I know that the development of this is over, but still, a few basic thoughts when I was playing it:
* Try to not stack your guys in the exact same spot, like when exiting the armory, etc.
* You need some visceral feedback, like little satisfying sounds or effects "confirming"
that you've damaged/killed an enemy, healed/revived an ally, or issued a move command. You have some for resources, but you're also missing some.
* Watchtowers are kinda useless if they don't extend attack range - you can't even cover full 25% of the main building's side with it,
and you *need* AoE attacks to deal with the big enemy groups, anyway, making watchtowers useless
* The preplaced huts should block placement of new buildings. In general, I think you would keep things more "organic",
if the huts and the central building weren't "special case" objects, but rather stuff that's possible to build or reposition normally
* Relying on AoE attacks and spells instead of individual combat, makes your game feel kinda MMO-ish:
Instead of striving against dangerous creatures, feels like your guys are mainly just wiping mobs
with the occassional miniboss after which they need to heal up.
* You should do some basic formations: Ranged guys stay a bit further behind waypoints, armor ones a bit ahead
* Let your guys eat food from their backpack first, rather than starve.
* I agree that some recurring threats are needed, but I don't think spawning the same enemies in the same spot when you pass through it is the right approach.
What if you instead had some props that serve as potential spawnpoints for enemies?
* I think it's important for things to feel like consequences of other things, rather than something that blatantly happens as a consequence of simple scripts, e.g. resources respawning,
animals eating food in the wild, wandering, idk.
In general I didn't feel like I had a lot of agency in this game, since it was fairly obvious what the best things to do are,
and I didn't really feel like I had the ability to set any
particular goals for myself, or had room to experiment with things.