I don't think anyone really knows. I personally ignore it. IT does not seem to have any bering on anything at the moment.

Voted good. Another big leap from last beta from my perspective. Succintly:

Things I liked:

- City specialization = more depth!

- Better and more informative UI. Would like the focus to move to idle cities after they finished building something. Quite often I found myself forgeting to check.

- New cloth map!

- Spell book.

- New Outpost functionality. Would like more depth added to them. For example: I'd like some kind of flavored garrison added to them depending on the race, that can be upgraded the more upgrades the outpost has. After all the effort spent to build them and upgrade them, it feels too punishing to just have some random monster or AI take them.

- Resources upgrades!

- I found the AI in hard to be good enough for me. (YMMV)

- New quest system. But at the same time, most are gone after the initial phase. Would be nice to have some kind of respawn from time to time (could be a random event).

- Essence was a great addition.

Things I didn't like:

- Emphasis still put on pioneer spam. Seems like you fall behind if you don't do it, because the map is littered with outposts and cities too fast. Makes it feel like exploration and city building is less rewarding. The fewer but stronger cities strat or turtling doesn't seem viable.

- Spells seem few, weak and costly in this beta iteration, at least the offensive ones (the buffs are OK). The magic route feels less lucrative. There are just not many things to do with magic and the levels come too slowly. You could really go crazy stuff here, but it seems you're holding off.

- I still feel like the RPG elements for heroes/sovereing are not well presented/exploited. For example: I don't know what I'll get to pick later if I choose this or that skill. (A skill tree would do great here, IMO). But also, some of them seem luckluster. You could make some unique things with heroes and their skills and equipment (i.e.: give them stuff you cannot obtain from any other source).

- Levels seem to come slower now, so for the huge map I played in epic pace, I didn't get to use some items with higher requirements, and had few(er) spells to play with.

- Quite differently from what happened in previous iterations, where there was heroes in abundance for hire, this time around the AI is very aggressively recruiting them. So you're basically stuck with the one you find near your settle area, and that's it. The ones I could find later, just came too late.

- What's up with the power table? It seems like their diplomacy actions and tendencies for war are determined by it, so I found myself consistently at war with everyone I met, even though I conquered them later. Something just doesn't add up there.

- This really ticks me off: Invading AI. They are quite effectively blocking you from trespassing or risking war. But when you tell them to stop crossing into your territory, they just do it again the next turn, and the next, and the next. I would love the borders to work like in Civ: Unless you have some treaty or are at war, you just can't cross them.

- Tactical battles are repetitive and boring.

Exactley my feeling!

When I play on easier levels it is to inviting to just conquer other towns, on harder levels you have to fight for a little space left.

In both cases the base of success is many cities and many outposts. So I level my Souvereign al ittle bit at the beginning but after that I either have no more time to let him travel around because he is involed in war or there is nothing left to travel around anymore.

Cities are either to cheap or to easy to establish, or the game is to much focued on them, I do not know how to solve this, perhaps that is the reason why Civ established the "Happy-Thing". Perhaps there is sth. missing, that your travelling around has "effect", that you free threatened people or cities, or have to fight for the land you want to settle on, establish allies and become mightier (in political sense) by being a hero.

I love the world they created and it a pity that a such big world plays that schematic.

Comemrcial it is in this state the question how many players we have that like to play around just a bit without bigger strategic ambitions and on the other side how the magazines will rate the obvious strategic weaknesses of the game.

I also think there is missing any "combat-mechanic", like "Rock, Paper, Scissors". That there are more weaknesses or advantages of special types of units, like the Spearmen vs. Cavalry.

It is a good idea that you can recruit "wild" units, but I never use it because it is to late in the game to make these units useful.

That is the reason why it makes most fun to me to play as a beastmaster, with uge spiders, ice wargs and an Alpha Wolf combats are much more funny and interesting.

Also the units you can get as a reward for quests are designed very well.

Perhaps It should give more in that direction, that you can recruit, hire or bribe interesting units. Perhaps a troll that follows you as long he gets enough to eat and leaves you when you are to "peaceful", or outland fractions with special interests that either help you against other fractions or fight against you, depending on how you behave.

I also think there is missing sth. like the barbarians in Civ.

I did not like it when my cities were killed by animals in the first version, but I also think that it was not logical that animals eat whole cities.

But now we are back in the state that I do not have to care much about the safety of my cities.

A more "calculable" (you know approximately their possible strengh) neutral enemy like barbarians would make settleing more dangerous, which perhaps could brake the city and outpost-spam a little bit, too.

Perhaps a stronger version of the mites/wildings could do that job.

I love the game, but i too don´t like that i´m forced to spam pioneers to get any ressources/fertile land  without fighting the AI. I hope they will tweak this a bit.  

To "solve" the prob, i reduce the number of AI i play against. Take large map and play against 3 or 4 opponents and you will have more time to expand.

In my last games it worked very very well on any level of difficulty , I even tamed one of this very big spiders and Ice wargs.

Do you have a good level in Spell mastery? I always combine Beastmaster with brillant and try to level Spell Mastery.

But don`t they establish huge empires then, too, with the only difference that they are far away?

The difference is, that you have more time to deal with monsters, make quests, lvl. up champs and sov. and develop your citys. It gives you more time to play "your" game. Because of more space for everybody you can build troops or city improvements without thinking "Damn, i need a pioneer." You can discover a fertile spot and don´t have immediatly to build a pioneer, because the AI is around the corner.  

And at some point you have to fight the AI (unless you go for diplomacy, spell or quest victory) But, this way the AI grows much bigger. And this only means you will have a real fight against them.    I like that and it was only a suggestion.

yeah I started with brilliant. The sovereign only was level 3 or so but I expected to be able to at least tame a level 1 wolf at that point and even that resisted. In the previous version I didn't get nearly as much in the way of resists, especially with low level creatures such as wolves and bears. Was kind of fun going around building up a army of low rent troops while I built up my sovereigns level. Now I wind up having to kill them all. 

