True, I have three cities in my current game, almost in a triangle pattern with connecting borders.  Magnar sent a pioneer into my territory and I told him to get off my land.  Somehow that made the pioneer transport to a little space in between my cities, where they decided to create an outpost.

Overall, I'm enjoying .913, maybe because I have a good random map and I seem to be on an equal playing field to the opponents.  I'm playing on hard, which seems to be the right challenge level for me.

Some things I've noticed though:

I have two cities that are pretty close to each other, and yet there is a great big expanse of land (plains) between them, but for some reason I can't put building there.  Is there a reason for that?

There seems to be a lot less heros in .913, was that changed?  Or has the AI improved its ability to grab them first?

The AI spamming cities and outposts is a tad annoying.  I think if they had the same threat from monsters as the players do, this would change.

I didn't even know this was there!  good to know.

I've answered the questions below, but my main problems with FE so far are as follows:

1. The random maps are generally unplayable. It requires you to ctrl+N almost nine out of ten maps due to completely terrible spawn locations. I understand that random map generation is one of the HARDEST things to do. And I know it will take time to make it right. But it is something that needs to be looked at very closely. Maybe insert a 20 tile exclusion zone for large monster hordes? Include at least one grain tile?

2. #1 is coupled with the random and variable location of very powerful and very close monster hordes. I had one game where the random map generator limited me to a coastline because a huge mountain range blocked from the interior. I had two outlets from my coastline: one east and one south. The eastern one is blocked by a Shrill Lord Horde and the South one by a Forest Drake, you quickly become disenchanted.

3. The AI doesn't seem bothered or gets attacked by the Monsters. I've watched Scouts from the AI sit next to monster spawns and never get attacked. Yet, when my scout moves by it is instantly AGGRO'd and the monsters start moving towards it.

So... to reply to your questions:

1. Extremely powerful monsters spawn way too close to your first city. Even before my Champion reached level 3 and 10 turns in, I had spotted an Ignys Army and an Umberdoth within 10-15 tiles of my first city. This wouldn't have been so bad if my first city hadn't started with mountains on three sides so the only way out was through them. Other combinations include Mountains+Coastline+River Slag, Mountains+Coastline+Shrill Lord horde, Mountains+Forest Drake, Mountains+Coastline+Ravenous Spider Horde.

2. Honestly, I haven't been able to actually engage the AI. Too many games end up with my cornered or separated from the AI by a combination of mountains and huge monster blobs choking the passes through them. See #1 for a full explanation. Also, the AI is way too happy to start a war.

3. Normal

4. Custom Sovereign

5. The AI is not the problem. It's the monster spawns.

I'm having a blast in my current 1v1 Hard on a tiny map. The world is dangerous - the mobs are a constant threat and the AI is constantly attacking. Only about 100 or so turns in but really enjoying this game. Hadn't played a 1v1 in awhile... it feels more difficult than loading a map full of AI players.

I didn't just want to add this as an Edit. This was too "good" to pass up.

Once again, started with a mountain range on three sides of my start location. 6 tiles away were the Knights of Asok.

Hey people,

I didn't read all pages of the thread so don't blame me if something was already written before..

These are just my impressions of the game:

1. without the shadow wark (summoner skill), a good bow or stoneskin the monsters are a good threat, but just at the beginning..later on they are to easy and vulnerable to magic and I get very fast to strong for nearly every enemy --> i think there is still to little difference in strength of the monsters (a wind elemental should be much harder to kill than with a lvl 3 hero with stoneskin for ex.) + higher monsters should have their own (big) armee + all enemys shouldn't be so vulnerable to magic (or u tweak the summoner skill for ex.) + the monsters armee should grow alot faster over the time

2.  the AI players are still to weak because there are still a lot of bugs and the way they treat their units is miserable..they just send their units into their warrant death --> I would suggest better combinations of units + heroes and units, only scouts should go alone, not 3 pioneers in one stack anymore, better would be scouts and strong units

3. ridiculous

4. I made my own hero, please see picture

5. At the beginning I used the summoner skill shadow walk + a bow + fireball to kill 3 fractions very quick, later on the fire elemental helped alot, in the end I just used someone with blizzard (evoker skill 3) + someone with haste to let him call blizzard immediately

I never used a single trained unit apart from one bow unit from a quest, because I think the heroes are far superior through quick developement of magic and hitpoints

6. Since I don't know which savegame is the most usefull for u I load up 3.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iibfo2cjh7xjlj3/2.EleSav

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ta65nkkvbsfwr7y/3.EleSav

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r331zfki4dizbby/4.EleSav

I have played a number of hours on the new beta and I think it is a big step forward.

I play on normal.

I have two idea that i feel would balance two aspects of the game.

1/ Arcane Monoliths: I like these however I do feel they make outposts more redundant. I would like to see Arcane Monoliths stay as they are as a fast type of outpost to build. Make outposts upgradeable so they can have defending units in them. They could use some type of defending bonus as they take a pioneer to make there by using more resources.

