Great post!

Perhaps allow the user to choose two things: whether there will be wandering monsters spawned at random, and also, the distance at which settled monsters will feel that their territory has been invaded, and attack.  I think the latter is currently set for two squares radius, if I recall correctly.

I voted excellent. The moves made to change the game were all in the right direction. Stats are so much more fluid to name one important change. Things seems to be headed in the right direction. The only detractors I see are balance issues which are easily solved before the Fall. Any other problems I see in the game are mostly personal taste. Same old stuff I whine about: New Quest Triggers, More Monster Spawns, WoM style quest spawning, all spells being resistible, one-handed spears. Okay, so maybe you added one of those things. 

Two core things I find in common with some here:

Decisions with consequences matter.

Balancing competing interests IS 4x Gaming.

I played it the same way I played the last build and has just as much fun (not saying I had a lot of fun). I agree that the game feels and plays in a shallow fashion. I didn't vote because I didn't play the latest build more than two hours - it held my attention for less then 1 because it felt the same as the last build, even playing as one of the factions that got a big update.

If Brad doesn't want me to play, I won't. I'll uninstall it. But quite frankly, I'm surprised that a company that can develop a game like Gal Civ 2, it's expansions, and the final result with Twilight of the Arnor is blowing off the issues with its game. I can't understand why and I won't try, I have better things to kill my time on. Perhaps a modder will step forward and add real substance to this game, which has great potential.

Sorry this wasn't my kind of game.

Makes me wanna change my vote from fair to excellent, meaby it was due to me comparing to another full game, but without fe having  bugs xD.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Why would I want to train a unit when my sovereign, her favorite champion, and their summoned elementals are killing every band of monsters and completing every quest by themselves?  I don't need a crappy trio of spearmen weighing them down, and by the time my military tech has reached a point where they can even threaten the Wildlands my magic is so strong that I don't need them anymore.  I guess if an enemy faction was breathing down my neck right at this particular moment I might bother spending upkeep on some soon-to-be-obsolete troops just in case, but I'm skeptical that they could handle my sovereign's group with how widely they seem to scatter their experience.  Worst-case scenario my empire winds up short two or three schoolhouses in its smallest cities.  It barely matters; I mostly just build them because I have nothing better to do.  The population, and therefore research and economy and production, is still growing at almost exactly the same pace regardless of what I produce.

Why would I care where my population goes?  Percentage-based improvements aren't really common enough or powerful enough for it to make a huge difference where they live; as long as they exist I'm getting gold and research out of them.  That's all that matters.  And controlling more cities brings more total citizens into existence faster than fewer cities.  The "cost", in the short term, of a quarter of a new citizen being diverted away from my well-developed capital into a smaller city is next to meaningless, because that's not a huge number and crappy cities aren't that much worse than big cities at making use of citizens anyway.  Assuming my core cities haven't all been sitting at their population caps for dozens of turns already, that is.  In the extremely likely case that that has happened or will happen soon, I have even LESS reason to care. 

Another thing to bear in mind: the more cities I have, the less one additional city impacts the growth of each existing city.  The difference between one and two is kind of noticeable, but between 6 and 7, when the seventh city is going to be increasing my total prestige by 1 anyway?  The number in the panel doesn't even change.  And don't try to tell me that a one-city empire is a sensible alternative to a seven-city empire.  Even if concentrated population was more valuable than it is, my population is going to grow faster than I can research new food-related techs if I don't spread it out.  Especially if I focus on the military techs you expect me to care about at this phase of the game.

In my current game, my taxes sat at 0 for the first 150 or so turns, then 1% for the next 150, and then I finally put it up to 2% when I started producing meaningful numbers of troops for the first time.  Not because I NEEDED to; I had just gotten used to having 4000 gilden in the bank and didn't feel like seeing the number turn red.  Besides, the most important aspect of my "natural progression" is probably prestige (population is the root of everything), and I'm pretty sure unrest doesn't even impact population growth.

Can you see what I'm getting at?  There's a "choice" between producing soldiers and producing infrastructure, but is it really meaningful?  If I am at peace, I have no reason to waste gildar on troops who will be sitting around doing nothing and waiting to become obsolete, so I build infrastructure and rely on my sovereign to do all the killy jobs.  When my diplomatic information tells me that I am close to war, I build troops, because I might actually need them and the actual benefit of the constructed infrastructure barely matters anyway.  My decisions during peacetime aren't likely to enhance or detract from my empire's potential as a war machine when the time comes.  The only forms of infrastructure that DO matter in a big, obvious way--the existence of cities, total prestige, and control over resources via outposts--are maximized so cheaply and so quickly that doing so doesn't detract from any of my other capabilities (in fact, it directly supports all of them in the most efficient possible manner).  Am I actually making meaningful strategic decisions and sacrifices, or am I making no-brainer decisions and reacting to stimuli?

