and the undead can feel challenging/refreshing, both to play as and to play against.

By Durin's beard. Did anyone say Dwarves? I'll pay for a Dwarf race, Dwarf loot, Dwarf adventure areas, Dwarf Mammoth riders, Dwarven hammers, Dwarf cities, Dwarven finery, Dwarven ale, Dwarven diplomacy failures, Dwarven architecture, and Dwarven scarves with pictures of trees being chopped down, with some angry Elves watching! And dangerous Carp in the waters to go with that! 

*takes anti-excitement drugs*

But we have a dwarf race. They're called Ironeers.

Unless it is SD's intension to overwrite this faction....which I would be more than okay with. Golems are very lacking. Imo, why not have several different kinds of Golem? Stone Golem. Iron Golem. Crystal Golem. Easy and more Dynamic. You can even guess which requires iron to build and which requires crystal.

The screenshots are probably from the new 4X fantasy. The art style looks different, but still just great (love it). I'm so glad they still choose this cosy fantasy style instead of the terribly uncharming, vulgar and excessivestyle we see in all too many fantasy games nowadays. This indeed smells of grand atmosphere and epic adventure, gentlemen.

How about additional planes?

1. Quarterly.

2. More tactical battle maps, followed by more spells and abilities.

Down the road, I wouldn't mind seeing additional hero types, or more special heroes with their own custom skill tree(s).

He he. Probably a red herring. Would conflict with the integrity of the unique universe. A shame though.