And that is were I was hoping, that this game would not wander, but........

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

Monsters & quests were tougher, heroes were weaker. I liked it.Monsters stopped being a threat after I researched leather and blacksmithing. 2 or 3 regular units equipped with leather and boar spear, lead by a hero could take out almost any monster I encountered. 

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

AI players were much more active than in previous beta.

3. What difficulty did you play on?

Hard difficulty, medium map, dense monsters, sparse resources, 5 opponents.

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

Verga/Yithril. I actually lost first two games because hero strategy from previous beta didn't work plus I really had crappy starts. Third time I won, I had a great start and focused on regular units.

5. If you think the AI was too easy, what did you do to lead to your success (did you outfit your sovereign 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)?

Lead AI(Markin)  was way ahead of me but he neglected to focus on warfare. I carefully leveled my heroes and regulars and when I upgraded the regulars to leather and blacksmithing weapons I attacked the Markin and took his capital city(he built a level 5 city in record time). After that It was game over for the AI. 

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.

Here are two saves. First before the epic battle for Markin's capital. And the second after my victory. Reasons for my victory were superior armor and weaponry, high level units,tough hero, lots of mana, creative use of tactics and magic. Markin had a terrific economy If he focused more on armor and weaponry he would be a way tougher opponent.

Save before epic battle(I attacked with Verga): https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-Ax0FxN0i6AUG5GSVJub0IwZEE

Save after: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-Ax0FxN0i6ALXo2cUZHLXVZN3c

Some general bugs I encountered:

1. Tremor spell sometimes doesn't work(units move, altough they shouldn't)

2. Sometimes arrows and bolts come from the side. Perhaps the bug has to do with the screen resolution. Mine is  1920 X 1080.

Some balance stuff:

1.That butcherman that you get from a quest seems to be a very weak unit, perhaps he should be upgraded to martyr

2.'Kill rats' quest offers you 300 gildar as  a reward, I think that's way too much considering how gildar is much more precious now 

3.Throwing daggers seem to me so weak now that I always sell them, perhaps they should do damage based on the level of unit

4. Sand golem has no longer weakness to blunt?

to 1)

•  I like the animals, they all have special features, you have a chance to kill them, but the fights are interesting and challenging, and you have several ways you can handle them:

1. you can fight them the regular way with weapons or magic. 
2. You can try to tame them as a beastmaster.
3.  You can kill them very easily as a hunter.

• I do not like Mites/Wildings/Darklings (besides from Shamans), they can nothing besides from being killed, you know you will win, but you can turn your brain off and so it makes fighting them not intersting.
• When we talk about strong monsters we should talk about the behavior of monsters generally: Why should every monster raze your city when winning a battle? I played on "hard" and my second city was razed by a monster at around turn 20, I had no chance even with more units or three champions. To do mistakes or playing at risk is ok for a player, but dealing with events you would not have a chance even if you play perfect is frustrating. So perhaps the monsters should have interests: Bandits want your money, so let them plunder your city and take some guilder. Monsters and beasts are perhaps hungry, so let them kill some people and then go away for a long while. That Dragons and Death demons want to destroy cities is ok, but so please give me the chance to place a second city without being killed by them.
• And Mites/Wildings/Darklings: They should know that they are so weak, even if they are stupid they should have learned by experience that they die in 98 % of cases they meet humans, so perhaps we should make "Cooperations" more interesting, and find a way to let them really cooperate, perhaps it should be possible to make them vassals, or trade with them, or buy/rent food from them, or when it comes to war several tribes of them should ally to a more strong army with mixed weapons, perhaps let them be something like the Natives in Colonization. When you want their land, kill them, but then the other villages will be hostile towards you, but you could also be friendly and cooperate with them.
• And please: Same chance for everyone, what makes "hard" at the moment (0913) extraordinary hard, is that I sometimes can even not defend my first city but the AI builds dozens of Outposts around their cities. The monsters seem not to be any threat to them, perhaps that is a AI-bonus or their champions are much to strong, I saw one with 120 Hit-Points in very early game.

How do I attach save-games?

