The Good:

It's fun. Everything else still has to answer to this question. It's goddam fun. Like, best strategy game since Civ IV fun if they fix the stuff below. 

The Bad:

Diplomacy needs a lot of work. The computer players need work. More magic. More spells. More loot. Caravan spam. 

The Ugly:

Gets very slow and very memory hoggish late game. The graphics in the game are terrible if you're playing as an Empire. Is anyone at Stardock playing as an Empire? Seriously. How thinks dark on dark is good?

The end game is terrible. No pay off. Conquest is a slog. Diplomacy is boring. The quests are often incoherent. And the spell of making is a total let down. 

FE, right now, is the Sopranos of games. It's amazing right up until it's not and then it really isn't.

It's all fixable but it can't be sugar coated. The end phase of the game suuuuuuccccckkkkkssss. 

My suggestions:

Get rid of Caravans or at least the little caravan unit thingy. 

Get rid of improvement placing. It's just a pain and meaningless.

Make the quests a lot lot more user friendly. I'm stupid. I need it to hand hold me OK?

Let the end game not be a tedious slog. Let's see some magical pew pew. Don't do the GalCiv thing where the AI just surrenders. No. They don't get away that easily. Let me annihilate them with magic. 

I'm stupid so walk me through the spell of making so I understand what is happening and have a bloody pay off for casting it. Speaking of the spell of making, why is everyone letting me sit there and cast it without lifting a finger to stop me?

Roads. Find some way to get there to be roads. I would be happy if they just showed up once cities got to a certain size.

More discipline on city improvements. I just build build build without care.