[Doo]

Another idea, in CoE2 you recruit groups of soldiers (ie 5 swordsmen) but after purchase they are individuals. How about make them a "squad" that are always joined. The squad can have individual units die but recruits can replace the deaths. The squad can have its equipment upgraded, even with magic gear. Forge 5*Ice Swords and the swordsmen now have magic swords with better defense. The good thing about this is that it retains CoE2's smaller scale (compared with Dom3's epic battles of hundreds of units) and allows different strategy about mixed forces, upgrading, quality vs quantity and saving valuable units to build back up to strength,

I'd say the magic would need to be capped in a way, for example if we take Dom3 as an example the best magic items a squad could get would be max construction 2 items, but I'd include more tiers between con0 and con2. So fear helms which are everyday items in Dom3 are pretty rare in CoE3. Leaders only can use the real good forged items. Perhaps make some items unique to units, eg for a squad of "fire" mages allow them to have forged robes which increase their fire magic attacks.

Make mages more like the "support" mages of Kohan 2, they have limited spells (unlike Dom3 where they have heaps of spell options to be scripted, this eliminates mage scripting), they operate like units and not leaders and their spell effects can get better with items and experience.

Make Leaders like leaders in Kohan or Warlords, they participate directly in the battle and/or have secondary skills that passively affect squads under their command. So usual fare, magic heroes can either be tough mages themselves or passively increase mage squads under their command, melee leaders the same but with melee squads. Even have unique leaders that have other tricks. Nothing like HoMM5 where uber heroes almost auto-win but something to encourage up-skilling leaders, unless the faction being played strength is squad/leader spam.