Far as the spaming goes I agree with that.  The game I'm playing now, I have yet to do a quest which I did a lot of in the past.  I wonder if each AI opponent can have a different level of aggressiveness like GalCiv2 had.  This way the player can decide which opponents to play against with the different levels of aggression. This may already be in the game, I have not had a chance to try different types of opponents out yet.

Derek I hope you get a chance to read this. PLEASE make factions develop in a way that plays to their strengths. Queen Procipinee of Pariden SHOULD NOT be leveling up as a warrior, nor should her faction play like that. She is a sorceress and should be focusing on magic. Her units should be mostly magic related, etc. Other factions should play to their strengths, etc.

If I am going up against Pariden or Resoln I should be thinking to myself, better start producing some anti magic soldiers and use anti spell buffs and stuff.

If I am up against Magnar I should be thinking of producing high dmg units because they use a lot of weak units. Or if I am up against Yithril I may want to go high def units or powerful magic units, etc. This will make it more interesting and it isn't necessarily predictable because you are going to be dealing with different factions of different styles coming at you (maybe). Also just because you prepare in a certain way doesn't mean you can neglect other things, etc. Anyway, this is how it should work in my opinion. Right now the factions have certain unique stuff and abilities suited for certain play styles but they play randomly which is just stupid. A faction like Pariden, which gets lots of magical benefits and stuff should be focusing on that, it will only make them stronger.

Queen procipinee is the only viable warrior out there. she is head and shoulders above the others. Not only does she get bloodline benefits from each additional shards, but her crown allows her to stack an infinite amount of buffs with 0 maintenence cost which makes her an utter BEAST in combat.

If you want her to be a caster her crown needs to be modified to give caster benefits instead of warrior benefits. like halving the casting cost of spells.

And her special building gives +1 essence which is awesome for recruiting thanks to the magic +X to recruited troops aura spells.

The way I view it is that she is a magic focused faction not a summoner.

Also, such artificial limitations forcing each faction into 1 playstyle sound like they would suck and be a nightmare to balance.

Why would it be a nightmare to balance> Seems pretty simple to me, nor do I think it would suck. That doesn't mean there couldn't be variations but a faction that gets tons of racial and faction benefits for warriors, should be pumping out warriors, not mages and Procipinee should definitely not be a warrior.

Yeah I can see how that would make procipinee good at battle but that isn't what she was supposed to be, she's supposed to be the most powerful sorceress or something like that and her faction is magic related. I see Ceresa as more of a summoner type and her faction as a summoner type faction, not pariden.

Playing Pariden is all about making good mages and setting up a solid tank unit. Leht Staff is immensely powerful, even if people do not realize it. Lighting has no solid counters. It is extremely effective. Put a few tanks in front and fill your back lines with lightning mages. Then add a powerful hero with 4-5 elements. Now you've got a magical army. Now, you can try to play as a standard warrior army, but you are wasting your potential. 

I voted fair, because no matter what I cannot end turn at some point after turn 200 - and I started several games that "ended" forcefully. Pioneer spam is also annoying me. A good step was making the factions a little bit unique.

Please fix the end turn bug - I've spent a whole weekend being unable to fully enjoy the game, and my pewter elemental dragon is sad  :)

Thats what I am saying, they should play to their strengths not in some other way. I am not an expert on what each of their strengths are but they do have certain strengths and that is how the faction should play otherwise it is wasted potential.

I am pretty sure the new version fixes this

AMDG, there appears to be some very good news on this front.  If you look at the Derek Paxton's v0.951 Changelog Post (for the Beta 4a coming out on August 30), which also appeared on Sunday August 26, you can see that in the very long list of Bug Fixes, the third one from the bottom said:  "Fixed an issue with corrupted Saves" .  Here's hoping, that one nailed it ...

          https://forums.elementalgame.com/430134

Incidentally, just for the recond, after some serious soul-searching (and with some reservations), I ended up voting "Excellent" on the Beta4 poll.  My reasoning appears at Reply #71 in another Discussion Thread: 

          https://forums.elementalgame.com/429972 

Resoln is pretty cool. I found out that when the demon kills someone the unit adds another demon up to 9.  I now have a demon that does 72 for an attack.

Pretty awesome!

Tarth is the best at pioneer spam , because of the master scouts trait, but they need better endgame unique weapons - one obsidian golem is wiping a whole bunch of archers.

The slave units concept is also pretty cool, but IMHO the factions are still too similar.

I managed to crawl back into the game by saving and reloading - sometimes the end turn bug is absent.

I played "her" (well, a custom male version of her) as a melee solo sov who killed everything single handedly. Got to level 14 and killed storm dragons mano a mano, as well as the massive armies that spawn when getting one of the eyes of the dragon (the mercenaries and the giant).

I killed those on the cheap too, I just buffed myself in hard battles with a single haste spell and RARELY used a heal spell. I only managed to snag 1 or 2 champions though (damn AI took them all really quickly, how did it find them?) which I was going to shepard into getting levels in spell-casting so I could steal their soul for my sov's power.

Had to stop letting it auto resolve battles because:

1. Idiot AI getting killed due to sucking at strategy.

2. Idiot AI wasted all my mana on worthless attack spells which I need to save to boost self with permanently or teleport to action. (like celerity.. speaking of, my forth casting of celerity did not seem to take. I only have 3 active. waste of mana!)

Here is my saves:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B5cEvOA-L4zcSEdsZnloUDczNWM

Key tactic was to kite enemies. hit them so nobody can attack me and then escape. Occasionally they will counter but never outright attack me.