The Ridiculous game is now looking a bit more comfortable, because after I killed Gilden's four full stacks two of the other AIs declared war on them, and I've got a reasonably favourable map layout (I'm on good terms with my closest neighbour; Gilden is some distance away and there's a bottleneck). However I had to reload after trying to take the offensive to Gilden and ending up one tile away from his city; he then promptly started spamming Tremor on me, which when you have a Stack of Doom strategy is pretty much game over. Whoops.

It might be nice to have a reasonably expensive Counterspell to remove immobility, in the same way you can counter spells cast on your cities, as having your main stack immobilized indefinitely is not a great deal of fun. Maybe the spell could come from late game Magic research. The AI would need to know when to cast it on its units, of course.

Alternatively the immobilizing spell could end at the end of the turn of the person who cast it, so the immobilized stack would always get at least one turn before being immobilized again.

The strategic AI seems much, much improved. I now get a chance to see this "late game" which people speak of! My only comments so far are:

1) the AI doesn't seem to build Pioneers for good city sites as much as I'd expect, although this may reflect their personalities or the "Ridiculous" monster lairs in my game. If it's the latter then perhaps clearing lairs could be given higher priority if they give access to a good city site.

2) The AI cast Tremor on me when I was already Tremored. Or at least, I got the taunt every turn I was immobilized. Surely casting the same spell twice on a unit is illegal? Is this a bug, or is it by design that you get the taunt every turn you're immobilized, even if no new spell was cast? The Tremors didn't seem to stack, so it may just be that the AI was taunting me every turn.

Occasionally the AI can stack (or at least cast multiple times) a spell that shouldn't be able to be cast more than once on an enemy or stack.  I've seen Spiders Web the same unit multiple times, and a Darkling Shaman Shrink the same unit multiple times.  The code for controlling AI actions is different to the User Interface controlling player actions - the AI does things directly and does not use the interface, so fixing or changing their behaviour requires different code changes that are not related to the player's UI.

I'm having a fun time on hard now against the AI. Strategic AI is much better indeed. I have to think twice before invading some of the AI cities now. Their sovs and champs are pretty scary too.

I see some Weird things though. Umber keeps sending pioneers into my borders while we're at war. I've killed 5 of those lone pioneers already. Quite a waste of resources there.

What is "Ineluctible Vision"?

reveals the entire map for as long as you pay the mana maintenance fee

Ineluctible:

Unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable

Sounds more like a curse spell...

Conquered an enemy city and found that there were two enemy heroes (just previously defeated) sitting slap bang in the middle of my 'new' city's town square. I've seen the same with caravans. Doesn't seem right, somehow, particularly with the heroes. At least they did not flip the city ownership.

I've already posted about this in another thread: defeated the Guardian of the World's End but his territory did not reset. He was far out of his stomping ground when I finally found him, that may have a bearing on it. Nor did the quest marker disappear for that matter. 

Conquered outposts do not get a road connection. Intended or oversight? 

I've seen that as well.  When I saw it, the enemy army was already sitting on the city, but not stationed within, when I conquered it.  I only fought the stationed army.  After the city was mine, the enemy army sitting on the city remained there, and neither moved off of it nor attacked it.  I Tornado'd them off.  I wonder if I'd have left them there, would they have been stuck there forever, or would they have eventually attacked?

How are AI vs AI going in 1.3? My last game I was barely touched by AI at all (Insane AI), they seemed to be more fond of hacking away on each other. Both had 1000+ power and 20+ cities and the one attacking me was my neighbor. (5-6 stacks total, they were hard but doable so if they had sent more it would have been challenging for me) I have Spell of Making disabled, and the AI's of course had all the towers built. Afaik that gives a huge diplo disadvantage, could that have been the reason for the passive play I observed? 

Also, thanks for making dodge completely useless on Insane (the AI's all spam Accuracy bonus now, on my last Insane game all AI units had 400+ accuracy) Don't know if that is intended, but assassin heroes hardly needed a nerf. I get that this isn't high priority, but I am just making you aware of the possibly unintended consequence of the change. Also useless due to this are the spells Evade, Guardian Wind, Obscuring fog, and any trait with dodge. If someone could point me into the direction of where stuff like this are coded (if it's in the XML) I could change it myself, as I guess this is low on the priority list for 1.3. 

Minor issue: The "B" shortcut for settling the first city does not work with the champion.

Could we mayhap get a shortcut key for roadbuilding for units with that ability? It's tedious to use, mousing forwards and back for each step.

Who's da' man Derek?  You da' man!

This new spell really seems out of place, or rather, it is a very new idea to the world of elemental (obviously existing in other games...civ4 it's the 'satelites' tech as an example)

Perhaps, could a lesser version of the spell be created earlier in the tech tree?

Some ideas include:

- Casting a "Reveal Land" type spell with oneshot casting cost to select a 5x5 area to be revealed for a coupel of turns. (similar to starcraft's terrian comsat upgrade)

- Casting an "Extended Sight" spell with a casting cost and casting maintenance to increase the sight of all your cities and outposts by 2

- Casting an 'Awareness' spell with an initial and maintenance costs that reveals all cities on the map, but no surrounding territory.

It did patch today.

Yeap, we updated the beta today.

This looks like it's going to be great patch!!! Cheers to everyone at SD!