Setting: Normal difficulty/monsters/magic, Medium "Desert" map (there's something wrong - Desert gives me temperate, Temperate gives me swamp), Kraxis with custom Sov (death fire earth 1pt, brilliant, attuned, clumsy, warlock, prociphene's(?) crown).

Game was won having taken path of the mage and hit fire mastery. 

Strength is great, minus the bogus exception with AI being able to put outposts down near camped monsters and release them. I dealt rather early with a swarm of assassin demons (who seem a bit TOO strong for the 'weak' category with their full heal) from three different demon lord spawns, and drakes from a drake lair. Fortunately, until late game, the AI didn't trip those and send them my way. In other games I gave up early when I found an earth elemental's army at my doorstep at turn 30 with me having never seen the guy's starting point.

Overall feedback: Love the design and the concept. Similar to Civ5's bandits BUT SO MUCH COOLER - monster bases spawn out unlimited lowbies until overrun (which almost always seem to go for me over AI, which sucks). I can take mites, bandits, baby cave bears, weak trolls early game and feel justified with a "hmm, do I spend the effort to kill that mite army/bandit archer army now, or tolerate these attacks while i keep exploring and solidify?" and then later "oh crap, gotta prepare for drakes, shrikes, assassin demons!". I think there's tuning to do, but the general concept is pretty sweet.

Generally speaking, playing on Normal, the AI players biggest threat has been their ability to build outposts near monster lairs and release them. I frankly would rather see that get fixed before I try hard! 

Resoln in this game, when I decided to attack her unprovoked, made the foolish move of throwing six or so stacks of very weak militia/spearmen/casters at my level 10 super-caster-sov and level 8 bodyguard (inside a level 2 city) --- we went from on par (~350 each) to me having a decisive leads (~350 to ~200) in the span of maybe 2 turns from Resoln throwing the same troops at me entrenched over and over and over. Still waiting for first real AI fight (looks like it will be against Relias as he's conquered the other half of the world) but Resoln surprised me. It didn't help that their sov spent half the game stuck in a level 1 city right next to a dragon - apparently she repeatedly attacked at got dispatched by the dragon. She still managed to make it to level 7 before submitting to me (neat! but how come I keep her and not her cities?)

(Normal Mode AI)

Upd: So, I steamrolled Relias with my sov + bodyguard + summoned fire elementalx1. Fireball spell ruled the day (and with benefit of whatever, I could cast it on my bodyguard so she could also cast fireball). One of the key points: I almost never ran into a situation where I could be counterspelled.

The good: Relias was on the offensive early, and jumped a decent sized army into my territory, with what looked like two larger armies on the way before I derailed them by taking his cities. That army wouldn't have threatened any of my military-spawning towns, but could have wreaked havoc on my countryside. He had well balanced armies (spearmen + archers + armored types) and had catapults built, on par with my military - in short, unlike Resolyn, he was ready for war!

The bad 1: Fireball spell won the day handily, and was only counter-spelled in one fight. I want to note, I think it worked exactly as intended and it didn't feel overpowered - the one fight where there was another champion, he counterspelled three spells in a row ("oh crap!") but fortunately was rather weak from dying repeatedly - the fire elemental got to him and managed to kill him in two shots before dying under a hail of arrows. I sat there going "wow, I should avoid direct confrontation with Relias, or my 2 man 1 elemental army is not gunna win!"

To kill Relias, I was fortunate to capture a city with a large ownership radius to find him leading a large army on the very outskirts of my new territory. Several strategic spells later, that army was eradicated. [Freeze, Pillar of Flame, Firestorm, Pillar of Flame, gone]. Had I gone toe to toe in tactical battle it would have been much hairier, because Relias wouldn't have gone down in two swings like the seven-injury-joke.

The bad 2: Tactical fights, the AI completely ignored my sov typically, opting to shoot at the fire elemental and/or the bodyguard who got closer for melee. My sov had the highest defense and a half dozen enchantments, but except for the lone npc who instantly counterspelled everything she threw out, they typically shot at the closest thing - the fire elemental. So for me (having ~1500 mana with ~40 per turn) it became a game of "summon elemental, attack, throw elemental up front to take first few volleys, fireball everyone 2x, clean up". The only kink in this plan was counterspelling. Relias didn't have enough NPC's to have counterspell available. I allied with Yithril (who'd been beaten down to one town) and beat him down to one town, then accepted his surrender.

