I've been loosely following the development of this game for a while now and preordered the limited edition in time for Beta 2, and I like a lot of what I see (even with a bunch of it disabled at the moment), so kudos to Stardock and crew for all the amazing work done so far.

A couple of observances first:

A caveat first that I may have not gone far enough in the tech tree, etc. for some of my observances may in fact be there but I missed them.

1) Ships move way too slow.  (Maybe I didn't go far enough in the tech tree or because there was no spells, etc., but compared to even a level two or three 'hero' with a few points placed into movement boats/ships were just flat out sad in comparison.)

2) Maybe it is not ready for prime time, it just wasn't on the Beta map, or I've completely missed it out of all the information I've seen, but the lack of rivers is kind of disturbing...

     2a) Assuming they are in I hope some rivers can only be crossed at fords/bridges.

3) I like the fact roads kind of spring up as trade caravans as it makes the world seem kind of dynamic and that things are still happening absent your (the player's) actions.

However it would be nice if there was a MOM type engineer unit.  Sometimes I do want to build a road to nowhere.  Maybe it is a planned invasion route and I want my troops to get there fast, or to a planned place for a future city, to a place where I want to defend (think a one square valley between two mountains) and be able to get troops there quickly, etc. 

4) A few of my other observances have already been mentioned, such as why bother equipping troops beyond a basic level as their health is so low they get gutted anyways.

5) Why do walls required a full tile building to build?  Walls should just cost resources and money to built and have a upkeep to maintain them not a full scale building.

As for City Design Philosophy:

Now it may be way to late to change anything, but I feel I have got to chime in a bit with a thought towards it and why in its current state I am not a fan.

In it's current state a city is placed using Essence (which is kind of cool given how blasted the land is) and on the next turn some people move in.  That's fine as it is a bit of a twist rather than the settler unit of times past. (Btw is there a settler unit later in the game when the world starts to go green, and one shouldn't have to spend essence to place a city?)

It here where I think it breaks down.  As it stands all building have to be placed in a tile next to the 'city'.  Whether it is a quarter tile or it takes up a full tile.  Now I'm a bit of a fan of that, but it seems this design philosophy took it to the extremes.  Which is what I do not like.  It is neither realistic (a dangerous word in games I know) and I thought it distracted a lot from the gameplay.

I'm only going to mention the realistic as a point because it seems ridiculous that a 'city' of maybe 300 people can stretch out as it is currently designed.  For example on the Beta map provided I placed my starting city in a tile roughly between the spot where the only crystal mine can be placed and where the horse resource is located (which as aside I don't think should be a requirement for building horse units but give you a bonus on building them...say greater speed, etc.). 

Now I was just playing an easy game trying to build up some more advanced units to test some things out, but as I built up I was amazed that my city stretched from one mountain range to another...I was floored.  It just didn't make sense.  A look at Ancient Rome or the large cities of antiquity should give you an idea (IIRC Rome had city walls of about 11 miles surrounding the core of the city) of size.  If you take a tile to be say anywhere between 15 to 30 miles there is no way a city should be spreading out like that (I base this on the base starting movement rate of 1 for a 'hero' which given a typical human walking in a day is anywhere between fifteen and thirty miles without pushing it or in rough terrain).

However as I said I like the concept but the execution goes to an extreme which not only is unrealistic but IMO hurt the gameplay.  For me the gameplay was affected on several accounts.  It seemed gamey to be able to build a city in a rough line just to get basically free movement. Isn't that what roads are for? 

Also once I started building walls it seemed even more ridiculous.  I can now blockade a whole valley (and I'm not talking about a one square one) with a city?  Either I'm confused on the scale or this is just plain strange.

But me just complaining isn't very helpful IMO. So here's my thoughts on what could maybe change, if that is even feasible at this point).

1) Bring back the city screen.  However limit the number of buildings that can be built within the 'walls' of the city (say base the number on its 'level', i.e. the bigger the city the more things can be placed inside it's defenses).  Then allow building immediately outside the 'walls' to be built.  The current quarter tiles that you can initially place would work excellently.  This would simulate how not everything can be protected in larger cities and allow those buildings to be susceptible to being destroyed by besieging army.

2) Leave the buildings on resources.  It shows growth on the map, and presents a target that needs to be defended from not only enemy nations, but bandits and roaming creatures.

   2a) It would be nice if not all units moving automatically destroyed a captured resource building.  It would be cool say if a giant spider captured a mining complex and turned it into a lair eventually sending out smaller giant spiders until someone cleared it out.

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Now that's my two cents so take it what it's worth.  And I can't wait to see the spells.