Welcome to Bloodlust Valley where there is no peace only the savage echoes of war, for the battlefields of Bloodlust Valley is the god of deaths temple and from here he lies witness to the glorious combat of lesser beings and bestows those worthy with powers beyond measure. You seek this power and through your determination, strength and the destruction of those who appose you, victory will be achieved. Good luck champion and may the odds be in your favor.
Things I wanted to achieve with Bloodlust Valley:
-Attempt to remove several tedious 4X elements like waiting for your units to move across the map. To solve this: the map is very small, there are a lot of roads and the important points of contention are all in the middle of the map.
-Make the player in a constant struggle for power, thus the 12 races in a small map to constantly pressure the player.
-Balancing gold in favor of the AI to increase difficulty.
-Strong RNG elements with random towns near your starting area to make every time you play feel little different.
-Create several important strategic locations by making the map filled with linear paths rather then the more opened structure of traditional maps. There are also several cities which hold important flanking positions.
-Encourage the AI and the player to actively use magic by placing an abundance of magic nodes. These magic nodes are also only located on the edges of the map so there are additional cons to only taking control of the middle map area.
Recommendations:
-This map was tested and designed for AI set on emperor and expander, you obviously can change these to something you prefer, but there is a possibility the AI wont leave the starting cave area for a very long time.
-This is more of a personal rule to keep the game more balanced: when your leader or hero reaches level 6 (unless the hero started with spell casting I, then this is applied when they reach level 7) they can only put there “level up” points into spell casting.
The zip file seems to be empty, please update the download!
Also, from what you've written here, you seem to be percipient and have all the right ideas.
To see magic boosted, you should try the Ziggurat Mod, or the AoW+ or AoWx mods. They all make spells stronger while making Spellcasting cheaper and DEF levelup more expensive.