I play on challenging:

1. Do you feel monsters act too randomly? Yes sometimes, but less often in the last patch.

2. Do you feel like early game monsters are too powerful? No, the only problem is with the danger level (sometimes strong monster are weaker than weak one and vice-versa, so I think can be difficult for a new player to evalute correctly the enemies)

3. Do you feel like the Faction AI is getting a free pass with monsters? Yes and No, but I think it depend more on point one then other things.

4. Do you often lose cities from wandering monsters? Never happened in the last patch, rarely in beta5, very often in the beta4... I saw that if you leave a garrison in a city (even a weak one), the monsters tend to leave alone the city.
So, I don't know if the "solving" is related to the patch or to a change in my gameplay.

5. Does losing a city cause you to quit playing? It depend from the season: in the beginning Yes of course, after No (it depend also from the number of cities and importance of the lost city)

I play on normal, with monsters dense. As for why I go for monsters dense, I tried monsters rare once and out of the six lairs within 20 tiles of my city, two were bone ogres, one was a Fell Dragon, one was a bandit, one was a cave bear, and one was a juggernaut. There's not really anything I can do against that in the early game, and being unable to level heroes (or, for that matter, really start expanding your borders) hurts quite a bit. I'd rather deal with lots of monsters and run the risk of having strong interspersed with weak monsters than deal with a handful of very strong monsters.

1. Not usually, but there are a few times when it looks like the monsters decide to go attack something when not bothered by anything before that, or the whole "I'll go halfway across the world to attack some city settled by the human player rather than beat up this AI that just ticked me off". Occasionally a monster that gets freed for no apparent reason.

2. Yes and no. I have had numerous starts where nothing weaker than Medium-challenge enemies has been visible around me, and things like Ashwake dragons within 20 tiles of the starting position (and no direction of expansion that doesn't go past at least one group of monsters of similar strength). On the other hand, I'm currently playing a game where I have only seen one Fell Dragon anywhere near my starting position, and a Hoarder Spider nearby, and the rest have been Darklings, Mites, Bandits, and a handful of Widow Spiders, Trolls and Cave Bears.

3. Sometimes. I've seen the AI settle a city in the tile next to a Forest Drake and the Drake started moving towards me (when my borders were ~20 tiles away) rather than after the city right in front of it - though the AI was Tarth, and I'm not entirely clear if Master Scouts applies only to units or also affects cities.

4. Not often, but it does happen, especially if I'm careless in pacing the city or am 'lucky' enough to be near a foolhardy AI who likes to build outposts/cities next to things better left alone.

5. Depends on how early in the game it is, or if I am for some reason particularly attached to the city that was just leveled. If I only have a few cities to begin with, then yes I probably will start a new game, because I can't really afford to fight whatever killed the city at that point and I don't believe that monsters go back and settle on their lairs after destroying whatever might have released it.

1.  Monsters do seem pretty inconsistent with regards to when they attack your stuff, which makes it hard to plan strategy.  It feels like consistent aggressiveness would work better.

2.  It feels like high-danger monsters should be further away from your starting area, yes.

3.  The AI factions do seem to face less monster attacks - which adds a significant annoyance when you take an AI city and have to choose between clearing out the monsters or risk losing it to a random wandering monster that wasn't cleared out.

4-5.  I reload and powerlevel my heroes enough that I've only faced inevitable city loss in 1 or 2 early-game scenarios with a Strong+ attacking army randomly hitting my city - I usually resort to teleporting them away via cheats in that case.

FYI, I used to play on expert, and now play on ridiculous.

1. Do you feel monsters act too randomly?

Yes. It doesn't bother me, but the random activity across the board can make them appear broken or unresponsive.

 

2. Do you feel like early game monsters are too powerful?

No. The problem is not that the monsters are too powerful. The problem is; there is no way to gauge the level of danger you are about to sign up for. The strength indicator has been completely off in the beta for awhile now. This has cause some unpleasant surprises engaging monsters that I've been able to defeat in previous beta versions, only to get completely stomped.

 

3. Do you feel like the Faction AI is getting a free pass with monsters?

Yes. Regardless of what is happening under the hood, the appearance of this is definitely present.

 

4. Do you often lose cities from wandering monsters?

No. This almost never happens to me. I usually have cyndrum demons in my city since I play as Resoln, so maybe the monsters avoid cities with stationed units.

 

5. Does losing a city cause you to quit playing?

No. Usually I get more upset when a champion gets defeated really early game by some low level monster I thought I could defeat.

Where's my graph and chart as promised by the OP?

Ditto. If it takes much longer, 0.984 will be out and the graph will be obsolete. Frogboy was already courteous enough to give you an extension till Monday.

Okay okay. I just wanted to make sure I had most of the responses before I made the chart. Be up soon.

1. Do you feel monsters act too randomly?

No. They act like monsters to me.

2. Do you feel like early game monsters are too powerful?

Some. But on the most part if it says weak it's weak.

3. Do you feel like the Faction AI is getting a free pass with monsters?

No. But then again I am playing on challenging. I have noticed some issues, but I have the same saftey net with that difficulty.

4. Do you often lose cities from wandering monsters?

No. But they scare the crap out of me.

5. Does losing a city cause you to quit playing?

Depends on what city. Most of the times No. If it is my capital then... well we'll say that it is not a happy day, and so I just restart a game.

