I kind of second what SavageBananaMan said.  It's weird to have global resources for your cities even if the cities and resource improvements are not connected by roads or caravans, they need to be connected or else how do the reources get around?  The current system could theoretically let two cities be on opposite sides of the map and not connected by roads or seaports to exchange resources.

I was also thinking that a good way to make factions more unique is to have at least different styles of architecture and maybe even similar but differently designed weapons and armor available for equiping units.  These don't have to completely different as I know there is a RAM limitation with 32-bit, but I would like more differences than just colors.

I'm a little disappointed with the 1 or 4 square rule. Why cant we have 2 and 3 tile buildings 

On this one, I'm going to have to agree about the weapon techs, and armor techs. They don't seem to supply a distinct advantage, and then you go from daggers to short swords. I realize from a logical evolution that makes sense. But from a gameplay point, those techs that only supply one thing, like daggers, should be dagger specializations, and other specializations. The base tech should unlock light bladed weapons, daggers, short swords, two weapon fighting. And so on, and the next one up unlocks a few other options, and so on, until you get to a point where your able to go back and revisit earlier techs, to upgrade them with new smithing techniques, weapons of different materials, etcetera.

See my feel is that an army with daggers is beaten by an army with swords, and the pretech to that should of been unlocked earlier with little fuss.

I must strongly voice my opinion AGAINST a building next to a farm that makes the farm output much more.

Right now, chasing down farms/honeybees/oasis (oasises?) is an important part of the game to feed your megacity. However, we already have the Granary which can only be built once a city has completed a farm (adds 25% to all food production in that city). We also have a global upgrade from research that increases garden from 1 to 2 food.

I guess my point is that one farm already gives a massive advantage when it comes to food supply, not only by the (20?15?) food it supplies from the start, but by the massive granary boost as well. Now you're thinking about increasing that even further. I'd say farms are already TOO STRONG.

I'm also not sure about the buildings that you have to connect to other buildings. It sounds more PAINFUL than FUN. Not only would it require city planning on a geographical level, but it would also make it too microscopic in terms of management. It might sound like a good idea, but when you've got 6-7 megacities running, maybe, just maybe, it's not really fun at all.

I seem to recall (don't quote me on this) someone from Stardock saying that they originally intended to include 2 tile buildings, but it turned out to be too much of a pain from a coding perspective.

Hey, at least we don't have player-color UI text on a black background... with black as a selectable choice for color.

School should be more efficient than a study (it is), University should be more efficient than a library (haven't tested), slums are still too weak of an improvement. 3 houses @ 64 pop each use 12 food and house 186 ... thats 1 extra space and no prestige penalty.

4 houses use 16 food and house 256 pop. More expensive than slums, sure ... but when houses are 25% more effective at housing pop then something has gone wrong.

I like the idea of Estates just being plain better than Villas in every way (hence 80 pop and 2 prestige), and I like that they are NOT automatically upgraded. I do wonder though if such a building is overpowered or not. At that point though ... I think its justified because all your really benefiting from is the extra prestige at the cost of plenty of resources.

Mililtary (econ) Buildings-

more tooltips. How do I build a Ventri Mine over a regular mine? Do I need to destroy the Ventri? What bonuses does an Armory or barracks give? I kind of like that there is only a 1 per city on Armory and Forge, so that Military (read non Civ-teching) nations will get equal chance for training discounts and extra ore.

I would like though, for cities with access to a Mine to be able to build 2 forges (or maybe only Mine towns can build forges, in that case probably 2 - 3 forges per mine, hard cap.

Weapons/Armor/Equipment -

currently there is no difference between Leather and Hardened Leather ... since they both give 1 defense per item. Personally I think patchwork cloth should be 1 (or 0.5), etc. Also, I wish there were more tool tips on how you get Magic Rings, and I wish there was a +defense magic ring and a + combat speed magic ring.

Tactical Battles-

is there once again a separation between movement and combat speed? If so, place combat speed into more of the stat-menu/HUDs. As it is, finding out a soldier's combat speed isn't as easy as any of the other stats.

Military (training) Buildings-

its not exactly obvious that we need to build a Siege Workshop to train a unit with a battering ram ... tool tips could help. Tool tips could also be in place to explain that archers need an archery range to be built. Its perfectly feasible to assume that archery ranges merely give some extra benefit to archer units, as opposed to being required for their training.

QUESTS!!!!!

I really think that every successfully completed quest should give some exp. I don't think that battles should be only exp. Though, you should have to complete the quest "correctly" in order to get the exp (properly escorting dude, actually saving the Knight/Princess).

