I've played through 4 games in your mod mostly playing with nomads with nature and I really enjoy the changes, it makes the game far more interesting and balanced. The summons seem much more useful as do the spells. I made a few notes - apologies for the wall of text.
Lairs rewards too boring. Never get any decent items ever or spells early in the game. Early on you can beat 10 zombies and skeletons for just 70 gold. Maybe an early item or something would be nice.
Another one where I had to beat efreet and about 6 hell hounds and it gave me a +1 def +1 attack shield as a reward.
Apart from node capture, beating map features early just seems like a waste of time and resources. I lost 3 elite pikemen, a basilisk and a bowman for 20 gold and 50 mana crystals. You also don't get much fame for beating them which would be something. Do they get the same sort of rewards as beating a node, but without the mana source?
Outposts maybe a little too slow to turn into a town.
Alchemist guild seems a bit cheap for +3 mana and magical weapons. A temple costs more and gives you +2 mana and -1 unrest.
Food upkeep should be higher for higher rated troops - this would help balance summons a bit as you would have a limited number of the best normal units (not sure if this would work with the AI though).
I never build the parthenon as you need an oracle first (also do you need the wizards guild first too?). I'd say removing that requirement would mean they get built occasionally as at the moment it also delays priests essentially making them a tier-5 unit (or 6 if you need the wiards guild too) - plus by then you'll probably have griffins by then anyway.
I'd rename the bank as a harbour or something to show the player that it is coastal cities only.
Wow stone giants are tough as nails. Give them iron skin and a couple of them are very difficult to kill. So much better than basilisks.
Hail storm seems quite underpowered, when would you use it? The 40 mana means you won't be using it much early on and later on the 5 strength attack won't really do anything of value.
Lowering it to 20 might see it get a bit of use or maybe up the strength a bit.
Mana focusing is actually quite useful now (at least as far as I can tell).
Famous - does the +10 fame actually do anything to get more heroes? Looking at the formula on the heroes site it says you need 25 to go from 3% to 4% chance per turn if you have no heroes. It would be good if the jumps weren't quite so big. Getting 25 fame is pretty difficult until late on.
I wonder if the heroes are bugged as I managed to get to 56 fame without any heroes other than the very worst ever being offered even when famous. I've played four games the last of which I kept 4 slots open and didn't get offered anything except two tier-1 heroes all game (despite having high fame).
Famous and charismatic are good early on, but seems to run out of steam later on. Is it possible to increase the rate at which mercenaries are offered to you as the game progresses? One every 10 turns or so at the start is massive, whereas it becomes completely irrelevant later on. Does their quality increase with fame too? I like the idea of running a mercenary army in the mid/late game and concentrate on magic and summoning.
Basilisk a bit underpowered I'd say, one war bear in a nature node almost killed my unit in one turn. By the time you can summon one you normally have better options cheaper - I had mithril griffins being cranked out in 3 turns in my game so why would I spend 350 odd mana on a basilisk?
How come you've nerfed nature/sorcery/chaos mastery? The reduction in spell research and maintenance was great. Now you're dependent on finding a suitable node early on to make these worthwhile which can be especially difficult with tiny map size. Also it is much weaker than node mastery, as it has a third of the node spell bonus (only works on 1 instead of 3 nodes) and the bonus is x4 on one in three nodes rather than x2 in all nodes (so 4/3 = 1.333 on average bonus for each node).
Stone skin is still pretty lame. +2 defence? No maintenance? +1 heart? Reduced cost? I never used this in any of the games I played.
Diplomacy - all the wiards liked me until I got attacked and suddenly they all hated me. Also if you declare war and banish a wizard then that's it everyone attacks you.
I made peace with rjak and it says I'm not at war with him, but he keeps attacking me all the time including in cities.
Early heroes seem a bit unbalanced. Didn't B'Shan used to have noble? Now he just has scouting II and that's it. Gunther only has two armour which seems a little low.
Valana is way more powerful than those two, she can cast spells, has leadership and has attack and defence as good as gunther.
Removing constitution nerfs several heroes. I'd say reduce the HP bonus you gave to all heroes to +2 and add 1 shield but keep the constitution as it was. Early heroes are still slightly underwhelming - gunther lost to a plain nomad spearman for example.
Bugs
The game doesn't tell you when your outpost change into a town anymore. You have to keep clicking on the outpost each turn to check.
Still getting the invincible defenders bug sometimes, quitting the game and reloading seems to fix it (just reloading doesn't as far as I can tell).
Iron ore surveyor text needs a space in it before 10%
Coal reduces unit cost by 14% not 15% (according to the surveyor anyway)
The gold mine on the surveyor says it gives you 5 gold, but in the city screen it only gives you +3. Same problem with quork crystals, but I think this is just a display bug as the gold amount looks right.
Cracks call description needs a space in the spellbook between "has" and "a".
The nagas text in the spellbook is the text that should be for wind mastery.
