So while I realize that the game is beta and that significant allowances need to be made for that, I just can't have fun 'cos each time I try to play, I find myself surrounded by countless mobs that are 10x stronger than any of my troops, which is just no fun at all.

How the heck am I supposed to level my heroes when all the mobs have 10-20x the hit points and all I can do to power my heroes up is hope that my random finds on the map will amount to armor (not yet found a single piece) or better weapons?  For those few mobs that are only 4-5 times stronger than my oh-so-lame heroes, they always seem to hang out very near stronger uber mobs, so I'm stuck staying far away from them as well (most of my dudes have a single move, so doubtless I would get attacked by the uber mob in the turn following the fight with the little guy).

So instead I move here, move there, afraid of all interaction with anything in the map, since everything I touch will blow me to bits.  I research stuff, build up my cities, and go broke.  I suppose that in 100 turns, when I have accumulated enough research, money and other resources to build some troops capable of taking down the monsters on the map, my heroes will still be level 1 and incapable of leading anything.

It's so brutal that I can't even play: I don't see the growth path I'm supposed to follow here, for my heroes.  Cities + tech are fairly easy, but the heroes are such wimps that they can't do anything on the game map.  I could take all 5-6 of my hard-bought lvl 1 losers and group them: no way they will survive any but 1 in 5 encounters on the map, from what I can see, and unfortunately they only move 1 point per turn (with no leveling in sight): the time it takes to move those ponderous units around the map is enough to make me want to turn off the game.  The quests don't seem to give XP, either, for that matter: just increases in a particular attribute (not quite the same thing).

I tried to design an infantry unity with leather armor + a lame spear: ~ 45 gold + 50 'goods' or whatever per unit, but it only has 5 HP!  How is that supposed to help against monsters with 120 HP and way better stats, all around?  What fun in sight: live a life of penury for a few hundred turns and maybe you will be able to finally be able to deal with your monster neighbors, although at that point you will be depending on lame troops that don't level, not on your heroes, so it's not like that is a recipe for long-term super-power.