Even if quests only gave a little bit of exp, I think i'd still of gained a couple levels on quests alone. I think it should be perfectly valid to gain levels by completing enough quests (especially harder/ more difficult quests->more exp)

This would be as an extra(bonus) reward added to the actual posted reward ... I doubt any (or very few) quests would "only" give experience points as a reward.

On the same thought, it'd be cool to have little mini dungeons to explore in, with random respawning monsters ... for a little random battle action. Not a lot, perhaps, but about one relatively near each starting location would be nice (but out of the way so as not to be a nuisance).

Would having an option to automactially place buildings be a good idea? I thought it would speed up the process if you don't mind where they go. If you don't have a required building, it could give you a message saying what building you're missing.

I'm not in the Beta, so my apologies if there is already an option for this. I don't remember seeing one mentioned in the preview videos I've watched though.

#1 City Improvements

Houses are the biggest issue I run into. No matter what I do, my city ends up at a standstill requiring reorganization to fit more houses.

Why not make houses automatic? The city grows based off your surplus food and houses become sort of a pleasant visual buffer zone between the city improvements. This makes the city improvements spaced out and visually, a little bit nicer, with little huts and houses in between them. This might require rebalancing of city space per city level, but in the end, it eliminates one of the tedious aspects of city building right now.

Either that, or I would go with housing area instead of just a single hut or house. And make it upgradeable, so that if I have huts and research villas, I can improve my four tile housing district to the next level, rather than demolish and rebuild.

#2 Research

Tooltips and new requirements. I may have missed it, but when you get archery, you can design an archer unit and never be able to build it because nothing showed you the archery range is required. Maybe the yielding technology could be displayed like this:

>New Ability: Ranged Weapons

->New Improvement: Archery Range

-->New Item: Yew Shortbow

This shows I gain the ability for Ranged Weapons, which lets me build an Archery Range so I can make Shortbows. An example of technology info that doesn't have reqs:

>New Item: Shortsword

>New Item:Longsword

>New Item:Dagger

The Longsword here doesn't require the shortsword to be made. The only reason I find something like this would be useful is when Techs give us multiple rewards, but we have to build/use one reward before the others are available.

#4 NON-HUD Information

I'm not sure if this is planned, but I'd like to see the actual City tile grow. It always looks like a wooden fort. Will it age into a keep, and then a stone castle, and then an ivory tower? (for example)

If the houses were automatic, they would also grow out with the city. This growth should also be on the cloth map. Similar to Master of Magic, this would be comparing a hamlet to a city - the city stretches a bit further and has a level of magnificence to it. This instantly distincts the difference between a low population city and a high-pop city, which is my point. Population is hidden in the bottom corner of the screen. It should be more obvious (but unless the hardcore HUD is on, no numbers on the map!).

#5 Visual Distinctions between Factions.

First thought on this: Emblems. Crests. These should be displayed somehow on units. Your mentioning of flags gave me an idea you used in Gal Civ 2. You had components that gave a buff to an entire Fleet. Why not have Herald's or Flagbearers that can grant an entire army an ability? With magic, you could even make enchanted Standards. This could be fun, but I guess in the end, it'd end up being doable in the modding editors. It would just be nice to see the Crests/Emblems more obvious on units.

A different building or 2 per faction wouldn't be bad, or even individual gear. I'll have to come up with something specific.

I need to brush up on the factions a bit more, but a special ability for Pioneers might be nice, as well. An example would be, one faction is from the mountains and their Pioneers can build tunnels through mountain ranges. Another is a faction of exceptional traders, perhaps their Pioneers can upgrade roads in highways. Maybe a warlike factions can have Pioneers build Forts outside city limits, or walls, for a forward defensive position.

#6 Other types of World Resources

Off shore resources would be a nice twist to a fantasy game.

Turtle Mounts,Coral Reefs, or Underwater Shards?

What about tile specific resources? Maybe a Goldenwood thicket in a cluster of forests, a Waterfall on a river tile (some kind of mill improvement?) or something to that effect.

It would be interesting if there were Essence Fonts. Areas naturally saturated with Essence that can quicken mana regeneration for champions.

I think animals can play a big part here. I saw someone recommend that a cattle farm have a slaughterhouse and a tannery for bonus food and materials versus a mill. Well, in order to have cattle, you need cows! That could be a resource. Alternative mounts could have a great presence here, but they need to be different from horses. Raptors have an extra attack, Elephants grant more defense, and Turtles (mentioned above) can swim? Having any of those available could greatly alter tactics.

