Ok, so I skipped the last couple of betas after playing beta 2 extensively in the spring. I have to say the game has come leaps and bounds since then. I just answered the "where are we at?" poll that Brad posted up; my answer was 'good'. There is obviously a bunch of polishing to be done, and I've got a list of things I noticed in the two games I played of Beta 5 (0.98). There is a bit more than polish to bump it up to where I would say it is "excellent" however: First, the AI needs to be able to play both strategically and tactically much better, and in particular it needs to be able to make decisions about how the one will influence the other. Second, I haven't quite bought into the current balance regarding the strength of sovereigns and champions. For both of those reasons I was able to start up these two games knowing nothing about all the new gameplay introduced since March (which is a huge level of ignorance, believe you me) and roll over the AI without a challenge.
Both games were played on 'normal/default' everything. I played first as Tarth (but didn't expand and built no scouts - there's that ignorance for you), but used my Sovereign and single Champion to roll right over Kraxis and take all 8 or so of their cities without a problem. At any point following that, I could have taken out the rest of the map, but chose instead to play around a bit. In the end I won by alliance to Procipinee after knocking Ceresa out of the game. Second game played as Pariden, and expanded rapidly, making use of city enchantments for the first time. Without a single tussle I came out of the settling race with twice the cities and twice the score of all of my opponents. I parlayed that huge infrastructure advantage into an ever-accelerating ascension to the godhood, waltzing to a quest of mastery win with a killer champ stack.
During these play-throughs I noticed a couple of issues that I will mention here. Minor, major, didn't matter. If Word could catch a spelling mistake it shouldn't be in the game.
- first off, the new setup screens look great, but there's a second Tarth option called "Yara" that uses the same description text referring to "Lady Irane"
- in close-up figurine shots of champs with bows, there is no bowstring visible
- when a settlement first levels up, the description text for the 'Town' option has a typo: "agRiculture"
- combat sounds in tactical were sporadic throughout both games. sometimes whole tactical battles would have none, sometimes no problem, and sometimes it would only come on half way through
- terrain features on the strategic map don't show up right away, ie. when the fog of war is revealed, enemy cities are showing up as fence borders and roads with nothing inside. only several turns later do they show up. same thing happens to individual terrain features like lairs and shards occasionally
- the 'storm' tactical spell animation takes place on a unit other than the one being targeted and damaged. same for the air shrill 'static blast'
- the mouseover text for the Firebrand unit is missing the word "those", ie. it should read "those that..."
- the Fog of War does not reveal dynamically with unit movement. ie. you need to send the unit to a tile, wait for the reveal, then send to the next tile, then wait, etc...
- back in Beta 2, the large monster 'crash' that caused the map to shake was awesome but happened too often (ie. strategic map and tactical both), and also inconsistently (ie. ogres did it but not some even larger monsters). Now it appears to have been more or less axed 
, but very occasionally it still shows up for an ogre or troll in tactical.
- in tactical nobody seems to want to rush my ranged units. I guess there are kiting issues to be worried about, but they shouldn't be able to sit there without worry...
- whenever a champ stack walks over a quest location en-route to somewhere else, the "notable location unavailable" message pops up
- one of Pariden's diplomacy messages spells "readily" with one too many 'L's
- computer players ignore undefended loot in their borders and adjacent to their borders quite frequently. they also seem to ignore small monsters nearby. a great deal of advantage can be gained merely by walking around the whole map picking up the bits and pieces no-one else cared about.
- at the 'no comp advantages' level of difficulty at least, it is not necessary to pay any attention to taxes or unhappiness. now, granted, careful strategic use of it will give a huge advantage, but ignoring it seems to offer no barrier to steamrolling the AI. contrast that with GalCivII... the first thing I would do in any game is set the tax rate, and it was one of the most important things to manage the whole game. same in other TBS like Civ. TBS is all about economics, and right now the balance is making the mechanic irrelevant.
- during the arena gladiator quest, I got stuck once on an obsidian golem's turn and had to 'auto-finish' out of the battle.
- when improvements are added to cities, the terrain shifts. ie. mountains change shape when a building is built
- the description of the Bhindami Fissure has a typo: "magnificAnt" should be "magnificEnt"
- there's a graphics glitch (or some terribly bad taste) in the credits. watch what happens at the bottom of the screen: the text is scrolling up but is revealed by a downwards wipe
- the screen for loading a saved game says "creating world" instead of "loading game", and the status bar is usually finished only half-way through the loading time (not that any status bar anywhere is ever correct, but still)
- the tactical spell 'slow' can be doubled up: once cast, then once applied by an ice golem
- on the close up figurine image of the NPC Giovanna, she doesn't have a clearly visible mouth
- when units are "shrunk" (at least with Sculla's mace) they don't visibly change in size
- speaking of which, Sculla's mace is wildly overpowered. to the point that when I get it, I won't use it
- if you add a logging camp to the queue of a city, then remove it, the city's connection to the forest may be broken, thus preventing you from building a logging camp in the future
- the animations for both the mantles of flame and ocean leave artifacts behind on the strategic map, ie. the aura effects remain on a tile long after the units have left
- the scrap golem boss stacks of doom sometimes wander 8+ squares outside of the influence borders of their valley
- mounted units attacked in tactical battles rear up, which can cause their health bars to do a double or triple vision effect until a change prompts them to update.
- in general, health status bars in tactical often do not update
- a handfull of times, when I started up the game the loading screen wouldn't come up. all but once I just had to wait for the movie to start.
- the "fearful merchant" quest(s) use the same image as for "morrigan the mad"
- when I rushed the construction of a 'high tower' outpost improvement, it caused both the outpost and the city's borders to expand
- the Ghost Helm armor description has an unnecessary apostrophe: Tomb's should be Tombs (plural)
- experience giving books appear to be buggy: when I transferred them from my Sov to other Champs, they didn't appear to have any effect at all on either unit
- there are two Curgen's Hammers (yes, two of the most powerful weapon in the game). one you win in the gladiatorial arena, one you get from an ogre during the quest of mastery.
- the animation after winning via quest of mastery has nothing to do with dragons - it's some wierdo opening a chest. I swear I remember there was a great animation for this back in February... where did it go?
- roads seem to be placed without concern for borders. whatever the algorithm is, it seems to assume I'll always be able to go through my neighbours' property, even when there could be a simple connection within my own borders
- the "pit of despair" looks ridiculous on the strategic map. all those mountains, a huge chunk of map, wasted to keep me out of a quest location? the scale/awkwardness is just awful
- tactical battle maps are functionally boring. superficially they look better than ever, but there doesn't seem to be any real tactical variety in terms of cover, obstacles, high ground, etc
- even with super-speedy infrastructure build-out for cities and tech, by the time I could produce anything remotely interesting my champions could have wiped the map twice over
- not being able to pass through allied cities is frustrating, and in one game prevented me from winning by quest without declaring war on my ally
- not being able to pass over mountains, even slowly with all sorts of penalties and pre-reqs, is frustrating and breaks immersion, as does not being able to pass over water.
- the inability to switch weapons during combat is also immensely frustrating. who ever heard of archers who wouldn't pull a dagger to defend themselves in hand-to-hand? I'm fine losing a turn, just please, pretty please, give me the option
- finally, fighting Waerloga was a cakewalk. thanks to a 'slow' spell, he didn't get off a single attack before he died
Unfortunately, I don't have time to play through more times and get a deeper feel for the current mechanics, as I'm back at uni again next week. The game right now is looking promising, but the AI and balance will need to pose a challenge for the game to one that I want to come back to. Keep at it Stardock!
