Granted. Settings mean alot.

I would imagine that most beta testers here are playing at a world/faction difficulty level of at least challenging.

I think that it's really good that troops are required in the early game in order to expand. That's a plus.

May I also assume that expansion is basically neccessary in order to win? Or is one-city challenge still a viable option?

In .981 you could still win with a solo sovereign. I've done it. So yes, you can definitely win with a single city, although you may lose it at some point.

Yeah... and until we get our grubby little hands on it, we can only speculate.  I would be surprised if they nerf heroes to the point where a custom race/sovereign cannot win solo on challenging. (That win was on insane)

Frankly, I think that nerfing heroes too much reduces players enjoyment.

I believe the best thing to do reduce a target's dodge/defense for every swing/hit to simulate a single man being overwhelmed by numbers.  This way, heroes will remain suitably heroic at slaying beasts, but will realistically lose to trained armies, militia, etc...

It's not about nerfing heroes. It's about improving the AI.

Are you saying there's no more City Militia?  That seems like a major change, and if so, there would need to be a ridiculous amount of re-balancing. Troops would have to cost much less (at least on the low end) and improvement would have to take less time - since you'll be spending more time making troops - and I already think improvements take too long to build.

Adventuring all willy-nilly is basically all the fun for me.  I can't imagine playing this game and keeping my one Sov and the one "close to home" champ nearby all the time to defend from everything while the Wild-lands just sit there waiting for the end-game.

I guess I'll reserve judgement to see how it work with the new movement rules and bonuses in your territory, but this change sincerely make me feel like the pace of the game is going to be set to far too slow for my enjoyment.  I don't want to take 3000 turns of micromanaging a half dozen to a dozen cities just to be able to go out to the Wild lands and get boot-stomped by a 500HP Boss. 

I think you read it wrong.  There are going to be more and better city militia  but what Frog is saying is that you will need to train early units (earliest unit being the no armor guy with a club, named "militia"), to go adventure with your sov if you want to destroy monster lairs and grab their goodies.