• No essence was directly beside me at my starting point. As I understand, only the square where I build contributed to my resources, so I had to move several squares over to build my capital. 

A side note: I’ve noticed a 'bug' right away. I’m in full screen mode, but run dual monitors. My scroll to the right (where my other monitor is) doesn’t work. Great for all this typing, as I can click right into my wordpad, but bad for scrolling right in the game. To compensate, I have to zoom-out/zoom-in or use the keyboard arrows, but both are way too sensitive…looking for a control to turn them down...Found the option, but it’s 0 or 100…nothing in between. Needs more flexability.

Another side note: Just recruited my first hero; an ironneer. Looks like she’ll be good at combat and has earth magic for extra defenses. Noticed that I received an achievement for the action. Achievements in games are a total waste, imo…but whatever; it doesn’t hurt the game any and I suppose some people may like collecting useless pieces of paper.

• Really like how hills reduce movement speed. That’s a nice touch.
• Found a sand golem. This thing is very powerful. I can smash through everything I’ve come across so far and they just clink against his armor.
• Comments about the battles so far…love the terrain. Love the movement restrictions. I do find the animations to move unnaturally fast though. Needs to be adjusted. Also, combat is fairly plain. Needs more tatics. Please see my other posts on this thread for thoughts on tatical battles.
• Don't like how you have to click on the unit to see how many movement points they have left. Would like to see some kind of highlight when you mouse over the army in the upper left hand corner so that you right away know which ones still require commands.

Spring of 162AC and I still haven't got much to show. A single city and 2 heros. Don't have the resources to build buildings AND pioneers at the same time. Makes the game too 1-dimensional.

• I don’t like it when I double-click a city and it automatically assumes I want to build the ‘cleric’. Should have to manually select the building your want to build. No autos.
• Don't like how, when a city is destroyed, it stays 'razed' and I cannot build there again until I've finally researched that restore land spell. I recommed the following:
• I recommend adding a 'fallow' time limit to a city when it is destroyed. Tie it together with the cities level. Thus a level 2 city, when razed, could remain fallow for 2*10 = 20 turns. Larger cities have more impact, thus when larger cities are destroyed, it takes longer for the land to fallow. Now, if you don't want to wait and have gained sufficient magical knowledge, you can bypass that fallow period with a spell and set up roots immediately.
• Took my first sights of the coast….looks like it’s still missing a beach, else the cliff is in the wrong spot relative to the way the waves are traveling.
• Was playing a battle with a wolf 'anna' and I periodically have no way of ending my wolf’s turn. Where did the ‘pass’ button go? To bypass this persisting bug, I need to autoplay briefly...
• Received a message from an ogre. Nice touch.

What in the world! My city finished building it’s queue and it never told me. I don’t know how many bloody turns of production I just lost. A warning DEFINATELY has to be given…

• Zooming in and out, I find the game a little crunchy when I change between the strategic and cloth views. Maybe it’s my computer, but I doubt it. I run XP on a dual 3gig/3gig with 4gigs of ram (yes, I know XP doesn’t see all of it). Never the less, the rest of the game runs very smooth, so I’m guessing it’s not related to my machine.
• Found an area that looks out of place. There is a fruit grove, but to way I see of building a city near it…at least no way yet…
• Also, still looking in how to build outposts…just found it…silly that pioneers are consumed to build cities. How does one have time to build outposts with them? I suppose this is the ‘pioneer spam’ that so many are talking about on these threads.
• Just came across another wolf statue. Wanted to name my wolf Anna again….but I already have an Anna. Should have some random-name function built in.
• Yikes! I just spent a settler for an outpost?!? Totally didn’t think that would consume the unit. Outposts aren’t as near important as city locations….this brings me to something I recommended on another thread:
• I recommend a solution that solves (I think..maybe..needs testing) both pioneer spam and the need for scouts. First, cut the price of scouts in half....such that Pioneers take about 10 turns to build and scouts take about 5 turns. This would greatly increase your desire to build scouts instead of pioneers. Now you need a reason why: Have scouts responsible, and consumable, for building Outposts. Continue to have pioneers responsible, and consumable, for building cities. You have have sufficient reason for wanting scouts to roam the land....looking for suitable resources to capture and utilize. You now have accpetable use out of your pioneer....expansion and procreation.
• If pioneers are also meant to be the scouts, then merge the two units into one and be done with it...but the problem here is that a low costing pion-scout would still be spammed and a high costing pion-scout would take to many resource and queue time to invest in.

