First of all, wow! This is really coming together nicely. Fantastic job all at Stardock.

1. No crashes to report.

2. I had the blurry screen to start with but switching off Advanced lighting solved that. And there was no residue left on the screen afterwards.

3. I run multiple monitors and switched on clip cursor when full screen thinking it would contain the cursor and allow automatic scrolling along the right hand edge. This didn't do anything. Ended up disabling the second monitor.

4. Had a tactical battle with two darklings. After defeating both the second darkling wasn't listed in the battle summary but was mentioned in the detailed battle report.

5. The helper character didn't arrive but after creating a familiar it started to provide feedback.

6. Sums didn't work when recruiting a hero band of three heroes. It said it would cost me $510. I had $518 so said yes. Final balance was -$421.

7. Had a tactical battle where the frames dropped to about 1 frame per second. Veeeeerrrrrryyyyy slow. I was attacking a city at the time. Attached is the debug from this...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9163563/debug03.zip

The whole game slowed at this point so I quit and restarted. Afterwards the battles were fine again.

8. Taking cities is way way too easy. Come across an AI player in the early game and they are toast. Suggest cities spawn static missile units when first built then spawn more for each city level after that (perhaps with other buffs). Maybe these could be called 'Garrison' units with 1 level better armour and weapons than the current research level. I don't know. But the cities are too easy to steam roll through.

9. Had a hero level up after a tactical battle but the cursor stayed as the movement cursor so was very hard to use as a pointer.

10. After capturing cities there was no reduction in the city quality or influence area. I think there should be a penalty when you capture an enemy city. The influence area at least should shrink a bit. and perhaps all resource improvements should be removed. This would do two things. If they successfully capture it they will need to devote resources and time to bring it back up to a usable level. If the attacking player is eventually removed they at least have damaged the city like a raid.

11. In a tactical battle the AI cast two completely useless global spells on my troops. Cast Familiar and Imbue Hero. Wasted his attacks.

12. A bandit threatened me but the screen zoomed to one of my units. Would think that it should zoom to the bandit.

13. It is now too easy to wander around (at least in the map I am playing). Need more monsters that protect their areas like in some of the previous betas.

14. I really like the pacing of the research now.

15. The city building is also feeling very nice and natural.

16. The game starts off nicely where there is a lot to do but there aren't enough challenges in the middle game. Monsters will help this. I like games where there is a specific challenge that needs to be solved a particular way. Eg. An important pass is blocked by a high level creature that is best attacked with fire. Either get the fire shard and fire magic or find another way around him. Next challenge calls for a different set of skills. I expect more from the environment in this respect. After the early game I found I was just doing the same thing over and over and was losing interest.

17. The magic spells are now too easy to use. Would like to see shards play a much more important role. After all, this is the war of magic and the shards should be the main strategic elements in the game. They should also have a guardian unit that needs conquering first.

Over-all I'm enjoying it a lot and will certainly be one of my favourite games when finished. The big 'but' for me is the lack of shifting challenges in the middle game where things start to get boring and repetitive.