1. I played customs factions in all of the about 10 games i played. Customizing my side is very important to me and i feel that the UI could be much improved in that area. Most of the time i chose Men as race for the experience bonus and the henchmen, which are cool. I taken a liking to Heroic, Wanderlust and Master Scouts. I take "No ranged weapons" as a weakness, because trained ranged units are useless in my experience.

2. I rush the early civics technologies and tech warfare up until mounted warfare - after that i avoid warfare like the plague; after all, weapons can be found in the magic tree, which is where i spend most of my research. As soon as i can train a group of 5 with lightning hammers, my trained units outclass all others, and that is the point where all further research is unnecessary to win.

3. Most of my mana is gained from meditation. Most of my research from inspiration. My faction power is always the lowest until the first conflict, because it doesn't take into account that my hero can wipe out armies, especially since experience gain has been made faster again.

4. I play against five on a medium map, expert difficulty. When a war breaks out, some dozen turns of whack-a-mole ensue as enemy troops plop up everywhere near my cities while i rarely train more than 2 or 3 units myself. After i cleaned that up, my sovereign takes their cities effortlessly. However, i take care not to war against more than one faction at a time, if necessary by paying tribute. One on one, no faction can compete with the high-level sovereign and his gang.

5. The enemy does train proper units but they are nowhere near the level of the units that travel with my sovereign. That means all they can hope is to conquer the garrison of undefended towns - by the way, town garrisons have never successfully defended anything in my games. They are occasionally using 5-man units, but their sovereigns are weak and rarely have any impact on the fights inspite of being assigned a dozen bonus perks.

6. Apart from 1 -2 of the trained units mentioned in #2 i have one or two henchmen and 2 or more heroes. I dislike training units that will soon become outdated,  so i avoid having more than one or two around in the beginning. That might change when unit size and equipment can be upgraded in the future. I rarely use anything beyond leather armor, my games don't go that long.

7. There is no late game. Once i took out one faction and the path to taking out the others is clearly mapped out i will often start a new game or end the game quickly by means of the master quest. I cannot be bothered to mop up the entire map, it's just not entertaining and the tactical battles against the AI are just not interesting enough at the moment.

Faction:
I play all factions, I (usually) play premade factions with custom sovereigns. (leaving my custom sovereigns for future AI's to play)

Tech:
I ALWAYS get the "Civics" tech first, then usually get first 2 warfare techs and all the way up to each 2nd line of civilization technology, slightly depending on starting location. (and faction, Magnar Faction usually get civics, then spears, then armour, then civilization research).

Economy:
I usually run none taxes up till midgame, building a couple of early merchants to hold down troop wages, at the end of early game I increases taxes to low, and the core of midgame my taxes goes to normal, rushing buildings and units with excess coin
(Never bothered to go above normal, always swimming in cash at this point if I did it right, having a core of big cities).
Iron/crystal/horses/wargs are supremely plentyfull and the only thing keeping me from dropping resources to scarce is I know I will not have "less iron", but rather just not see iron at all.  (1 iron mine is enough to supply my empire, same goes for crystal, horse and wargs).
Mana is somewhat more balanced when playing mage sovereign, when playing a warrior type sovereign I have tons of mana.

Map Size, AI Left:
I play small or medium maps, number of enemies depend on mood, sometimes I go with preferred, a few times recently I tried to lower the enemy count to see how the game was like at that (Jehebus you get lots of cities then )
Been running Challenging after beta since I thought I saw a note about the AI being upgraded, upping it up to hard or challenging for future games, since it was nothing big.
Most players live, spare for 1 or 2 I got mad at during the start-up.

AI Army:
Usually see the AI armmies fitted with with maces only (Rarely see the AI use anything but maces) meaby its just a random impression as I was bashing they're faces in.
I usually can whoop them with my sovereign focused game-plan.