Well, that was mildly unfair. Just got the snot beaten out of my by a dragon. Had two wolves and a warg, valued to be able to win the battle, and the dragon wiped them all out in a single attack. Will be reloading that battle…..

Hint: For Pariden you need to focus on Essence. At level 2 choose Conclave for any city with 1 Essence or more. Then you can get Oracle (+1 Essence) at level 3. You have a building that is +1 Essence as well. This is the best way to specialize the faction.

Game 2: Playing Queen Procipinee again

Game started without any problem. Was able to read that book this time around. Saw the tiny, tiny ‘X’ in the top corner, but didn’t have the chance to click it to close the book. I clicked elsewhere, and it dropped the page.

• Really nice starting location.
• Started the game full screen mode, and the right scroll was working properly until I alt-tabbed for the first time to type. Now right-scroll doesn’t work again.
• Definitely don’t like that an improvement is always selected to place by default. Should be a manual select so there is no accidental building.
• Obsidian Golem terrorizing the landscape isn’t that fun. Can’t build anything. I recommend:
• Have monsters have there own 'zone of threat'. If that zone werre breached, the monster takes it upon himself to rid the zone of the intruder...and then RETURNS to his starting location (which we can call 'lair'). This elimates high-powered monster roaming, as they are zoned by there lair, yet allows the weaker monsters to still roam early game as they don't have a specific lair to be attached too. In addition, different monsters could have different zoning criteria....maybe a dragon likes his space and doesn't want anyone with a 5x5...maybe the obsidion golem doesn't mind people walking by, so long as you don't build something within the 3x3. Clicking on the 'lair' should despite and explain the zoning details to the player so that they can work it into there overall strategy.

And the game just crashed…

I had no problems pasting my serial from the stardock page to the game when I installed it.

There are indicators for idle cities (the Zzzz I'm sleeping next to their icon on the tree on the left, which appears on the same turn a queue is idel).  I'm newly returning and simply not in the habit of watching for that kind of thing, so I could use a more blatant queue has become empty notification too, like having the right hand side building complete notifier in a different color or, or include some text like "this city is now building nothing," or maybe a huge neon explosion saying "build more, noob"

In fact, I often miss the notifiers on the right hand side in general, especially if I have auto turn on.  I've started playing with auto turn off so that I take more time thinking every turn, looking for indicators, making sure I tweaks stuff in a timely manner and it doesn't slip a turn, etc.

Auto turn is nice for getting around quick and exploring, sorta, but it's too easy for me to just plow and miss critical events.  Maybe once I get more used to looking for the visual queues.

The game has a ton of optoins but it'd be nice to have autoturn options to force an end of turn confirmation (or manual hitting of end turn) for certain events, like getting attacked, losing structures to monsters actions, idle queues, that kind of thing.

Continuing Game 3:

• Just came across the ‘pit of lost voices’. Really cool. Nice cut-scene. Don’t know what it’s for yet, but game definitely needs more of it.
• Game needs more heroes. I only got 1 beside my starting city and he was a research wimp.
• Don’t really like how I only have 3 cities and I’m already hemmed in.
• I do like how there is ‘pockets’ of fertile land surrounded by wastelands. Really pushes that ‘cataclysm’ feel.
• Don't really like how forests cost 0.5 movement. Was totally fine with hills having that restriction...just forests seem a little too much. Maybe remove that limitation while walking through forests in your zone of control??

Well, Kraxis all of a sudden declared war on me. Don't know why cause he was quite neutral where diplomacy was concerned. Bought two huge armies in and wiped me out quickly. Heroes are too powerful. Else, to balance, troops should be enabled to be built earlier so they have time to level as well.

Overall it was a good game. Didn't get much chance to research in the military and nothing in the magic area. Was doing all civic to try build my cities up so that I could produce at a decent rate.

Totally thought I could of squeezed one more city in my 'green' space so that was a bit of a disappointment. What is the range that cities must be apart from one another?

Game should also be able to give you scouts and pioneers quicker. Having to split your production between units and buildings feels fairly harsh. Also still think that scouts should be building outposts.

