I voted good! This was a HUGE improvement over beta 3. Well done!

Pros:

+ City specialization is a good direction. It gives the cities personality.

+ Fantastic job on the new interface elements. I especially like the new spell book.

+ Outpost upgrades were cool. I also liked the improvement upgrades being implemented with tile resources as well (like shards).

+ Essence is a good add. I think it has potential as a resource but it could be utilized more.

Balance:

- Small map with 3 other AI players: The game play seemed to slow down considerably late game, not the graphics, the actual pacing.

- Magic started out feeling way too weak, but eventually (mid game) got up to acceptable levels. This will be tough to balance.

- Overall it feels like the magic system is a little detached from the rest of the game. Sure it modifies different aspects, but it feels. . . external. It seems like it needs to be brought up to speed with the rest of the systems with more meaningful interactions.

Bugs:

- Still noticed that one of the AI characters was getting astronomical mana spikes throughout the game.

- Pillar of fire will not kill, just bring them down to 0 HP and they keep on kicking. . . is that intentional?

- On the ledger, I clicked the 'Details' button for one of my cities, and nothing happened, so I pressed it again, still nothing. Three times total I pressed it with no effect, so I closed the ledger, and the Details screen popped up. When I closed it, another one popped up. Three details screens opened up in series after I would close the previous one.

That's all I can think of right now. Again, the concepts that you implemented this time for cities, outposts, and interfaces, were all positive in my opinion. Keep up the good work, guys!

I voted Excellent. I still think there is room for improvement, BUT i LOVE what you have done to the cloth map! You all listened to what we bitched about in the early builds when everyone first complained about the cloth map. The colours make a real difference and it properly displays where the mountians are! "No more i'll just nip through this pass - oh it doesn't really exist" - JOY.

You should all be really pleased with your progress - keep up the good work guys i think this could be truely great game.

OMG. I didn't play the new version but if the AI is actually not-that-rubbish its a good news! Voting a game down because getting destroyed is so stupid.

There is absolute no problem to make the game winable at easiest level regardless what you do. Man I'm so tires about this stupidness... Whoever read this from the devs: Keep the harder levels as hard as possible!

What are you talking about?

He is complaining about getting beaten on an easy setting (I assume) which is exactly what (I think) you are saying. It's therefore not "stupidness".

Hard should be hard, easy should be easy - I think everyone agrees on that.

In my game I completely forgot about enchanting my cities - maybe because the game never recommended I did so?

Should the enchantments somehow be linked to the city building screen?

A new player would struggle to find out that they could enchant their own cities (or indeed cast any strategic spells) since the spellbook is not obvious.

And? Its exactly what I saying: There is 0 problem to make the game easier on easy! Its a BETA. It far more complex to make it difficult!

I voted fair, because of UI still needing a bit of work (treasure windows, building tooltips not showing effect of Essence, no path displayed before the unit is already moving) and the city tile placement problem. If the tile placement is fixed I'll be in the "good" camp.

If the UI problems are fixed on top of that I'll be closing in on Excellent (though I don't know much about balance yet.

Sorry - I thought you were calling him "so stupid" for suggesting exactly what you are saying?

Maybe English is not your first language because we are clearly not understanding each other.

First of all, I have to commend the team on producing a version of the game that makes me want to keep playing.  The game has advanced by leaps and bounds with .95..  Outposts are an excellent way of not cluttering up the land with cities, I think this is probably the biggest step forward.

Still some problems - the quests are broken - they say I need to research a certain tech, but don't unlock when I have those techs.

Still the dreaded mixed-up cursors that were there on day one of WoM.  Still cannot understand why these don't work properly - not good for emersion and polish.

Some slow-down/missing task bars in combat.

And the unkillable champions of course (although this is gameplay rather than error).  If I've just killed a sovereign or an enemy hero, I don't want to see them coming back at me in 3 turns time - no way.  Dynasties would allow for sons/daughters of sovereigns and heroes to replace fallen sovereigns and heroes, in a much more natural, realistic and compelling way.  This is the main stumbling block for me with FE, but something that could easily be put right.  No more immortality please! 

Oh and btw, I am not finding the game too hard.  I am currently second, and seeing off every enemy that comes my way (on Normal difficulty). 

Had to downgrade to Fair because of the continued existence of the AI Burning Blade Stacking Bug from previous versions (which is a gamebreaker).

This new version is really good. Many of the balance issues have been solved regarding cities and the tech tree. The essence system is really nice, it also makes Enchanters must have pick for me. 

My main complaint is that its much more rare to get decent magic items and I never saw a really powerful one, even while killing the strongest monsters in the game. You really need to fix this since it ruins the adventuring part of the game for me, though I agree that the previous system was flawed.

Yeah, this is a problem...

Voted 'Good', would have voted 'Very Good' if there was an option but not quite 'Excellent' yet. In my mind the balancing is still a bit off (aware that this is being worked on for the next patch) but it is already very playable and fun.

I like the essence mechanic. it's a nice addition and adds a lot to city placement decision making.

New city specialization mode is great as well - one request though: allow us to view the city before making the decision. Especially late game it's sometimes hard to remember what a city was meant to be specialised to ...

Building upgrades are awesome. Less clutter, cities look tidier but still easy to differentiate a village from a fully grown capital.

Auto-placement of buildings: meh ... I turned it off.

Spellbook: awesome! But make it so that it remembers the last page (or layout) selected. If I want to tesselate the map with Pariden outpost, I want to select the same spell over and over.

I would like to see further faction differentiation (unique buildings?) and also a restriction on spellbooks being used. IMHO too many champions have spellbooks, often multiple ones. Think this should be restricted to make spell casting abilities rarer, something like champions can only have one spellbook unless they have some kind of mage trait. In general would like to see bigger differentiation between spellcaster and combat champions.