Orcs actually can be fun to fight at higher levels.
Goblins on the other hand. Not so much.
Nets and shamans and snipers. Shamans especially. They are so annoying to fight especially with combination of enemy superior numbers and unfavorable terrain.
Nets plus vines plus insects plus daggers = pure frustration. And they never get tired and have pretty high fatigue and HP for a old farts.
Overall Orcs are the most fight against faction. Sure Bersekers can one shot guys and warriors can solo your early company but still fighting against them is rather fun.
Goblins are pure frustration as noted earlier. You can not even reliable out-shoot them thanks to shamans and boosted ranged defense for them.
Undead. Zombies are most boring one but bones are not so far away. No injuries, no morale, no fatigue. Boring.
Bandits and noble troops are pretty fun when they not snipe your guys with the xbows.
But Orcs are the best.
To be honest factions really have limited enemy types. Is adding few more would be that much a problem? I wonder.
I mean goblins have 5(plus wolves), orcs 4, zombies 4(plus necro), bones 5. Bandits have more but only because more hero/champion units. Few more mid tier units would greatly help - even some more variation in enemy party compositions and unit weapon/armor choices.
The same goes for weapon types. At first they are fine but with added multiple weapon specialization perks its not really that great especially that you can have limited recruits and training them take long. Too bad that weapons types consist of straight upgrades and zero variation in skills.
Adding cavalry or "lording" (I expect that means getting a castle, controlling settlements, etc.) would have been a horrible mistake. Thank fuck they didn't commit it.
If you want to play M&B, go play M&B.
Don't see how settlement management would work, looking at how the gameplay is constructed, but some cavalry (at least as scouts or skirmishers) would be a nice touch.
When I agree that owning settlements would be too much - veteran houses could become a sort of bases for a player. A place that can be bought for high amount of cash and only if you have high rep with the owner. It could serve as a warehouse mostly but also as place where player could stash some brothers on rehabilitation, training, guard duty, paid vacation or put them on hire so they would earn some money. Or retire them and get some bonus to the company. It could be also place to hire non combat followers that could offer some buffs to the company in similar way of companions in Sid Meier Pirates.
And I am not fond of cavalry. It would change the gameplay balance too much. Too bad that they abandon idea of world with no horses. Although ponies or mules for faster global map movement would be nice.