As always, thank you for the review, SeedinAethyr.
I will answer your questions in a chronologic order:
-For the Lich being OP thing: I'm going to compare the overall level 1 and level 2 ability damage that heroes get from their burst spells and check if Lich is leading by a huge margin. (It might just be that the tooltips sometimes don't tell the correct numbers.)
As you said, I would agree that the use of damage items in fast-attacking towers is the most efficient use of the gold spent for the item. I haven't tested it in the past few days, but one of my friends used to do it all the time. I wouldn't consider it OP though, because you have to keep in mind that the damage is still single target; meaning if the monsters are quickly clumping up in front of your walls, those towers will probably still draw short in comparison to splash damage towers. (I am going to test this myself for confirmation)
For the size of the bases: I always tried to see the relation between the space you have and the number of walls you have to place / entrances you have to guard. So maybe if you build in a place that offers more than enough space, it will still come at the price of having to build 1 or 2 extra walls. But you might be right about some bases being not very "balanced" since I can recall some where you only have to place 2 walls and can still have more than enough room for yourself - so I might make some bases smaller. But If you reach lategame, you will also realize that the size of your base is not always to your advantage: Many of the later mobs can cast blizzard or rain of fire, meaning if you dont pack your buildings together enough, you might lose a huge chunk of your goldmines if your healing tower can't reach them. So this is also my answer to the transmute question: You dont wanna have your gold minens too far in the back, plus the cast range is actually pretty huge along with projectile speed and gets even greater once upgraded to the lumber mine.
I will try to do something about the dummy unit, but I believe you can't choose heroes anymore if it has locust. Maybe I will do something completely different.
The build time on gold mines has to be a tooltip error, I will change it to the correct value.
The gold per 5 seconds is some broken number for the cheaper mines (0,1875 or sth like that), that was why I used the 30 second period in the first place. But I can surely add the 5 second income aswell.
I think I could work out a small trigger that instantly calculates the new gold income, if it bothers you. Beforehand, it was always on the 5 second timer aswell.
I will look for an error or add a new waypoint for the mobs at the base you mentioned. Its most certainly because the units just don't have enough of a nightsight radius.
I am an honest guy, so no, for now there are no secret recipes, but your idea really reminds me of Moo Moo survival where you had to look for all the secret item combinations, I guess i could see that applied to my map aswell, we'll see