2/ Selling to the shop: 1o% makes getting gold more of a challenge in the game. I feel things you get from monsters in the world such as demon horns, wolf pelts ect and sort after items should sell at 100% to the store. I think it would balance the 10% issue.

Keep up the great work Star Dock. This beta update has made the game more fun to play

Kudos, guys! I've been complaining about the AI for a while, and I'm very pleased with the progress thus far. I played one game on challenging, and one game on hard. The challenging one was a little too easy, and I got my ass handed to me on hard. So, I think the difficulty is about where it should be on hard, and needs to be more challenging on challenging. So, comments and thoughts.

1) The AI and toughness for the monsters was just about right. I didn't have any problems with giant monsters destroying my starter bases. Just giant monsters who had lairs in the deep wilderness, and wouldn't let me settle there for any length of time. Which is good!

2) On hard, the AI was awesome. It assessed my situation, looked for weak points, etc. On challenging, not so much. I quickly got an early hold with Pariden's magic monuments, and the AI couldn't recover. The situation may have been different if Pariden couldn't expand so quickly with those, but I think those single-handedly let me win the game. I have a file where I think I decisively won.

4) The AI wasn't a challenge because of Pariden's magical monuments. I'm going to try a game on challenging with a different faction and see how that plays out. I will let you know.

 Seriously, great work guys. This is majorly in the right direction. Could someone please instruct me how to attach a file so I can give my saved game?

As for attaching Saved Game files, you might want to look at Yazari's Reply #85 to this thread.  In it, he recommends using  "Drop Box", in part, because there is not a utility for this purpose, built into the Stardock site.  

But, Full Disclosure: I have not actually used this feature, myself.   (Been too busy ...   )   However, I recall seeing this site mentioned, more than once, in various Stardock Discussion threads, in the last couple months.  I believe this is one of more popular sites/utilities for capturing and sharing Saved Games, etc.  Hope this helps. Good Luck ! 

5) Based on my first game (challenging) and the excellent vids by Das I come to the conclusion that the AI is falling short mid game. As soon as you survive the (excellently balanced) beginning of the game as a player and you can finally make some decent stacks it's basically game over for the AI.

In the beginning you can have some very tight battles with the AI due to scarceness of units. That's the part where the AI can keep up, but when you are finally able to create bigger armies the AI started fallling short. Looking at their rating they should be able to come up with some pretty serious armies but it's too loosely organized. I think Brad's going to have a tough nut to crack there. Two things that would really help the AI in the mid- and endgame IMHO:

- AI needs to create better units and start using armour

- AI needs to create bigger and better stacks and avoid wandering off with small armies or solo heroes into enemy territory.

My first impressions (only have played early stages of two games) is that it seems the AI somehow pumps out tons of pioneers and is able to somehow spam many cities early. I can only think that the AI monsters are ignoring AI pioneers to some degree because if I try to get my pioneers past AI monsters they get chased and killed. Played on normal.

I think an important bug to fix is the one where if a monster group attacks you and you beat them, you don't get to keep any of the loot that they drop.

PS: Moderators, could you remove the huge text of the picture in post 155?  It really clogs up the thread and is painful to scoll past.

Thank you very much for this information. And I thought it was just tile info:)

Another game. Normal. Small map 2 AI.

I was cut from exploring and expanding by Umberdoth, Drake and Butchers. They were rampaging my spawned outposts and in tis places AI built their own - mostly untouched by the monsters.  Development with one city was pain, so I decided to take some cities from AI. Unfortunatelly the roaming butchers started the offensive and ther two armies took my capital. SO monsters were challenging. I managed do kill one umberdoth and it was a tough fight. So monsters were challenging:)

AI not so much. Mostly because it's heroes were recovering during my attacks.

Very annoying thing - no ZOC for units. With good winds enemy army can get past you and run few tiles into tour teritory. I'd use some spells like Ice Spikes or Lockjaw Traps or Border Palisade improvement that would slow the enemy rush a bit.

I've played most of the stock factions and on medium.  Found the settler spam too annoying combined with the monsters seeming preference for attacking players over the AI opponents that unshackled them via settling too near them.  Have seen umberoths come from 6 screens away after my cities after ai outposted next to them, while leaving the offending outpost alone.  Makes the game too restarty to have random powerful npcs block expansion/ decided to go out of way to ruin your expansion, while AIs boom over the map.

***large npcs should have a more obvious field of influence, remember better who ruined their lairs

***Settler cost should go up

***Monsters should attack AI much as players/adjust the tendency.  I know AI cities do get hit by them but no where near as they seem to go after my cities.

I just bought the game and downloaded the beta last night, so I have no experience with the previous builds. I also haven't played Elemental, so I'm coming to this with total purity of vision (except for my memories of MoM).

I haven't finished a game yet -- though I'm having a ton of fun! -- but so far the only thing that's really irritated me is that I can't access the menu from the tactical battle screen. That's not so cool. At least let me quit to the main menu!

It also took me quite a while to figure out how to scroll the tactical screen (why don't the arrow keys scroll as on the main map?) and I still don't know why my guys don't defend (the little shield symbols over their heads).