Think we are quite a ways off from Beta 4, however Frogboy or Derek mentioned that we should get quite a few rapid updates of Beta 3.

Good.  I was concerned it might be rushed because of the begging folks.

Yay yay yay! 

These all sound awesome!

The beta is very good and the best instalment of elemental I have yet played. With regards to the OP, I'm particularly looking forward to outposts gaining defenders, terrain changes, and no longer having to worry about whether a city will be able to fit in the location I have identified.

The idea of players being able to gold-plate their units if they have the resources is an interesting one. The idea, I assume is that you can get similar advantages (attack bonuses etc) that you would get through technologies, before you have those techs, by spending extra resources. It would be nice to have this option.

But I think this (as well as most enchanted items) could be presented with much more elegance and flexibility. Instead of having 10 different “magic axe,” “flame axe,”  “magic spear,” “flame spear” and now what I assume will be “masterwork axe” and “masterwork spear,” why not just have axes and spears, and a separate page of “enchantments” including magic, flame and masterwork, and then let me combine them as I like?

This seems better in almost every regard, except perhaps in regards to upgrading. But, no offence, I think the current upgrading system sucks and that few people are using it anyway. It’s far too expensive and it forces me to always upgrade to levels beyond what I may want. And even if it did work well, all it succeeds in doing is stopping me from designing units, which is one of the game’s best features. It would be far better to just encourage people to design new units and enable upgrading AS WE HAVE ALWAYS ASKED FOR IT (in both elemental and gal civ): allow us to return a unit to the recruitment queue, with the old unit as a discount on the costs of the new one.

I’m rambling I know. But I’d just like to finish be stating my main problem with the game is still the sheer fact that I can march from my city to the enemy’s and conquer it in about 5 turns. That’s just too quick and too easy, and so long as I can do this the AI is always going to struggle. I talked about this in more detail here.

upgrade seem nice, but what is point if someone build three outpost next to each other to upgrade all of it? better go with it in ome package.

That as well as the minimum tile distance between outposts. Although it would be kinda cool to see two civs build up a border of fortresses next to each other with a DMZ of sorts between them.

Brad/Derek - please do something about player ability to ninja monster loot. Stealing from a monster and then killing it with the stolen loot is... cheese. Speaking of cheese, in my current game I had a 3 hero stack early game. Ran into a Shrill Lord stack, too powerful at the time to take on. However, I split my 3 hero stack into individual units, kited the Shrill Lord stack off the lair, and proceeded to ninja the loot. I was like, holy crap I'm brilliant, and then felt ashamed. Very ashamed. I also ninja'd Torax's area but he's somehow loose destroying my cities... you reap what you sow!

At any rate I recommend the lair remain defended by the main mob at all times - let the spawns patrol around. The other thing you could do is not allow sacking of the lair until the main mob is defeated but that's rather cheesy too.

Exactly. I will also add that like in WoM maybe the wandering monsters should form groups. Only when lairs fall under a players ZoC should the boss monster leave to attack the city, and then return.

every single one of brad's suggestions should be in the game, especially #2

Ponies:  +1 mana, because friendship is magic.

I would hate to work for Stardock.  Nothing like having some "ideas" floated by you and then posted on the internet to put on added pressure.

As for the actual "examples" posted:

•Every champion should have a unique ability
Why?  Can't some just be vanilla champion types who are waiting to be molded?  I like growing my own champions, not being handed some pre-defined character.
•Move random events away from being random and into being “choices”.  For instance, an event that currently just random makes everyone go to war instead turns into a council where everyone votes on whether to have a war of finality or an emissary comes and demands you give them 10% of your income, if you fail fortresses appear on the map that begin attacking everyone.
Love this, hate the example.  What rationale is there for everyone suddenly forming a council and having some global effect come out of it?  This sucked in GalCiv and it would be even worse here.  There's no basis for it.  The choice/effect thing should be more localized.
•Have Civ techs that cause Outposts to get guards and expand influence so that you don’t need as many late game.
Ok I guess. 
•Have weapons and armor that are “better” but cost significantly more resources so that the player with more stuff can fight a war of attrition.
As long as the AI understands how to use it.
•Have quests tend to give players access to more spells so that they’re more compelling. Getting a magic axe is less interesting and gets repetitive. Getting a random magic spell, by contrast, would make the finite # of quests have far greater replay ability.
Big yes to this.  Anything to make getting spells more interesting.
•More terrain types (especially snow at the poles).
Meh.  How about improving the graphics for the terrain you have?  And why must there be snow at the poles?
•Outpost specialization (late game, spend money to upgrade outposts that have an impact on the ZOC they control)
More GalCiv stuff. 

They have this in Total War: Shogun 2 (Awsome game. The best of the Total War Series.) However I did not know this until last night when the AI Abushed me as my troops were heading for his city to "vist"   I was floored it was so awsome.  He won the battle. The lesson  I learned in that ambush is to not bring Swords and Bows to a Gun fight.

A little nervous on smaller cities. I like the feeling that urban spawl has, when you have leveled up a lot of your cities to metropolises. I also don't mind having small towns as well and slums for the spice of life mainly variety but I think the option should remain to have multiple city sizes. But I will keep an open mind.