State of the Beta - what needs fixing?

1) The improvements are only minor changes to a city. There are too many and most don't have an impact or cost to my city. 

2) The AI is not finished. Tactical is still pretty simplistic and I keep seeing the AI stuck moving back and forth between two spots. Just needs more time.

3) There are no mutually exclusive choices. I can do everything in the game in one playthrough. I can specialize in every class as a hero. I can get every spell. I can get 95% of the buildings. Regulars and Heroes should be balanced, but I should not be able to make the best of both in one game. Make me choose a specialty. The only thing that really makes me specialize is when I cannot find enough heroes to get every magic type to level 5.

Still plenty of time to fix these things. Don't be afraid to steal my ideas, they are public domain. 

AI 

I'm not sure to clearly state this, but the game seems "shallow".

I feel that after a few games I've seen all there is to see.  City building is simplistic, research trees are small, limited number of spells, the units are just variations of the same templates.  There just needs to be a larger variety and paths that the game can take.

Don't get me wrong, the core game is fun, I really enjoy it.  There just needs to be more content so there are new things to discover and try out each game.

1 The rare choices aren't rare enough and I've sometimes have seen them 2 or 3 times through the course of my leveling a champion. Rare should be near game breaking in its excitement and utility and yes, the rares should be exclusive. If I take Path of the Mage, then I cannot take the others, or maybe only one or two...

2 Cities never seem to get rares until level 5. I don't know if this is intended or not. More city levels, with slower population growth and more unique choices would be better, in my opinion. Also, probably 8-10 tiles between new cities, instead of the 7 for more spread and less spam.

3 The tactical AI seems just as easy as WOM, even on the streamline

1. Quest variety. I would like to see a large variety of quests, at least not be asked to escort the nobleman's daughter several times a game. Since these are largely text-based, I don't see why they can't be produced en masse. Even if they are the same quest mechanics with a different story, it adds to the sense of novelty.

2. Diplomacy. It seems like this is barely implemented at the moment. The only thing that can be traded is diplomatic capital, and I am not sure what that is. The treaties are a good start though.

3. Slow start with cities and tech. It may just be a balance quirk now, but cities and tech are so slow to develop compared to champions that it never seems worthwhile to build armies. 

I've been thinkin the cities are too close as well, looks like a metropolis at mid/late-game, I would prefer them be maybe twice as far at least allowing for outposts & roads to play a bigger part

1.THE AI!! 

Doesn't matter what you fix or change in the game, if the AI don't work then its all a waste of time.

Fallen Enchantress 0.76 changelog
https://forums.elementalgame.com/415307/page/4/

The Crippled FE AI & Difficulty Thread
https://forums.elementalgame.com/415706

1. Once you've cleared out your little area on the map the game pretty much turns back into WoM. The warfare and city management parts of the game need a ton of work, they sucked in WoM and they suck only slightly less in FE. Alternatively that part of the game can be "hidden" by expanding the the lair/wildlands gameplay into the mid and late game instead of it quickly drying up.

2. AI. It just has no idea what it's doing. Specifically it has no concept of leveling it's units or any knowledge of how much more powerful a player stack is with leveled units. I'm not sure it's even checking against unit level or health when it attacks with army after army of mass produced level 1s. The tactical AI also has no idea how to utilize movement ranges or how to handle melee locking, it just mindlessly moves forward as far as it can every turn until it runs into something then just sits there and beats on whatever it is.

3. I don't really have a third. Those two are my only major issues, though number 1 is admittedly pretty vast and far reaching and could probably be split into several parts for a list like this. Everything else is kind of minor, though there's a lot and I couldn't pick just one to throw in here.

1.AI for combat, diplomacy, city building, etc.

2.Loading times for saved games, map generation, etc.

3.City and champion specialization. Tied with more variety of quests.(improvements I would like to see have already been stated above)

(and it would be nice to have an option to turn off the use of magic in auto-resolving combat)

1. AI

2. Stupid creation of 1 Killer Stack is enough to run over everything (also related to 1. AI)

3. Balancing: Heroes>everything (related again to 1. AND 2.)

Given this is the first beta, I hesitate even bringing anything up but since you asked...

1.  the UI - this has come a long way, but still needs a lot of work.  for example, the currently selected troop/city/quest should be highlighted in the list down the left side, there are tips/explanations for some things not for others, the list down the left side also needs a scroll bar when the number of troops/cities/quests grows more than the screen can show, black on black is ugly and needs to be skinned or something... SD has Jon Shafer now so they should use him ... look at Civ 5 with very pretty UI

2.  the AI - i don't even bother with diplomacy ... i just declare war the first time i see an opponent's borders and waltz through all their cities

3.  city building - currently we can build every building and it doesn't matter

1. Performance (including load times). If I can't play the mid/late game, it's all for nothing. Might as well NOT release the game.