My Army:
My armies usually consist of:
some heavily armoured non-mounted defenders (dunno why I don't mount them though )
a group of heavily armoured heavily armed mounted knights
I Usually max out my midgame and lategame units, and never going to use ranged... any more (Tried it once, it was really rubbish).

Opinion:
Lategame needs balance, and needs some reappearing monsters.
Lategame would also be helped if monsters during the early stages of the game where more alive and aggressive, keeping the player down by eating outposts and non-defended cities (within reason).
ATM the AI is not really doing anything, (I know it is, but nothing noticeable, like declaring war, killing each-other).
I usually see the AI try to clear wildlands at best.
I'd love the AI to be better at managing to upgrade they're armies, also want to see the hitpoints gained for trained units each level lessened, compared to what they start with.
Also I love to see more interesting sovereign perks, but less powerful ones. (And less late-game accuracy for heroes, axes becomes useless except if they have high raw damage).

I did play my first games in a rather pacifistic way, and with some special things in mind, so next couple of games will be way different.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I never ended a game, I always get bored in the middle game. Early game is awesome, but the endless mooks the ai sends against you in the middle game bores me to death.

1. Magnar game in progress. My LP videos show a specific shift from Magnar early game to late game. The end of the midgame marks Magnar's rise to a powerhouse of a faction. The early game mostly depends on how good your starting position is. Nothing wrong with that. Their unique ability to focus solely on producing leather clad spear slaves en mass can get really powerful if you have a solid production capacity. If you have a mediocre start, they will at least keep you alive until you can expand in the late game. They are the faction you want for a vast war machine, using Slave Pits to utilize conquered cities as training hubs.

2. Getting Groups and Blacksmithing is the ticket to winning. Do what you have to do, but get those techs. Early on you want leather and spears. Then you focus on Civic until you have massive production levels and large armies. It's a simple plan. Avoid any techs with non-spear weapons, magical weapons, metal armor, mounts, or other weak choices. You just need a Boar Spear and Leather. The rest falls into place. Charge, Muscle, Might make for a very strong slave. Once you have these basic things, you don't need any other techs. 

3. The economy uses a little bit of metal. In the early game taxes are set to zero. Later on you can work towards increasing them to Oppressive. Just make sure each production center has a Slave Pit. If you still want research after having the basics, get a Conclave to take Tower of the Magi to ignore Unrest's effect on research. You can save up all other resources to make one or two very strong knights or sell it off to another faction. Faction Power will stay near the top three for the most part until you start your initial attacks. Then you will quickly become dominant.

4. On Challenging, Medium map, normal settings, with 6 factions. Up until about turn 210, I was in the middle as far as faction power. The lower factions were still able to defend their cities and once in a while take one of mine temporarily. After I gained the last tech needed for my strategy, Only the most powerful faction, Tarth, is ahead of me. All others worship at my feet or hang on my wall.

5. The AI's that I defeated were Pariden and Altar. I had made some nice cavalry units for Pariden, which were their best units. They relied on four level 10 heroes to defend against my 2 level 9 heroes and hordes of slaves. Bows are totally ineffective as they would cast Obscuring Fog and Air Shield every battle. Their regular troops were using Monk's Staff and no armor. They used Gift of Iron to become competitive. The only armies they used larger than 5 were in city defense. They were very smart about stacking an endangered city. I lost a few armies to Tenfell early on. 

Altar was less competitive with some basic club units and a few leather defenders. They had little metal, but did not see fit to use spears and leather. A shame really. They had 3 heroes, all of which were level 6 or less with many injuries. More after I finished with them. Their cities were scattered, making a solid defense impossible for them. I agreed to take their Sov in as my pet after it was clear he could not manage a war. He is however skilled at rubbing my feet at night, after a long day of smashing in skulls.

6. Bows are too useless and too easily countered to continue using them. I got rid of them early on in favor of 6 Pawns and a hero. Pawn is a unit that has leather, spear, charge, muscle, strength and that +1 fire attack item that costs no crystal. They are so called because they move the same as a pawn in chess. They are equally expendable. A group of these does plenty of damage and can pierce armor. Losing one or two is not horrible because they are so easily replaced.

