General opinion: I love the new changes, except for the champion progression. However, I feel the champion progression could be made to work- though I wonder if the effort required will be worth it.
City Growth: it seems frustrating how close your cities grow to a level then stall out. They seem to get lvl 2 quicker, and future levels more slowly.
Buffing storehouses would help here. Would like to see the 9 cap on plot yields raised to 10 or 12.
New monsters: I like what I've seen so far, I just wish I saw more.
AI: still a work in progress, as it always is, but I've seen some real improvements, and I do like the new TB system. It's not AOW2-fun, but it's closer, and given the scope of this game, sufficient. Some of the same AI flaws that have been obvious and in place for over a year like webbing/beguiling from spiders are still intact
New unrest mechanic: I'm ok with it for now, it seems to work like Civ IV, but draining research/production instead of gold. We may need some more unrest buildings.
Normal unit skills: seem wildly varied and different power levels, which is fine. Double strike seems the stronget one, but that is balanced by Tarth's weaknesses.
Crushing blow needs to be replaced for maces, and made a warrior-only skill usable with any weapon.
Heroes: this is the part of the game that flat-out needs work and is currently inferior to FE. I think it can become a better system, but it's going to take a willingness to make heavy changes
Problems:
too many heroes early game: I think hero gaining could be slowed down slightly.
heroes are too slow to level: various fixes
1) Adventurer Guilds should stop being 1 per faction. Should be 1 per city.
2) You should be able to decline heroes , and use fame to give XP to champions- efficiency of this should improve with Heroes/Ereog's Journals/Breon's Letters
3) The XP penalty needs to be reduced for stacking heroes, or eliminated. My suggestion would be to change the function and base it on the level of the champion versus the level of the highest champion in the stack. In particular, it needs to be reduced/eliminated for low lvl heroes in stacks with higher level heroes. Throwing level into the formula might be the best solution here.
4) The XP required to reach higher levels needs to be less exponential.
hero trees are unfun: many solutions:
1) rewrite the trees
2) Many heros get a specific line of skills. They already have bonus skills, adding in a line for a unique tree for each hero would be a number of engineering hours, but would give some variety. An archer hero should have an advantage with bows.
3) cut down on the passive skills- having to take 3 Prodigy skills to get what you want is boring. Powerful, but boring.
4) Trees need to make sense- why should mastering dodge be needed to shoot a volley of arrows?
There is a potential overpowering issue here, getting to the fun stuff early may be nice, but it might be too powerful.
Overall: I'm pleased with what I'm seeing, but it's not there yet, and in the area of heroes, I think it's pretty far from being there. I like the rest of the stuff.
