These are a few of the more important items that have been mentioned in the editor wish list for Empire Earth 2, I have cut down a number of items so they remain relevant to a possible AoE3. I think # 8 is probably the most important.
1) Multiplayer Designing: Imagine if you will, the ability to host a game, but instead of playing the game you got together with your buddies and designed a scenario online. Scenario design teams would probably find this the most useful as it would make it much easier to get together with other team members to work on joint projects. However, I think the average player would enjoy it as well. A group, for instance, could make a map and then play against each other on it. A good descriptive name for this would be cooperative designing. 2) Effects that can write/read from/to text files: Visualizing the effectiveness of these effects is a no brainier. This would make it possible to keep track of various things outside of a scenario. The implications for such triggers for both multiplayer scenarios and single player scenarios are monumental if you can conceive of a few of the possibilities such effects could have. 3) Graphic Scaling: Most games already have this as a feature of their editor. However, it would be useful if you could scale objects by individual axis. 4) Graphical Effects That are Laid as Terrains: With this idea you could draw on the map where you want to see smoke, mist, fog, rain etc... However, for this idea to actually be something creative you should also be able to manipulate the elevation level in which the terrain is placed. These effects shouldn't just be objects that have been incorporated into terrains as that defeats the purpose of such an idea. 5) A Water Fill Tool: For this tool to work properly the editor would have to function under a system of numerical denotation for elevations. Basically this tool would allow you to fill a certain elevation level up with water. The water level would be adjustable so both shallows and deep oceans can be created. The tool would only you to fill an area with water if that area is constrained by a higher elevation. This tool would allow water to placed at any elevation level without the hassle of non-elevation water
based systems. 6) Surfaces and Colour Overlays That Can be Applied to Terrains: Basically this would allow you to change the tint of terrains by placing colour overlays on top of them. Coupled with this would the ability to choose from maybe four surfaces that can be placed with the terrain. These surfaces would fairly simple; you could have a jagged, flat, bumpy and blocky surface. These surfaces would not act as elevations, they would act simply as if they were normal terrains. 7) A Physics System that can be Modified: The designer would able to change a series of constant values (i.e. gravitational force, coefficient of static and kinetic friction). The designer would also have the ability to distort simple equations in order to create surreal effects. 8) A Component Based Trigger Systems: Several games already possess such a system as they dwarf non component based trigger systems by providing greater power and flexibility. A component based trigger system basically allows you to construct the components of triggers before you actually construct the trigger itself. It turn these components can be used in multiple triggers. The next step up from a component based trigger system would be one that operates in a similar fashion to windows. 9) Numerical Elevations: Elevation levels are denoted with a numerical values. 10) Saving your triggers/conditions/effects/objects/areas: the ability to copy all of your triggers/conditions/effects/objects/areas into a .txt file so that you can "load" them into a new scenario that you are designing without having to remake everything. 11) Multiplayer scenario testing: The ability to be able to test the multiplayer scenario as any player without going online. 12) A campaign editor: An editor which allows you choose what scenarios you would like in a campaign and the media you like in the campaign. (I know this sounds like an odd request, as this is fairly standard for editors now, but I know of a certain game that came out recently completely forgot to put one in.) 13) Text editing system: Empires has a really nice system that allows you to change the colour, alignment and size of the text in areas where text is displayed. They also use a system that allows you to implant any numerical condition within a text section. This is great for things like kill counters, death counters, etc. 14) More programming type features Sort of like taking content from txt files but more. Players can enter input, and the game keeps it as a variable that can be used later. Variables would add a lot of depth and personality. Imagine a scenario asking for your name and it uses your name for the rest of the scenario. 15) Unit Pathways This function would be similar to tasking units to an area only you would be able to define a path that the unit can walk along. 16) A Manual