First off, my significant other is about to kill me. Secondly, although I played the beta, and the a little when 1.0 first came out, I haven't had a chance to mass play until now. So I had both 1.3 and the DLC to tide me over.

The good

I started playing back in the fallen enchantress beta. Back then the game had potential, but wasn't anything impressive. Now, this game is finally there, where it is a solid fantasy game. Maybe not the seconding coming of MoM, but it has interwoven the strategic, adventuring, and tactical portions pretty well. Heros are useful, but still need troop back up. The AI isn't brain dead. It certainly isn't an evil genius, but it can put up a bit of a challenge. I played 30 hours before calling it quits and doing the spell of making. I really think this game has a good niche in the fantasy genre, and I hope for further support. If this is it, it will be very disappointing. The most amazing thing is that This game has finally seemed to register high on the immersion factor for me. I can imagine my units and cities being part of a living fantasy world.

The bad

I was only playing on challenging, so eventually, I went from a snowball to a steam roller. I probably reached the point of no return after 10 hours, and the other 20 hours was just consolidating, building up, and then trying my damnedest to bring Cerces back from the brink. I gave her tens of thousands of gildars, some wargs, shared half the tech tree with her, gave her maybe a thousand crystal and two thousand metal. Yet, after attempting to expand once, and having that taken away by the ironeers, she refused to expand. I would have loved to have brad looking over my shoulder at the AI as I played. I mean why would an AI with more than 10,000 gold, not rush everything, or nearly everything? Also, while the ironeers had a couple of 4 and 5 unit groups, she would never build more than 3 unit groups. I don't get it. I think the AI should almost always build more than 3 units groups when they can.

Also, although I had random events on the highest setting, about half way through the game, they simply stopped. This is about where the game went from the struggle to establish a small set of holdings, to the battle against the AI players. Once I had the AI on the ropes, I should have ended the game, because I was out of quests and out of random events.

The ugly

The most annoying bug I encountered, and it happened over and over again, is that it would snap to an overhead view instead of an isometric one, and I would have to restart to fix it. Also monsters, and especially the AI wouldn't take any action against my frontier outposts. The monsters are almost too passive in 1.3. I could play alot sloppier without losing anything than I should be able to. The AI, especially the opposing AI, should actively capture outposts. Also, if it doesn't think it has a good chance of taking nearby cities, then it should raze the outposts, and should try to aggressively pillage my resources. The monster AI needs just a bit more aggression is razing encroaching structures. I realize there is a balance between fun and difficulty. Right now, it balanced too much towards fun. Also the AI, would have 4 nearly full armies going toward the same objectives, instead of 3 completely full armies. The AI would come at a city, and since none of these armies were individually strong enough to take them, they would just mull about. If they aren't strong enough, then they need to raze and pillage, while either moving on to an easier city, or building up enough to take the main city, even if it takes to or three armies coming in waves. If it's not powerful enough to do that, then It needs to hang back in its territory, or then focus on expanding. Also, the AI is workable, but the entire spell book and and city management is too much clicking. It would be nice if the next city arrows were available from the main map screen without having to open any city menus at all. Also, the spells seem unbalanced and deserve another look

What I want to see next in patches

For diplomacy, what would really improve the game for me would be:

A screen to coordinate attacks or assaults on a city (like in SMAC)

The ability to trade or at the very least, gift troops or pioneers to allies

The ability to trade or at least gift cities to other players

I either wouldn't mind seeing caravans go, or make them more useful/important

The ability to get things done with fewer clicks, and fewer menus

What I would like to see from DLC

More monsters, especially "special" ones like the banshee with something that makes them unique

More allies or neutrals to discover in the wastes. Something between the Knights of Asok/trolls or ogre lairs and a minor civ. Maybe a tile feature, that your character could go into and have a choice of different units to recruit/hire. Also, inns/camps that didn't go away. You could get a new quest from them once every 5-10 turns.

Each champion coming with a tough multipart quest. These quests would help to flesh out their back story, and the world in general. Stuff like chasing down the bandits that killed their parents, to recovering a lost artifact important to them, etc. Something similar to loyalty quests in Mass Effect 2.

More items/quests/adventures.

That's all for now.