Started a small game on hard difficulty with 3 hard AIs. They were Tarth, Gilden, Roseln, and I was Magnar. I modded in some of the .911 changes like the Sov hp and Stoneskin nerf.

I restarted the game a few times because of bad starting locations. I think there is to much variance between possible city locations. A range from 2/2 to 5/5 is too much, it encourages reloading and is unnecessary. I suggest in general that that range be smaller and in particular that food resources stop increasing the fertility of land around them.  Food resources should probably also stop spawning at start locations. I once found a spot with 6 food because it had wheat, an orchard, and a river.

I founded my Capital on a 4/4 spot beside some Iron and a river. Built a pioneer first, then a workshop.

Then Magnar beat up a Rock Spiderling in hand to hand, and fire bolted a Banished Ogre to death. Got Anguine Edge which allowed Magnar to handily defeat most monster in hand to hand. Recruited the hero Gazdeh and then had him take out a mites nest. It was actually very close but he managed to beat the mites. Magnar did the Butcherman quest and got the potion.

Unluckily my main city was placed right in the middle of a large patch of fertile ground. The only places around me I could settle on were on the very edges of that  patch and were only 2/2. So I ended up with only my capital and a bunch of outposts.This ended up being a problem because I kept running out of food in my main city because the prestige was so high. This slowed down my research and production.

In many games I have played the city minimum distance limit prevents you from placing any expansions. I feel that in order to decrease the huge and random effect of fertile land placement on the game their should be lv1-2 Death and Life spells that allow you to expand fertile land one or two tiles for significant mana cost. It would only be castable on tiles that already border fertile land. This would help players with a bad start position turn 2/2 spots into 3/3. It would also totally fit into the lore because channelers are supposed to be able to revitalize the land. Again it would mostly serve to fix randomly assigned handicaps that would cause most player to restart their game.

I think that forest on unfertile land should really have its own art that looks more like the 3D version for a whole lot of reasons.

Magnar leveled after killing some monsters and then encountered an ogre. Which he proceeded to Soulburn to death easily. Some powerful knights of Akosh blocked me from exploring the south. 

Tarth realized I had no army so they tried to blackmail me. I refused and they declared war. They also built 2 cities in highly questionable locations, usually right beside Wildlands in 2/2  spots. Tarth sent some nice armies after me but they didn't seem to use armor and didn't effectively combine their armies and champions. I countered them with some custom spearmen and my champions. Wages on those spearmen really absorbed my income but then I realized I could build slaves so I spammed them to back up by 2 spearmen.

Meanwhile in my city and for research I focused on maxing food.

I walked a rather long distance over to the other side of a mountain range where I found Tarth's homeland. Wow was their start better then mine. They had room for 3 cities with values of around 4/4. Their capital even had wheat. This is what I mean when I say there is too much randomness.

They started spamming mages which was annoying but my spearmen were around level 6 with leather armor and they focused their shots on my slaves. Magnar could basically firebolt them to death in one shot and I had plenty of mana. They also had troops with burning axes but no armor. After taking the first of their cities I finally got to use the slaving ability to boost population. It didn't take long for the population in my conquered city to  rise to higher then it was before it was conquered.

I couldn't take their main city because it was full of mages but then for some reason they started to remove the mages from the city 1 or 2 at a time and I killed them one by one until the city was weak enough to take. They also still really failed to use champions to back up their troops.

To be continued....