About limiting player to certain areas, and making it impossible to scout around and check whole game with 1st lvl hero try to remember KB-tL : there you could check first 4 areas but MUST defeat giant turtle to go to freedom islands, then you MUST finish Lucky James quest to proceed to dwarf mines, then you MUST finish dwarf prince quest to go to elven lands. So game development and difficulty you go through was much better in tL compared to AP/CW. So instead increasing stats of enemy stacks in areas why not return this kind of play ? You get map for new areas after finishing certain quests, not by kiting or simply picking up map that is unguarded.
As for no loss runs, i dont think we should take them as base to build new game because there arent so much players that do them. But no loss runs are among most commented on forum simply because in them new ideas and strategies are developed. Player that is on easy/hard difficulty may come here for some guidance for particular problem he/she run into, but wont make new tread for it and get 100+ reply on it. But no loss runs are interesting to test and try out with `Can i do it?`idea and then post your achievement, and somebody else try it and do something different and post his thoughts ... And that`s why no loss runs gather much attention, and commenting here not because they give something more in game since they dont (no better rewards, no higher scorers) nothing is different finishing no loss and normal game with losses. If there was only 1 way to finish no loss, then it wouldnt be problem to prevent it. But there are bunch no loss strategies so to prevent them all is to much work.
And in the end, SirWhiskers remembered great new feature in KB-tL HoMM babies mod : BABIES
Every wife have much more potential babies then in original game and every baby is unique in it`s bonuses to your army. Expl : i had Rina wife, and with her had undead kids - Aisilin (great bonuses to evil book spell which is much better then original , 24% more basic dmg from attack spells so if fire arrow make 100 dmg now it make 124 and then you apply hero intellect bonus) , Charna (gives bonuses to ghosts/cursed ghosts +16%hp, +1speed/initiative, attack defence , -16% leadership and unlimited retaliation. I must say this is sickest bonus to unit in whole mod but out of 32 possible kids you have about 3% chance to get her in game) , Vidomina ( -9% leadership to all undead) , and Nimbus ( 18% more bonus from hero intellect to spells).
This all may seem like to much bonuses, but also every enemy hero in game have similar bonuses to his units, you on other hand as player can take 8 wives and every have 30+ kids, so you can have great kids, not so much great (lets say you pick warrior hero and end up with spell bonus kids) and that`s great random treat in game
1 more great thing Matt changed in his mod are spells : he added option that was in intellect description since start of this games but didint work properly. Every 15 hero intellect some spells last +1 turn, this includes stone skin/bless/haste/slow, but also sheep/doom, and burning/poison effects from spells. So fighting enemy primary intellect heroes can be real pain in the ass, expl : Misticus undead hero in Wastelands area have 40 int, so when he cast blind it lasts for 5 turns and he cast it 2 times per turn like higher magic hero skill. Also Matt added shock/stun feat to lightning/geyser spells based on caster int. There are bunch more great feats in this mod, but you simply have to try it and see them all.
So i dont vote for just adding some % bonus to whole area when player come first time, but like in this mod, lots of little changes that can make new game more interesting.