I've played all night and have nearly conquered a medium sized map.  Mountains boxed me in so I fired up the war machine and never turned it off.  Fun game.  I'm generally liking the updates.  Was nice to feel the heat of aggressive monsters.  And was nice to see more champion variety.   The buildings UI is spot on.  I'm liking the changes/additions to buildings and am looking forward to more tweaks here.  Magic feels  weaker yet deeper.  I'm anxious but confident to see more magic depth as the new system gets solidified.  Alot of good things to say about this version.  Two thumbs up. 

I'm off to get a few more turns in before getting to work.  Even the ZOC save bug doesn't deter me from getting in another short round of play.  

Having played a bit more, I like some of the directions the game is going. Let me try and collect my thoughts to make them easier to understand.

UI

I think this is really going in the right direction. There are still bizarre moments with the UI, like when I get two cities with the "do something" popup and I can only use it for one of them. All in all I think it is a much cleaner interface and makes it easier to access the various elements.

Spells

So far I have found spells to be rather weak in general and they tend to be a bit on the buggy side. For example, Storm shows its effect over the casting unit instead of the targeted one. I think the idea behind spells is going in the right direction, but some spells just feel meaningless. Consider the spells which give +1 resource to a city. In per 1.09n, these spells had some usefulness since you were limited on how much of a resource you could build in a city, but now, there is little point to cast brilliance when I can just build another study with the masses of specialists I have to run them.

Combat

Tactical combat is definitely improved in some ways. Units have more base health, weapons are more potent, and armor is more important. Yet, as someone pointed out, it feels like weapons never miss and the balance on the weapons still lack any real differentiation.

Cities

I think cities are coming along nicely in some ways, and yet in others, it is one of the weakest points. Gildar improvements were given a huge knock since they do not effect taxes, and gold mines seem to be far more in frequent. After several hundred turns, I found that most of my cities where either building the same level 1 building over and over or building nothing. There just are not enough different buildings for levels 1-3 and most of the level 4-5 buildings are either one per faction or only useful in specific circumstances. Since most buildings require a ton of research into civics, cities eventually become stagnant, with no point to grow any higher, at which point I start looking for more food to start city spamming again.

Caravans

The new caravans trading gold is a nice change, but have the same problems that gildar bonus buildings have. They do not effect taxes, and are therefore only useful to send towards cities with gold mines. This is the same exact problem with caravans as before but now they don't even give you the ability to aid the growth of your faction.

Resources

In 1.09n, shards are incredibly easy to find and exploit, as I had 4 shards (2 air, 1 fire, and 1 water) in my last game, yet the other resources seem to be incredibly rare. I have played a couple of games to about turn 300 and have yet to even find a lost library or ancient temple. In my last game, I only found 1 gold mine for all 4 cities I built ( which were not huddled close together ), which meant I only had one place where merchants and markets would work and only one place to send caravans. 

Roaming Monsters

Its cool that Roaming monsters are alot more aggressive, but as I research adventure techs to try and get more resources and quests, I get to the point where I feel like I can't even mount a war effort. Since I can no long build cities to stem their spawning places, all of my cities have to be heavily guarded and my caravans closely watched.

You still need enough food to keep growing you max population, so this is not really true; but yes growing a larger city and only founding others to take strategic resources or choke points is what this patch encourages and I consider it much better. And buildings and troops tie up your population remember.

The game mechanics feel *completely* different, a vast improvement in my opinion. After reading through the posts, I chose the Normal setting, only once did the wandering monsters attack one of my settlements (and it was an undefended one) allowing unhindered play. Enemy declared war and was a bit unprepared so lost this game.. Have to play a bit more I guess to get a better feel for strategies. NO crashes in almost 2 hours straight, wish I had more time.. and adding my kudos to the Stardock Team.