When you summon a phantom beast in a sorcery node it doesn't get the bonus to attack and defence until the start of the next turn (probably a result of summoning sickness). Makes it a lot harder to defend sorcery nodes.
Lairs rewards too boring. Never get any decent items ever or spells early in the game. Early on you can beat 10 zombies and skeletons for just 70 gold. Maybe an early item or something would be nice.
Another one where I had to beat efreet and about 6 hell hounds and it gave me a +1 def +1 attack shield as a reward.
Apart from node capture, beating map features early just seems like a waste of time and resources. I lost 3 elite pikemen, a basilisk and a bowman for 20 gold and 50 mana crystals. You also don't get much fame for beating them which would be something. Do they get the same sort of rewards as beating a node, but without the mana source?
Outposts maybe a little too slow to turn into a town.
Alchemist guild seems a bit cheap for +3 mana and magical weapons. A temple costs more and gives you +2 mana and -1 unrest.
Food upkeep should be higher for higher rated troops - this would help balance summons a bit as you would have a limited number of the best normal units (not sure if this would work with the AI though).
I never build the parthenon as you need an oracle first (also do you need the wizards guild first too?). I'd say removing that requirement would mean they get built occasionally as at the moment it also delays priests essentially making them a tier-5 unit (or 6 if you need the wiards guild too) - plus by then you'll probably have griffins by then anyway.
I'd rename the bank as a harbour or something to show the player that it is coastal cities only.
Wow stone giants are tough as nails. Give them iron skin and a couple of them are very difficult to kill. So much better than basilisks.
Hail storm seems quite underpowered, when would you use it? The 40 mana means you won't be using it much early on and later on the 5 strength attack won't really do anything of value.
Lowering it to 20 might see it get a bit of use or maybe up the strength a bit.
Mana focusing is actually quite useful now (at least as far as I can tell).
Famous - does the +10 fame actually do anything to get more heroes? Looking at the formula on the heroes site it says you need 25 to go from 3% to 4% chance per turn if you have no heroes. It would be good if the jumps weren't quite so big. Getting 25 fame is pretty difficult until late on.
I wonder if the heroes are bugged as I managed to get to 56 fame without any heroes other than the very worst ever being offered even when famous. I've played four games the last of which I kept 4 slots open and didn't get offered anything except two tier-1 heroes all game (despite having high fame).
Famous and charismatic are good early on, but seems to run out of steam later on. Is it possible to increase the rate at which mercenaries are offered to you as the game progresses? One every 10 turns or so at the start is massive, whereas it becomes completely irrelevant later on. Does their quality increase with fame too? I like the idea of running a mercenary army in the mid/late game and concentrate on magic and summoning.
Basilisk a bit underpowered I'd say, one war bear in a nature node almost killed my unit in one turn. By the time you can summon one you normally have better options cheaper - I had mithril griffins being cranked out in 3 turns in my game so why would I spend 350 odd mana on a basilisk?
How come you've nerfed nature/sorcery/chaos mastery? The reduction in spell research and maintenance was great. Now you're dependent on finding a suitable node early on to make these worthwhile which can be especially difficult with tiny map size. Also it is much weaker than node mastery, as it has a third of the node spell bonus (only works on 1 instead of 3 nodes) and the bonus is x4 on one in three nodes rather than x2 in all nodes (so 4/3 = 1.333 on average bonus for each node).
Stone skin is still pretty lame. +2 defence? No maintenance? +1 heart? Reduced cost? I never used this in any of the games I played.
Diplomacy - all the wiards liked me until I got attacked and suddenly they all hated me. Also if you declare war and banish a wizard then that's it everyone attacks you.
I made peace with rjak and it says I'm not at war with him, but he keeps attacking me all the time including in cities.
Early heroes seem a bit unbalanced. Didn't B'Shan used to have noble? Now he just has scouting II and that's it. Gunther only has two armour which seems a little low.
Valana is way more powerful than those two, she can cast spells, has leadership and has attack and defence as good as gunther.
Removing constitution nerfs several heroes. I'd say reduce the HP bonus you gave to all heroes to +2 and add 1 shield but keep the constitution as it was. Early heroes are still slightly underwhelming - gunther lost to a plain nomad spearman for example.
Bugs
The game doesn't tell you when your outpost change into a town anymore. You have to keep clicking on the outpost each turn to check.
Still getting the invincible defenders bug sometimes, quitting the game and reloading seems to fix it (just reloading doesn't as far as I can tell).
Iron ore surveyor text needs a space in it before 10%
Coal reduces unit cost by 14% not 15% (according to the surveyor anyway)
The gold mine on the surveyor says it gives you 5 gold, but in the city screen it only gives you +3. Same problem with quork crystals, but I think this is just a display bug as the gold amount looks right.
Cracks call description needs a space in the spellbook between "has" and "a".
The nagas text in the spellbook is the text that should be for wind mastery.
When you summon a phantom beast in a sorcery node it doesn't get the bonus to attack and defence until the start of the next turn (probably a result of summoning sickness). Makes it a lot harder to defend sorcery nodes.
