pixelartist

Not a game, but the Eragon series of books had a fantastically detailed world (particularly the idea of magic) which I would pay dearly to see PROPERLY transformed into a movie or (*nerdgasm*) game (the only movie created based on the first book was just plain bad).

Otherwise I recently played through Ace Combat 5 on the PS2 and found its story very moving (the artwork may have had something to do with it, but I can't really separate the two in my mind now that I've seen it). I can't speak to the other games in the series (AC1-4) because it's my roommate's PS2 and he only brought the one game in the series, but if you get the chance, I highly suggest you check that one out.

Since right click is often the 'block' button in a number of action melee I went with this.

Block/Guard = G

Given that is close to the movement keys does that make it a fluid part of combat? combined with the mouse?

I think this could cause some serious complaints. Assuming you've done the standard "move slower while blocking" to help balance out the usefulness of blocking, it will further impede movement by preventing the player from strafing right. I personally always find it aggravating when a game forces me to jump or block using one of my WASD fingers because I can't move in that direction anymore (I guess technically I could, but then I'd just be doing finger-acrobatics, which is not what I want to do when I'm gaming). Since the player will be more likely to hold down the block-command, and more likely to simply tap the secondary action command (even if you have to hold it for zooming while shooting an arrow, you'll probably be stationary anyway), you're probably better off leaving block on the secondary mouse button and putting secondary action on the keyboard.

I agree with the issue on the number of hotkeys. Keeping it at a standard 10 is probably your safest bet. I do, however, like the idea of being able to rotate through setups. Obviously not everyone will use them (and if they don't, so be it), but it's a definite plus for those who would like to.

I hate to kill your creativity, but I think the key layout is the way it is because that's the way that GENERALLY works best (your game may be an exception of course).

I'm not sure of the mood you're going for in your game (both of your images use fairly bright colours which give me a sense it's a rather "happy", lighthearted game, but that's neither here nor there), but the rocks look great asides from the grid (which you've already noted).
I found this http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/tilemap-based-game-techniques-handling-terrai-r934 little article to be a really good resource when first starting out with tile design. You may have seen it already, but i think it's pretty good quality and needs to be mentioned regardless.
As for grass, try to use less detail, unless your game is on a very small scale.
Also, what's the angle of your camera like? The more top-down it is, the less definition you should see for each blade of grass, while a side-scroller will have more definition and something in between will have something... in between. A very quick search on GD brought me to http://www.gamedev.net/topic/606520-tile-transitions/ which has a couple good examples of grass and the change in detail you see based on scale (though not so much camera angle). Try something to the tune of http://alastaira.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/grass.png which has very little detail, but has fairly high quality when tiled.

I'm not sure if this is applicable for your game, but I find that allowing more/better units to be trained or hired (say from a different race or faction) based on increased map control is a really effective way to stop players from turtling without making it an extremely obvious cop-out. It can also help to end games quicker as you start to restrict your opponents' unit selection while increasing yours with any captures.

It's been a while since I played it, but Mount and Blade had both the camera and your weapon follow the mouse in an interesting way. I think it may have been dependent on your settings too, but I specifically remember the challenge (the good kind, not the "I can't stand this game mechanic" kind) of balancing where you swung your sword with where you were looking. It doesn't have anything to do with the inventory system/moving items around (that was all menu-based) but perhaps that might give you some ideas.
Otherwise, perhaps you could have the camera sit still while the cursor is within a small area on the screen, but start to move as it leaves that area. I'm not sure exactly how that would look since I've never seen it implemented before and never thought about it until now, but that might remove the "unresponsiveness" that I found very annoying in Wii shooters since it would start to rotate shortly after you moved the cursor, rather than at the edge of the screen. Maybe have the camera rotation speed up as the cursor moves further from the centre, and slow to 0 when it's within x distance from the centre.