It's good that no one has suggested changing the knight's move in classic chess yet. 8x8, with 16 pieces, so many possibilities... 9 castles, 16 heroes, 7 levels of units, 2 combat skills, 8 secondary skills, a bunch of magic and buildings... HOW MANY POSSIBILITIES? Plus, you can never rig the card draw – it's not chess after all. But working with templates and a generator to more precisely and specifically define the appearance of certain buildings and their abundance based on the map size would be useful. But by trying to simplify the game, you're actually making it more complicated, which is only a plus for hardcore fans who have plenty of time.
In my opinion... remove the unnecessary settings and buildings, leave the timer and a simplified creature experience system, and a couple of unique features. Everything brilliant is quite simple.
Real life is more interesting; heroes should only be a supplement, not the other way around.
Added 6 minutes later
I would work on increasing the creature limit, not just in WoTA but also in SoD, if I were one of the programmers involved in making changes and patches. Leave level 4 as is, but change the others: the lower the level, the greater the range, and the higher the level, the smaller the range (this might be a silly idea, but it came to me while I was writing the previous message)