From memory, Beta 3 was addressing faction differentiation, however there were also improvements to game flow at the beginning (like letting you build on metal mines early, shifting +research techs early). Also, one of Frogboy's goal (correct me if I'm wrong) was to have your starting position (once explored) guide you in the direction of your strategy for the short to medium game. For example, if you were surrounded only by metal, that warefare tech tree is going to get a pounding!!
The Good: about half of the factions have very clear base strategy about them just looking at their stats. When you couple that with the leader's traits, you have at least the following different base startegies (see if you can guess which team is which); ranged skirmishes with magic backup, anti magic mundane warrior force, walking tanks with magic backup, magic reliance to boost cities and troops to something special, attack early and attack hard and attack often. I think this is great. What would be interesting, whether it adds to the differentiation or not, is have a negative trait for each of the teams. No archers is the obvious one in there currently, but if each faction has strengths AND weaknesses their points of difference will become more pronounced.
Starting locations are causing me to really think of where I need to head strategically from the beginning of the game. Played two games now, neither played the same. In one, I was stuck with only my Sov for ages, no access to shards, so I went a warring with the best of the mundane (no crystal either). The other game, I had an abundance of champions, plenty of shards, and was lucky enoug hto have picked a sov that had death magic and fire magic. So when I had 4 death shards..... that spell which is bas 18 fire damage.... plus NINE damage per death shard..... path of the mage... evoker... I went a walking over everyone I met!!
The rebalance of the equipment seems to have made the mundane arts more balanced. The one oddity I found was an axe which had maul, but did 9 dmg only, with a lvl limit of 7. By the time a her or sov is lvl 7, having an attack of 9 does mainly 1 damage a hit due to the high defenses of the units about that time.
The AI stockpiled enough mana to cast a wicked set of spell synergies in a grand battle between Sovs (in their home city).
Lookit all the goodies!! The eqiupment loot is varied and a lot of fun. Allowing me to customise different champions for different roles.
Tech trading implementation is awesome!
The Bad: Spell balancing. Hell, I don't even know if you can balance spells. I think it may have to do with a lack of similar level counters to the damage spells in particular. Modifier spells can be countered by spell resistance which can be up to 30% early on, and modifiers don't kill you outright. However damage spells need to be countered by %elemental resistance. The problem as I see it is that by the time you get 25% resistance on a 40hp unit, spellcasters can do 40-60 fire damage easily (in one game, if I used nature's cloak I would have had 40% resist, but I was doing 150+ dmage for a soul burn. after resistance I was going to kill almost everything with 80dmg). Nature's Cloak is a 20% + shards, which is more, but is expensive when you count the upkeep compared to the damage it protects from (especially if you only have 1 shard). So perhaps tactical versions of resistance spells could be implemented? with a higher base and smaller increase per shard.
Tactical AI. While it did cast a nice set of synergies in the gigantic battle, it did this at the cost of not doing any damage. So by the time the AI was ready to do damage, they were all dead. Also, berserk shouldn't be cast when a unit is clearly overpowered to what is left on the battlefield (on auto tactical, my Sov buffed with berserk to kill something with 10% of the Sov health, and < half attack and < half defense compared to the Sov). There needs to be a check that compares when will they start to be able to do damage after buffing vs expected deaths before that time AND damage dealt forgone vs hp of priority target. This is exasperated when there is a mage doing direct damage spells. They need to be dealt with instantly unless you are immune to the damage type they are dealing.
Another player built an outpost WITHIN MY ZOC. This should be banned. And check to make sure that cities can't be built in another player's ZOC either....
AI that has a side of it's empire up against too many powerful monsters will get stuck and do nothing. It needs to amass enough units into 1-3 armies and chain attack some creatures to open up their territory. This problem also keeps the Sov lvl low as the Sov doesn't kill much.
AI player had gone down the enchanted weapons tech path but didn't have access to crystal at all.
I cannot reiterate the enough in regards to tactical battles. Damage Forgone to cast buffs vs HP of enemies. NEVER buff when 1 turn damage is > half health of enemy unit. Never buff when damage after buff does not reduce Time-to-kill by > 1 turn.
Thanks guys at stardock!! Looking forward to seeing city building changes in Beta 4 
