New day, new beta release. Nice 
After having my assed kicked at EXTREEEEMEEE difficulty in 1.09q, I decided to try again with 1.09r. This time playing Umber, hoping a warrior had a better chance at surviving the critical first 20 turns before you get qualified help.
Monsters are now down to what seems to be x2 hit-points. This is somehow a lot more managable than the x3 in 1.09q. Also the first monsters attacking was wolves and not bears. This gave my sovereign much needed XP before facing bears. Still there was several amazingly close calls. In the end I survived the first critical turns, and the monsters stopped attacking just around when I got spearmen *grumble*. All in all extreme difficulty seems to work. It is very hard like it should be, but doable.
Setup: I tried the large map, and here by 185, I have still only met one AI, Resoln, and they are a fair distance from me. Very appropiate for a large map. I also found a lost library south of me between me and Resoln. All in all, pretty good, though quite resource starved (except for food, I got plenty of food, but everything else is scarce).
I haven't used fire-spells for a lot of the latest playthrough, so I am unsure how new it is, but fire-spells have become utterly useless. They cost the same mana as arcane arrow, and gives less damage.. Stupid.
Sovereign of Umber, appears to one of the only people who can't wear travelling boots. Strangely enough all my troops can wear travelling boots now. It is very nice with fast moving attack troops. It makes it possible to have different defensive and offensive troops (I even changed the auto-generated quote from: "That smell isn't me" to "That smell is me" for the offensive troops).
The AI no longer has a 3x hitpoints, but they now have 3x attack rating?? The Cerasa of Resoln and her spouse, both had around 20 hp, and 70 in attack.. That is lot against my 6 defense (padded armor). I am assuming this is a bug.
The empire btw seems to be using the alternative padded armor, which gives them a different look than kingdom troops,
The problem where the map seemed slighly misaligned 1.09q is gone. The map now appears to work again.
Popups in the beginning of the turn still fall over eachother, but it seems they are stacking properly now. You used to lose the earlier popups in previous patches. You now return to them once the newer ones are solved. I would still prefer if they waited for earlier popups to be solved before poping up, but having research interrupted due to a battle is better than having research choice cancelled due to a battle.
