I like the fresh scenario, MoM returns slowly...

The design-polish is great.

Sadly I think I miss sth. : Strategy.

The game makes fun, to see your cities grow and leveling your heroes. But I miss challenging aims, things that need long-time planing, combats that can be won by finesse, creative preparation that is rewarded. I have the feeling that I am successfull by playing around and by simple basic-descisions. Everything works anyhow, I can not do anything really wrong or really perfect. I do not want to start a discussion about hardcore gamers and Casual gamers, but it is long ago that I played a really good turn-based-STRATEGY-Game apart from Civ and I have/had a lot of hope of that project because I do not know if I really like the real-time-hybrids like Sins of a solar Empire.

At the Moment the game is based on an Outpost-Spam. This makes a very good idea a little bit annoying.

I know the game already has a lot of stuff in it, but in the end combats for example always follow a simple policy: more and stronger wins.

I do not have the feeling that a clever combination of units or designing very special troops will help you or your enemy.

I also miss any influence of the terrain or real defence structures for cities, like towers or obstacles.

If you have luck with your starting position you can spam cities and grow fast, if not and you have weak neigbours you kill them and after that you are very likely the most powerful nation. I can not clearly say how to bring the game from a nice and enjoyable amusement to a challenging strategy game, but now it does not feel like that in my opinion. I like to play around a while, but I do not think it will elate me or will generate great long-term-motivation to me.

Good find. I was asking myself why the army is taking long way around

I voted Good. I agree with erlier posters, in regards to content it's a pretty solid build, although I also would like things like postitioning to matter in tactical combat. It doesn't need to be overly complicated, a simple flanking and perhaps backstab bonus would go a long way to making it a bit more interesting.

I probably would vote exellent if all the small bugs were taken care of. I've come across nothing gamebreaking, but several small annoyances. Just from my last playthrough:

*When designing a custom sovereign/race I want to be able to pick from the races special abilities, or at least pick one of the original race abilities. Maybe I can already do this, but in that case the information is lacking.

*My hero with "true strike" couldn't use it.

*Although I played with the "no archers" trait, my city militia still had archers? This may be intended but is't a bit weird.

*The AI built cities on tiles with 0/0/0. Probably it was supposed to be an outpost? Imagine my dissapointment when I took that city...

*Not really a bug, but the Information-popups need to hold a lot more information... "Apiary: You can harvest honey..." Well, what does honey do then??? (+1 grain and +1 gildar I believe, but it should say so when I click the unbuilt resource). And that's just an example, there are loads of times when you're not really sure what does what. The create sovereig screen is another great example, you should have links to the hiergamememensomething. "Can build juggernauts". Well what's that? (I know, but a new player wouldn't, again, you can't have to much information.). The best thing would be to give the Hiergamenon a work over, and then link to that. Pretty much like they do it in Civ.

Finally, I just want to say that the Beta 4 build is the first time I keep going back to play, and this is a great thing. I've gone from WANTING to like the game to actually liking it for real. Still not lovin' it, but I'm positive it's doable to get there!

As far as I know the AI isn't cheating at all unless you play higher difficulties. Why don't you try playing on easy if you find the computer to aggressive? And I don't think it's weird at all to build pioneers straight away, it's a viable strategy. Granted the AI maybe spams them a bit much, but that's because it's often a good idea to do so. It's not because the computer is "cheating". I do however think that some mechanic to limit the pioneer spam might be in order, but I think the best way to that is to have other things you'll rather build, or at least just as viable to build as a strategy.

It isn't her aggressivity. It is easy to cruch it at normal difficulty. It is the spamming of cities because the IA know the land without scouting, so it know where to send pionners quickly. For the wierding of creating pionners, it's just don't reflect a real colonisation scheme.  You just settle after an apocalyptic war and your first act is to restart to settle somewhere else?

Presently in many game, I nearly nerver creating new cities after my capital, I just conquer the many cities of the IA. For a civilization game type, it is problem. I have a feeling to play a Small World game where we are all neightbors. 