Fallen Enchantress is looking to become everything I wanted from E:WoM. I really love the direction this project is taking. I am enjoying watching the AI take shape and am hopeful that we will see it become capable of holding its own in the release version.

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

I have no complaints about the monsters; they provide an interesting challenge and add a lot of variety to my games.

The overall sentiment appears to be leaning towards having monster aggression and spawn randomness curbed. I would suggest making those based on difficulty instead as I really enjoy both the aggression and the randomness of the placement. I can understand the concerns of those who dislike it though, especially on the easier difficulties.

2. General feedback on if you felt the AI players were a threat (were they to strong, to weak, or about right).
3. What difficulty did you play on?

The AI does not provide any challenge or resistance at present.
I play on hard.

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

Sovereign:

• Krax Blood (+10 Defense @ 50% HP)
• Armorer (+25% Defense)
• Hardy
• Brilliant 
• Life, Water, Earth 1 
• Procipinee's Crown
• Clumsy

Faction:

• Adepts (Starts with shard tech + 40 manna)
• Flesh Bound Tome (Cull the Pioneers + Death Lash)
• Heroic (2x XP for adventures, 2x Prestige from Trophies)
• Light Plate
• Master Scouts (free movement through all terrain)
• Scholars (+10% Research + Research tech)
• No Ranged Weapons (by the time I could research bows, the game will likely be over anyway. I do think bows to be useful otherwise…)
• Uneducated (-10% Research)
• Vulnerable to Magic (debuff magic is not frequently encountered) 

• I colonize the square with the most industry. Early production means faster horizontal growth and horizontal growth has the following advantages (over vertical growth):
• With more cities, I can move everything faster and farther than a vertical counterpart. (due to roads)
• I cast Meditation, Enchanted Hammers and Inspiration on the starting city (and Meditation/Inspiration on most all cities). Inspiration, Meditation and Enchanted Hammers means more research, more production and more manna when/where needed. This provides ultimate flexibility and a huge boost to early growth.
• The power comes from city quantity more than city quality; I can afford to lose a couple outposts and cities and still rebound. 
• I can ignore improving many of my cities for a long time without negative consequences. The bonuses provided by EH+I are sufficient on their own for the early game when multiplied across the breadth of cities that will be built.
• In most starts, I will be producing a pioneer every 3-5 turns in City 1 and a Pioneer every 5-8 turns in expansions. Where needed, I will also produce spearmen units.
• I ignore improvements until I have a sufficient army of pioneers to cull for manna and/or expand with.
• I research towards trade (roads) so that I can increase my rate of exploration and expansion
• I lower taxes to 0 to increase production and research
• I generally do not recruit the champion near the starting position as that burdens the economy. The exceptions are when it’s a merchant, has air magic or some other utility (like armor I want to trade for)
• If I need manna, I use cull the weak. I do not worry too much about shards, focusing more on city planting so that I can enjoy the benefits of the roads and expand at a maximum velocity.

General Strategy:

I heavily utilize the Sov for clearing a pioneering trail. This also means ALL the XP goes to one unit... The typical starting enemies in groups will be killed first and if I lose HP, I will leave 1 alive and hold space (skip turn) until the regeneration returns the Sov to full HP before leaving the tactical combat mode.  

After roads; I research spears as I find spear units better than most of the common nearby champions. Especially with Krax blood.

Leveling Strategy:

I want Boon (+10HP), E2 (stone skin), L3 (Shrink/Grow) and the assassin perk. Stone Skin, Regeneration and Grow/Shrink are powerful together and synergize well with Kraxis Blood / Armorer (10 Defense + 25% Defense + 6 Defense + Enemy Attack Reduction + Regeneration + Defense Bonus by just hitting space). With those, I can start taking on much more powerful enemies and level faster.

AI Encounters:

While expanding, I usually meet some weak scout based army the AI has and I quickly offer a DoW, take a city and wait a few turns until they surrender or their general suicides.

The real challenge is when my roads automatically get built through the wastes... I enjoy the current monster aggressiveness; I had Delin take a road out of the wastes and rampage into my cities. That was a ton of fun and quite interesting. That is sadly the only challenge I have found thus far.

