As for another victory condition, I'd like to see another quest series ending. Perhaps something akin to Lord of the Rings and doing some sort of quest line that effectively destroys the SK without having to fight him, but is hard in its own right. 

Sorta like a combination of Legendary Heroes and Lord of the Rings. 

Perhaps it woold change depending on the rivals you have on your map. They'd each know of secret series of items or spells or something that you'd have to seek out, each quest becoming more and more difficult until you eventually found the item - and perhaps a nasty enemy - at the end of it.

One thing I've noticed is that I can pretty much just wander around with my super-stack and leave my cities undefended, from the start to the end of the game.  Every once in awhile there's a threat, but usually not a big one, and Cloudwalk takes care of that by bringing my hero back.

1) When the Sorcerer King places his garrisons nearby to keep an eye on you, they're typically pretty imposing, but they seem to just sit there and get killed by my outposts slowly, turn-by-turn.  First, what idiot sits there and dies because they built their encampment next to your arrow-shooting tower?  Second, they may be powerful, but they don't use that power for anything.  If they sent out troop stacks to threaten my cities every once in awhile -- heck, I'd have to think about keeping some of my strong units close to home.  If they were taking damage each turn and decided to just leave that spot and put a stop to the people who were hurting them -- well, that makes sense!

2) Bandits and such almost never attack cities.  I can understand why small groups might not, but when there's almost no garrison?  I think the bandit AI needs to be spruced up so that if it sees a weak city, it sends some groups to assault it.  What bandit lord doesn't dream of having a city to pillage?

3) Some monsters are pretty strong.  Maybe they attack cities sometimes for encroaching on their territory.  Monsters get angry and want revenge.

Perhaps this comes as a toggle for more aggressive city-attacking AI for those who think it will add another dimension to the game play.  I get that the game wants us to get out an explore -- but it just seems strange that I almost never have to worry about what's going on at home.  It might also encourage me (and others) to actually use some logistics to make troops, especially early on.

I don't think I would pay for this change, but would certainly love to see it in an update.

A lot of good ideas here. I think the most important thing to emphasise is that SK is an ok 4X game, what makes it fun is the roleplaying element and the quests and so on. The 4X side of it could be polished a bit perhaps, but I think most post-release effort should be put into making the roleplaying element richer, more quests, more effects of your choices, etc.

I agree more ways to win might be fun. Perhaps there could be quest endings which are only available under certain conditions? E.g. a very Wise monarch might be able to find a way to neutralise the spell the SK is casting; a very Courageous/Famous/Honourable monarch might be able to unite all the minor factions; a very Cowardly monarch might be able to find a way round the gate to make the final battle much easier, etc. etc. Controlling 90% of the original shards (i.e. impossible if more than 10% have been destroyed) allows you to cast some super spell to stop the SK. Perhaps the Sorcerer King would get a chance to react to some of these (e.g. you have to survive five turns with Threat level of 5 before you can complete your victory condition). Perhaps some of these are only available if Threat is low enough (e.g. you can't sneak into the stronghold if threat is greater than three), forcing you to choose between confronting the SK and raising the Threat level so high you have to fight him head-on, or adopting a more softly softly approach in order to choose one of the more subtle victory conditions.

I would personally pay for DLC which expanded the roleplaying element and provided different ways to win the game based on how you've been playing. That would improve replay value, apart from anything else. At the moment Honorable choices seem to be invariably "better". If there were some things you could only do if you'd been a bit bad, that would be fun.

Other than that, make the Sorcerer King a bit more aggressive strategically on higher threat levels and higher difficulty levels, and a bit better at casting spells in battles. Slightly more variety of enemies would be good. Some more Epic stacks; the hardest battle in the whole of Legendary Heroes was fighting multiple dragons. I don't want a battle that's harder than fighting the SK, but fighting several Drakes with my Stack of Doom could be interesting. More help when running cities; I generally haven't got a clue how helpful it will be to build Onyx Throne or similar which depends on how many shards are connected, because I don't know how many shards are connected. The option probably shouldn't even appear if you have zero shards connected.

