Without having read the rest of the thread yet:

1. Quarterly or thereabouts
2. All of the above However, in order
1. More quests - I include world random events in this category too.  Ideally bigger scale, world changing ones (e.g. alternate victory quests, or expansion/more options within the existing one - but they don't all have to be endgame ones.)  However, even more "filler" quests would be appreciated.
2. New factions - HOWEVER - only if they're sufficiently different than existing ones (the Dead qualify here AND the AI can use them at least as well as existing factions (the Dead don't do so well on this score.)
1. Perhaps a faction that converts land into something unusable by other factions?  Maybe fire elementals that convert terrain to "Burning Lands" type or something?
3. More spells - preference given for ones that have permanent or world altering effects; limited use is OK for these.
1. Consider entire new schools (such as abob1's mod introduces.)
4. More tactical battle maps
5. More stamps
6. More loot (more art assets please!)

As far as option G - "something else", it's not entirely clear what can be done entirely wo/touching code.  However, some of the following look like they *might* be possible, and different enough to be very worthwhile

• Alternate tech paths - this IMO was a missed opportunity w/The Dead.  Something that speaks to an entirely different end goal.
• Alternate cosmetic options - perhaps the ability to select armor "styles" or something?  Alternate UI options?  New mount types (or at least colors?)
• More built out AI behaviors (alternatives to the default.)

Anyway, more expansions are appreciated

I would like a cut scene DLC, such as when you meet a new hero, run into a new monster, you die, a rival dies and meet another leader for the first time.  You know that sort of immersion thing?

Oh! and lesbian romance.

Cool stuff.

For DLC - can I suggest the Animal Kingdom faction?

I would like to see DLC monthly or quarterly. Every 2 months might be really nice.

I'd love to see new Wildlands if that is possible, after that items, spells, and quests since I feel like the game can still be a bit repetitive with what you find (the more variety from one game to the next the better in my opinion, it's extremely fun to find stuff you haven't seen before). New factions would also be cool, but unless they are pretty drastically different I'd rather have more items and quests and such.

The problem with adding in a new faction is that it would be hard to make them unique and AI friendly without editing C++. The Dead are a good example of this. Their core ability is just a slightly altered version of Slavelords, which the AI doesn't understand anyway. You couldn't give any new factions truly unique abilities. I have modded this stuff a lot and it would be very hard to come up with meaningful new faction abilities just by editing existing abilities. It's possible but most likely you would end up with a new faction wielding some sort of new weapons and a +X% bonus to something. That's not something I want as there are mods that do this for free.

As far as 2.0 is concerned I want to see one thing above all: USABLE WATER TILES, NAVAL COMBAT AND BOATS.

Real city sieges on fortress/castle sites would be cool ... right now its simply a modified tactical combat map ...

Elevation variation affecting movement , spells and line of site in tactical as well as strategic. 

More definitive uniqueness between the races...  Some races get different weapons or armour, but the game play and tech tree is pretty much the same across the board. 

Better AI ,  Galactic Civ. II showed multi threading and an AI that responded to changes in player strategy.... This is way cool . 

1. Quarterly
2. C - spells

DLC: Every 2-3 months.

New DLC: Pretty much anything works for me. 

I hear a lot about tech trees but personally don't think they have much to do with factions playing different. The main problem with all the factions is their abilities. No matter how unique a team's weapons or how many resource multipliers you give them they will play the same. The core problem is that their basic structures are all the same. They gather resources and build all exactly the same way. Once upon a time the Magnar ability Slavelords prevented them from building growth buildings and instead granted them the ability to get population from kills and taking cities. This is a example of an ability that actually changes how a faction plays, but unfortunately the negative part was removed and it was rendered pointless. Probably because it was poorly thought out due to how you never got population where or when you actually needed it. Now the Slavelord ability is useless and ignored. Enchanters granting Arcane Monoliths that are outposts summoned by magic is another good trait, but the AI can't use it... That leaves the most unique ability as Binding.

Part of the problem is that for some reason they didn't update any of the abilities when LH came out even though so many of them were effected. They just cut all the parts that should have been updated, like Kraxis getting both kingdom and empire champions. It still mystifies me why they did this. Especially how they re-added Umber and Capitar but in truth didn't touch their abilities at all. Ummm they were removed because the devs said they were incomplete and they wanted to focus on other factions so you can't just re-add them unchanged later. It's pretty much like at some point they just gave up completely on faction abilities and differentiation and cut everything they were working on and released it unfinished. End rant.

This means that at a minimum in the 2.0 update, is to release these features and factions properly balanced and tested.  There's no reason to add all the new features if the core game has unfinished elements.  Brad and Stardock, I suggest you release the 2.0 game with all the features you've talked about, plus the ones DsRaider has talked about here.

I don't think that's going to happen. They actually have to budget things and assign programmers, which means tradeoffs. I think most everyone is working on other things now. It's just a shame they didn't consider faction differentiation a priority for LH. I will be happy if they just manage to get everything they want to put into 2.0 done.

Yeah, I would like to see independents added to the game like what the original WOM had, if they could be made interesting (they weren't in WOM)

Yeah the best thing that could be done (in 1.6, 2.0 or whenever just somehow) is to get the AI to use the rest of the strategic spells.  As far as I can tell it doesn't use any strategic spells where the target is a tile:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/452050/page/1/#3444390

Frogboy/Kael - pls find a way to get the AI to use these types of spells.  

Just to pick out this one item - you could (potentially) do a lot with a wholly alternate tech tree.  Just to name a few examples

• Simple re-organization so that "late game" techs come early and early techs late.  For instance, a "horselords" faction could have a tech tree that re-positions mounted warfare at the start of the warfare tree.
• Assign different costing to nodes, so that e.g. magical techs cost less than warfare techs (relative to the "standard" tree.) 
• Even if the AI researches at the same rate, different costings will end up "pushing" them down particular tech paths
• Prune out any techs that the AI or a particular faction can't use effectively (e.g. Sion tech.)
• Purely cosmetic changes for look and feel (e.g. instead of building a Storehouse, an insect themed race could build a hive)
• These kinds of changes don't even necessarily require entirely new tech trees, just different prerequisites for unlocks of existing techs.
• You can create unlocks that are wholly inaccessible to other factions (though again, you don't necessarily need a new tree for this, just different prerequisites) - similar to the "Black Quire" spells granted in the Empire tree.

To your point about playing differently, it would mostly be about "pushing" the choices in a particular direction.  This would be most helpful for the AI; the player can already choose to rush particular targets.