On NPC's: Despite being the worlds largest or second largest power most of the game, Relias only had one follower that I saw. I think I had my sov, 3 npcs, 1 quest npc (elaine) and the sov of Resolyn. I passed on two NPC's simply due to the outrageous cost of the level 7 and 9's.

Kept a few, will upload.

Double post fail

My game was simple.  Started a challenging game with large world and full population of sovs, as Resoln.  Got to a good start, set up second city early.  Turn 64, Umberdroth appeared.  Turn 67, he deroyed my secondary city.  Turn 79, destroyed my main city.  GG

Oh, and he had destroyed another sov much earlier, like turn 10.

guessing the sov "woke him up" by setting city next to him?  Then he went on a rampage.

Played about 6 hours yesterday.  Challenging (all settings), Large map, Balanced, Dense & epic, 7 opponents.

Custom Sov, Magic (Enchanter).

Game has been rock steady - not a single crash to report. (Win7 64, i7-2600, 8GB DDR3, GT530 2GB) 

I'm up to Fall 264 (season 423).  I've taken out 2 other Sovs (Magnar & Queen Procipinee) by getting them to surrender.  I like the fact that they're now my vassals (champions), but it would have been even better if I had also gotten control of their remaining cities.

This version is the best one yet at keeping me playing one more turn.  Oh yeah, it has flaws (it is a beta) - my 2 pet peeves are AI city spamming & AI pumping out armies like they grow on trees.  So what makes it fun?  I have to really pay attention every minute and work for every inch of ground.  Every decision I make has to have a purpose, because there is no rest, it's go, go, go.  I've managed to defeat any armies sent my way (sometimes 2 or 3 at once and all pretty tough - no pioneer spam), but for the first time I find myself having to conserve Mana.  I've actually almost run out & had to resort to hand-to hand combat (how demeaning for a Wizard) when the waves of enemy armies wouldn't stop.  And capturing his cities - wow, a whole new ballgame.  I got a couple of his fringe cities pretty easy, so I walked into one of his older ones all cocky & got my ass handed to me.  Now that was a first.

Here's my saved game -

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16706254/Jim_913_1_24.EleSav

Now to see if I can actually win, because this ain't gunna be pretty, but it sure is fun.

What I like:

• Monsters seem more interested in attacking things now.

What I still despise:

The AI non-stop spamming outposts/pioneers everywhere. 

Ways this could be culled

• Make an upkeep penalty for outposts
• Make it so monsters attack npc outposts (I watched a harridan army with 130 or so strength just roam the country rather than attack the enemy outpost.  I on the other hand, had no such luck with roamers.  If a monster saw my outpost it was making a B line for it.
• Make it so you can trade for outposts - this would at least let me trade one of my 50 air shards for the only fire shard on the map.

It's getting there though.. I played as magnar on normal and enjoyed it for the most part, until I realised I would spend 60 minutes chasing down all of Karavox's outposts throughout the game. (this is boring).

I quite enjoyed the outpost wars actually (see pic). I ended up making abunch in the NW to stave off first Yithril then Relias, and a bunch in the NE to stave off Resoyln. Note in the south that when Yithril tried to swoop between three of my towns and pick up a resource via outpost, I fought back with more outposts - drove his zone of control down to nothing (southern box).

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/824/outpostwars.jpg/

That said -- agree -- MONSTERS SHOULD ATTACK AI OUTPOSTS not just mine.

1. General feedback on if you felt the monsters were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).

I'm liking the monsters in this version. They are strong and you need to pick your battles. You also need to protect your cities.

2. General feedback on if you felt the AI players were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).

AI Players are good. I'd say on average they are about right in terms of challenge and aggressiveness.

3. What difficulty did you play on?

Challenging - and the game threw enough curve-balls at this level to keep it 'challenging'.

4. What faction/sovereign did you play (if you made a custom sovereigns, what traits did you pick)?

Lord Relias

5. If you think the AI was too easy, what did you do to lead to your success (did you outfit your soveriegn in leather armor, find a good sword and then single handidly kill everyone, did you start producing an endless stream of spearmen and destroy with your armies, did you learn fireball and use it to destroy the world)?