More variety of heroes. Fix a few of the bugs and fill in some of the blank spaces. Except for swords, hero weapons seem somewhat underdeveloped at the moment, for example. A Heroes DLC which added a few new heroes, lots of fun new non-sword weapons (including spears), maybe some hero specific quests, would be good.

DLC which adds new quests is always nice. The quest variety in SK is impressive, but I'm on my third game and I'm starting to notice repetitions.

We were definitely NOT promised that.

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I don't think basic units need basic equipment, it's sort of implied that they have that.  Whatever equipment you give them is assumed to be an improvement upon that basic equipment.  Also, then you need to start doing that for heroes, bandits, etc...  It get's overly complicated then which is why the assumption is that units have basic equipment.

I like a lot of the other ideas though.

Oh and 28) Make initiative differences less extreme. It makes sense that mounted troops should be able to move further, but it doesn't make any sense for them to have much higher initiative than infantry, archers or casters - and it makes battles too predictable because you pretty much know who will act when. It'd be better if archers, infantry and mounted troops all had similar initiative. Higher initiative should be for sharp witted or very fast moving creatures like wolves. It doesn't take more initiative to fire a bow or march forward than to ride a horse, you just can't move as fast on foot. Elite troops could still get higher initiative and militia or levy type troops lower to represent higher and lower morale and preparedness. Units that use magical attacks or cast spells should mostly have low initiative as they do now though, to avoid overpowering them (especially e.g harbingers ranged attack, which is devastating) Slow witted creatures like trolls and juggernauts would still get low initiative.

I know this is a old post, and I am a relative new comer to Sorcerer King, but I have a suggestion, assuming it has not already been talked about.

I come from a board game background and there is a series of co-op board games that are very popular which was defined by a Fantasy Flight Game called Arkham Horror. It wasn't exactly the start of this sub-class of co-op board games but it is defiantly the break out.

Anyway, Arkham Horror and many subsequence boardgames use a very simular idea to the "Sorcerer King" by having a universal "bad guy" that the player plays against, all comeing with special game rule modifications that are only in play, if you have that particular bad guy in your game. Arkham Horror is a lovecraftian style game so in its case there are like 20 or so different "Old Ones" and each has their own powers, monsters, unique mechanisms, even in some cases additional boards you addto the base game board.. all to give the game very different feels depending on what bad guy you choose.

I think a great DLC idea for Sorcerer King would be a DLC that changes the actual Sorcerer and with it changes various global rules and game goals for any map that he is being played on. He'd have his own personality, GFX, maybe even minions, might not even be interested in destroyign crystals, maybe he is trying to open a portal to another realm and needs to control them.. w/e.. that kind of "modification" to the game that players can either select or random select the big bad at the start of a game.

I'm really enjoying the game but read a few reviews last night to see what other people are saying and a common mentioned thing is "replayability". This could be a not only a good fix for that for if done right, like in Arkham Horror and all the board games that copied it a well crafted "alternative" bad guy could make it feel like a completely new game. Also as a bonus it is a endless design space, you could make as many "bad guy" dlc releases as people will pay for as they are not additive so you need to worry about growing complexity.

I agree that would be over-powered. It's just that currently I'd argue that the perk is actually a liability. I'd rather skip right over it, having all of my ranged first turns wasted is not helpful at all.

edit: "wasted" is probably too strong a word, however the gist of it does apply.

That's the thing. Whenever their first turn would come up, it is gone. You have to wait until what would be their second turn to have any control.

We'll have to agree to disagree. This ability allowed me to roll through my enemies in my last game.

It just could not happen. Without this ability you would be able to target shots by yourself, or even use archers ability to shoot multiple enemies. Looks like you've rolled despite the shoot-at-the-start-of-battle ability, it is very possible.