[.95 Feedback] Grand design in need of tweaking/suggestions

I'd like to give suggestions now that my first win is on the books. I believe the devs want to keep this focused on gameplay mechanics (not on AI and such), and I'll try to be brief.

***The settlement categories are a nice touch, but they still need balancing. For example, I could have easily won a Spell Mastery victory without building a single conclave. They are very much unnecessary (the research they add once fully developed are a case of the too-lates). I suggest making all research buildings beside the school/library ones unique to conclaves, making the first 2 tiers of tech cost slightly less research, and then more steeply ramp up the costs of later research, especially those associated with the Spell Mastery win (so that conclaves have an important focus rather than the fluff they now are). To offset this further specialization, consider making the conclave buildings construct easier (less requirements), so the player can quickly get at their research/mana/crystal benefit (thereby making them necessary to a thriving/balanced country and critical to a Spell Mastery victory).

In contrast, the towns are nice foundations (money/growth, just as advertised), and the fortresses give great military/defense benefits that should aid close contests. Everything can use fine-tuning, heh, but these designs work pretty well as is (as far as I can tell with a single game played).

***Sure, the building auto-placement serves for less odd shaped towns, but the code should be optimized enough to build toward a forest instead of away from it. I had a forest one space away from the starting placement (with nothing but plains in the other directions) and it wasn't until it had built in 2 other directions that it reached out for the forest and allowed the important lumber mill structures (by then the town was size 3 with about 10-12 unique buildings). I suggest making the auto-placement AI first look for rivers and then for forests.

***When upgrading things like mines or outposts (great addition, by the way), the progress bar under the town name does not update for 2+ turns. This can lead to confusion and cancelling/re-queuing the job.

***I noticed some research tweaks, yet I still can find no compelling reason to go very deep into the Warfare tree (the end of it seeming worthless); both the other trees have vital improvements (civilization-required things, and the best weapon/armor/allies/spells).

***A minor UI bug: the Faction Power display box can't seem to stay locked in place, and in some cases, the events listing for some turns makes the box try to hide off screen.

All in all, I'm firmly in the camp of testers who believe this game is moving steadily in the correct direction, adding more polish, fun, and replayability. Thanks for the effort.

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***Oh, and since Derek specifically mentioned "AI units try to maneuver to get the first hit in battle" in his change log, I'll mention that a mixed party really confuses the AI. Enemies will creep forward one space at a time, even when being pelted with arrows/magic, so long as the melee units maintain their distance. This allows a relatively cheesy tactic to kill anything without taking melee damage (even dragons).

I suggest making a routine that checks for any ranged unit and then bee-lines for them, making melee units have to fulfill their duty as "protectors of the squishies." Or maybe perhaps going full speed after the first round of getting hit with a ranged attack (nothing would continue to creep along while taking ranged abuse if given a choice).

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Another couple of things I noticed.

***It seems you can build multiple consular improvements from the same outpost and get the +1 bonus each time. This might have been from the fact that one of my cities had enveloped the initial outpost (it was the magical kind of outpost, if that matters), but I saw the consular option still available after completing the initial improvement, checking that the bonus was applied my fortress, and tried building another. It let me, seemed to apply an extra point of growth, and gave me the option to build a third consular. Without a doubt, this should not be allowed--consular stacking is far too cheesy.

***Hero xp-advancement is now perhaps a tad too steep (though not much, thanks to the way spells scale). On default settings, I used my sovereign and one hero for every fight, picked all the xp-increasing options as my first choices, wore an xp ring, and still was only 12ish when I won the game (not a full clear on a large map, but that's crazy-tedious so I doubt many gamers will). My caster was reasonably powerful, though, and I beat my opponents without taking their every resource (making them surrender).

I believe this steep curve will penalize fighters (testing to follow), and makes +attribute/level mechanic much weaker. If you keep the curve as is, consider making the plus-per-level items and traits have extra benefits to offset a lower average level. For example, why would someone ever pick a +1 dodge/level over a +10 dodge when it's no longer feasible to get that unit to 10th level?

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