The AI wasn't too easy and I never really got a stack of doom going like in previous games of Elemental. The biggest 'exploit' ended up having a bunch of ranged units with a couple of defensive units and a champion with the healing spell. The defensive units locked down the enemy melee units while the ranged units wiped out the enemy ranged units first then the enemy melee units. If the enemy melee units repositioned themselves during melee they could have easily made their way past my shield in a few turns and attacked the ranged units (like what a human player would do). What I liked about this exploit though was that it relied on specially designed units and also relied on securing a lot of Life Shards. This wouldn't have worked in the early game anywhere nearly as well as it ultimately did.

I also really liked that I needed to specifically gear my stacks depending on the faction I was going to attack. For example, fighting Yithril I needed a lot of ranged units with a few good defenders. Versus Tarth and Magnar I needed high initiative mounted troops. Loved this aspect of the game.

6. Attach a save game at the point where you believe you have the game beat so we can check it out.  A save at the tipping point, where you believe you have the game won and have to play it out is more useful than one where the opponents are all crushed because it allows us to see exactly what is going on when the AI loses.  If you get to a point where yo don't feel a threat from the AI anymore thats a good point to get a save.

Saved Game

Other notes about the game...

* The user interface is a big issue now (if you have time please watch the first one or two episodes of the Let's Play I made of the game)

* The pacing at the start is still too slow. Pacing good for mid and end game though.

* Could not research a single sword for the whole game. Think the Short Sword is missing?

* Resoln was able to attack with troops that moved an enormous number of tiles I think due to the March spell. This spell may stack which isn't a good idea.

* Troops entering enemy territory should not be able to use the roads at that point. Was having attacks where the enemy wasn't even seen coming. It meant that once research was done on roads to outposts the roads then worked against me rather than for me. Found this quite frustrating.

* Desperately need a way of assigning troops the the front and rear ranks. This makes tactical battles unenjoyable if your placement is not what you want.

* Liking the balance of levelling up both champions and troops in the game I played.

* A lot of other notes and suggestions etc in the video series.

* Overall really enjoying the game and the changes. Please keep up the good work.

1. Monsters are just about right imo, maybe a bit on the weak side.

2. Playing on challenging, I've yet to feel threatened by the AI.

3. Challenging

4. Yithril/Verga

5. Focused research and city building on maximizing growth while killing monsters with my Sov.

6. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/63924402/won.EleSav

This is an early save, turn 25 I think, and I have only met 1 AI and don't even know where his territory is. Still, I'm slightly ahead in power, and I know all my power rating is concentrated in my sov while his is probably diluted by "useless" units, so when I find his territory I expect to steamroll him. Retiring to look at the graphs, I have almost twice the research of the closest AI, and about 4 times more than the slowest researcher. I'm also well ahead in population. Playing on for 10ish more turns only confirms this.

Yes, they are a threat. I stay away from Death Demons and Drakes for a long time in the game right now. That said I don't feel there is quite a smooth transition of threats in the game. Also, the wild creatures don't seem to pay equal attention to the other civilizations like I feel they should. They ignore other AIs and just focus straight on the human player.

Too dumb. I just wiped the floor with Ceresa easy. When I made her surrender to me, her spellcasting sovereign was completely outfitted for melee. Their AI only seems to have one playstyle. I have never seen the AI good at spellcasting or good at ranged combat. The AI seems to shine focusing on a combo of civics and melee technology techs.

Normal because I don't feel like the AI should "cheat" yet in my playtesting.

Custom Arnorian, Custom Tarth, Default Ironeers. I've tried a variety of traits. None yet seem overpowered or underwhelming yet (though some definitely have a limited lifetime of usefulness)

Just keep adventuring and getting better and better gear on my tank sov. Get mana and poor on the melee buffs.

I will see if I can get one. Last game Ceresa declared war on me then capitulated in surrender about a dozen turns later as my sovereign just marched down her road destroying all her unprepared cities and forts. AIs should get ready for war before they declare war.

They need to fix the bug about monsters being as aggressive to AI as it is to the human.  Then we would see far less pioneers and undefended territory would see their resources get hammered too.  AI would not be able to expand nearly as fast as it does now.  Once this is done can sit back and re-evaluate the situation is what I would think.  Things would fall in line better I'd think.