7. Overall I have only one serious threat left in my game of 6. I warred and competed with two factions from the start. Tarth has a few outposts near, but their cites are unknown. Yithril and Gilden are somewhere locked in a 30 year war. I am now able to focus on Tarth with no one getting in the way. They have 50 more faction power than I do. I am confident they will be using weak bows that do little against my slave legions. There is a Wildlands nearby, but I see no reason to attack it unless Tarth begins to worry me. I could extend our fragile peace and go for about 5 new shards in the Wildlands if needed. The midgame rise in power I experienced was due to me forgetting to prioritize Blacksmithing and lacking a good start. The AI played well, but after I upgraded all my soldiers, there was little they could do. Their armies were weak, yet they had ample technology. If it was a matter of resources, there should be some better choices in warfare that don't require metal. Clubs don't cut it past turn 100. Even then they are weak to spears. The AI also needs to use leather. Gift of Iron will run out if I force them into a war of attrition. By the end Pariden had no magic left to use in battle.

As soon as I got Blacksmithing no one could keep up with me. I rose to power in about 30 turns. Now I have 3 factions worth of cities. Tarth really should have attacked me earlier. She has been dominating me since we began. Why would she not help out the other Kingdoms? Keep in mind that I am not even at turn 300. It is at this point I would like to see some balance and AI refinement. I don't think that Tarth will have the ability to defend in a large scale war. They have better units and better technology. I should be seeing their soldiers on my doorstep now that I have risen to power so quickly. Tarth should have magical armor and burning bows. I should be way behind. Perhaps things will turn out differently. I will post the final result as soon as it happens.

Continued:

Tarth ended up having strong chain units and most of them were level 6 or higher They rampaged into my territory and took two cities fairly quickly. By the time I was able to catch up to them and lay siege, the cities were too well defended to attack. The next turn Irane and her familiar left the city and went scouting. Two additional armies made it past me and were out to do some guerrilla warfare. I sent one army after the guerrillas and then regrouped to confront those cities I had lost. Since Irane was sitting outside, the cities fell rather easily. Seems most of her armies were beefy, but only at party size due being trained early on. My groups of Pawns cut them to pieces. Once I got the cities back, Irane was an easy fight. She glitched once, so I killed her twice for an extra 140XP. After that it was simply a matter of taking her most defended city. An easy battle since I just weakened all her heroes and most of the defenders were useless crude bow or useless wildings. At that point I played out some more easy sieges and then made everyone surrender to me. The battles were interesting, but there was too much dullness inbetween. Tarth for some reason did not attack when I was weak and payed the ultimate price. 

I would say the biggest problem is that I was able to spend 25 Gildar per groups and just one metal to upgrade all my pawns. It should have been more like 25 metal and 100 gildar per unit. That, combined with the AI's inability to counter boar spear units with charge made for a perfect conquest victory.

Agreed with this. Quality > Quantity in FE's combat system by a large margin, so the AI tends to suffer but can be very annoying to fight with the waves upon waves of poorly armed peasants. The pieces are there to be a terrifying foe, especially when the AI gets difficulty bonuses, but they aren't being utilized.

I don't entirely agree with you here. Horses are (theoretically) a limited resource and you need 1 horse per mounted unit. Though this ends up being less of a problem than it should. Perhaps horses and other mounts should have a counteracting drain so that they work like Strategic Resources in Civ5? Either the same cost as the original or 1/2 or whatever value works to limit their numbers based on how many sources of horse you have available.

Alternatively, they could just have greatly increased wage costs, so keeping a ton around has a significant financial impact on your empire.

I suppose it might just be me and my games, but I just finished a game with 6 units of 7 cavalry each, and several hundred horses just sitting there not being used...and the game before that was similar. I suppose it really might just be me, but I haven't found horses to be a limiting factor. Crystal, now, crystal has slowed me down.