Here are 3 of my latest games on V913 (at a point where I do not feel any threat from the AI and have conquered 1 or 2 of them):

1: Turn 47

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m77xcvagp1renom/1.EleSav
25 Minute (2x speed) silent video of the play that took place up to the save point: http://youtu.be/amonV9Vkm1g

2: Turn 46

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nlwszuq6jauweah/2.EleSav
25 Minute (2x speed) silent video of the play that took place up to the save point: http://youtu.be/Z3xso_pnoM0

3: Turn 35

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f7dryu3din1fn2o/3.EleSav

You don't think they have the difficulty setting screwed do you?  The beginner is challenging and challenging the beginner.

Yazari, where have all the monsters gone in your game, like dragons, Death Demons and that stuff? Do you play on monster-setting "Dense"?

My problems with my hard-games were the rare places where I could settle and a lot more strong monsters standing or walking around these places, most of the time one of my early settlements was destroyed by one of these monsters, an umberdroth ran into it using my street.

The difficulty settings seem to work as intended. The harder difficulties definitely boost the AI's resources and experience.

The greatest challenge I can find comes from the random monster spawns and their aggression level. I LOVE IT, but, I think this is the reason for the complaints that a lot of people are having with the easier difficulties. The monster placement and aggression does not appear to scale or be adjusted with the difficulty level and can be quite harsh. The AI also does not appear to aggravate the monsters at the same pace as the player.

I played all my games on the default settings (Moderate/Moderate/Medium/Balanced) outside of difficulty which was set to hard. I agree that the challenge currently is from the randomness of monster placement - I imagine dense is a lot tougher - I will give that a shot.

I recommend using Drop Box [https://www.dropbox.com/home] as a way to share files. I was unable to find an upload option in the forum software and doubt it exists.

So I will try to play against the hard-KI with moderate monsters...

I think at the moment dense is an advantage for the KI, because they have a kind of agreement with the monsters...

I believe that the latest round of AI improvement has been solid; however, some issues remain. 

As for Derek's questions:

1. I felt that the monster behavior and distinction is starting to approach a "good" quality. Mites are small, but rapidly reproducing menaces (I seek out mite mounds as soon as I can because they destroy all my outposts!) and dragons still remain the beasts that they should be!

2. The AI has improved and has become somewhat more competitive. Still, I feel that more work must be done. For starters, I will repeat what other posters have said: the Monster AI should react to AI opponents as if they were human opponents as well. If the AI routines for the enemy factions cannot handle this, then I think that they need more work to be able to cope. Sometimes the AI produces substantial armies, and sometimes it sits, horrified, as you churn through its cities. Please see my thoughts below.

3. I played on Normal difficulty. 

4. I played one game as Pariden and one game as Magnar. Default sovereign selection. Magnar is easily the BEST early game faction in the game. Bar-none. Much of this is due to the wage-less slave units. Rather than nerf Magnar, I believe that paid units need more wage-reduction. My thoughts below.

5. Many of the AI opponents would allow me to expand and conquer a rival faction without incident. I believe that the AI needs to be a tiny bit more opportunistic when it knows that you are going to war with a faction that is on one of your opposite flanks. Additionally, the AI tends to produce high quantities of lower wage, low quality troops. This game currently rewards players who focus on precise strikes with high quality troops. Some changes to tactical combat (ie. positioning bonuses and "mobbing" bonuses) would alleviate some of the issues here; however, a short-term solution would be to have the AI mix high quality units within the army.

6. Here is a replay where I play as Magnar and I feel that my military-industrial strength is sufficient for me to conquer Gilden to my south after just having wiped out Pariden to my south-west.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sz5y4apufetit88/AutoSave.EleSav

My thoughts: 

• The wage reduction for trained troops was a godsend! MUCH needed! My opinions about early game stagnation were mostly due to unfeasibility of early game armies. If you were smart, you just hired a champion or two, and roamed around without purchasing any units up until turn 100 or so. Suggestion: Decrease wages for early game troops (ie. clubs, spears and the like) even more and decrease production times for those units. Also, consider increasing wages for late game equipment. 