I toyed with the outpost upgrades a little...is there a maximum number of upgrades an outpost can have? If there isn't, recommend that there should be. My proposal is as follows:

• Just as essence now controls the number of enchantments a city can have, noting of course that you can upgrade you city to produce more essence and hense more enchantments; so too with outposts should 'resources' be the limiting factor for the number of upgrades that can be built. Therefore, if you have as an example, a water shard, a iron mine, and a prestegious location within the zone of your outpost, you would be able to build 3 upgrades for that outpost. Naturally, by extending the zone with the 'hightower' upgrade, it would be possible to have more upgrades, should you obtain more resources by that extension.
• In addition, the thought of having outposts connected to the 'nearest' city seems a little lame. I can understand that you shouldn't be able to connect an outpost to ANY city per-se, but perhaps have a choice to connect to 1 of the 3 closest cities. Make that choice selectable at the outpost. Also make the link between the outpost and the city visible, or at least togglable to be visible.

Game 4 to come soon...

Yeah, found that out the hard way in game 3. Should have tried to build a bit more of an army....ah well, live and learn.

Yeah, it's only of the reasons why I specifically didn't play beta 3. I wanted my beta 4 experiance to be virgin.

Stackable outposts.  That, I don't like. It's possible I concede the point that tech upgrades and production limitations can be sufficant for outpost upgrades, but it seems silly that you can artificially boost your bonus just by corect placement.

Enchantments, spells, and abilities are all being designed not to stack. Why do it different for outposts?

As to the matter of city walls, I find it silly that only Fortresses are able to have them. I propose the following:

• I think that when your city reaches level 2, and if you chose the fortress type, then you should get 'basic' walls for free right then and there.
• Other towns and conclaves should still be able to build walls...you just have to queue them.
• There also should be a spell to cast 'walls' on your city, imo....as well as 'firewall' and 'wind wall' and maybe even 'moat'. This way, each of the elements has some way of magically defending there cities. Each would have unique aspects:
• Stone Wall: Prevents movement and blocks line of sight for ranged attacks expept at gates

• Moat: Prevents movement expect at drawbridges. Does not prevent line of sight.

• Wind Wall: Prevents line of sight for ranged attacks. Does not prevent movement.

• Fire Wall: Doesn't prevent anything, but does some X damage per unit passing through the wall.

• Lastly, being a Fortress, you should have access to building 2 types of walls on your city (or perhaps a variable amount, dependant on essence.) Other cities only have a maximum of one type.

Game 4: Let’s try Oracle Ceresa

• K, I’m not Emperor Palpatine here. What’s with all the thunder? It’s too much.
• City queue doesn’t work properly. Often times when I order the queue and then come back to it, it’s not in the same order that I first ordered it in.
• The infection spell did not work.
• There is a massive dragon right by my second city location. How do I expand my empire?

 Restarting

•  Where did my obsession enchantment disappear to?

 Restarting

•  Still missing the obsession enchantment that I had in the 4^th game….never-the-less, I’m continuing on because my starting location is a fantasic utopia.
• I'm finding often that the elemental shards that I have access to are NOT the shards I want to have access to. I like how the life/death shards can change depending on the territory they're in and wish to have something similar for the elemental shards. Naturally since they are not territory dependant, I propose the following:

• Instead, you come across a shard. It has a default property of one of the 4 elements. (say fire as an example). You may choose to maintain that default 'fire' property, gaining 100% of the bonous to spells and mana of that elemental type OR choose to change/warp the shard (whether that be upon initial construction of the 'shrine' or whether that is a spell you must cast on the controlled shard.) to your will, encuring 50% penalty to the shard's potency, but gaining the element type of your choosing, (water air or earth).

• This gives an element of luck in obtaining naturally what you were looking for and maximizing your natural bonus, yet also provides strategic decisions to make should you wish to focus in one or two elemental type. 

• In addition, gaining X (whatever game balance dictates) shards of one specific type should grant 'bonus spells, abilitys, quests, etc'. This would further encourage strategic decisions and reward the rpg element of the game.

