A few quick thoughts on the .77 beta.
1) FE is definitely headed in the right direction, especially as regards to heroes and the world. A lot of things seem imbalanced/overpowered right now, but I think a lot of that has to do with the AI still being a work in progress.
2) This problem goes back to WOM, but getting the "right" type of shards early on is too dependent on luck. If I have a fire/earth sovereign and I get only water/air shards to start with that's a real setback. Instead I think this should be done Fall from Heaven style: shards start without any elemental attachment, and can be turned into an element by the first person to build on it. Converting shards into a type you already have a lot of should require additional techs from the magic tree. So if you wanted to convert the first five shards you find into fire, you can, but you would have to invest heavily in the magic tech tree
3) I think champions/sovereigns should not be able to defend the city they are in while they are recovering from being defeated. Otherwise it is like your opponent has an immortal army that you have to beat over and over again. When I win a major battle I want to feel some momentum, not that I have to fight the same battle again in a few turns. Bypassing the city where they are recovering is not a good option either because it puts them behind your lines once they recover.
4) Something needs to be done to increase champion variability. By level 20 all my champions look the same except for spell school specialization. Part of this is because the random traits makes it too hard to plan champions and part of this has to do with the fact that the trait tree is very wide but not very deep. These things are connected, you can't have traits with a long trail of prereqs with all the randomness.
5) Setting the difficultly in the opening screen is very confusing. Is the difficultly under "world options" the AI difficultly or the difficultly of the world, or both? This needs to be made more clear. Also the tooltip may be incorrect here.
