FE B.75 feedback

edit:  copied over into the beta forum from the general FE forum.

Let's start with the feedback on FE b.75. The game is MUCH more fun and sound than EWOMv1.4. Archery isn't cheesy, magic is in the right ballpark, my choice of sovereign and race have GalCiv2-like meaningful impact on the playstyle, growing cities isn't an exercise in house micromanagement hell, the sovereign/champion/city levelup bonuses are EXCELLENT. The tutorial is in the right ballpark. The sandbox game was (mostly) crashfree, for which I thanked God above on your behalf. The weapon damage styles, initiative system, archery/mounted/melee rock/paper/scissors put tactical combat in the right ballpark for interesting and fun.

I've spent about 8 hours on the game so far, taking notes as I went, and hopefully these specific constructive criticisms (some minor, some not) will be helpful to you:

Throwing knives are broken, I've already seen this reported in other threads so we'll move right along.

The hiergamenon is linked up incorrectly to the description files, e.g. "refined agriculture" does  NOT allow for trading crystal/metal/horses, that is actually the "rare resources" research item. There were too many examples of this in the hiergamenon to list separately. I ended up in the  heirgamenon because...

"Refined Arcana"  has no description of what it gives as a  benefit in the research flowchart.

Unit stack size limits are not clear, to me at least. A tooltip could clear this up, or perhaps it's bugged, hard to tell. More than 5 champions can't seem to get together. Perhaps there is a total unit stack size limit and a separate "champions" in a stack limit? While we are discussing this, PLEASE go steal the code from galciv2 for rearranging fleets on the same space. Because trying to shuffle 2 armies together is clunky at best, and cannot be done safely near any potential combatant. Alternatively, just don't allow more than the max single stacksize of units to occupy one square.

Many icons would blank out throughout the game. Some specific examples are the "rats" in the go kill the rats quest which was a black square in 2 different games, also the battle events icon would go blank, etc.

The post turn summary icons in general are vague and clunky, an unfortunate carryover from EWOM. Perhaps just make a single notification for "new cities are idle" in much the same manner as the "enemies in  your zone of control" icon which you click on to cycle through. Simple and clear should be the priority of those icons. Do you NEED a notification for troops that have been built, when they are going to come up on the idle units with moves during the turn anyway?

In premade map selection, FE_Template and War of Magic maps did not have a listed map size or number of players tag like all the other maps.

When starting as a fallen sovereign on the Clover premade map, my starting area would not allow me to settle (found a capital) ... anywhere. I restared on a random map to circumvent this issue.

[GRAPHICS GLITCH] Upon the death of a group of opponents in tactical combat from the fireball spell, the screen would go completely white for a second  before recovering. ATI 5970 card, updated drivers. An animation with blank frames at the end?

By summer of 190AC in my most recent game, my zone of  control border had become corrupted, showing my color outside the zonelines. Allowing me to click "build" on resources, which would then not be built. Once my zone of control lines encompassed these resources, they could be built normally. 

By spring of 211AC, I razed one of my cities to free up some food. The game crashed to desktop the next turn.

Cities are MUCH improved over EWOM, they really are, but they are still spaghetti strings. Is there some overriding game directive that says spaghetti string cities which are desperately trying to octopi tag all nearby resources for their own safety is a good thing? Why can't the cities have a 1,2,3, etc "radius" square hard wall for various city sizes, and  you build your stuff inside that hardwall where you find it aesthetically pleasing (or obviously enable an autoplace option for folks who dont care about that). This would give city placement some meaning (what resources can it eventually cover) but eliminate the silly string metropolis effect. It will also give players a good reason not to let enemies rampage across the countryside  between cities.

Icons in zoomed mode are an enormous improvement over EWOM, which was unplayable in nonclothmap mode.

While the grab and move map is fine, MANY people are used to strategic map edgescrolling in this day and age.

My imbued champions couldn't cast spells other than counterspell. They had "spell spheres" different from my own, I had hundreds of mana available. Obviously missing something there. Maybe need a tooltip clarification in the imbue spell to clarify what else is needed?

Wow there were alot of wandering monster respawns (on normal default settings). I'm sure that was intentional, but most of my army maintenance was directed to sweep crews to keep the encroachment down. On the plus side the monsters were interesting and varied. I  like the barbarian camp, er... monster lair  spawn site that you clear mechanic.  I  just thought that once I had cleared the areas, they would stay clear(er).

Magnar starts with a +50% spell damage unique buff that didn't seem to correctly stack (change damage) when combined with the Evocation +50% damage buff upon  levelup.

That's all for now, hopefully this feedback will be useful for you.