• An example of what type of abilities you nation could gain are as follows:
  Effect Suggestions:
  Fire Mastery: Enemies take 1 pt burn dmg while in your territory
  Water Mastery: Tiles (or maybe just river tiles) in your territory produce +1 food
  Earth Mastery: Roads allows your units additional +1 movement while in your territory
  Air Mastery: Ranged attacks while in your territory are increased by +1

Here's a picture of what's I was able to work with: http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/5004/howmordorshouldhavebeen.jpg

• Maul is brutal…
• An Assassin Demon is said to be a ‘weak’ encounter. That sure ain’t the case. Not to mention it heals 30hp when it downs someone. That’s crazy…
• Game crashed…. reloading a save and continuing as this is turning to be a really good start…had to pioneer rush to do it though….
• What dictates when a monster begins to randomly terrorize the landscape? I built an outpost right beside the assassin demon and he did nothing for 11 turns…then all of a sudden decided to attack when my forces were no longer near…
• Sweet. I killed an ogre, and now I’ll be able to recruit ogres, pending some tech. Neat addition!
• When my threat level is ‘strong’ and my opponent is ‘weak’, there should be NO way the single unit can slaughter me. Definitely needs some tweaking…
• So, I walked by this one square 4 times. It was desolate. Then, I built a outpost nearby to acquire the shard in the area. All of a sudden…3/3/1 spot shows up. Wow. Didn’t know the game gave you spots after awhile…
• Feeling really strapped for cash. There’s a hero nearby, but she wants 339 gilders. Ouch.
• The music stops if your turn takes too long…
• Just did a rat’s quest that gave 300 gilders or a doom blade. I took the hero option.
• I'm kinda feeling jipped that Pariden is the only race that can get the +1 essence scrying pool. This game is about magic....would be nice if the other races could eventually get it aswell....or...Pariden's scrying pools grant +2 essence....everybody elses only grant +1 bonus. This would work really nice too...
• The Crow Demon’s ‘titan’s breath’ hangs for a while before casting.
• Traveling the 'auto-road' layout is becoming a pain. Why can't I choose where the roads are built? Don't necessarily need a pioneer to do the building...could use the city queue with 'start' and 'stop' selection points. Here is what I propose:
• • The concept of a road should be "select starting point of road" then "select ending point of road", then road is built. Pioneers don't HAVE to do the building, imo, but you should have more choice in where your roads are built and how your empire is connected. I recommend that 'Build Road' be added to the buildings list under the guilding principles of start-stop.
  • Road 'start' and 'stop' points should be limited and restricted to friendly cities and settlements. Roads connecting empires can appear automatically depending on interations and treaties and can ONLY be modified if you control both ends of the road.
  • Maybe, a city can only build roads that are connected to it. Maybe this can be extended to the outpost that is linked to the city aswell. That would mean that if you wanted to build a road from outpost A to outpost B, you just queue the road building and when ready to place, just select the points.
  • When you get the 'trade' tech, you'll have several of these roads to build...but imo, that increases the uniqueness of obtaining the tech...and since it's ussually an early tech to get, you won't have too much to build. Maybe have these roads built for free...adding dynamic as to WHEN you want to get the 'trade' tech.
  • Roads currently feel too powerful, granting too much movement bonus. This should be dialed back somehow.
  • Additionally, there should be a way to spell your roads to give you...well, what your currently getting. Actually, it could be like the spell in MoM, selecting a site and then a 5x5 around that select turns all road into enchanted road....definately worth considering imo...
  • Roads NEED a 'raze' option. Maybe be able to select the road, as if a city or outpost, but the only option is 'Raze'. 'Raze' should only be available IF you control both sides of the road segment. I suppose road segments could have 'Upgrades' as well, tied in with technilogical advancements, granting bonuses....maybe a 'stone road upgrade' etc.
  • I agreed that armies should not gain the benefits of roads while in enemy territory.
  • I agree that an 'Open Borders' Treaty should be in place before being able to walk through enemy territory...though I understand that this would hinder RPG questing if a player were hemmed in...
  • Caravans should not block travel on roads.
• Game just crashed…

 Will take a break before redoing a bunch of stuff from my last save.