• PROBLEM: The game has now devolved into what you could call: "pioneer spam." It makes more sense to constantly produce pioneers than it does to build structures in your towns. The AI is VERY aggressive about colonizing new territory (this needs to be toned down) and the Monster AI tends to let it do so. The player, in order to cope with this, must constantly expand regardless of prestige, location or map location or else the AI will claim resources at a rapid rate. Suggestion: reduce the AI's aggressive expansion (especially if the resource lies next to another player's territory), change the Monster AI's routines to regard AI opponents as equal targets, and, perhaps, include a flat gildar cost for building an outpost (20-30 gildar sounds right, though this could be on a sliding scale).
  

• PROBLEM: Your ability to expand within turns 20 - 50 greatly predicts whether or not you will be successful. If your starting city is in an excellent location, but your surroundings have no food tiles or are "locked down" by high level monsters, you will likely fail. A single city lacks production capabilities necessary to support an army/economy. Suggestion: add the spells that allow you to convert non-food tiles into food tiles into a low-tier magic research item. 

I feel your pain.  Prior to v0.913, I usually played on Easy level about half the time; and on Medium level about half the time.  Based on the v0.913 Changelog info, I decided to play my first new game on Beginner level, to scope out the changes.  I have pretty much been getting my ass kicked, which I was definitely not expecting.

 After 120+ turns, I have reached a kind of stalemate.  I have two cities that I can hold, just barely; but no hope of expanding any time soon.  The one empire I am facing (Magnar) is ridiculously over-powered; and the two kingdoms are at my level, and (I think) are slowly improving.  Lack of money is crippling; the monsters will  NOT  attack any of the AI-controlled players; and viable tiles for starting new cities seem to have been markedly reduced.   On the whole, I am not finding this to be fun ... 

 [ Edit: some days later -- just for the record, I did eventually win this game; but I am still not sure that I found it to be as much "Fun", as I was hoping it would be ... ]

I think Yazari may have identified the problem here.  The Beginner level seems ridiculous.  I understand the desire of the more hard-core players to be "challenged" at the higher levels.  Sometimes I like to play that way myself.  However, the two lowest levels (Beginner and Easy) should not be so nearly impossible, that the more casual players (who just want to have Fun) view the game as being hopeless to actually win.

Stardock needs to get this right!  They aren't going to be selling many more copies of Fallen Enchantress to the Beta Testers.  These folks already have their free copies, and their early purchases.  If Stardock wants to sell  MANY  more copies, to the larger class of more casual players, they are going to need to get the balance correct, in the lower levels too! 

I think that Yazari nicely illustrated the value of pioneer-spamming. He used them as meat-shields, scouts and (naturally) city founders. Because they are wage-less, they fit all of those roles very handily. Very well-played!

In order to combat this, perhaps a unit limit for pioneers should be in place? A faction can only have one or two pioneers on the field at one time? Also, I am wondering if outposts need an overhaul (flat gildar cost to place them and-or maintenance costs. I believe that outposts should also have some "upgrades" available for purchase after researching certain techs).

I give it up with 0913. In my last hard game I walked around for half an hour and did not find any fertile land for a second city.

I need any magic for fertile land or technology that makes it possible to settle on other types of land.

On "challenging" I killed every neighbour fraction without problems.

Dense is tougher at the start.  More monster lairs.  Also more challenging to play this way against enemies, since the monsters don't attack the cities, shards, etc, of your AI opponents at this point.

Monsters being actually a real pain is fine to me, but their constant threat to my outposts and cities is no fun. It becomes a micromanagement hell at best and is gamebreaking way too often.

Give us a simple solution to hold all monsters (bandits, butchermen, ...) but not enemy forces away from our infrastructure. Let's say we could have three options for cities and outposts:

1) traps and scarecrows - takes some monthly production from the associated city

2) torchbearers - some gildar per month

3) wailing spirit - some mana per month

Should be easily switched on/off and toggled through per outpot/city, just give it a cooldown after deactivating to avoid gamey last minute decisions. After having an area cleared, one could free the ressources invested into monter determent before.

