First, can you turn off the game turn limit so that I can still "win" but take longer that whatever the preset is? I think it is a great feature overall, keeps games shorter, but sometimes I want to play out a desperate strategy that is for the long term. In this case, I spawned okay, but quickly got killed over and over by these patrolling knights of Asok who were all over the only way out of my little mountain range I spawned in. So, I sat and grew my city and researched my ass off. Yay, beat the knights of Asok, but the AI has taken the entire map and is swarming me with weak units. I have ten times the tech, but not enough resources to churn out resources. I decide to take Verga and go the magic path now... ugh. First of all, he never gets his higher level earth magic in about ten level ups, so no summoning elementals to help me out. So, I holed up in my initial city and upgraded. I upgraded for years, literal in game centuries. Finally, I got the ability to spam falling stars! Boo yeah, then I buffed the crap out of Verga, got him in some shiny armor, and would go city to city raining down falling stars then taking the now defenseless cities. Finally I got to a higher faction power and was able to force that Altarian scumbag to surrender. But, of course, the game had "ended" long ago.

Things I noticed, the knights of Asok were "weak" but raped my "medium" army early game. This was a little annoying as I got my champion killed and got a nasty scar.

I still want assignable spell slots so I throw dispell, falling star, pillar of fire, etc to a key

the AI never made armies greater than Deadly, while I had Epic defenses most of the game.

The AI tried to use some tactical spells, but really just spammed some city curse that made my guys cold and lose initiative. Apparently this stacked 8+ times was not enough to overcome my defenses though. I just feel like with the ammount of mana they had, and resources, the AI could have wiped me off the earth. 

Now, this was a tiny map on easy and I think I had resources and research boosted, and I played a game before this one where, by the time my Verga met Tarth, he single handedly took out their best soldiers and wiped them out in a few turns. So, it really is about the starting position.

All in all, I actually kind of enjoyed this. I look forward to seeing more improvements in the game etc.