Good video. I like the pioneer changes, swarm, growth changes, instant battles are great, looks like you accounted for the what if I have ranged question, talents trees are great. The battle report screen showing injury reports instead of multiple windows is a nice improvement. Here are some things I would like to see, not necessarily for release:

- A continue move button that like in Endless Space, so all units that already have a waypoint set will move towards their waypoint when you click this button or hotkey. This would be a huge quality of life improvement and it should take minimal coding time. This basically would run the continue movement portion of end turn. 

- give a city upgrade option on the city UI or prevent cancelling out of the screen unless you select an upgrade.

- Would it be possible to add the Gal Civ 2 Rally system for units or give us the ability to choose which square units leave the city at. 

- if you attack a unit and no defending stack remains the attacker should claim the empty square

- I liked the armies all requiring city pop mechanic which appears to have been given back to pioneers. Any possibility this will return for other units.

Anyways, I'm sure you have no shortage of "suggestions" I'm excited for the beta.

Because it can't be said enough, I love the new champion leveling and acquisition. Also like that city spam is being addressed, although I'll hold off of saying I love it till I play it and decide that I do (or, you know, don't if I don't )

Also, I just checked and shadowbolt can only be used every other turn in my FE, is steam distributing an old version or are you just too used to the stardock internal build?

btw, loving how much you talk on these forums frogboy, it's refreshing .

Looks good.      What's the latest on timing for the start of the beta?

Since you mentioned that you were considering replacing Governor with something else, would you consider adding a second magic-specialized class? Warriors, Defenders, and Assassins are all essentially mundane combat classes, the Governor is a mundane non-combat class, and in Fallen Enchantress Warrior and Defender cover the role of an army leader fairly well, while Mages are the only class specifically for magic users. Mages are 'efficient' spellcasters - their spells cost less to cast, but aren't any more powerful than spells cast by anyone else until you start gaining the Evoker traits. Could we have 'powerful' spellcasters, whose spells are more powerful (such as haste providing one more initiative, or Flame Dart dealing three fire damage per level rather than two) at the cost of increased mana use? A summoner whose summons are always at his/her level plus the summon ability bonuses (level with summoner rather than normal experience gain)? A curses and blessings specialist whose blessings and curses last longer or are more powerful or more likely to stick to resistant targets?

Great vid thanks, looking forward to the beta.

Why not create an outpost creating unit that is fairly cheap, and make pioneers only for settling new cities?

In the current build of the released game, if you hover over your encumbrance bar it will give you this information. Also, when you are equipping items and you add equipment that puts you over one of the thresholds your initiative score will change as well. Basically 40%, 80% are the points that divide between low medium and heavy encumbered. Generally most units start with 30 before you add skills like strength. 

This. Addresses very frequent and annoying mundane tasks required to play the current build.

Swarm does seem a little overpowered now.

All the things you mentioned such as the lack of information (tool tip) when it comes to the trait screen as well as world objects should be addressed.

*It also looks like Kraxis doesn't have anything new yet.

*Is the flame tongue ability a racial or unique to the hero? If it's a racial it's not very good.

*Overall the graphics look much better than vanilla FE.

Edit: while on the topic of racials i believe something needs to be done for racials such as fortify and berserk. Early on fortify could help in Vanilla FE but now it's useless since melee units are right on top of eachother. my suggestion is to make fortify not count as your action for turn meaning as soon as you cast it your character can perform an additional action or maybe make it so fortify automatically puts the fortified unit in defense position.

Berserk is simply awful beyond useless my suggestion is to remove it and add "+3 Attack power" to the racial trait. 

The game looks beautiful!  I am really happy with the hero recruitment and the tactical battles seem better (though clearly the game need a better UI clue for when a unit has ranged attack -- how frustrating it was watching you end-turn on your fire-mage).

Is it too late to make a common-sense UI suggestion?  Watching your play-through, there's an issue with flavor text dialogs breaking the flow of the game.  Flavor texts are important to establishing the lore and encouraging immersion, but they should be able to do so unobtrusively.  If they interrupt the game for meaningless decisions they're not providing immersion.