- One turn deaths for players and AI are possible.

- Monsters in Lairs don't rage on AI players like they do on Human.  No Fair!

- A lot of concerns I have about monsters is that some of the stronger ones that can sit on a lair spawn similarly dangerous things that can wander about  and this happens too soon for the early game.  (Specific example - Death Demon (big baddie)  spawning assasin demons (EEK! for the early game)  and umberdroths can spawn more ones that move about..  )

- Most games I have played was with 4-6 opponents on large random maps.  I am getting outbuilt by the midgame, the AI will have double the # of settlements and resource income   ..  I'm thinking save some AI stuff for challenging.  Sheesh.  

- AI still guilty of sending unescorted pioneers

- AI is dumb in regards to telling them to stay out of your territory.  They keep doing it turn after turn and they're ___ annoying.  They call you on going thru their territory.  Have the AI choose another route, give it a rest.  

- I've played around with a few of the Kingdoms and made a couple custom Sovereigns.  

- Wish for additional spell for 'summoners' so that its not so much of a early/short term gain and I don't regret not picking warlock instead.  Shadow wargs are pretty good but get torn apart easy on things rougher than bandits.  

- Knights of Asok are too powerful to mess with in early game.  They need to defend their castle or something, that way scouts can get past.  

- Played as a "Team" with an AI before mainly so I could be buddy-buddy with Procipinee and get some books.  She and I can infer that AI has horrible judgment on initial city location.  The city's grain and mats were average but on top of that she was greatly restricted on tiles no thanks to having chasms on both sides of her.  Sorry I don't have saves, that was several games ago.  

- A lot of really powerful stuff has level requirements on it, so I don't think anything I can get my hands on is OP.

- Seems like "Armor" is stronger in defense rating than Weapons are in "Attack ".  I feel that all weapons need a slight bump up - that is the base weapons for units researchable on the warfare tree.

- Magic weapons could be a tad stronger.  Let me clarify, the base weapons for units under the Magic tech tree.

You got the problem right but the suggestion to tone down aggressive AI expansion is terrible, I think. If pioneer spam is optimal then that is exactly what the AI should do. The solution is to tone down the benefits of pioneer spam for everyone so that it is no longer a dominating strategy. 

Interesting ideas!

Perhaps cities should have a Level of how interesting they are for monsters/beasts, why should a demon walk all the way to search for 40  people having a little camp in the forest?

200 undefended people are much more interesting...

Something like in Alpha Centauri/Planetfall where you are attacked much more likely when you act against Nature, kill forests and animals and so...

Perhaps animals/beasts should be afraid of fire, so you can have a firewall-spell, traps sounds also intersting to me, perhaps a church, temple of xy or mage guild to prevent you from assaults of more supernatural things, or illusion spells to make the monster go away...

Perhaps also the kind of your fraction/shards can be an influencing factor... Like animals do not attack Tarth, or demons do not attack the Death-affine fractions...

Occasional attacks by big twisted seem not to be unrealistic in such a world, especially when your city has become larger, famous and richer, but what speaks against a little story and warning around this incident?

"A huge troll has been seen close to your area, prepare your city..."

I do not understand these knights in the story of the game...why should they kill my Pioneers? No money, I do not expect them to have my pioneers for dinner, no fame... even fantays games could have a little bit logic and predictability, especially strategic ones. Customs duty for passing their territory would fit better.

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

In the beggining monsters are fun with a number of monsters stronger than a starting Sov and some weaker so you can explore/level/loot. Soon however you get armor (loot or leather tech) and only the toughest monsters are a threat. With leather armor and weaponry I killed an earth elemental army with 3 groups of 3 troops and my Sov, no casulties. With leather armor most monsters can only do 1-3 dmg to you and you can build enough armored leather troops to destroy anything.

The only time monsters were really a threat after leather was when the AI woke up drakes/bone ogres by building outposts/cities and they attacked me.

