The new goals that came with the recent patch are a good start, but I would love to see more done with the Victory Points in the game. Imagine this... You have completely lost your entire army and 2 of your 3 cities are at the brink of resource depletion. Bad guys coming at you from all sides. What do you do? Personally, I just start a new game instead of playing to the bitter end. Now what if... You could turn back the tides. Just need a few more Victory Points...and a Champion unit would be trained. Nothing game-breaking, but just something to give you the edge in the next battle. A rare card, or maybe your mages would be temporarily able to push back the Desolation. These bonuses could be awarded by player choice maybe every "x" VP? Something to keep me playing a losing game instead of simply restarting.
The situation you're describing is due to heavy duty positive feedback acting against you (also known as 'snowballing', death spiral, slippery slope). That is, when you start loosing, the game becomes much harder for you. The problem isn't necessarily the death spiral, but how easy it is to get sucked into it and how long it takes for it to reach it's completion. This is a very common game design problem, and I'm not sure how to treat it in general or in this case (maybe we should start a thread dedicated to this?)... having your suggestion would create positive feedback acting for the player, making the winners win easier, so this is maybe not the real solution?
Yeah, the concern is that what if you're a super bad-ass player and doing super well? Then your changes simply make the game get even EASIER for him. If anything I think the real solution is to make the game's balance and pacing better. Also we have some major changes to how armies and stuff work in a future patch, which will also mean that losing a battle doesn't mean you're screwed.
I'll have a blog post up about it soon also, still working out the details. Also Crazy Monkey is starting on a prototype for the next game which will delay 1.2 a bit (although we have a 1.1.1 coming very soon which will have a few small changes and bug fixes).