Intitial thoughts:

I have to agree with others, it is good but not excellent. There are the obvious bugs that others have already pointed out but the few I will outline here truly irked me. I should point out that I play the majority of the game on the cloth map and would even prefer tactical battles to be cloth. That said, most of my opinions expressed here default to that mode.

Bugs:

• Henchman are a great idea, except that when I bought them loads of gear, the store charged me for it and then it disappeared in their inventory. They couldn't even trade it to anyone else. So I lost money for nothing. This happened with magic items; staffs, cloaks, boots... not leather armor, though. (IMG 2)

• My captured lairs' icons disappear, after a certain amount of time, for no reason. They are still there but are invisible on the cloth map. (IMG 1) (IMG 3)

• Caravans trigger wildlands quests. Is this intended? Often I don't even know where the wildland is that is triggered and have to systematically search everywhere until I know; annoying.

• It would be wonderful if these great new outposts would garrison units.

• It would be wonderful “explore” could have a setting to stay away from wildlands, as to not trigger them prematurely.

• It would be wonderful if the city upgrade UI could at least state how many of each city type you already have. A simple number (in parentheses) could suffice.

• It would be wonderful if, when an army is set to “Guard” that they “awaken” when an enemy unit comes into their FOV.

• Many of the Heirgamenon entries don't actually tell you anything.

• Tactical battles desperately need armies to be able to “deploy” pre-battle. I know many others have said this but it needs to be reiterated. Simply lift the system from Dominions 3 or something. Currently, my bad-ass sovereign needs to run around everyone weaker, every time; this is maddeningly annoying and detrimental to re-playability.

• There needs to be a way to upgrade all units of one type, similar to many other games of this genre. Just have a simple dialogue screen with a price and an “all” button that does as many as you can afford. If the player doesn't want to upgrade all, they can use the current system to upgrade singly.

• As your empire's Zone of Control increases, the borders start to artifact. (IMG 4)

• After I had completed a wildlands quest (Vetrar), the ZOC never disappeared and the quest never ended.

Now the things that are right with the game are also numerous. Cities are definitely heading in the correct direction. I enjoy not placing all of the buildings and the building upgrade system works well. I have modded my game to keep spacing as follows:

<MinDistancesBetweenCities>8</MinDistancesBetweenCities>

<MinDistancesBetweenOutposts>4</MinDistancesBetweenOutposts>

<MinDistanceBetweenStartingPoints>13</MinDistanceBetweenStartingPoints>

<MinDistancesBetweenImprovements>5</MinDistancesBetweenImprovements>

It feels less crowded this way and I think it improves the overall experience. If there was less water, overall, on the map, I would increase this, minimally, to 10 and go from there. This is obviously on a large map, being the only map size I ever play. The music seems to have received a little work, or perhaps I just haven't played since it has been updated; there are some epic tracks.

I could, of course, continue on and write a dissertation on every singe little thing but I would just be restating what others have said.

Thank you and continue the good work!

===============

BUG: Sometimes the game decides to slow down and show combats in slow motion.

For me Limboldt assumed well the core problem. I agree with him 100 %. I think the minor bugs will be adressed (there will be no WOM second time, i just feel it) bu i miss this too: "I do not have the feeling that a clever combination of units or designing very special troops will help you or your enemy."
I cant forget my epic fail in a space strategy game when my expensive new fleet was "missiled" to death cause of the laking missile jammer.
 

Guys just FYI when ever there is a new beta you should always go into options and see if there are any changes, Additions and even subtractions in there.

You should do this on any game you play where a major update (beta or not) has come out.

Great and addictive gameplay, but there are numerous serious bugs still present.

First, there are the visual bugs, like some times your hero will be in the square next to the army even though they are all in the same group (only way i managed to fix that was to leave and rejoin).

Second, there are the bugs with the engine itself, like massive graphicsl slowdowns, the game going totally out of whack since the running animation dont stop at the end of your movement (resulting in it being impossible to end the turn until you find the unit and click on it). Even worse is that it also occationately happens with the AI units.. and then its goodbye.. no way to fix that.

