Minimod ideas

I've been thinking about putting together a few minimods to add to some features that are a little disappointing in base version of FfH2. For example:

Armageddon

Not nearly enough "bad stuff" happens when the AC reaches 100, making it one huge anti-climax.

Ideas to improve it (and the build up to it):
- Let hell terrain spread to good civs at AC100 and increase its spread rate
- Randomly create barbarian demon units in hell terrain once the AC has reached 100
- Buff the horsemen if they appear late in the game (free promos). They shouldn't be complete pushovers.
- AI: If the AC is nearing 100, anyone who doesn't want Armageddon should team up on the civs who are pushing it up for one final, epic battle

Plus some minor annoyances:
- Stop AC from falling back below 100 (Once armageddon has happened, that's it, surely?)
- Reinstate Obsidian Plains, but make them give 0 food. This way, hell terrain is still detrimental but you can get your flood plains back by sanctifying

Lairs

Lairs are probably the most disappointing thing about FfH. They spawn lots of nasties and it's very rare you get anything worthwhile from them. Here's the plan:

- Lair rewards and punishments should depend on how far you are into the game. Early on, there should be weak enemy spawns but also poor 'prizes'. Later, you should have to fight wave after wave of tough enemies for downright awesome prizes. Players would be forced to strike a balance between exploring for immediate benefits and 'saving for later'.
- Lairs with better rewards should spawn more enemies. I want to avoid the anti-climax situation where you fight several lots of powerful enemies only to end up with something craptastic like a healing salve.
- Exploring a lair in another civ's land should be an act of war. It's their property! (Though perhaps hidden units could be exempt from this rule...)
- Barbs who move onto city ruins squares should be able to create new lairs (a neat way of spawning new ones later in the game)
- Enemy spawns should depend somewhat on the type of lair, e.g. ruins = lizards, barrows = undead, etc.

Ideas for better prizes are appreciated.

Animals

I'm not sure what to do with this one, but animals aren't useful enough at the moment, and this has the side-effect of severely diminishing the recon line's value. Any ideas? The only thing I can think of is making them upgradeable, but to what, and would that be powerful enough on its own?

All feedback welcome. Are there any other areas that aren't quite as satisying or 'fleshed out' as they could be?

Orbis has a very nice idea about animals allowing recon units to gain an animal totem for some nice bonus.

Another idea would be to bring them back to a city and "sell" for food or some gold like hunting spoils but that would only be useful in earlier stages of the game, later on it would probably be too much micromanagement for too little gain.