Kventin
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A pioneer at the end of the game... Google Tournament Edition TE and World Tournament WT.
Your suggestions to change the balance are not new. Although I haven't seen some of them. In general, the point is that those branches are already dead, but SoD is still alive.
Now they've made HotA, but I don't know what's what there; it seems they haven't touched the magic, but they've added a lot of other stuff.
Every game would benefit from such an ending.
Regarding TE, there are too many controversial changes.
SoD is close to ideal and requires only minor changes to become perfect. A small rebalancing of magic so that all schools become competitive and a weakening of diplomacy so that it can be used in the game - this is an additional interesting mechanic. And that's basically it.
Added 6 minutes later
Currently, only baratorch with his ND mod has managed to surpass NWC and create something truly worthwhile. Everything else I would call greater or lesser perversions, interesting only to certain groups of players. In HotA, there don't seem to be any major changes to the gameplay (i.e., the least amount of perversions).
With all due respect to the quality work of the HotA creators, I am not at all interested in watching or playing it.