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

AI seemed more able to produce threatening armies and manged to win a couple of battles gainst me. Might be because of double inspiration and magic hammers on each city though.

I still saw way too many scouts with armies though. It seems the AI spends a lot of production on scouts. AI still was more annoying than threatening with outposts getting put up everywhere. Somehow when I wasn't looking an AI pioneer built a outpost 2 tiles from my capital, under my ZOC. Waves of pionners attempted to cross my ZOC to build outposts in tiny gaps in my ZOC and I wasted a lot of time threatening them to leave every turn. AI still builds horrible cities, even next to better tiles or shrill lords.

Oh and twice the AI attacked me with single champions armed with clubs.

3. What difficulty did you play on?

Challanging on small map vs 4 kingdoms and kraxis

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

Yithril standard Sov

5. If you think the AI was too easy, what did you do to lead to your success.

Leather armor + Wither +Stoneskin + rediculous mana + unresistable spells and unlimited range makes me invincible to AI units and monsters. Please make strategic and mass spells resistible and give less mana per shard.

Casting wither/stoneskin anywhere on the map without worrying about mana or range lets my legions dominate every fight. My Sov who wasn't even a mage was casting wither/stoneskin on anything and everything across continents and against monsters immune to spells. Half of every turn was casting and managing enchanments.

AI champions (not Sov) seemed to lack purpose and just ran around with clubs getting murdered or hiding in cities from me.

AI attacked monsters it couldn't hope to destroy and lost whole armies at the same time it was fighting me.

I like your line of thought. If there were a cost for founding cities and a cost for building/maintaining outposts, a person would need an economy in order to expand. City Growth would become much more important. I would love to see the build speed/benefits of city improvements increase as it seems to  happen at a snail’s pace currently. I would also love to see more unique improvement benefits. 

My understanding is the next beta is supposed to address cities and I am hopeful we see cities and their improvements made more meaningful across the board and that there are city/outpost defense upgrade options and ZOC defenses/fortifications. (fits the ‘go big or go home’ mantra that is applied to other parts of the game. The cities should be powerful and unique as well)

Cities are soft at present and that is bad for all play styles.

• A player who wants less of a challenge wants their cities and ZOC to be well protected.
• A player who wants more of a challenge wishes the AI cities and ZOC were protected.

Other ideas to limit the strength of pioneer spam:

While I do think that pioneer spam will be reduced when vertical growth is made more important, I have a few other ideas related to it:

• Disallowing pioneers from being part of tactical combat. 

1. Prevents them being used as meat shields (Death Lash)
2. Prevents them being used as manna reserves/walking batteries (cull the weak).
3. Kraxis pioneers are stupidly good meat shields due to the armor boost and the AI prioritizing targets that are initially ‘soft’. Maybe pioneers should not have the blood trait applied?

• Removing the ability to use Cull the Weak on free units.

• I use pioneers as manna batteries/reserves (40 Manna per pioneer IF needed). This might be alright as it is a definite trade-off to harvest them.
• Militia troops are free manna and there is no trade off associated with Death Lashing them, followed by harvesting them up before tactical mode ends. Example:
1. I took a L1 city from the AI which had been parked next to a ton of monsters... 
2. The next turn, I was immediately attacked by three waves of monsters.
3. I harvested the lone militia each time which netted me 120 manna
• Now imagine if that was an L6 city, I would be up 240 manna per wave for a total of 720 manna. I think that is a bit overpowered and that it should not be usable on militia units (or that militia units dying should matter... does it matter? I never figured it did...)
• Also the description for cull the weak is wrong. It provides 40 manna and 0 HP (description states 40 manna + 40 HP)

• AI Centric pioneer issues/ideas:
• The AI appears to prioritize units based on softness (Defense and HP)
• I would love to see the AI prioritize on units capable of damaging it, using softness/CtH as a secondary part of the equation. Pioneers should never be a target unless they box the AI in or are the last unit remaining (or have Death Lash).
• The AI currently does not play fox / rabbit well (goes for a direct path as opposed to staying as near the center to entrap). Regeneration makes this matter as I can avoid/heal up while facing slower monsters.