I challenge you to find one post with people commenting on how "perfect" the game is!

I don't know if you are familiar with the usual meaning of the term 'beta' (though it might be different in case of Stardock), but 'beta' refers to the phase of final testing when the product is feature-frozen, and the effort is concentrated on polishing/debugging/tweaking.

So while there may be some stat changes, or buttons may be added or removed, or minor GUI changes may occur, or AI maybe improved, I think tactical battles we experience now are basicly what it will be in the final game.

And if someone points to design problems, there is slim chance it will be changed radically in the final product.

I hate to admit that I share the feeling of the game feeling a bit boring.

I mostly enjoy the gameplay mechanics (except for the city tile building), but many aspects of the game lack epicness:

1) Improvements are boring. I hate building up the cities because I don't really understand what is good and what is not. I hate that I get no message when an improvement is complete and I get no satisfaction for completing a building. For contrast, even building a granary in Civilization games seemed cool as the game stops and points out "hey, you just built a granary here!", and you get the saw & hammer sound effect and everything. Somehow, building stuff doesn't seem like an achievement, it's seems like adding a line in a spreadsheet.

2) Finding rare items seems indistinguishable from finding common items. I love the idea of unique loot. The gameplay system is great. BUT! I hate that all the epic stuff I find just appears in my inventory and I equip it and carry on playing. I wish there was some sort of a fanfare or something else making me feel awesome when I find that magic sword.

3) Finishing quests are not rewarding enough. I want to feel great when I escort the noble into her estate. I need graphics that shows the girl reaching his dad or being taken by the thieves. Or some kind of sound effect, or something. I want this stuff to matter. Now it's just a decision to maximize my profit, and I don't give two shits about what the quest was actually about. Something is missing, and I'm sorry that I can't be more precise than this.

4) Tactical battles are great presentation-wise. This is one part that doesn't need improvements. The gameplay mechanics need some improvement to make tactical battles more interesting, but the presentation is excellent. EXCEPT! The battle ending screen could use some soul. It lacks something. The experience gained could be displayed somehow more interesting. Maybe a sword that fills up as you get closer to a level or something. You know, more soul.

I need to go eat so I don't have time to write more examples, but other places in the game need this kind of polish too. Now let me stress out: THE GAME IS REALLY GOOD FOR THE MOST PARTS! But it needs more soul. It has infinite times more soul than WoM, but it still needs to go that extra yard.

In short: Presentation, presentation, presentation.

haha, same for me.

A hundred times? Must have been a few rather boring posts then, you've posted in three threads. All of em fullo f"Tactical battles should be better!"?

Your intentions are good, the way you come off, as a know-it-all who thinks his opinion is better than the rest, is not. Please do not say you speak for a large audience of strategy gamers... and please do not pretend you know everything better or assault folks intelligence. To be honest, what I have read from you was "Copy Warmachine..." doesnt come off as being a genius either. I've played Warmachine through various rulesets, started with Cryx when it arrived, eventually moved on to Mercenary contracts ( The Moot! Woo!)... and got very, very annoyed by the enormous set of differentiating rules for every single miniature. Its not a perfect game by far. And suggesting to copycat that... I am sure Privateer Press would be very happy. Not.

You come here and accuse folks of being fanboys, of not being critical... I assume you have not read any posts at all... must be... there's loads of criticism, and E:WOM failed, and Frogboy knows that very, very well, and I think he's out for vengance this time

The genre is already old, the general outlines are known. I'd prefer a solid, fun, challenging and entertaining 4X in fantasy land with random maps and the general Stardockian genius behind it above a game trying to be innovative and failing. As long as the AI is good, I'm cool with more of the same, if its well-done. Plus, we will get a solid amount of modding tools ( aka reshape the entire game) once its released... this means we can remod the game any way we like. Keep us happy for decades

As for boring...

turn x: Oh, Relias is in the way... he's three times as powerfull as me, but its a narrow front between me and him .

*declares war*

turn x+5 ... ok, that's city number 1. MINE!

turn x+7... Aaand instead of two cities I now have one city again, and one less tack of troops, because an Ashwake Dragon stomped into my city, toasted my army and turned it into rubble.

turn x+10 Resoln attacks and starts burning my outposts, and I have no responce forces ( were eaten by the dragon).

Bored? Nope. Not at all. Set the AI to challenging, and you wont be bored.

We must be playing two different games here, my lands are regularly getting occupied by bears of doom, spiders, and all sorts of other monsters.Not to mention my heroes have been regularly winning tons of battles and havent gotten past level 3. This game you speak of is certainly not the Fallen Enchantress I have.

Still if you think this is fun, thats cool but that wont sell. I can name half a dozan Empire Strategy building games that are more fun right now based solely on the virtue of proper pacing. You know, faster in the beginning but thanks to a proper curve get slower as it progresses.

Personally, I think its just stupid you need to field armies just to handle some wildlife like wolves, bears and bandits, (Real monsters like dragons and demons and such, sure, Im totally down with that). *cue sarcasm* How great would Skyrim be if your so called Hero needed any entire army at their back to do some simple adventuring! Sounds like every great RPG I've played.. no wait, I've never heard of any RPG where a hero or a group of heroes required a army to clear out a nest of wolves or bears, and for good reason, your no hero if you need a army to go Adventuring.

I think that it's the research trees that make things boring, at present. You can't really diversify and customize your society beyond "Civics, War or Magic". Each tree within those categories don't really let you branch off from the rest of the tech options, making it pretty linear. 

I would reccomend making a lot of diverse tech trees and paths. Make it so we can really feel like our civilization is customized to us. Maybe there could be a sub branch of Civics that gives technology devoted to solving unrest, maybe each element could have it's own sub branch granting bonuses and access to their respective spells, etc. 

What makes these games interesting is the customization options. More customization, the better. 

Et tu, Toby?

I agree that research is boring. I liked the semi-random research of the early versions of WOM a lot better. Right now research is the same in every game, click click next turn to get this, click click next turn to get that. Hide the research tree and add some randomness to it.

Adventure is also very limited, I said many times what WOM needed was something like dungons, I don't know why something like the battle maps couldn't be used as places to explore vs. just the main map.  A place/building on the main map could lead to one or more battle type maps to explore.

Game still needs island map and boats.

I've been an outspoken critic on these forums about WoM but this dude is a real tool. 

I actually don't mind the difficulty as it is now, If you want a better shot then decrease the enemy kingdoms and play on a large map, if not all you have to do is blitzkrieg all the enemy factions until your Number 1,