I just got through playing my first several games; one of each race, only finished one, I was exploring the game; but in each one I played until i'd developed a good bit; and was usually in a position to win.

I like the game overall; it's a good addition to the genre; some balance issues, but those are normal for new games.

My comments may skew towards the negative; that's only because it's easier to identify things I dislike then things I like.

It feels like cities are a bit too numerous.  While there isn't full-scale infinite city-sprawl syndrome, the expansionism still feels a bit much.  The only penalty for extra cities is defending them and the growth penalty due to prestige being spread out.  Given the low cost of pioneers compared to buildings/units; expanding is basically always a good choice if you can; unless you've done something unusual to get sooo much food you can use the focused growth.  Clearing areas so you can settle them is nice, but i'd like to see a bit less expansionism; also i'd like monsters to be a bit more aggressive;  if a monster's lair ends up in a player's zone of control, i'd like to see the monster tend to attack the city/outpost that set them off.  The AI really spams expands; and frequently wakes up things like ashwake dragons long before it can possiblty fight them; and their cities usually survive as the monster random walks around; the penalties for disturbing monsters beyond your ability should be more severe and likely.

I like the idea behind the shard mechanic, but in practice it just feels lacking.  I remember playing age of wonders and master of magic; getting ones of the right kind/converting them made a big difference in the bonus.  Right now the only conversion is one faction ability to convert to death; the rest of the time what shards you get is random, AND what heroes you have access to and the paths your sovereign has are already set.  This means that you can't really adjust to the situation in a way that makes fro interesting and varied gameplay.  You don't get to change your strategy based on what shards are available to you.  Whereas you do get to adjust yoru strategy based on how much metal/crystal there is near you; you may go deeper in the respective trees, or equip more heavily on magic items; or if you get very little you may skimp on certain trees.  (i'd also like more uses for metal early in the tech tree, warfare tree is expensive to research, and if you get some early metal it's quite awhile til you get to something you can really spend it on).

The difficulty formula of enemy camps could use some tweaking.  Some things seem rather weak for their listed difficulty rating; though this may have to do with strengths/weaknesses of units.  Example: air shrills are worth a lot of xp and can easily get a stack up to medium/strong strength.  The problem is that air shrills biggest waekness is something very easyt o get: hp.  air shrills have no armor, and armor-ignoring nuke and mild damage.  Their weak vs one of the most basic things in the game, a militia.  Any unit that's vulnerable to militia shouldn't get that high a rating; 

The game feels like it ends a little too early;  in my most recent game I did the mastery quest; killed the final guy with the kill spell.  as I was level 19 with the uh, quendar sovereign I think, I had enough spell mastery to 35% kill him even with his 100 spell resist.  i had a few decent troops with me but they didn't do that much to him.  I had a little over half the tech tree done when I killed him; i only had some troops with me, and while good troops, they weren't optimized for fighting the big guy.  If they had been, i think i coulda taken him without access to the kill spell.  I haven't done other victories yet as i've been exploring the game more; but it does feel like spell of making (and of course miltiary victories) can quite readily be done with a lot of the hgih-end tech tree still available.  Mastery quest and Spell of making should really be more late/end game options I think.

AI seems reasonable; i'd be happy to talk ai design at some point, as I know a fair about that;  I think it should prep its armies a bit more before declaring war; it should really be positioning and gathering forces first.

Mounts seem really strong; it's also not so good that they negate the bash ability completely.  I find the cost of mounts compared to metal/crystal is so low that if you get one decent mount source, you can mount all your good troops quite easily, whereas depleting metal/crystal is pretty easy if you put everything on your troops.  And cuz mounts have no production cost it's just a straight add-on to any troop.

edit: two more thing; it's not possible to disallow conquest victory.  Or at least i couldn't turn ti off when I tried, i'd like to be able to turn off conquest victory and play a game with 0 opponents.  This makes it more of a time challenge/questing thing;  it's preferable to setting up one weak ai or crippling the ai and hoping they don't accidentally die.

Also i didn't see an option to keep playing after tyou've won the game.  It'd be good to have an option to keep playing if there's some stuff you wanted to do/fight.