Voted good. Another big leap from last beta from my perspective. Succintly:
Things I liked:
- City specialization = more depth!
- Better and more informative UI. Would like the focus to move to idle cities after they finished building something. Quite often I found myself forgeting to check.
- New cloth map!
- Spell book.
- New Outpost functionality. Would like more depth added to them. For example: I'd like some kind of flavored garrison added to them depending on the race, that can be upgraded the more upgrades the outpost has. After all the effort spent to build them and upgrade them, it feels too punishing to just have some random monster or AI take them.
- Resources upgrades!
- I found the AI in hard to be good enough for me. (YMMV)
- New quest system. But at the same time, most are gone after the initial phase. Would be nice to have some kind of respawn from time to time (could be a random event).
- Essence was a great addition.
Things I didn't like:
- Emphasis still put on pioneer spam. Seems like you fall behind if you don't do it, because the map is littered with outposts and cities too fast. Makes it feel like exploration and city building is less rewarding. The fewer but stronger cities strat or turtling doesn't seem viable.
- Spells seem few, weak and costly in this beta iteration, at least the offensive ones (the buffs are OK). The magic route feels less lucrative. There are just not many things to do with magic and the levels come too slowly. You could really go crazy stuff here, but it seems you're holding off.
- I still feel like the RPG elements for heroes/sovereing are not well presented/exploited. For example: I don't know what I'll get to pick later if I choose this or that skill. (A skill tree would do great here, IMO). But also, some of them seem luckluster. You could make some unique things with heroes and their skills and equipment (i.e.: give them stuff you cannot obtain from any other source).
- Levels seem to come slower now, so for the huge map I played in epic pace, I didn't get to use some items with higher requirements, and had few(er) spells to play with.
- Quite differently from what happened in previous iterations, where there was heroes in abundance for hire, this time around the AI is very aggressively recruiting them. So you're basically stuck with the one you find near your settle area, and that's it. The ones I could find later, just came too late.
- What's up with the power table? It seems like their diplomacy actions and tendencies for war are determined by it, so I found myself consistently at war with everyone I met, even though I conquered them later. Something just doesn't add up there.
- This really ticks me off: Invading AI. They are quite effectively blocking you from trespassing or risking war. But when you tell them to stop crossing into your territory, they just do it again the next turn, and the next, and the next. I would love the borders to work like in Civ: Unless you have some treaty or are at war, you just can't cross them.
- Tactical battles are repetitive and boring.