The first (and most egregious) is the book at the start of the game.  It's just a total waste of time.  And confusing to boot.  I think we can read the flavor text on the sov's details page, so why force a modal dialog on the user at the start of the game?  Take it out!  Get us playing, not reading.

Another bad flavor text moment is the goodie huts.  You get a OK dialog with something meaningless like "There's nothing here, but this one thing."  OK, it's a goodie hut, I know that already.  Clicking OK brings up another dialog with the thing you get and more flavor text (which doesn't actually describe what the thing does) and the awkward Use/Trade/OK options. 

I recognize that it's important to inform the user of what's going on, but these interactions are needlessly awkward.  Dialog-itis!  The frustrating part (for me) is that you don't need them.  You have a really terrific notifications system already in the game.

So my recommendation is that you try to get rid of all the modal dialogs that don't present an actual choice and replace them with notifications.  (In this case "Strike the Earth!"  or "Item found").

And you would still be able to read them.  Whenever you want.  Because they would be notifications, not modal dialogs that force you to read RIGHT NOW.

But if you watch Frogboy play you can actually see (and hear in his speaking) the awkward effect of these dialogs.  They totally break his concentration and knock him out of the game.  He's not reading them (because he already knows what they say) and just clicks through as quickly as possible.  The point is frogboy has a plan for the next couple moves and the game interrupts that plan with inconsequential modal dialogs.

I noticed in the tool tip that it is 2 dmg per level.  That would be, what, 20 damage at level 10?  I agree, not great at all.  However, what if it was made true damage or something, where resist doesn't affect it, or like a spear, where it penetrates 66% of the resist?

I second sweatyboatman's dialogue suggestions, especially that "far beneath the withered... blah" at the beginning of the game.  I have NEVER been able to get my custom sov/faction text to show up in that window ever.  Ditch it.

Other thoughts:

 Instead of the equip/trade/ok screen can we just have the sov/hero inventory screen with scrolling arrows for multiple heroes in a stack and the ability to assign the item right away?  I noticed you forgot to equip the poison vial to your sov when you first found it.

The Fame icon should be in the popup with the lair cleared message: +1 Fame (symbol).  I hope there are fame multipliers for epic city battles or sov/sov battles.  Or victory against great odds.

Also, could we at least get a figure outline/paper doll for our heroes/sovs for item equippage?  ala HOMM3?  A little more intuitive and fun.

You never built on the shards within your ZOC throughout the demo, could the yellow turn button be expanded to prompt you about undeveloped resources in your ZOC?  Please make this available ESPECIALLY when you unlock the NECESSARY tech for an initial build or an upgrade.

I lol'd at the ctrl-n at the beginning with the essence-less start.  A special capitol building that gives +1 essence per level would go a long way to making the capitol special and fun.  Or use the governor traits mod from Emmagine and the unit traits from Dsraider to spice up the cities and the unit abilities.

Can we snake a tile or too as the city grows like Parrotmath's mod?

The tactical battles look awesome!  Love the new mechanics.  Agree with Nichtganz as to the "casting" of special abilities at the start of combat.

Would love to see a special morale ability that occasionally gives a unit two moves in a row.  Or make it monster only 

Please give me the choice of ALL basic weapons at game start and let me improve them with research.  Crude/Basic/Advanced/Masterwork or something like that.  The Armor techs over time make more sense, but the weapons restrictions are silly.

Give trained units a bonus trait every 5 levels or so to make them more interesting/deadly/usable as the game progresses.  Fix the Upgrade system to be more consistent  (i.e robes vs. leather breastplate, one needs crystal, the other doesn't).  Or make it available as a default option.  

Definitely develop a summoner path and give summoners access to special units no other sov can get based on different magic types.  Joeball123 has good ideas above.

One other fun idea ala Magnar's slaver trait.  If I defeat a settler unit, my nearest settlement should get a +30 pop bonus.  

Keep it up, you guys and gals are making me drool!