Dear mother of god yes.

Take me to the river, Froggy, take a me to the water.

Any idea how big the upgrade will be?  Im just curious because ill be out in the oil patch by the time it hits and I dont get very good speed out there.  Hopefully on this update, ill be able to use the update vs the full DL.

"AI refinement". I like the sound of that!

This would be great for a true Happy Rosh Ha'Shanna

Fastest way would be to keep an eye on this forum, since Brad's stated a changelog will be up as the next beta gets closer.  No changelog, no beta.

I solved pioneer spam with a simple mod. Doesn't sound like a major problem.

I solved game pacing with a slightly more complex mod. Could easily be fixed in the next update.

Population and buildings affect gildar. Towns are the major gildar producers and do roughly four times more than a Fortress or Conclave. The tax system is really a great game mechanic and didn't need any changes.

I don't see a reason why we shouldn't be moving on to beta 5. That is precisely the phase where pacing and balance can solve the issues you seem to have. Unless you are one of "those people" who want a pioneer to cost 200 gildar. They are the Tea Party of Elemental.

It really depends on how one defines "Pioneer spam".

A big part of Fallen Enchantress is about claiming the land as yours. But cranking out pioneers is most definitely NOT the best way to win the game and the AI has been updated in Beta 5 to takes its cities a lot more seriously.

Rush. Boom. Turtle.  There's a 4th strategy that rarely gets covered but is very effective: Strangle.

When I was in PGL (Pro Gamer's League) this was the strategy I always used and it worked very well in games like Total Annihilation.  Strangle is where you simply control the whole map and you just strangle the other player of resources.

The counter, however, is that the Stranger's empire is brittle. If you're everywhere, you're very susceptible to a focused strike.

My job, and post-release the job of modders, will be to make heavy use of the AITraits tags because that is how I'm going to implement the other 3 strategies prior to release (Rush, Boom, and Turtle).

In Beta 4 (and to a lesser extent, as we begin Beta 5), the AI focuses on strangling.  It works.  But when players know how to counter that strategy, they can counter it for all time.  That's where my work begins to make sure their strategies are more varied.

But that's a *polish* thing.  At this stage, the AI plays the game.  Now it's about making it play the game WELL.

Never said you should mod anything. I only was using my mod as an example of how minor the issues are.

Let me reiterate:

The issues are very very very very very minor.

all praise the frog and it's minions. 

i cannot wait....

I like turtle myself... who needs more than 1 city... and an army of doom anyways...

I know mathematics are only *part* of the balance, but still: from a purely arithmetic point of view, if you quadruple the area of your empire, you only double the size of the frontier (provided that it keeps the same shape, so there's some assumptions which are only partially verified in practice).

As a result, you have up to 4 times the troops for only twice as much frontier to defend. That's a simplistic model, I admit - the point is just that if each city can provide for its own defense by producing troops or funding fortress to produce troops, then more is always better. It's just a matter of being well-organized.

Even worse: more cities mean a LOT more research, if you build at least basic research buildings. So not only will you have more troops, but they'll be better, too.

I don't think there's enough of a trade-off for large empires/horizontal expansion when compared to smaller empires - especially since you don't have to choose between lots of cities and very "powerful" cities. There's very little downside to expanding a lot, and many advantages. You don't have to sacrifice quality for quantity. The main limiting mechanism used to be prestige, but growth is now mostly tied to buildings, making prestige mostly irrelevant. From my experience, your empire will always be a lot better if it's large.

Trojasmic is right:

That's just how the game plays out, and that's how I crush hard+ AIs with moderate ease.

Im thinking its brittle because you expanded so fast and quickly, that you havnt had the time to build the resources and army you would need to hold it.  So if you had multiple opponents who could thrust thru even a single area, your empire could fall quickly.  On the other hand, if you can hold it and reinforce it before they attack the game could be yours.