I played Pariden using  a custom sovereign Nimue: Amarian Blood, Warlock,  Brilliant, Discipline, Natural leader,  Life Disciple, Clumsy, Procipinee’s Crown.

Large map with all the other races present (7 AI) on challenging.

Played the way I have on the other beta’s except I went more into units this time:

Find a champion to melee for me; hopefully pick a sand golem and/or a dog; and start clearing the weaker monsters.

Research 4-5 civ techs and unless I need soldiers (2 warfare techs), I then research magic up to spellbooks to get the books I am missing.  Usually I try to keep my level under 5 until I have learnt at least one spellbook.

I work my champions in pairs, one magic focused and one melee focused adding a couple of melee troops and my version of the mage latter on.

Early game I mainly use Heal, slow and haste in combat adding shrink and growth when I get them.

Slow and shrink often let me fight outside of my weight class, with slow reducing the number of attack and shrink reducing the damage.  Several slags, dragons and even Elemental Lords have fallen before their time with the help of those two spells.

Late game the spells themselves usually become the main damage dealer; except this time the trained units got in first.

A well-developed and enchanted fortress with Strike garrison producing your troop seems to have thrown the game to the units.   I designed and used three combat troops units during this game Spearmen (leather and spear), Sorceress (Incineration staff,  warg riding , both damage rings, and initiative increases) and Destiny’s Knight (Horse soldier in chain and long sword)

My main army consisted of Nimue(20), Naugach the Stonecutter(20), 2 sorceress squads, 1 sorceress company , two destiny’s knight squads and a dragon.   With these I cake walked the Epic quests, The Arena of the Shakhanan, The dragon statue lost eyes and the Master quest with hardly any damage.  In fact Nimue, Nuagach, and the dragon where luckly to more than one action (if any) in any of those fights.

Between impulsive and 34 initiative the trained units went first and tended to quickly clear the field.

In the fight with the dragon lord he died to the five trained units in my army who moved first.

Here is a save before the end fight. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20620127/End.EleSav

Noticed bugs

• What does “Glyph of life” do?  The spell description states that defending units start with regeneration which is no longer does anything tactical combat.
• Assassin’s blade quest does no finish if you kill the last victim
• Broken spirit states that it is -50% when it effects are -25%
• Growth and Giant Form are sometimes showing the shrink graphic.   This seems to happen when I cast it on someone riding a non-horse mount. 
• Growth on squads shows one member increased in size, if that member  is lost and then healed back up the whole squad increases in size.
• A couple of times I have been unable to use spells, items or skills in combat.  I am not sure why and have not been able to reproduce the effect but the buttons would go red when they were pressed,  I could only move or pass. This would come right on my next action.
• Clicking back and forth on between different icons in the city ledger will sometimes cause their tool tips to appear in the upper right corner.
• My game has an island big enough for two cities on it with two resources.  I found it when Gilden shifted one of my champions out of his territory on to it.  It took arcane monolith and Cloud walk to get him off the island( and to settle it)
• You can rename enemy units, towns and sovereigns.  This just seems odd.
• River building graphics are not displayed the right way for the river.  More often than not the building is in the river and the water part on land.
• Natural leader stopped working half way into the game and I had to pay for recruits. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20620127/recruit.EleSav
• Shouldn't the wildland quests supposed to appear in the quest log?  They don't currently.
• Frozen wasteland rivers graphic doesn't change when you kill Vetrar.  They then show up as plains in the terrain info but block movement. 
• Upgrading units.  I may have misunderstood how this works but I thought that you selected the parts that you wanted to upgrade and only those parts would upgrade.  So I designed a sorceress in robes with an upgrading cloak (I had none at the time).  But when I upgraded her armour to get the cloak she also got a plate cuirass. Playing around I discovered that body armour, shield and weapon always seems to update regardless.  It would be nice if you could pick which item gets upgraded and to what. ie I wanted a sorceress using an Ice staff that would upgrade to a Hailstone staff except  if you choice the upgrade option it will always start with the Incineration staff and go to the Leht staff.

Nakisisa