You should have included on this chart and things what difficulty people are making these judgements on (i.e. the difficulty played most often)

No. The point is to see whether or not the monsters and factions are acceptable from all levels of difficulty. There are not enough beta testers to divide the chart by difficulty and so we must assume that things are scaling well. So far it looks like an overall positive opinion about monsters. I thought people hated them alot more than this. And we are expected to get non-simultaneous turns in the next update. I think the chart will show that no metascore points are likely to be lost from monster issues.

Yes, the point of the level was not to divide the chart, but as another reference for you to realize that when somebody says the monsters are too agressive, then stop playing the game on impossible... it was these things to which I refer. I wasn't suggesting to divide the chart. For reasonably accurate statistics you need really only need 30 people

Wait, are the monsters aggressive?

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I am not going to reply to all of the 5 points, but as a relatively new player to the game (have been lurkingm, but not playing a lot) I find the wandering monsters far too powerful. Almost every game I play at around turn 130 I have my settlements attacked by monsters and there is nothing I can do. 

 I have tried very hard to change my tactics and prepare my cities to be invaded, but it seems impossible to protect from these huge armies that decimate my towns easily. I am not an idiot and play these kinds of games pretty often, but I predict in the current state, the game will see many rage quits. I know I am getting the point of giving up on this game because of these difficulties.

 I want this game to work, but I just cant get past turn 130 - 150 even on easy, all because of random powerful monsters attacking my towns for no reason.

1. Do you feel monsters act too randomly?

 Randomly? perhaps. i've seen them sit and do nothing at times when my army walks right next to them, get a threat then nothing happens. and then at times when suddenly their hole is in my control area they begin to wander around aimlessly away from my territory.

2. Do you feel like early game monsters are too powerful?

 Yes! the new spell coals or whichever it was caused my entire army to die after 2 turns. decimated my heroes.

3. Do you feel like the Faction AI is getting a free pass with monsters?

 I've only seen the AI fight the monsters once. but for the most part it seems the monsters avoid the AI players. or the AI avoids them, either way they don't seem to interact at all. at least that i have seen.

4. Do you often lose cities from wandering monsters?

 I've lost 3 cities to wandering monsters. i find it rediculous that you can't take it back, let alone there is no ruins or anything to mark where your city fell.

5. Does losing a city cause you to quit playing?

when early in the game it does. having my only other city being conquered and my heroes decimated and sent home injured caused me to rage quit.

Sean, where's the graph?  You can't take a poll, promise a graph, and then not deliver.  Have you heard the story about the boy who cried wolf?

1. mostly yes.

2. yes (under the current circumstances) and no (in general).

3. yes

4. yes

5. yes

Detailed answers:

1. Do you feel monsters act too randomly? - Yes for monsters with lairs which are woken up. They should (try to) destroy whoever was disturbing them and then go back to where they came from. But random behaviour is absolutely okay for wandering monsters.

2. Do you feel like early game monsters are too powerful? - As long as dragons woken up by AI players enjoy burning my towns: yes. The key point is that the AI should play by the same rules as the human player. As long as this is the case, I have no problems with strong early game monsters.

3. Do you feel like the Faction AI is getting a free pass with monsters? - yes, definitely.

4. Do you often lose cities from wandering monsters? - yes, definitely.

5. Does losing a city cause you to quit playing? - yes. After a large number of reloads (on "easy" difficulty!), I quit playing FE totally and hope for a new version. The current built is more frustration tolerance training then fun.

Currently, FE is definitely not recommendable.

I am waiting on some custom pony graphics for the bell curve.

Here's your pony.

I think he wants to hoarde the statistics all to himself. Show me the math...

I haven't really said anything for FE but this issue has completely prevented me from enjoying the beta.

1. Yes - No apparent rhyme or reason to any given group's activity

2. No - Not until lairs spawn upgraded stacks do they become an issue

3. Yes - Strong+ stacks routinely cross the world, passing every AI city along the way, seemingly hunting down and razing my least defended cities (not that defense matters, nobody is killing dragons and shrill lords when the most advanced military tech in the world by far is spears and leather armor)

4. Yes - Constantly, and never from a stack that I 'freed', since I don't build next to them for that very reason.

5. Yes - Immediately. Maybe I am a bad sport, but permanently losing one of my centers of production, regardless of its size, and never being able to replace it, is a game-wrecking experience, especially if I am in no reasonable position to prevent it in the first place and it happens seemingly at random.

I am not fundamentally opposed to the idea of lair-based or wandering stacks wrecking my cities, but the current system seems terrible. A few alternatives that would make it infinitely more bearable:
A) Instead of automatically razing the city, destroy some of its buildings and population proportional to stack strength.
Have lairs exert an area of influence based on strength (1-3 tiles) that either prevent cities from being founded there and/or send out routine patrols within to burn any structures (outposts, free buildings) and slay any units in the area
C) Always have a disturbed stack beeline for the nearest outpost or city to attack it instead of leaving the target open (read: crossing the world to attack the human player)

Any of these would be preferable to the current system. There is also option D) Just stop monsters from attacking cities period. Let them harass my armies, my pioneers, my outposts, my free-standing buildings, but not my cities. Cities are almost like characters in the Elemental world, if I wanted to play a game where my vital characters die off horribly and randomly and cause me much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I'd play XCOM. Actually, I'm going to do that now, I think.