So it's Sunday morning, a quick look at the Sunday papers (Greece is going to hell, nothing new here 
), the football match is at 18:30, so AT LAST i have plenty of time to play a full game with the new 1.06 patch (hadn't even played the 1.05).
I set the game on extreme, medium map, stock sovereign (a Royalty female, don't remember the name), 7 opponents on extreme and ready to go. Only victory condition was conquest (or whatever it's called).
Apparently the map was too small for 7 people and soon i'm surrounded by other factions, with monsters, adventurers and caravans moving all around like it's rush hour. Fortunately i built rather soon a couple of cities in good, resource-full, postions. Unfortunately there's a guy, Magnar surrounding my area not letting my scouts pass. Two choices there, attack or befriend him.
I chose the non-aggression route, mainly because, he was at war with two other factions so he could keep them busy while i build up my army (secondly because i'm a coward 
). That didn't work well though...
While Magnar eliminated opposition, i got my military tech near 20, built up a rather solid army and moved my troops next to his nearby cities ready to rock 'n' roll. What i didn't know (didn't notice actually cause it was right there in the dialog), non-aggression pacts last for 99 turns and i couldn't break the pact in the meantime. So there i am, all dressed up for war, hitting the next turn dozens of times, researching useless spells and techs and training more tropps in the process. Then Magnar is eliminated by someone 3 TURNS before the pact expires 
. Splendid...i spent the best part of the game clicking a green arrow for nothing. Then the winner, overwhelmed apparently by his victory, got stationed in a city to celebrate, ALONE, while his armies where roaming aimlessly in the wilds...Five turns to go there, 1 sec to hit auto-resolve battle.
In one word: ANTICLIMATIC. But enough with my "adventures"
Impressions
Anyway, the game looks solid in 1.06 (compared to the 0-day patch), only crashed once and only after 200 turns. Framerate seems to be improved and some past annoyances are obviously fixed. Finally it got that "on more turn" feeling that i truly missed in the initial versions. Still a lot to be desired though, but i won't repeat tha same ol' same, there is excellent feedback in other posts (this one for example)
Suggestion
The non-aggressive pact seems a little unintuitive to me. It should allow both parts to roam each others territories, but there should be a way to break the pact. At least that's how it goes with pacts in the real world (Ribbentrop-Molotov anyone?)
Conclusion, the game seems to be taking the right path, still a long way to become what most of us hoped, but from what i see you're really fast in delivering patches at Stardock, so i'm confident it will become a really good game and multiplayer will surely give it a boost.