Research comes from citizens.  Income comes from citizens.  Civic production comes from citizens.  Military production comes from citizens.    More citizens means more of all of these things, linearly, without drawback (actually that's not true; military production increases BETTER than linearly due to the base production values in the cities I build to keep citizens in).  There's exactly one way to get more citizens and that's to expand.  Expanding (via founding new cities, at least) is the least costly thing a player is capable of doing with their existing cities.  The faster you expand, the more total prestige you have and the faster citizens build up.  So of course I do it as much as possible.  Maybe I wind up producing a lot of troops, maybe I wind up producing a lot of infrastructure.  That's largely determined by the environment, not by my decisions earlier in the game.  And can you guess what my best option is for preparing for either contingency?  It's to maximize citizens, every single time.  There is no visible difference between an empire designed for war and an empire designed for peace, except in the mid-to-high level techs you take.  The only difference is what I have in the production queue at this exact second.

EDIT:  Also, I have to ask: if you (somehow) feel that diluting your prestige matters so much, then why did you program the AI to expand so aggressively?  I have yet to see terrain so arid and lifeless that the AI will not settle in it.  They even take the lousy 2/3 land that I don't bother with (more out of laziness than sensible strategy, probably).  That's part of why it pays to city-spam yourself: the AI will take all the land if you don't.

Unfortunately it seems everyone agrees but those that matter

I don't know why I bother posting if I only get ignored or told I should play a different game. Anyone can say everything you do is great but what sort of help is that in a BETA where I could only assume constructive criticism is the entire purpose.

I voted excellent. Progress has been tremendous since the last beta version.

I think I tend to play a bit differently than a lot of people that I've seen posting. Mainly, I usually don't spam a whole lot of cities. I'll usually start a second city after my first one has been established with a focus on grabbing some shards for mana and extra spell power (until I take some over later in the game). I'll build a small fodder army for my sovereign and let him conquer with magic, but usually just to harass other players and curb their power until I can cast the spell of making. The last game I finished I was killing whole armies that entered any of my zones of control with one cast of fire rain (which is awesome).

Some quick feedback points. . .

- I love the different element specific counterspells. That's the type of thing that magic-centric games should be made of. Basically anything that adds to the flavor and utility of magic, I love. More of this please! It would also be cool if magic got its fingers into all the other systems of the game. Also, death/life magic counterspells?

- Great job so far on making the weapons and factions more interesting.

- There are some cool things in the magic tech tree, but a lot of it also seems to mirror the functionality of the warfare tech tree. It would be cool to see some more differentiating and magically unique techs in that tree (I'm biased since I mainly play for flavor and focus on the magic aspects).

- I was not sure about the decision to remove the ability stats, but for this kind of game it ended up cleaning up the interface without removing any of the functionality or depth.

I voted excellent mainly for two reasons, this is still a beta and as far as I'm concerned the game even at this stage is alot of fun.

I know alot of people get their panties in a knot very easily on these forums about balance but I don't necessarily believe that perfect balance means that the game will be more fun. The reason is in a 4x strategy game you get to decide how you want to play. That being said there is still alot of work to be done but that is why we are still at the beta stage. I think that the disscusion should focus less on balance at times  and more on what makes a game fun to play. To me casting a volcano in a strategy game or a tidal wave is fun even if there are balance issues. 

Only fire, cold, poison and lightning have their own dmg type so only they can be resisted specifically.

I also really loved the fire resistance spell but it really annoys me that it is randomly given out.

I voted terrible.

I will explain myself here:

During the Elemental War of Magic beta that I was involved in. I made many bug reports for some rather major issues. Many of those bugs are still present in the current incarnation 2 years later.

Biggest one is crashing from loading games. If you save/load ~5 times in one session, the game will crash. It did the same thing 2 years ago in the Elemental beta. I reported it with crash dumps galore.

Additionally, if you load a saved game, it may not be the same game you thought you saved. Many times unit moves will be outright lost as if you had moved them. odd behavior from enemy factions as well. Such as my game where Magnar after being forced to surrender to me ended up having 12 traits at level 7, 2 of which were different path traits. (It was probably even more traits as he had at least 2 in the fire magic trait that I didn't count.) He also had 25 pairs of leather greaves in his inventory.

Little things like the game not updating ZoC on the turn in which you ACTUALLY gain the ZoC. For example, if you build a city and 1 tile out of range is a resource, if you build a monument to gain 1 ZoC, you can build the resource that is outside of your ZoC (Visual). Only the NEXT turn expands the visual and gives you a message that the resource is now in your ZoC.