Third, again relating to the engine i imagine, games can only go on for so long until you get an error, and the game shuts down. Save games wont help you either, and they also get corrupted from time to time.. in short, i'd call this a major mess, its not a game at this point. More of an advanced teaser

Most of the engine problems i imagine happens because of piss poor resource handling and optimization, which i guess gives hope for the future, but seeing the version number so close to 1.0, it scares the bejezus out of me...

Finally had some time to play, and though I've only seen (what I hope is) early game gameplay, it's enough to make me vote: Fair.

It's an okay game really, and if this was the first beta with still at least a year until release I'd vote excellent. But having followed this game's development since way before WoM's first beta, and seeing how some (including Frogboy if I read his posts correctly) seem to think the game is nearly ready to be released, I'm not so sure it's going to be the instant classic some seem to think it will be. I'll clarify which major aspects trouble me.

Pacing; Just seems off. The only sense of urgency I'm getting is the constant pressure to spam as many pioneers as possible, if you don't the whole world is soon covered with AI towns and outposts. Not only isn't this any fun, there's no strategy involved either. It also kills any sense of immersion ("So, we're a ragtag gang of post-apocalyptic survivors that has rallied around a powerful leader, hoping that by working together we can rebuild civilization. What should we do first?" "I know, lets split up again and try to occupy as much land as possible, that way we'll be unbeatable!").
And at other times it seems like there is nothing else to do but press enter over and over again ("Yay, only twelve more turns until my defender unit is build, and only six turns after that I'll have a food surplus so my town can start growing again.") If you're out exploring with one or two stacks it almost seems like you're playing a very slow RTS rather than a TBS game.

Cities; still lack character. This has improved a bit with the split into three different types, which is nice and could be a good mechanic with a bit more differentiation. But it feels like the only thing that really sets one city apart from the other is it's tile yield. One or two cities will have relatively good production, and a few will be absolute shit-holes (but still worth more than not building it), and that's about as much character as they get.

Scale; again, just seems off. You are rebuilding a civilization, but your civilization will probably only have 6 or 7 'cities'. There are only a few hundred people living in these cities, and yet you are dealing with unrest percentages by building prisons and temples (which seems a bit silly to me, when people would almost be on a first name basis in towns that small). Wars are being fought that destroy kingdoms, yet most battles are fought with maybe 50 guys on each side. Equipping a single soldier with some basic metal armor and weapons takes several years worth of a single iron mine's output. Etc, etc...

Magic; has been commented on by many others. It is mostly functional, but lacks a certain something to make it seem really magical. Mabye playing with a more magic oriented sov and civ would change my mind a bit, but I doubt it.

There's also quite a list of minor annoyances; things like enemy stacks hiding underneath other stacks, friendly units blocking movement, unpredictable monsters, UI issues, etc. A lot of these things could be fixed in the polish beta, but as some of these things have been around for ages I'm sure quite a few will slip through.

I don't want to be all negative though, there are a lot of things I like about this game. I just wish a lot of these imho fundamental areas were nailed down a lot better than they are.

Another suggestion...  Get RID of idling.  Do not create an incentive to idle your town.  Do not create incentives to idle your recruits/sovereign.  Why?  Because it's boring that's why.  No one wants to play the park your king in a city game.  These sorts of games are about incremental growth (and by these sorts I mean RPGs and TBSs).  If you want to make recruits govern cities, let them do it from the field and pretend that magic takes care of the communication (It's almost like some third party presence has complete awareness of the kingdom anyways, isn't it?).

Suggestion Two: Put the spell school (fire/death/life/etc) in the spellbook so I can tell where spells come from.  

Suggestion Three: Fix the one turn delay on displaying city stat/zone size changes after buildings are completed.  I know the zone is actually changed because I can build altars, etc.  It just doesn't display it.

Suggestion Four: Make monsters more interesting.  Give them abilities that use the battlefield.  Turn based battles just seem to run all pretty similarly.  But these things could be very interesting.  Flying units.  Teleporters.  Creatures who can lock you down (spiders do it from a range, but I'm thinking more like the marking 4e D&D mechanic).  Creatures with area effect spells.  Howls that affect your army.  Clouds that take up battlefield space.  Caltrops.  Thorn walls.  Acid pools.  etc.  More interesting attacks!