The victory conditions lead to games ending with a whimper rather than a bang. I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, improving the AI should help but you hit a tipping point as soon as you control more than 60-70% of the map at which point victory becomes an inevitability. Maybe it would help if there was a maximum amount of support you could have on any one tile at a time, so that one way or another you would become vulnerable to attacks on your capital. That limit would have to account for entrenchment bonuses of course but it would lead to games ending with a decisive attack on the capital more often.
I'm not sure there's any good way to avoid tipping points, unless you greatly amp up the enemy's power the weaker they get (which makes no sense). It's just something that you have to accept as part of the mechanics of strategy games.
Act 3's layout is much weaker. It's not just because land inexplicably appears, but because that inexplicable new land provides a straight-line drive to reach the enemy capital. The AI is weak on land, and there's no alternate paths.
Some people keep talking about how the original concept looked better to them. I disagree, I was not a fan of the original all-air combat. It was two-dimensional and looked really shallow. I definitely didn't like the flea-sized fighters.
To you people who think the game is too easy by massing units and sending them in, have you not considered changing the difficulty?
The original concept actually included ground combat as well, as far as i know, they changed the concept because some problems came up with making combat work at such a large scale. In other words,there was ground combat in the original concept, it was just too hard to integrate with the large scale air combat, so they changed it. However, right now, ground combat doesnt really work, and there isn't much of an air combat.
Also i'm playing on max difficulty, and the problem isn't with how hard the skirmish battles are, its about how boring it is, because of how the dragon makes these battles rather unbalanced without any kind of actual air combat. Right now, its all about sending the units in, while you spam your dragon skills on the enemy blobs, and dodge their anti air fire. It's just not much fun, since there's not much else to do, and i dont have 10 arms to keep using every single spell or skill each unit has. There are no large air units that could counter a dragon, nor are there enemy dragons(except in multiplayer, but the multiplayer is shallow for other reasons). That's why some people, like myself say, that the original concept would've worked better(if they could've made it work). Right now, the skirmish is rather boring as it is, and in my opinion a below average rts phase. Take other rts games for example. In my opinion, starcraft 1/2 is an average rts, each unit has 1 usable skill, or maybe 2(max)and may have some passives as well, and not a gazillion skills you cant use because you dont have enough arms. Now take an above average rts like company of heroes for example, you even need to play strategically in that game(blow up bridges, move units out of the way of enemy arty fire, play smart), thats what STRATEGY games are, you need to use strategies (in sc as well). Not as much in dc tho, you just spawn in the mighty dragon and mow down the enemy that was hindering your advancing army, problem solved(ah but i actually use 1(one) skill the devastator besiege skill). Not much strategy involved, and that's why some people say that its all about who has the bigger blob.
And this shows since many ppl just skip skirmish battles altogether(with autoresolve).
The best solution would've been if they found a middle path between air and ground combat. Also before you say: but there's air combat, you mean those little things my dragon can blow up with a few shots? riiiight.
(Also this is just my personal opinion, but i think that the max height where the dragon can fly up to is a bit low).
No offense intended by all this, and i know that the game was just released, so i'll just wait patiently and see what the devs will bring in the future.
