Hey, welcome to the game and the community! I agree with most of your points. Let me address them individually.
I agree. For further discussion, see this topic (although your suggestion was a bit more general).
I was thinking about that too. Perhaps the problem is that, if you can do individual blocks, the citizens are unable to fit through the holes they themselves create, and they might attempt to mine designations deeper into the cliff face that they can’t reach, or some such. But you say there’s already a tool that mines by individual blocks anyway… is that true? I don’t think I even knew about that one. In which case the above-mentioned issue should already be a problem or already be dealt with, and there’s no reason for it not to be allowed with the general mining tool 
Hmm… I don’t entirely agree with that one; it makes sense that the trader will want to get something good out of it as well, after all. I guess (approximately) equal value could work, but even then it doesn’t seem very lucrative for the trader. They should get something for their trouble, after all. And sometimes the trades where you lose some value can still be good, if you get something that is a limited resource where you are, or just something you cannot get easily (i.e. you don’t have to craft all these fur rugs yourself, etc.)
Agreed! The latter point was addressed here, but I think if the former point is addressed, the second thing can be implemented at the same time.
Interesting… could make sense, although perhaps you do eventually want your Stonehearthians to get the more distant goods as well… perhaps it could be a setting somewhere, so that you can focus your citizens’ efforts. I think this sort of thing will probably be implemented once you get more management options in the game.
Isn’t that already slightly the case? I seem to remember… hang on, let me check. Yes, look here at 1:07:20, in the test Tom is running. It looks like the citizen prefers to follow the road.
Ooh, I was just thinking about that yesterday! Yes, I think you should be able to specify whether they destroy it from above or below (although by default they should probably just do whichever is convenient). That way, you can prevent them from getting stuck after breaking down a ladder.
I don’t remember if it has a function at the moment… but I’ll take it from you that it doesn’t. (Not even for making fancy beds and such?) If that is the case, I’m sure it’ll get some love soon 
Well, we are getting crates in the next alpha that allow us to store multiple items in one tile, which is sorta similar. And I think the crates themselves do stack on a single tile, to boot! But it would be cool if certain individual items would be able to behave that way too, it’s true.
Hm, that’s a pretty good one. Of course, for certain things that you manually place in the world, like furniture, you can choose their orientation, but I guess you mean other things that aren’t placed down by hitting them with a hammer (“built”, in Dwarf Fortress terms), but just dropped. I agree, it would be nice if the game had more fidelity toward how the animations were done, sometimes.
Agreed again. Sometimes I make a farm four wide because I want it to be two planted rows, each with a non-planted row next to it, only to realize the orientation of the rows in the farm is in the other dimension, and it doesn’t work out.
I think the voxel 16-bit style is pretty core to the game for the developers, so I doubt that will be changed. I do agree that the concept art looks really good as well, though.
I think the green of the ground is meant to represent grass… but I guess you mean things like occasional patches of tall grass and the like (like in Minecraft). I agree it would be good to have some more things to break the monotony of the landscape. You know, other than the occasional flower or weed. Even if it’s just aesthetic, like the clumps of tall grass might be, or like the various symbols used for the ground in Dwarf Fortress (if you don’t disable that option).
Is on the planned features list, I believe
We used to have a management dialog for just crafters, but now they’re just incorporated into the citizens management dialog. You can at least use that to find their workbenches, I believe (at least you can select them and then open their workbench from the bar in the bottom left), so that you don’t have to break open houses like you said.
However, it might be nice if we could define hotkeys for certain locations, units, or items (including workbenches). I keep referring to Dwarf Fortress—you can set hotkeys for locations, there, at least. That sort of thing might be nice for Stonehearth, too.
Yes, various sorting options might be good. I seem to remember this being discussed at some point, but I can’t find the topic in question.
Yes, more options to control your footmen might be nice. Another one that I think might be nice is if you could give them a move/attack order without having them stay there after they arrive. (Especially because they seem to have a smaller aggro range when on such an order than if they’re just there… which means you have to remove the order for them to even attack an enemy that is nearby, but not nearby enough.) I think Tom mentioned planning to work on such things soon in the same stream I linked earlier, although I don’t remember where in the stream exactly.
There is going to be a bunny faction, at least, which is more or less allied (at least not hostile). I think some others were planned as well
You can kind of do this already if you make a party with your civilians (non-footman units) and set a defense flag for them at a certain point. Of course, this does mean that you need to enable defense mode before they actually go there, so it’s not quite as good as what you are suggesting. There’s also no alerting of guards. That sort of AI would be beautiful to see, I think. I hope we’ll get it at some point!
Would be fantastic. You could also have guardtowers in which you station lookouts that ring a bell when they see trouble, or something. I think these sorts of things were mentioned somewhere before… let me see if I can track that down. Yep, examples: here and here.
Sounds cool! Mounting was mentioned by the developers, at least, I think in a recent stream in response to a question from the chat. Again, don’t remember when exactly.
Sweet
Uses for water are already planned, and farming is one of them. See the Trello, under “Core Engine”.
Would be interesting. I imagine that might be a bit lower priority for the developers than some of the other things, more core elements of gameplay… but I also imagine this sort of thing will happen eventually.
Wasn’t the forge in now? Pandemic mentioned this in their recent spotlight (the text by the “Blacksmith” image). I think more should follow with new jobs, and eventually probably for existing jobs as well.
Interesting. Perhaps could be just a regular citizen set on a specific duty, rather than a specialized class.
I would agree there. Also when you mouse over your roads, sections that you built individually light up for selection. It’s all just sorta strange.
Yes, I think so too. Certainly external doors. Perhaps it could be a toggle, so that you can decide depending on what you want to do exactly.
Ah, I was thinking about lamp posts too, a few days ago! Good suggestions. I think we have a good chance of seeing these in the game.
Very nice post! Quite a number of good suggestions in here 