Just barely started playing 0.913 and am already seeing some strange behavior. The two three champions my custom sov has found (Iriel, Jesselde and Irwin) all cast Haste on themselves automatically at the start of tactical combat, even though one of the two doesn't even have Air Apprentice as a trait.

Also, my custom sov (Em) has Impulse as a trait, yet now can only get one shot/spell off in the first round of combat. Boo, hiss.

Look closer, that's not haste.  It's a spell called Noble Legacy & it's part of the new Faction differentiation.

Noble Legacy is Autocast on all Amarian units at the start of each battle.  It gives the unit +1 Init per Air shard, +1 Spell Mastery per Fire shard, +1 Spell resistance per Water shard, and +1 Hit Point per Earth shard.

I made sure my custom Sov (Wizard class) was an Amarian.  Talk about a kick-ass trait.  Go big or go home for sure.

Loving the newest Beta! I have had the few issues though.

Issues with Csilla.  She has +10 initiative so she has consecutive turns at start, and also casts Mass Curse automatically at start of battle. I am unable to cast Fireball(or other spell that uses a turn) because for some reason there is no spell bar at the bottom of the screen for the first turn and am forced to "space bar" through. 

I have been playing as Resoln (custom Resoln, took away the bad trait and made it just death apprentice and fire disciple) in a large world with all factions but Tarth on normal. Early in the game its usually stay away from the monsters and juggle anyone you meet so you are not thrust into war in the first 30 turns (I am looking at you Guilden).  At the same time I am researching magic and civil, while not really putting much into war but a few needed troops.   My sovereign can then go start taking out monsters and leveling up.   I find near end game that my champion armies and sovereign armies which are all "strong", are blasting "deadly" troops out of towns left and right just using fireball with initiative. Which isn't a problem (their armies are still very powerful), the problem is that factions don't seem to use magic much at all.  If they did, I feel it would make things a bit more challenging.  

I also find that armies can sneak up on any of my resources, towns, etc. due to there not being a faction marker on the army, if you zoomed out, you could see a little black speck is what I would look for. The marker is helpful imo(sort of looks like a layered cake,lol).  I don't always pay attention to the quick notes on the right such as "enemy army". 

I can't get enough of the game though.  so thanks Stardock!

P.S make useful is far more importian than "meaningful choices" because if you can't had other trait, then that trait might be useless, only thing easy is playing a warrior while mage is hard and mage need every trait to make mage useful, way I see it.

Yeah, the current leveling is a bit too rough. It was a bit too easy before, but now it feels like it's impossible to get past level 12 or so... which means you aren't going to get those spells unless you only pick one path and get really lucky or something. They probably needs to ease off on it a bit. Right now the only way to get high spell level seems to be at char creation, put all your points into spell books.

Or create a Pariden sovereign, who acquires access to the elemental books with the Sorcery tech skill, whether he/she starts with them, or not. 

That just gives you the first level of spells. That doesn't help getting the good ones, in fact it'll make it impossible to get the good ones because now you have even less chance of getting the one you want on level up. It was useful before when you could level easier... now, not so much.

Same game around 120 turns later... (played so bad)

I found Kraxis short after i declared war at pariden. Kraxis did the same with me. I attacked and conquered one of his citys, but no chance to hold it, because of troll-armys and drakes. I lost all my troops, except my champ. on a drake attack. The city was too far away from my capital. (fast troop supllies not possible). So i razed this city and ranaway back to my capital. I couldn´t establish a second city. I tried it 2 times, but umberroth and drakes didn´t like that and i wasn´t mighty enough to take them out. Pariden attacked me with a good stack. I was able to defend my town, but only because there was a unit almost completed and i had enough money to rush out another unit. Without that i would have lost my capital.

My only hope for now is, that i have a good champ. (Svedd, lvl. 8 and good equip) and my backyard is clear. 

Its a very entertaining session so far. First time in FE that i don´t feel comfortable. That is fantastic. I´m pretty sure i will loos this time. Played like i did before and it looks like that this isn´t enough anymore. Have to think and schedule my steps much more. Love it.

savegame...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12734598/tarth%20not%20so%20good.EleSav

Why can't the AI just be attacked as much as the human?  There must be code in there that checks for an AI before attacking, so the advantage needs to be reduced or eliminated altogether.

Game with Pariden. Access to summons (warg and elemental) made a fights pretty easy.

