Overview: Been playing since the WoM Beta. [0.95] is by far the best entry in the series to date. It looks good, plays well, and is fun. Needs polish and balance, but is overall a good game.
Gameplay:
1) Pioneer Spam remains a huge problem. There is more land available now to settle, which I really appreciate. But now I just see more and more AI pioneers rushing to grab it. I have seen the AI on Normal found a city, then immediately start work on a Pioneer. This doesn't seem to hurt the AI much if at all. This just isn't a fun way for the game to progress. Players should be able to develop their cities a bit and not be forced into a pioneer rush strategy just to claim a little bit of land. Going for a rapid expansion into a wide empire should be a viable tactic, but it shouldn't be the main tactic. This problem is really killing the fun factor of the game for me. I'll put up a separate post on this in more detail.
2) I really like the new city upgrade system. I haven't gotten to dig too deep yet, but some options do seem much better than others. I like the distinctiveness between each type of City.
3) Outposts are decent. Upgrades are a great idea. Might be nice to reduce the number of upgrades and put them onto more of a path with a few possible upgrades, instead of just 4 that impact combat or whatever.
4) Quests are much better, with nice artwork, text, and objectives, More variety would be good. Rewards need variety too. I often get multiples of the same item. I wish that quests would remain in place when declined.
Visuals:
1) Everything seems to look nicer overall, the improvements to things like animations and UI menus are subtle, but very nice.
2) Still a serious lack of visual variety. Every set of armor is the same. We have tons of great 'Civilian' options for different shirts, hair, etc. But once you start throwing on equipment, everyone looks the same. I wish we had a variety of weapon and armor sets to make our units more visually distinctive, and I wish we could change the color tint of items. Some decorative items would be nice too (flags, skulls, etc).
Bugs / Errors:
1) Leather Breastplate no longer available, but can be found. Hope this wasn't intentional.
2) I have seen the AI build Outposts practically on top of my cities, instantly losing them to my ZOC.
3) After the 3rd new game I tried, Sovs and Champs stopped showing up in their portrait. Also, my custom Sov went headless in the faction selection screen.