2. AI - As it was "foretold" months ago, it's still the weakest part of the game. Again, all is pointless if this is the AI we're going to face.

3. City building and terrain usage. Too much streamlined, almost ineffective choices and specialization.

There's more, but in other areas Modders can more effectively tweak or add (more balance, more factions, items, spells, traits and so on). What works and keeps hopes high (for me): the not perfect but much improved UI, the general flavour and "cuteness"; the more solid foundation that will grant more freedom (apparently) to modders.

1. AI

2. Something to avoid a single Killer Stack.. I'd really like to have several independent armies, not just one stack running around and killing everything.

3. More quests, especially at lower levels as they get done the most

1. Tactical combat still isn't fun.

2. Stability -there's a lot of crashes and hangs, especially on bigger maps.

3. The scale tweaks - maps are too small and I can't zoom in enough. This stuff was actually better in WoM.

AI isn't perfect yet, but I taking into account the work that has been done and will continue to be done, I think it's okay.

Yeah, when the map is advanced and there are lots of cities an armies, the game seems to hang a lot more.

1. More Depth ( more researchable spells, more quests, more variation in city building and race tactics, better cities, more unit variation) so we get more replay.

2. AI. GOOO BRAD!

3. an increased depth in tactical battles

Really, number 1 is just a matter of tweaking XML's till they are perfect. And time. More time. The game will be done when its done, so thats at least half a year from now I think. Gives Brad some more time to tool with the AI.

1) Better spell info from champion level-ups: https://forums.elementalgame.com/415862

2) More faction differentiation. Traits for everyone!

3) Enabled mod tools!

1. City building is not fun (can build everything, everywhere)

2. Tactical battles are not fun (no terrain, morale, forts, weapon differentiation, ranges, etc)

3. Leaders and Heroes OP and tech falls far behind, meaning no need to build troops, etc

1. City building is not fun (including the insane caravan micromanagement)

2. Tactical combat is not fun and not remotely tactical

3. Champion placement on the map lead to major unbalances and exploits*

 you can kill high tier enemy unrecruited champions and get their awesome weapons very early in the game before the enemy has any chance to recruit them. also the whole mechanic feels lame, i would like to have them recruit-able from a small roster in neutral buildings or cities (speak inns) similar to HoMM.

also (yes i know more than 3):

4.  the ai is terrible

5.  terrain is still largely useless and city spam is still very much in place

I would also agree with making heroes hireable from cities or buildings in those cities, subject to balanced criteria, costs, appearance and powers.  Techs could still be used as a means to attract higher level heroes.

In general, I'd say the following

1) AI of course.

2) Pacing issues

3) I think the game needs random events, and as many as BTS/FFH had.

4) Unrest needs to be a real mechanic, with real effects (like rebel armies spawning), and be affected by things other then just taxes.

I think a lot of folks are complaining about lack of choices, but I think some of this may be due to the above issues.  It's possible the choices are there, but we don't get to them.

I would say the most important issues are:

1) Stack of doom

2) Loot driven economy

3) The AI

When the first two issues are solved and the AI gets an upgrade (and please change how you choose difficulty to a system where AI level, and bonuses are allocated separately), we can start evaluating all the balance issues, they are legion, but not unfixable.

For a 0.75 beta I think we're in a good state. Considering ~25 Updates with 1 update a week means another half a year of developing.

1) The AI. The game is already fun, the ai isn't. Strategical as well as tactical.

2) Caravan/Trade micromanagement --> Make it a macro/meta screen like foreign relations/research/etc...

3) Tactical combat. What we have is not better than what has been there for years in MOM and HOMM. I don't want a difficult table top like model but a slightly bigger map with some terrain that matters would really be nice. (And some meta-decision-checkbox before I let a battle auto-resolve like "Don't use magic", "don't consume items")

[0.76]

1) city building more strategic/interesting -- more interaction with terrain?  building choices with more differentiation?

2) battles more tactical -- a greater variety of unit abilities; and/or a little more complexity in the underlying system

... I don't actually think yall neccesarily need BOTH of the above to have a great game, but probably at least one.  

3) Polish on some base gameplay mechanics that are placeholdery or legacy.  (caravan micromanagement and odd unit movement rules near cities are my personal pet peeves)

The majority of the AI code won't be in the beta 1 series. That starts happening in beta 2. For beta 1, only APIs for the AI are available and are made use of to determine their stability/performance.