I'd like to see a type of mutagen resource. I remember you discussing how in the dynasty system off spring could have drastic appearances depending on who or what their parents were. I'd like to see something similar applied to soldiers. Where a player might find a "Raven Blood" pool  (or whatever) that could be used to alter soldiers. During training the player could select the mutagen to use on his soldiers which would change their appearance and stats in random ways. Similar to the off spring system, soldiers given a mutagen during training would have randomly generated appearances and stats based on the mutagen. 

So for example Raven Blood could randomly alter strength & hit points positively but randomly affect defense and combat speed negatively. As for appearance the soldiers might have pale skin and pulsing black veins running throughout their bodies. Instead of using traditional weapons these soldiers might have sharp claws or other monstrous qualities for weapons. A simple example but you get the idea.

So far I am really enjoying the no crash experience, I am not sure why others are having problems. Maybe I just have not pushed it to the crash point but I have about 10 hours with no CTD!! I am still wrapped up in the eye candy, but did have the disappearing buildings issue pop up while scrolling in and out! As far as suggestions, I can't put my finger on anything specific  but something does not feel right with the cities. The buildings seemed hard to distinguish in the 3D view when they get built up. I am still learning what the buildings look like and will probably get used to it later on.

Research needs some fleshing out which I am sure is being taken care of and added as time goes on. I would really like to see a visual branching diagram of all the technology available, doesn't have to be in the Technology screen itself. It could be accessed from the info guide at the top right or in the manual if one is to come with the retail box.

The HUD is a good idea and I would hope it will be customizable. I believe it would also help to be able to toggle it on and off easily from inside a running game as opposed to on the options menu. Just in case things get cluttered you could switch it of, make your move and turn it back on should you need to.

Visual faction distinction is an issue at this point, but I can't think of a way to do it better than what is already been done.Other than locking each faction to a certain hair, eye or skin color. And horrid deformation for the dark oriented factions.That seem like it has been done to death though.

As far as resources, I like the different  metals, for making super light weapons and armor. Also I was thinking about resources that if gathered would have + and - effects like an herb that increases sight or magical ability  while slowing attack speed or map movement.

I was also thinking a single thread or a questionnaire to report or ask about the hardware resources of the machines we are testing on. It seems like it would make things easier for the developers to have one place to look up that info instead of chasing through the forum.

I hope this helps, back to testing and thanks guys I can tell this is going to eat up a lot of my time!! 

#1 City Improvements:

Possible salve against micromanagement hell would be to have cities without a building under construction give something else instead. This is how MoM and Civ operate, but it could be quite flexible... With an Elemental Twist!

A city with nothing under construction could:

    Automatically increase road construction speed (Builders have to go somewhere)

    Produce more Guilders, Population, and/or Material (Abstracted "goods" production)

    Expand Territory (in the form of little tiny houses popping up all around your borderlands)

    Or my personal favorite: Slowly reduce the time it takes to build future buildings (as in, the game abstracts turns where you are not micro managing, and the governor "builds" buildings according to either the NPC type or player decided Governor personality. For example a town that the player doesn't want to bother micromanaging could start "building" buildings that the AI would naturally build in that town, in effect reducing the build time for the turn that the player gets around to managing the city personally. If the player doesn't get to the town for a really long time, the governor could stop at "1 Turn" build time for that building, and move on to another building.

To clarify, a scenario using this Governor Pseudo-Build plan:

The town of Arguile is one of a dozen in Emperor Yestin's Empire. Yestin is busy managing his capital's construction plans, troop movements, designing new armies, exploring dungeons, meeting with foreign leaders etc. After a dozen turns of action and intrigue, Yestin notices he has not checked on the city of Arguile in some time.

Under Arguile's building list a Lumbermill has 1 Turn build time and a Palace has 4 turns build time. This represents the time the Governor decided to put into pseudo-building these improvements. Since Yestin's empire cannot afford another palace right now, Yestin decides to go ahead and build a Lumbermill, a Merchant and a Library.

The Lumbermill gets built in one turn, costing the normal price, and the next improvements take normal time. The Palace still has a 4 turn build time, but for now those turns the Governor spent pseudo-building it are wasted.

Under this system, a player who micromanages every single city all through the game will get maximum efficiency by building every single improvement as soon as it is available, but the player who doesn't want to can leave some of his cities unattended without too much waste/guilt, as long as he eventually gets around to looking at the town.