All of that is 2 year old reported issues. 2 years and not one person was placed on those bugs? That's pretty outrageous and disheartening. With release looming fast I really can't believe that those issues will even be looked at let alone finally squashed after 2 years.

I simply cannot believe that you actually learned anything that you admit in your "Apology" posts. It still really appears that you have your head buried in the game and it's potential and are still not being the leader that you need to be to have this version succeed where it's successor failed miserably. I guess I should be glad that I have access to the beta and the game for free due to actually buying the Elemental: War of Magic game.

Sad really, if I can overlook the bugs (Difficult at best), I see enjoyment from the game...

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...beta, beta, beta...It's been 2 years and those bugs were reported 2 years ago the beta excuse doesn't fly.

I'm not talking about damage type resistance (that's been done to death in games). I'm talking about the counterspells that each element has. I only saw the fire, and water ones, so I'm actually not sure if earth and air has them.

For instance, there's a water school counterspell that if it was successful, would give you mana. The fire one would damage the caster whose spell you countered.

I also like the silence spell.

This is my first play of E/FE since just after Elemental was released, thought I’d leave it for a while and see if it came good.

Overall I liked it, fun and a little addictive. My main criticisms have already been covered by others, so succinctly

1. Expansion is always the better option, food limits population, not growth, so it’s always worth doing.  Outposts for resources away from good are particularly obvious choices.
2. The quest mechanic is a bit pointless, it’s always just walk to another location and kill something. If they aren’t going to be more inventive than that I’d rather have the battle/reward in the one spot
3. The levelling mechanic is cool, but before level 15 you have everything you want and then you’re just getting marginally useful abilities you passed over earlier. It would be a lot more exciting if the more powerful abilities only came later
4. There are a plethora of spells available from fairly early on, yet only a few ever seem worth using. As Magnar I used fire bolt 80% of the time, with occasional use of fireball, feedback, life drain, fire elemental and soulburn. The buff / debuff spells weren’t ever worth it.
5. The AI seems to put multiple small army groups in the same square, so I end up fighting a sequence of easy battles rather than 1 harder one.

Things I really liked

1. Shards work well, their impact on spell power is just right.
2. Duration mechanic for powerful spells (and focus), make it a difficult decision what to cast (within the narrow frame of useful spells).
3. The arena location – by far the most fun location to visit, the attrition makes it increasingly difficult.
4. The number and type of different resources (crystal, metal, influence, etc) is spot on.

I'm going to be quick about this (finishing finals this week, will post later). I voted good (border line excellent). When this game comes out I am going to hate you when I am at Ferris. 

Ya spam cities or just take them off the ai is key. Just finished my first game in beta 3 with a score just over 10000. They don't put up the best fight and sometimes too passive (I am on challenging). Sometimes I see multiple stacked armies they could of used to defend their cities or halted my offense but didn't. Or they could of used some of those armies to sneak around me and grab cities I left undefended (ya I don't leave that many defenders in my cities or any at all just in cities on my borders). Make them use cheap units to take out my resources. Make me work for any ground I take.

I wouldn't mind seeing the world be more dangerous. Spawn more waves of creatures that will just try their hardest to take my cities out. Actually I need to up that difficult myself derp but still more world hates my life please.

Brad- right now your army size is limited until you tech up, make that the same for how many cities you can build/control (and outposts too) related to certain techs. It would be nice if certain areas you can't setup at until certain techs are meet and or cleared the land.

UI- please for the love of god add shift clicking for quickly selecting multiple units and for casting 1 spell on multiple units. (I be so grateful) 

You know what I am just going to record my next game... Are you guys planning a update this coming week? If so I will wait and if not I will start it Tuesday.

Vote fair

The game is shaping up to be great but the strategic AI at least on Challenging seems to lacking situational awareness, it is very signal minded in its goal. What I have seen in two games is the AI choosing a target like a poorly defended city and attacking it over and over. The army which is defending the city(say 3 squares out) is ignored. The AI simply tries to walk past the defending army gets its self destroyed. After the AIs initial army(s) has been destroy the subsequent armies are made up of 2 -3 units rather than the original 5 say.

So to me it looks like the AI does not see armies as targets or threats. There should be some consideration for crippling your opponents military then taking their cities, of course there are targets or opportunity that need to be considered too. It just seem the AI only sees the targets or opportunity. 

If not for my AI complaints I would vote excellent, I really enjoy the first 100 or so turns: great atmosphere, the monsters effective, love the wild lands, etc

I think there needs to be more recruitable creatures though or maybe a faction that can recruit all the creatures. 

Want to give the player a difficult choice?  Have founding a city gobble up a champion (Governor). Now that is a real choice.

