My two big problems with Dawntrail were as follows:

1. All four of the Dawnservant candidates seem woefully unqualified for the job, each of them being extremely one-dimensional -- I like peace! I like technological progress! I like imperialism! I'm the chosen one, genetically!

2. The entire Alexandria storyline was rushed and, frankly, unnecessary. It felt like halfway through writing they were like, "Damn, this is boring, let's introduce a world-ending threat." But Sphene never really felt threatening, because there was no tribulation involved in dethroning her: we just booped on over to Living Memory, unplugged everything, and unceremoniously killed her. The end. No real obstruction or hardship. We just did it. Even more boring than the first half, somehow.

My solution would be: cut Gulool Ja Ja's death and everything after it. Keep the Dawnservant story as the first half of the expansion -- this is, after all, at its heart, a game about the Scions helping to install stable leaders in unstable areas. But it'd need some changes:

1. Tural needs to have something threatening its stability. It seems to be at peace and everything is good.

2. A generally happy populace at peace would not be throwing their weight behind a comically imperialist candidate. Zoraal Ja having widespread support makes literally no sense, because his whole platform is "Mwahahaha! POWEEEERRRRR!" Stupid.

3. Flesh out all of the Dawnservant candidates way more. Each of them -- Wuk Lamat included -- should have an actually compelling reason to take the throne, and at least one weak area that would be a compelling argument against them. Wuk Lamat can be the status quo candidate, but she needs to be weak on something -- whatever's threatening Tural, maybe, or she's too isolationist, I dunno. Zoraal Ja and Bakool Ja Ja need to be not comically evil.

4. Ketenramm and Krile (especially Krile) need massively expanded stories. One of the worst moments in DT is when you finally unlock the path to the Golden City, you really want to go check it out, and then the game says "Hah, you wanted the illusion of agency? Screw you, go play cowboy on a stupid side-quest for several hours." Shaaloani was a narrative embarrassment. Get rid of it and Heritage Found. Maps four, five, and six (assuming we need six, an expansion staple I very seriously question) should be in the "Golden City," but we shouldn't know what it is when we go. It should be a process of organic discovery that sets up a major threat for the patch stories. It should culminate in us dealing with a less major threat that's still suitable as an expansion final boss. It doesn't have to be Meteion 2.0, which is what we got.

5. I would rework much of the "path of the Dawnservant" or whatever to cut down on the boredom. Less picking reeds, much more inter-candidate strife, inter-Scion strife, etc. Not malicious strife, necessarily, just justified competitiveness.

I could say a lot more, but that's the gist.