EDIT: I have upgraded my concept of the road. In addition to what is said above, I recommend the following:

Have three available levels of road: Path, Road, Highway

1. Be able to build a PATH through a city queue. When the build is complete, the UI asks you were your 'end' (or 'sink') destination to be. The start ('source') location must be the city where the PATH is being built. The end location must be another city or outpost that you control. The build produces a PATH along the most efficient route, granting +1 movement to units traveling along it.
2. You may select the PATH, as you would an outpost, and there will be an upgrade button on it. Upgrading puts the PATH back into the queue of the source city, which then upgrades the PATH into a ROAD once complete, granting +2 movement bonus while traveling along its trajectory. This upgrade could be made available with the 'construction' tech.
3. You may again select the ROAD and upgrade, this time turning into a HIGHWAY, granting +3 movement while traveling along its trajectory. This upgrade can be made available through tech in the military tree....perhaps something like 'mobilization' (if it's a little harder to get than 'construction') 

In addition, there can be two more city enchantment spells available that focus on further upgrading all the roads connected to the source city where the enchantment is placed. Naturally this enchantment requires the essence to cast.

• Ride like the Wind: Air Spell (perhaps lvl2), granting an additional +1 movement for travel along all roads SOURCED from the enchanted city.
• The Golden Road: Earth Spell (perhaps lvl4), granting x2 movement for travel along all roads SOURCED from the enchanted city.

(Yes, this means that if you had a city with highways sourced that has 'ride like the wind' AND 'the golden road', units travelling along those roads would gain an addition +8 movment.)

I'd really like to see an option (turned on at game start) for a scroll box in the bottom right that provides info about which cities have finished their queues, and what was produced.  That's in addition to the icons on the left of the screen.

There is an option for manual building placement, but it's turned off at game start.  I agree, it should be on.  I think there are currently problems with the placement of some buildings, however.

If you have a unit in that area, it should show all the settlement/outpost values for each tile.  If you just drop a monolith magically from a distance, you won't see this, of course.

There's an option on a new game of paying nothing for hired champions.  I suggest going with that, especially since a good Pariden build relies heavily on buying expensive elemental spell books for your leader and other champions he/she hires.  You want to save your cash for that purpose.  I typically make my first city big on trade, and all my others on research.

I've taken a moment here and condensed all recommendations I've made on other threads, and merged them into this thread as I came across the situations. Feel free to re-read (if not already done so) the green highlights.

Future considerations made in other threads will also be merged into this thread aswell, maintaining the green highlight approach so they can easily be picked out.

Thanks

Awesome! Didn't know that. Thanks!

A few more notes:

• The spider rider, Araine, takes a long time for her to cast her spells…
• It actually seems like all the opponent spell casters take a long time to cast.

Also, it really feels like essence is too sparce in this game. It's a game about magic; why restrict the magic? I understand that some sovreigns should be better at magic than others....strengths and weaknesses things....but here's what I propose:

One approach I thought of in another thread was to extend the 'scrying pool' to all factions. HOWEVER, Procipinee gets special bonus to her 'scrying pools'. First, she gets them available to her for building right away (whereas all the other nations would have to research a tech first) and second her 'scrying pools' would output +1 essence at first, but when the tech is obtained, they would upgrade to +2..

This would allow for all factions to be able to eventaully artifically create at least +1 essence in all their cities. If they go the route of conclave, they can get +2. If they are on a natural +2 essence tile, then they're up to +4 now. If they're playing Procipinee, and have the 'scrying pool tech',  then they'll be at a glorious +6!! Trully a power haven for one of the most powerful magic users in all the world.

Now, is there much difference between +4 and +6 such that Procipinee has an advantage in this area? Possibly....not such at the moment...but I think it's definately worth considering.

Additionally, here are some thoughts in what should be added:

• Really love how you can have horses and wargs, but can that not be expanded on? Can we ride spiders (that ignore terrain penaltys)? Unicorns (that can teleport)?
• More unique units (like the orge mounds, etc): Perhaps Unicorn Groves, Demon Portals, Hell Hounds Dens...even things for the later game like Dragon Roosts or Hydra Caves.
• More roaming monsters showing up mid-late game (whether that be by hole in the ground, or comet from the air, or climbing up out of the sea) or more lairs showing up mid-late game (those these could be the wildlands if designed right). Currently there is no reason to defend or patrol the area around your cities.
• More spells to be cast, both tatical and strategic. If you have access to the MoM information, that's a great source for some GREAT spells.
• More summoning spells. Different creatures types...

Here is a link to how my game 4 is progressing....I would say very well. Having 9 cities has slowed my overall growth quite a bit, but I just aquired a city enchantment that increases growth by 1...so it's time to catch up.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9224/empirehasgrown.jpg