In the only game I've played after the 1.08 update, I had zero metal resources on an entire continent.  When I researched the rare metal adventure tech, I got one ventri (sp?) metal mine pop up.  On an entire continent.  So I had about 20 villages and only one metal mine.  Ouch.  Definitely think there might be something funny going on with metal.

BTW, lots of bugs in 1.08.  Still don't understand how these types of things can get through the QA phase.  Need better attention to detail there.  My sovereign with a bow can now take down almost anything (other than the 150 HP obsidian golems) with just the bow..  Apparently defense doesn't matter (or isn't reducing dmg).   Add the dragon you get from the quest plus the fireball spell and you can now even take down the baddest of beasts very quickly.  Plus all of my spellcasters other than my sovereign (e.g. children, imbued heroes, fire giant, stone giant, trained dragons, quest dragon, etc) get reset to 0 mana about every other turn.  Sooo frustrating.

All the NPC adventurers you used to be able to hire also have become unhireable.  I can inspect them and see their ability (e.g. +1 tech research), but they're no longer hireable.  Very weird.

I do like that the beginning of the game is now tougher, though.  Or at least it seems to be.

Neither Atk, health or defense are additive (they just show up that way in the power estimation window, not in combat calculations). And my fire giant steamrolled a group of dudes armed with Karazans. They roll individually.

Diplomacy gets you darklings, umberdroths, dragons, ect. These creatures cost only gold and can be respectably formidable on the battle field.

Magic and diplomancy will get you started, so you can take someone else's iron.