After 2 full game as Tarth, challenging difficulty, large world with 8 factions, and one playing Altar (same settings) I have to say the game had a nice feel but faction AI is still under par on the long run. For exemple, in the first game, Altar had a score 3 times mine and expanded like crazy mid game. But I still managed to beat them quite easy: they kept sending me loads of troops, often without their sovereign or potent heroes and all their cities were underdevelopped. One good thing is that I actually had to use troops in 0.913 to win the game (lots of them) and it wasn't easy. The war vs Altar took me a good 100 turns to win and I had to make peace at some point to regroup and reorganise my new conquests. He declared war backstabbing me, which was good, but couldn't manage to properly defend that city after.

Monster AI is sure better in this one. Despite few bugs, there and there, the experience was great. To awswer your questions, monster AI is at a right difficulty (still few tweaks/bugs to solve here) but player AI is not a big threat on challenging: I just needs 2-3 heroes and 4 elite units to destroy loads, and loads of low armor units, even with good weapons. AI needs to learn to gather small armies of great warriors instead of loads of average troops. Never seen AI use a fireball too...

I like the pacing, especially early game.  I think the challenge and levelling up is nearly there (at least for the start).

But these are the glaring issues I have right now:

• AI monsters much more aggressive towards me than other kingdoms/empires.  When other AI players create an outpost or city, it stirs up the monsters and they come after me!  Plus the AI ooponents will send pioneers past bottleneck monsters in to my territory (which makes me declare war very often).
• AI keeps sending units through my territory.  I purposely tried to bottleneck a section of land, and every other AI thinks they have the right to walk right through my area of control.  Not only is it frustrating to keep telling them to "get off me land", but sometimes they refuse to even talk to you so you CAN say this.  There should be a way to say stay away from me or else it is an act of war.  Period.
• I couldn't attack an opponent's city because they refused to speak to me.  The attack button for the unit did nothing.
• There is no way to easily defend an outpost and its resources.  And early game I am constantly rebuilding my outposts and resources because of AI monster spawns.
• I need more transparency about what areas of land are able to create settlements (without having a pioneer unit near the area).  And we shouldn't be able to create cities in areas where we can't build buildings.  I settled on a 3/3 next to a river, a forest on one side, a gem resource on another side, and a mountain on the other.  I couldn't make any building except a dock.  I'm not sure why I couldn't clear out the forest.  The clear forest option has always confused me anyway because it always appears greyed out.

That's it for now.  Haven't had a lot of time to play .913 yet, so more feedback to come...

AI isn't challanging:

1) Armor is vitally important (probably too much so) and it rarely armors troops

2) Horrible spell AI. Both tactical and strategic. Although if AI used strategic spells intelligently to game would be impossible to win because they are irresisitable and mana unlimited.

3) Gets into fights with monsters it cannot win. Many times I have seen a Sov in the first hundred turns attack drakes. Also they build cities next to high level monsters kills champion/sov over and over again as it tries to leave the city.

4) Spends too many resources building pioneers for outposts and cities.  Does it really need to own every crystal mine within a hundred tiles of its capital? It never seems to spend metal, crystal or mana in any great quantity.

5) Builds cities in horrible locations, next to much better locations.

6) AI gives away first strike even when they have archers advantadge. AI archers still only retreat 1 square. AI never prioratizes targets once it is in combat. If the AI is next to an enemy unit they will never move if an enemy is adjacent.

AI is annoying:

1) Free Tireless march + roads let it cross like 8 aquares in a turn to attack you. Making it impossible to defend outposts and resources.

2) Builds outposts in annoying places, many times I have had my kingdom cut in half by an neutral outpost. Forcing me to declare war to get rid of it.

3) Endless waves of pioneers and heroes running through my territory forcing me to tell them to leave every #$%*ing turn, if I dont want ouposts in my territory or my lairs looted.

I think the AI is getting much better, but there is some major cheating going on.

For instance whats the deal with Life based Sovereign's getting 540 hit points and critical hitting for 250 damage a whack?

Pretty sure I saw a 0/0 city pumping out troops. Not even sure how that exists.

Might be related to the bug that allows them to build outposts deep under my ZOC in rare occasions.