I had a lot of fun playing beta 3 but I have to agree with what Dragonrider said in his last post and I hope you will take it seriously Brad. I think this game with some more changes (meaning balance issues) will be truly excellent.

I would prefer to end city spam by adding an unrest penalty for every city because if you place a direct cap on the amount of cities it will mean you should always max that cap, and how would conquering cities work? With a additive unrest penalty there are advantages to having a small kingdom so their is choice. 

I like that population is the detracting factor of city spam. It just needs some balance. One city should grow much faster. I think the problem lies mostly in that the third and fourth city can grow reasonably fast once you have Cooperation. Inn should be further up the tech tree to limit early expansion as well. It might be a good idea to also reduce the amount of prestige we get from our Sov. I can grow a city way too fast with a lucky couple of battles. Prestige should be more rare than that. I would also add +1 to city growth in the capital. Population should be very powerful, but it should be harder to do early in the game, except in one city. It might also be smart to raise the population requirements for city levels and make each level more important. The bonuses from leveling should be a primary factor in our decision to expand. Currently there are about 3 possible strategies from the level 2 options and none of them are worth more than settling another city.

It is hard to quantify my opinion of better expansion balance other than to do it and show you, but essentially I think that one level 2 city should be worth more than two level 1 cities to incentivize less expansion. That is why we have outposts, right?

Its huge progress from beta 2, but  i voted fair.  Why ?AI is 2 week, every game is 2 easy(i played on challenge). Make easy game easy but hard make hardcore  game !

If you add more neutral monsters/enemys game will be better (like knights of asok, elementalists etc).

Add more spells, items, quests, random events  and random fights (in beta 1 when  my army move 2  cave i started random fight, can you back this 2 game ?  and add more random encounters ?)

Also i  see very good option 2 randomize more every nation, add 4 tree tech (unique for each faction). In this tech tree players can be unlocks unique spells, buldings, items, events, units. Maybe this is a good idea ?

p.s

sorry for my bad english.

Excellent, for a beta.  The game is fun, beautiful, and very distinctive.  This was the first time in playing WoM or FE where I really thought "wow, this is fun!"  It lasted all the way up to the midgame where it became apparent that the AI was incapable of strategic thinking.

It looks to me that all the complaints in the thread (except the guy complaining about insignificant bugs in the game engine -- ZoC doesn't update until the next turn!  Oh noes!) come down to the AI sucks and the XML needs balancing.  Unarguable, but completely expected for a beta.

The game is chock-full of meaningful choices, the problem is that all the choices work.  You can build superior heroes because the AI doesn't properly prioritize monster fighting (and monster avoidance).  You can spam pioneers and build as many cities as you like because the AI is, for the most part, completely passive.

Brad & Stardock you're pretty much going to have to thicken your skin and ignore the million posts talking about the need for "meaningful choices" until we get to the stage of the Beta where you're specifically focused on the AI.

Another good vote.  On the new content, I'm liking what I'm seeing.  The factions are feeling more unique, and I did use a few different tactics in the start of my games; I even designed a few specialized units to counter some tough units I was running into, which was new (and fun).  I liked that the stalker felt more like a dodgy foe, and the ogres felt more slow and strong, etc.  Seeing some different looking units from race to race that I fought, and feeling like I should glance at their stats was a new wrinkle.  Partially because of that, I was also reading more of the lore and quests and enjoying what I found.  I did tend to feel a bit more bottled in by the environment to start, which I was fine with.  I don't mind starting off poking away at monsters before I could face other factions.

I had mixed feelings on the tech.  The feeling as a specialized warfare society (or magic in a different game) that I had through the early game questing/ monster killing sort of dissipated by the midgame.  By then I had a workable amount of all resource types (medium map), and while it would take 20-50 turns to make myself more specialized in the tech tree of choice, I could grab 10+ techs of the other trees in the same time - the additive benefit of that far, far greater than specializing. 

So its those balance and AI things that keep systems from feeling *right* to me.  For example, I find myself fairly well liked by the AI (normal difficulty), and monsters don't feel like they're a threat to my settlements either.  So a single high level killer stack, and few back line defenses works . .which keeps me from needing to build many units or worry about taxing and upkeep, etc.  Once things get meaner and more threatening I imagine a lot of those systems will feel more filled out even if the mechanics stay the same.  I'll be bumping up difficulties now to see how that feels.

So to me its on the right track.  Its fun enough I want to play, and get caught up in things, I'm interested in trying some different factions to see how they feel.  But it does seem to go back to a muddle in the midgame where it seems the equipment I find determines the gameplay more than my choices, and I'm just building all upgrades for my empty quenes, and casting all the positive city buffs I want with my huge amount of mana.