I played my first beta 4 game to a conquest victory yesterday and had a few observations:

Upon capturing a city, the city and my units disappeared until I saved the game, exited, and reloaded. The unit icons were still on the left of the screen, but the could not be selected or commanded. On reload, the city was still not visible but the units could be selected and commanded to exit the city.

Tactical battles did not always display the remaining hit points correctly, or else a few weak attacks killed units with more hit points than the max possible damage inflicted. Some times I would kill a unit and a neighboring unit would fall as well (not an area attack spell). Selecting targets and squares to move to was optically awkward, something was skewed at certain angles.

Archer arrow animations are painfully slow.

From a broad perspective, I agree we need more NPC's during the course of the game. I want the option for "in your face" UI updates that units are built or city production is sitting idle. Even updates that enemy units are spotted near one of my cities.

I didn't see a single shard last game, is that to be expected sometimes?

I'm worried that people will enclose regions in mountains and transport units using teleportation. Is there any way to break in if they do that? You can't lower mountains in their territory and you can't teleport in. Will the AI be able to cope with that tactic?

Magic in combat needs some work too. More units need resistance to elemental damage types to give us a reason to have both chain lightning and arcane strike, for instance. Or, reduce the damage done by each and give them additional effects unique to the spell (% chance for reducing combat speed slightly, reduced morale, reduced defense or attack, etc).

I am excited about the potential I'm seeing for a fun game. Thanks for all your hard work, both Dev's and testers!

Scott