RE: Karth and the Ocean - it's not that he CAN'T win that scenario it's just that you can't focus on the playstyle I enjoy most with him, which is just simply zerg waving the humans. To be honest, it's not really a strategy that wins a lot but I use while testing things because it's incredibly fun. I had success in the Trading scenario by buying up a pirate fleet BEFORE I raised a horde (if you have a horde the world is a little more suspicious of selling you a trading fleet) and then using that, but you can also pursue the other element of Karth's power, which is to cause Dangerous Tribes to form in spots of your choosing across the world, spreading chaos and allowing agents to recruit powerful minions in convenient locations.
RE: Wounds and a Hero Killing themselves - it used to happen ALL the time in our early builds back when the Hero AI wasn't fully fleshed out. Now it depends on their personality, a berserker will attack you even if it means his death, a vengeful character that hates someone will do the same, a heroic character will attack if he thinks it will kill you or save his allies, etc. Most of the time now, a severely wounded character will limp away - banking on the "cowardice" of heroes will win you many early fights, but as hope fades from the land the heroes get more desperate and will make more last ditch efforts.
Yeah we are excited at the KS success, my personal hope was 4k by the end of the first week and we really crushed that - without any media coverage as well. We're HOPING that one of the major indie media outlets picks us up this week or next (though still radio silence), and if we can get the demo into the hands of Youtube or equivalent by the third week we're probably in good shape to hit some of the stretch goals.
I really want to put Religion back in, it really opens up so many options in the game.
haha, we wouldn't be supporting Steampunk ourselves - that would have to be its very own tier or some kind of expansion considering how much work it would be. We don't handle "technology" as much as we handle "Government Types", we are comfortable providing a "stone age" experience up to roughly the renaissance because our government types support roughly these levels of technology and you can have a thematically consistent and interesting world.
Could you mod in steampunk? Pretty easily I suppose, if you are fine with the art being somewhat inconsistent - just make a "Victorian Republic" government type and replace all of the general actions for a government with ones that are more flavorful and sensible for that type of world. Defining its interactions with other nations, you may want to take the Empire -> Colony to look down on other civilizations or Civilized -> Empire to have a warier stance. Create some "tech" inspired military units, mod a class to make it an "Explorer" or something more steampunky, set the percentage spawn to the Victorian culture to make only these steampunk classes. Could work pretty well.
We are absolutely making a Colonial map that has elements of what you're saying, though it's not quite King Leopold's Ghost, more along the lines of Conquest of the New World. The scenario is very rough right now, but we're focusing a lot at this time on the difference in a Colonial Chosen One vs a Colonized Chosen One - just this one small difference greatly changes the way the game plays out.