Hero Quests -  Having heroes join you after completing quests to get to know the hero better ie after helping a town fight off a bandit raid the town champion swears alleigance to your cause or as you search a wretched caravan you find a wounded survivor that needs medical attention.  then after carring this person to your town the doctor informs you he needs special herbs to cure them.  or the random noble girl whom you escorted saftly to her home becomes infactuated with you.

Reduce the number or towns in the game either make pioneers very expensive or add outposts to the tech tree where you have to research them before you can build the outposts

make the ablities like merchant master and lore master people have to be in the towns doing their trade to get the benifit from their abilities

Allow guards to be attached to the caravans to protect them.

Allow children to take over kingdom/empire.  Kinda annoying having enemy soverns sucide themselves on my town walls and that ends their intire kingdom.  you are able to imbue champions with essence so it would make since that they now have the ablitiy to heal the land as well not sure why towns and stuff are instantly razed when a sovern dies.

allow marrage to allied or neutral faction kids maybe even quests and such for the perfect spouse.  you know like shreik marring the girl you save from the dragon guarded tower.