While I think you are being harsh on the game for similar reasons to Stabbey I would also like to play a mod with similar tweaks to those you suggest. The only thing I'm wary of is the Dragon v Dragon Combat doesn't feel great to me and I'd much rather face an enemy with a large standing army and moderately powerful hero unit than another dragon.
I have no idea if any level of mods will happen though, but I'm encouraged by the prospect of custom campaigns. More variables would be of course be nice (build times, AI bonus gold #, AI bonus gold %, research costs and so on) and mod tools would be awesome but I think there's plenty to enjoy as is.
Oh and Custom campaign gets rid of act III so there's that at least.