Got in War with Resoln (Hard) - It was all outposts ping pong and everlasting slashing of his lone many time wounded champions. It wasn't exciting. Irritiating rather. I must to check cloth map often to see if there are any blue figures near my borders.

Ideas:

* add small chance of champion death

* add an outpost upgrade in tech so it could spawn militia during attack

* add HUD icons on self and enemy armies (the one you can see when they are stacking)

* properly manage the resource icons (golden pickaxes don't disappear after resource is worked)

* don't inform me about resources I cannot improve - only after getting needed tech

* inform me about unbuilt resorces while rebuilding the outpost 

* add fertility overlay. I spammed some magic outposts and long after that I realized that they covers some fertile ground. Now you need to have pioneers and scroll whole map with cursor over the Settle button.

After Resoln and some minors destroyed (one faction rage quit), all map revealed I am with 2 stronger AIs on map. We are friendly and there's nothing interesting to do. Pumping up troops and developing cities. Long wait before final clash I guess. 2 wilderness on map but I am not ready for deadly opponents. I could use some random events.

The tactic of attacking resources and outposts is sure annoying. You can't defend them all with stationary troops, or you will be spread too thin. If you try to defend them with moving stacks, you will not get there before the resource is already destroyed.

Now, the tactic is somewhat effective, but rebuilding destroyed resources isn't that hard. The real problem is that on a larger map this style of game play is boring. You will constantly need to check for enemies, you will constantly need to rebuild resources. There isn't much strategy here, just repetitive micromanagement.

I don't know how to lessen this pain. Upgradable outposts are one solution.. Maybe some "intelligent patrolling" too. This could reuse some of the AI work done by Brad. Something like "guard this area" - player selects a rectangle from the map. And then the stack will automatically attack enemies moving into that area (or report that the enemy stack seems too strong). I guess this falls into pony-request category...

One possibility would be a "garrison" upgrade to outposts. You have some troops inside the garrison automatically (like militia). You can station more troops in there. If an enemy tries to attack your resources in the garrisons controlled area, you have the opportunity to defend the resource (or skip defend if the enemy stack seems too strong). Attacking a garrison is hard - the defender gets big bonuses. Garrisons also have an upkeep cost, and thus you can't spam them at will. Now, this would lessen the pain of protecting resources, make garrison placement strategically important, and would hopefully be somewhat straightforward to code.

Beginner - turn 262 - Ironeers.

All was going quite well until in one single turn all off my outpost were destroyed and my towns taken.  I couldn't believe it.

I am defiantly going back to 0.912 until this game returns to some sort of sanity.

From being a fantastic game to it becoming a crock, all within 48 hours.

Might be true, I was just thinking they might atleast send a scout to probe my cities instead of letting me go on suicidal rampage freely, Waging war on everything seems to be the best tactic ATM since they seem to Hunker up huge defenses in this case to be able to withstand an attack, losing possible production and money on other things, Can show you a couple of saves and the whole game so far in as a movie, since I am vidding my playthrough to better understand what I think the AI needs to do better.

But when I wage war on 3 people at once, they might want to go cooperative on my ass .

gonna play a few more turns on this save and see if they decide to attack, or let me conquer one of them .
Playing on HARD btw.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Played my first game on normal as Yithril. Large map.

Decided to test my normal tactics - i.e. solo with Sov, research champions gear, pick up some nice stuff in quests, get cloud walk and basically flatten everyone. Hadn't failed to date at any level with any sovereign.

ok... within 5 turns I'd died. The monsters were actually monsters rather than sheep pretending to be monsters.

Ok restart. Try same tactic again. Same thing again - death, this time because some really tough omnsters got disturbed. Nice.

Ok restart. Group the two heroes and avoid big monsters. Thats working. Meet Gilden, Pariden who both declare war shortly afterwards. They'd actually expanded quicker than i had and had both put troops into defend themselves. I start beating up Pariden, then turn to Gilden. Pariden starts taking my undefeneded cities. Hurray - at last! So do the monsters - hurray! I hated being able to leave all my settlements undefended.

Restart. Group, act as if the AI will behave sensibly and suddenyl i'm in a good but tough game. I've knocked Pariden down to 1 or 2 cities and taken the best cities from Gilden but am not tough enough to take his capital (Hurray). All monsters near me are down and out and i'm about level 9 with sov and main hero.

All in all, miles better! Just make sure easy is actually easy! Fireball made a massive difference once learned even when used by a warrior type. Definitely on the right track. Frankly I want to struggle on normal as if i was playing other players. Easy is the level for 'easy'.