I also find it irritating that the max army size is 12 and the GUI on the bottom of the screen goes to... 11. So to see the last unit I have to click a little side arrow... Get rid of the useless gray shield in front of my army and let me see all of the troops at a glance.
And how about a convenient town dump button and city gate mechanic like we had in GCII? Let my sentried defenders stay in the town and let my visiting army exit via a set side of the city. I hate shift clicking when I am trying to play the game while feeding the baby.
Love the OP and other ideas as well.
The buff spells need work too for tactical combat... my caster has to be right next to units to lay guardian ward on them? I have no problem with a 3-5 square range but 1 is just irritating, not challenging as a game mechanic.
Another good use of a pre-battle screen: we could pre-buff or maybe set up a spell queue for the early rounds of combat for our spell caster(s) so you don't have to flip through the spellbook every turn...