UmbralAngel has some interesting feedback. If I were Derek, I would take a long hard look at how this angel is able to circumvent the game mechanics. Playing the RPG aspect so efficiently definitely breaks alot of the basic balancing factors. Getting 300 Gildar from a quest for instance is way too much. This is a chance to really fine tune the length of time when adventuring is a strong tactic.

If I may ask, how are you able to compete with the AI when you apparently don't start building your economy until later in the game? How quickly are your cities growing? How do you outclass them in technology? Did you say that you don't even have a capital until later in the game? 

So by focusing on Essence with the Oracle you get a significant research advantage. That makes more sense. I would say there are some early game balance issues with extremely high growth and leveling towards the Oracle. If you can avoid needing gildar and trained units, research is all that matters really. So Conclave is the best choice. Then it gives you +1 Essence. The best citylevelup option you will see till level 5. This, combined with Civics being the best choice in technology early on, leads to perhaps too much advancement too quickly. Being able to level heroes to extreme levels makes the AI even less competitive. Even without extreme leveling, you can generally get some very overpowered weapons and armor too easily. Thus, the AI stands little chance at competing on a fair scale.

The question I am want to ask is how to reign in these issues. Any ideas from testers?

1. Which Faction did you play? How does their late game power compare to earlier in the game? What makes that faction feel unique at this point compared to other factions you have gotten to this point in the game?

Custom faction based on alter with binded, uneducated, adpets, heroic, sov with summoner with magic traits. At late game, there really isn't much difference based on faction-related differences. It is based on more of sov/hero specialization (either go mage or warrior) One thing I realized was that air magic is MUST since it is one route allow you to move across map very quickly and it comes later (I think water magic also has global movement ability, but I think it comes much later level)

2. Which technologies do you rush for? Which ones do you avoid? What is the worst payoff in the late game techs? What is the best tech?

Obviously Civic some points on War then focus on Civ and magic. Civ is always the best tech followed by magic, War tech gets better when game goes really late when you are running non-magic army (but again, it hardly happens.)

3. What are is your economy like? How much of each resource are you getting per turn? What is your Faction Power compared to others?

With normal/challenge setting, tax is always zero because most of resources are coming from buildings instead of population anyway (and this fact annoys me so much). When normal, I am on par with other factions. Regardless of the situation, I will eventually get 2x to 5x compared to other factions on both challenge and normal.

4. How many factions did you start with and how many are still alive? How many are able to compete with you? At what difficulty?

Usually large map with full 9 factions, I usually wipe them all out or do diplomatic victory with just 1 or 2 allies. Normally they just can't compete against me (with both normal and challenging). Probably a bit easier with current version with pioneer spamming intentionally gimped for AI side.

5. What kind of armies does the AI have? Are they building powerful armies or wasting their potential in small weakling groups? Did the AI ever use anything larger than a party?

For my games, they actually make full-stacked armies against me, and most of the times better equipped/numberous than me (challenging). I usually maintain the army as just a sov + 1 or 2 heroes + a few meatshield for early to initial late game to counter their army spam. And then when it is able, I also create fully-stacked armies, but at that point, the game is almost over.

6. What do your armies look like? What level are your units? What weapons do you use? What armor? How many heroes do you have?

Again, with cloud walk, I usually run with just a mage sov + 1~2 heroes + meatshield and it works really well til beginning of late game where I eventually need large armies. With binding trait, I can get free elemental armies from shards buildings, tho they get weaker as the game progress. I don't really concern about weapons/armour as long as it is functional and does job for me.

I don't hire no more than 2 heroes..... but again, thanks to AI spam, most of the heroes are gone from field before I have to chance to meet them.

7. What is your overall opinion of the late game for Fallen Enchantress?

It has huge balance problems (good thing at least there are enough contents. With balance and bugs fixed, this game is good for release.)

(1) Population is hardly a matter now. Too much reliance on buildings.

(2) Pioneer spam.

These two alone suck the all the fun from the game, and really need to be fixed.