I just finished my first game on .95 (well i did not finish but i can any sec since the AI has one city) I think the game is much better but I am not loving the end game.
I have defeated every creature on the map besides the epic quests and my sovereign is only lvl 5. This is very detrimental because, I have conquered the entire map minus one city which will go down as soon as i cross the border basically. And now i have nothing to do. I have a city on every point that had the ability to settle a city on, and yet still I am not very far on tech and I have no more monsters to kill. But until my tech catches up I can't do the epic's cause they are too hard.
I think the cities really need a different method of resource than just the tile they are built on. I conquered the swamp city Dyowhatever and it has 5 grain (great) and 0 production
and no essence to enchant hammers it seems to me that the epic city should have a huge amount of essence...anywho
I think this game needs some more late game content for the completionist in us all. Maybe add new realms or something. Places where there are ultra high lvl characters to fight. Or add a building that gives quests from cities (tavern, palace, etc)
Also I think cities are better but they still feel a bit meh. I don't care about my cities and they are too easy to conquer. I should not be able to just roll in with my sov and 3 heroes, or just my sov late game, and get out without any issues. Maybe your citadel (capital city) gets bonus defenses based on shards, you know, like you get a tower that shoots flame arrow every turn per fire shard you have. Something to make me fear combat. ATM it is way to easy to just ignore everything on the map and just rush cities.
I really liked the old method in war of magic that made harder monsters appear after certain events happened.
As it is the game is shaping up nicely (still has bugs and crashes to desktop but those are easy to ignore) I am more concerned about the pacing and such.