i am around 130 turns into my game (on challenge lvl, huge map) and here are some thoughts:
1. Issue - leveling of champions
Leveling is now sooo slow. I have cleaned map from all the monsters i could find and now i have only foreign AI to fight against, and my sov is on lvl 6 .... Taking into account that there is very little exp gain even if army is strong, i think that to lvl from a level 11 to 12 it will take like hundreds of battles ... I am not yet at the end of game, though i can wipe remaining AI (i conquered one so far) in next 100 turn or so, and if my sov takes part in all fights maybe he will get to lvl 10.
This causes certain consequences: epic enemies are impossible to beat without high lvl champions. 2, fun of lvl champs is gone. 3, since level happen so rarely i am starting to re-load a game of after leveling if a choice of attributes is not lucky enough. If my mage spend 2 hours of gameplay to level from lvl 5 to 6 and then I know that next time i will have a choice will be in next 50 turns or so, and i have only melee attribute to choose from (+2 str ...) i re-load, b/c without spells my mage is close to useless. Before champs were leveling fast i knew that soon i will be able to choose fire apprentice and cast lvl 3 fire spells, now I HAVE TO CHOOSE THEM ON LVL 5 or i will have big problems to fight monsters for next 100 battles ... The choice become so important i cannot risk/ i get pissed off if i have to select from useless selection of attributes ...
2. Money & cities.
Maintenance of troops is insane. Stupid troop of three soldiers with basic armors and spear can cost you 4 gildar/turn!! It is an absurd that city of 200 population can afford only 1, maximum two troops, in total 6 soldiers. I am afraid that a troop of 9 knight with full armor will cost like 100 guildar/turn.
Right now i have 5 cities (mostly lvl 2) and i cannot afford any troops to defend them. I have two armies and that's all. In total i have 4 troops build. I was initially happy that finally armies are being build fast, cities are not busy with buildings much, so i can have a nice army. So i built like 4 scouts and 5 spearman and my income hit -13 guildars/turn ... I had to disband all of them. High taxes is not an option, b/c research is already very, very slow (i play on normal pace).
Cities - since they cannot build armies, research is slow, they stay for turns and turns idle. All of them. If i get new civ tech (i try mostly to research magic tech) then they build, all of them, inn and then they wait, and wait, and wait ... Often my gameplay is reduced to move one, or now, two armies around.
