Basements or dungeon levels to housing is something that I feel should have been put in long time ago....
Bleh... basements... Where does it stop? "I don't have enough room in my basement, now I need a sub-basement." I think this just opens up a whole new level of silliness... and it would require a lot of reprogramming.
But I still would like to see some variations of the castle design....
This, this I would like to see. More on this in a second...
And the copout of some castles having "blocking" items in the courtyard..... I seem to recall a few years back they removed a bunch of vegetation that was "encroaching" on properties... this I know because a large Yew tree was removed from beside one of my homes.. sadly... but it allowed me to gain 3 tiles... They could once again remove all vegetation that is blocking.... and take all that out of castle courtyards... and give all castles and keeps a REAL base.... either 24x24 or 32x32... that can be customized.
Bleh... I definitely don't want them to run around removing vegetation. The Yew thing was part of the adjustment of that area because of the swamp that appeared and then later disappeared. They took the opportunity to free up some space, and this was good.
For them to start removing vegetation from existing castles, well, you know, if they got rid of the entire forest behind me, I could put a castle there too... Heck, I only need them to take out about five rows of trees. And you better believe if they start removing statics from the game for one castle owner, they might as well just put in a whole flat green acres for the world, because you know, trees and stuff are inconvenient.
What I will say about this is that I would fully support a 24x24 plot and a 31x31 plot, both customizable, with the following limitation: It can't exceed 2 stories.
Now, if you have a castle or keep that is placed over landscape such as trees, tough. Move your castle or keep. No removing statics for anyone's convenience. Leave the game world as it is.
But if you can place the large-sized plots, go for it... and then you can customize, up to two stories... no three story monstrosities.
And actually, I'm thinking maybe they could do 20x20, 22x22, 24x24, 26x26, 28x28 and 30x30, or maybe just 20, 22, 26, and 30... all square bases, none of this silly shape like an 18x30... let's keep it simple on anything over 18x18, and anything over 18x18 gets no more than 2 stories to them. (If the upper limit becomes 30x30, a castle should still be "convertable" to this through the menu, it would simply lose 1 square (east or west, who cares?) and the stairs in would be the 31st row at the front).
This would (1) allow customization of large plots, and (2) help prevent the lag issue that would potentially arise from a 31x31 three story ogre.
As for the usual argument of "they'll make horrible designs," well, yeah, some will. Custom housing is still an awesome thing, there ARE some great houses out there, and, well, you don't have to live inside it. I've got some garish neighbors, I've got some awesome neighbors. To each their own.