ohhhh ohhhh ohhhh you are a beautiful soul
I know many of my ideas are farfetched and probably undoable, but you know I am just putting it out there just in case
Do you know the mod silver stag? Yeah perhaps some mods and stuff from there like the whole idea of the quartermaster gaoler etc
what I think would be really cool would be a second in command soldier that you assign, he can be a hero you build from the ground up, or an expensive hero that you can get, either way from time to time he gives you advise and tips, (The tips are corresponding as to what their job was before you hired them, soldiers will give you battle tips, merchants and priests can give you trade and some other tips, hunters food morale tips etc, you can assign only special heroes and those that stand beside the guild masters etc when you hire them and you have to venture into town.
make better camps, whenever I entrench my camp, it's pretty useless, the ai is too stupid to properly advance, make a proper map where you get a major advantage (Thus the point of the camp, there is a ditch running around the camp with water in it, the stakes in the ground block intruders so it might be smart to just cancel it altogether. you have options as to what you want to build in the minifort, the camp can be created over time into a solid fortress with options to build watch towers and assign archers insider them to watch over the fort as well as shoot down on subsequent attackers while they try to assault your hq.
So the entrenched camp is on a slightly elavated hill, there is a simply wall around it and a ditch running around the whole thing, the wall can be broken, perhaps to make it simpler just make the wall unbreakable but rather there is only one entrance to attack from, from that entrance they have to face the ditch, the watchtower which is basically a building filled with archers, some simple traps or basically stakes but they aren't really hindered. The point of this battlefield is to turn the tables when you are sieging a castle, basically sieging a castle goes hand in hand with this mini hq. Let's say you are sieging and a large campaign army comes back, you now have a better advantage, oh oh and if you create this fort you heal faster, thus in the heat of the battle you can create this fort and other parties can join you in it, so heavy campaigns won't be so bad. If possible even make this camp more permanent where you can assign a hero carpenter/engie to look over it and take care of it for a high price, the pro is that it can be upgraded and made into a real fort overseas, the con is that it's costly and takes a long time to upgrade. adding like a small farm area so you have constant food and a well so your troop morale is up, basically a lot of options like having a village. it however takes upkeep to keep.
Any battle taking place in the forest or specific parts of the mountain should start in the favour of the bandits, this forces the player to walk around the forests lest they get ambushed and slaughterd, basically in the forest there are many high chances that you can get hit by a larger previously unseen force. if possible even add roadways through forests that speed up travel but also act as a flag area, so basically when you travel on pathways, you go faster in exchange that bandits also like to wait on popular roads and when attacked near roads you go on a special map where you are on a road and is surrounded by a forest on both left and right, in the forests are bandits that throw stuff and come running down as the fight progresses and the remaining horde gets spawned in the front and charges you, there is no retreat, only surrender, thus players have to be very wary not to get attacked on these roads unless they know what they are doing. this map idea can apply to other areas too that will be advised to you via your men, setting up camp there or waiting there can mean a clear advantage when attacked as the map is shaped to your side, even better yet can be that certain areas will trigger new maps that help and hurt both sides (Like some maps help infantry but hurt archers.
fire flipping arrows, of course they can only work when there is no snow or rain. greek fire would also be lovely.
A better use for daggers and throwing knives, my advice is that they are given a small chance to break through blocks and shields thus making their sneakiness cooler, the exchange is that you can't block with them as well as low dmg and unable to block attacks, if possible, speed up the speed of drawing them out so as well as the speed of attacks and throws to a one very high. ( of course wielding these things with shields make them slower in usage so it's much better to use a sword in that sense.
make towns more go inable, this applies for castles and small villages, the main villages have plenty to do in the area so I'm cool with that, perhaps give some events that happen in every village at certain times of the week, an archery competition would be cool or even a throwing competition.
On the road or in town, you can get challenged by someone to a duel, in that said duel there is only you and him/her but they are very strong, doing it in a town can lower likeness or rise it, the you can turn it down and lose or gain relations but it drops morale for their captain being a coward.
blacksmith that can turn cracked and broken weapons into stronger finer ones, it however takes time and costs only slightly cheaper than simply buying the built up one.
something that the native expansion did called the black knight invasion, at some point in the future (For the native expansion you could set it) A small group of near unkillable knights under a lady ravages the land, there is only like 7 of them but they can take down the whole of calradia given time.
make special tournaments that take place in special maps, the tournament acts out like a small scale castle siege or ditch warfare etc. more gold but higher chance of death. also under tournaments are special quests that make you enter tournaments so you can go to feasts and poison or talk to certain characters, more sneakyness would be cool, like during the feast if you are given the quest, you have to go up to up to someone and if you have a sabotage quest, an option comes up to poison him, poisoning him makes in incapp for a few days, however you can be found out causing guards to attack you (Which you can pay off in advance to fight for you or disappear) You can even bribe servants to help you before hand etc. (They only carry knives) if you are found out (This can be based on your persuasion as it makes them warmer to you etc) Then you have to kill the guards and escape, you can't kill the lords or ladies, (It's like fighting drunkards in the bar they run away) However you have guards to deal with. getting caught can mean almost getting banned and completely hated by that faction, which is why the chances of failure is low due to the main character having need to invest a lot of time and money into doing it (If possible there are ways to fix the arena fight to your favour by making all all other contestants die after one hit, like you poison them for a price etc.)
a duck key, or a way for troops to drop down a pavise.
a way to escape any battle, when I join a lord in battle, I'm always the last standing if they lose, I can't quit or escape but only get caught.
A way to keep your army even if you are joined with a lord, like you pay for them but leave them somewhere etc.
more ways to storm a fort, attacking at night can be beneficial for you, like senarios where you attack through the front, also the defenders can attack you while you are building a siege tool and meet you outside the battlefield. Or even a senario where you sneak into the castle with only 5 men, the opposing force would be only like 10-20 men depending on army ratio. You could severely damage the troops inside by sneaking in at the cost of you getting caught and losing everything.
the ability to have a raid option, when attacking larger parties, you can have the option to do a hit and run, depending on the level of your tactics, you may win and get less deaths for more kills but you can't control the actual battle, after the hit and run it's impossible to do it again and sometimes the party chases you, better to do it at night. you cannot pick who you want to raid.