Okay, so I have been playing now for almost three months and in that time have thought of a few things that I believe could benefit this game. First off, some organizational improvements:
User Interface:
Friend's List Chat Tab
I have noticed on many occasions people posting in trade if anyone on their friend's list can help them with something. Usually it is to drop a buff on their island or do a round trade. This isn't really a trade matter, and I believe that having a chat tab that sends to only people on your FL will help with this.
Battle/Buff Message Tabs
As is, after a battle a message gets sent to your mailbox showing the results. However, after an adventure these can clog up your mailbox. Now if you only have those, it isn't a problem as you can delete all. However, there are some mail messages I want to keep and that means having to select them individually in order to not delete the wrong ones. Creating a separate mail tab for battle results (as well as one for whenever someone buffs your island) would allow people like me to instantly delete all of the unwanted messages quickly and easily.
Detailed Mining Tab
I have actually seen this one brought up here before, but it is worth repeating. Some sort of menu screen that shows us the remaining level of all mines/deposits that are currently being mined. This will make things much easier as we will not have to constantly scan the island to check levels in order to make sure we are operating at full steam.
Separate tabs for Generals and Specialists in the Star Menu
At the beginning this isn't really a problem, but when you reach the higher levels and you have 15 or so generals and 20 specialists, looking through them can be a pain. Adding an extra tab to the Star Menu to separate will clean that up.
Trade System Improvements:
Red Letters/Red Background when Can't Afford
When selecting "Deals I can't afford", the deals in question come up on a red background with red letters. This makes it very difficult to see what the requested price is. It may be that I can afford, but just need to shuffle some resources around. I believe the red background is enough and that changing the lettering to white will make it much easier to read.
Refresh/Edit Sale Offer
Often when posting an offer for sale in TO, there will come times when a mistake is made (entering 100 instead of 1000 for example) and that means we have to cancel the current offer and enter it again properly. On the first free slot this is no big deal, but when it is a subsequent slot it costs us coins each time we want to post. Adding an 'edit' button to the side of each would allow us to fix our mistakes without paying additional coins. Also this would also help in cases where someone else posts an offer after that is better and we wish to change ours to stay competitive. It doesn't need to change the time remaining on the offer, just alter the offer itself.
On that note however, I would also like to suggest a 'refresh' button that would allow us to resubmit the same offer again in order to extend the time it is in the trade office. This way when I am going to log off, I don't need to cancel all my offers and resubmit them all over again to give them six more hours. This one can still cost the required coins for that slot as we are effectively buying that slot again. This just saves a lot of time.
Permanently Purchase Sales Slots
So speaking of paying coins to use the sales slots each time, I believe that allowing us to use gems to permanently buy those slots (so we can post more trades for free) would also be very useful. Right now we can pay for the slot with gems but as I understand it, that usage is limited to that one transaction wherein we have to pay again after just like with coins. Allowing us to purchase those slots would save us coins and get players to spend those gems (and that makes money for you!)
New Buildings:
Epic Barracks
A barracks that can produce both regular units and elite units from the same building! Can either be simultaneous or toggle between types. Main benefit is a secondary elite/reg barracks for faster overall troop building. Can be limited with slower build times if needed for balance.
Improved Bakery
Pretty self explanatory. Bread is a huge necessity to keep those settlers rolling out, and space is already at a premium without needing 20 bakeries and the subsequent farms/fields/mills to supply them. Improved bakeries are a logical step.
Improvements to Buffs:
Area of Effect Buffs
Things like Efficient Traps, Kitty Lure, Forest Offerings, etc.. all currently use this wonky grid system to determine area of effect. However, it doesn't react well to buildings as a building half included in the area will sometimes count and sometimes not. Worse yet, the grid always sets whatever building you are placing it on at the right hand side of the grid. That means if you try to use that buff on a building that has other buildings of its kind to the right of it, they won't count. It limits best placement to a very specific layout.
Moreover, it can only be placed on the building type in question, even if the required types are in range (example: three buildings around a storehouse. If you hover the buff over the storehouse it should still cover the three buildings but you can't place it because it is on the storehouse) My suggestion here is to do away with the grid and instead have a circular range around the the placement spot that will activate on any qualifying building in range, and can be placed anywhere as long at least one qualifying building is in range. (allowing you to place buff on the storehouse and have it activate on all the surrounding buildings)
Clearcutter Buff
Much like the Shotfirer and demolition buff except this one will allow us to clear away the small shrubs and non-deposit type trees that get in the way of better building placement. Either much cheaper than shotfirer types or multi-use given the small size of the objects to be removed.
Adventure Improvements:
Selectable Landing Spots
Adventures as is have predetermined landing spots for generals, however there is much more room for them to occupy, and usually starting an adventuring involves immediately moving your generals to a better position - sometimes all the way across the map! My suggestion here is to incorporate the ability to pick where your general will land. So at the start of an adventure, as long as your general is still in transit, you would be able to click on him (or her Nusala) and pick a landing spot from all land that is available to you to move to. Would speed things up nicely. Can be limited to your own adventures.
New General
Now I don't know if lootspotting was ever an intended design choice by BlueByte, but whether it was or not, no one can deny that it is a big part of the game now. Why not celebrate this user created part of your world with a general that reflects that creation? I propose "Lootie McTaggart", a new female general. She can travel to and from the battlefield in five minutes, walks twice as fact on the map as other generals, gets First Strike and Attack Weakest and does 500 damage. However, she can only carry 50 troops and does not get splash damage. This will allow her to be the perfect 'tagging' general for loot, while balancing her to not be overpowered in any way on the regular battlefield.
Gem Shop/Merchant Improvements:
Random Sales on Items
So far I have noticed, your current strategy to get people to buy gems is the Happy Hour sale. That is fine and it works, but I would like to offer a supplementary suggestion here. Sales in the Gem shop! To illustrate, currently the MMA cost 6,999 gems. That is a lot for a lot of players and takes some saving to do and so they wait. However, if on random occasions a sale were to occur and that MMA was to drop to 3,499, the people would want to buy it right away. This means they will have reason to buy those gems immediately (or even buy more often on Happy Hour to prepare for sales) and it is a good way to reward long time players who have been saving those gems so diligently.
Christmas Generals
This has less to do with the overall improvement of the game than just a random suggestion, but I would like to suggest that when the new generals end up in the shop for gems that they be placed on sale for a week or so before being bumped up to regular price. It will encourage people to buy gems so that they can get them while cheap and buying gems is always good for you!
Okay, I do apologize for the length of this post, but I hope that will give some thought to these ideas and consider implementing in the future. To anyone else who reads through this I appreciate any feedback or criticism you may have also, as refining these ideas only makes it easier for them to be accepted! Thank you.