If it wouldnt be so buggy.

If the AI wouldnt be so bad. As it is now (at least with my modded version, with many creeps on a large map) it is very bad. Often units just stand around doing nothing for no reason. Somehow the AI gets its units systematically killed by creeps unless difficulty is so high that it can overcome this with extreme power levels. Only champions work somewhat due to them being inherently immortal. And the AIs set to 'insane' with their uber teched 'Epic' level killer stacks - it has no problems massing these. The problem is it doesnt use them. It could easily overrun its neighbors or the adjacent wimpy creeps standing in the way blocking them. But instead it does ... nothing.

If the game would be better balanced. Luckily this is to some degree fixable by modding.

If the game wouldnt be so bland. Luckily this is fixable with modding. Unfortunately the modding scene is near dead. Large part of the reason for that of course is Stardocks previous abandonment of the game and the sad buggy state it is in.

(There are more issues.)

Well yes the AI is so bad they had to delete ships and real harbors from the game. Also they had delete the most interesting terraforming spells too because you could simply raise mountains in the early versions and the AI dont know how to use spells - at all.

And yes the game is still buggy even if they released a new patch but it didnt address the most glaring issues so for me the result is I would never buy another game from Stardock.

I mean the release history of this mess is:

2010 Elemental - War of Magic, 1st iteration of the game, stopped because it was a buggy mess
2012 Fallen Enchantress, 2nd iteration of the game, stopped because it was a buggy mess
2013 Fallen Enchantress Legendary Heroes, 3rd iteration of the game, they never admitted it was buggy mess
2015 Sorcerer King, 4th iteration of the same game, still a buggy mess
2016 Sorcerer King Rivals, 5th iteration of the same game.

Well they reused quests, graphics, game rules and so its. Its like you play Civilization 1, then 1.1., 1.2, 1.5 and 1.6 as a comparison

At least they changed the goal of the game in sorcerer king but now to some Alamo kind of game for making it more interesting but well for me that kind of game is totally boring. I dont want to play a game against an at the start seemingly unbeatable opponent. I want to play against AIs which all start as the same as me.

So I never played the sorcerer king iterations very much

1. Engine
2. Balance
3. Game Design (with all respect to Derek Paxton)

I can expand this, but I guess everyone who have played will understand.
Too bad they've put a lot of effort but then just abandoned the game.
I think it had enough potential to become Stardock's trademark series like Dominions/EU/CC/Civilization etc. IMO Sorcerer King could be quite good as a story telling mod of some 4-x strategy. If they would focus on that part and quests, I think it would have been quite good. I've rarely seen a combination of narrative game + strategy but that MIGHT work. Sadly as 4-x it is not that good.

Funny (or sad) thing is that they had Derek for that, and that's exactly what was done in FFH.