Some questions from a newcomer

First off, check out the manual linked at the top of the forum. It's a very good one, and makes an excellent read--plus, you'll find it answers most of your questions in great detail, especially those regarding how the various factions, traits, etc, differ, both in specifics and gameplay.  Yes, they really do provide different playing experiences.  Reminds me of SMAC in that respect.

The AI has strategic issues at this point.  It makes reasonable decisions in many respects, but tends to place outposts near lairs, which releases monsters to randomly wander about and attack.  Diplomacy is something of a mess.  A ruler can bribe you to attack another ruler, and then declare war on you the next turn for declaring war on the ruler they paid you to attack.  Tactical combat AI is pretty decent, and your opponents field good armies, for the most part.  Research choices are good.

Balance is good between spells and might, though you really have to research one specific tech tree to win.  There's excellent replayability, since so much can change in the sandbox mode from game to game even if you leave all the options unchanged.  And there are many options that help configure the kind of game you have.  Try a large map with Magnar among your opponents, and turn his AI up to Hard.  Things get brutal very quickly.

All in all, I think it's a very good game, and given Stardock's record, I'm fairly confident it will become a great one as they work to improve it.  It also has a number of strong mods in development that add more buildings, races, leaders, quests, etc.

I'm not the best player of the game. There are those who do better than me, but here is my meager attempt at answering your questions you posed.

The AI has several different personalities and most of their actions are based on good random choices. The map is random so the AI cannot play the same way each time. There are isolationist type AI (I've got my cave and it will be POWERFUL), and there are expansionist type AI (grab everything because it's MINE). These type of AI are randomly assigned to each of the oppenents and you cannot always tell which you will get when you play the game.

The manual has an in depth description of everything you are looking for here. But they are different, very different.

It seems you covered everything here, but they also look different in style. Kingdom / Empire have different looks altogether. Then you have color distinction between the factions. Yes they do have different traits.

Yes, each faction is defined from a race. The race of people have particular abilities. Each of the units built from this faction use the racial properties.

Some races have unique equipment only to that race. For example Kraxis make 1 handed spears, no other race can make these items.

You cannot play the game as one race and not feel your playing the same race as another. Each play style is distinctly different in style. You can play each race the same, but that may not be playing that race to it's full potential.

The game is designed to be completely random. Thus, the traits for the same faction is the same, but the playstyle must be adaptive depending on your start. Although, you may have the same traits, the tatics you used in the previous game do not work well in the new game because say you have less access to metal, but more access to crystal. Then your troops will be more magical in nature, and thus your playstyle must be more adaptive to this end. This means that if you are playing a less magical race you have added a new challenge by trying to utilize your traits in a different manner to be successful.

More importantly, if you are asking about replayability in general, you do have the ability to customize your sovereign for a given race. Also, any units you design the AI will use and somewhat effectively. Also, the AI will use any customize sovereign you make because the AI was designed to be able to play the game. The AI designer is also going to continue to upgrade the AI to be better and better in future updates... once he learns more peoples play styles and adds counters to those particular gameplay mechanics.

A spellcasting faction is not uncapable from building upgraded armies to defend themselves. In fact, most weapons with elemental damage leave some of these armies vunerable if the other faction didn't provide the appropriate resistances from this damage. The problem with building a super troop that is resistent to every form of damage is costly, and also limited by a units strength. There are also strategic spells (which the AI is not the best at using presently) that can stop armies in their tracks for a few turns. Also, there are spells that will scatter forces on the strategic map, then allow you to attack each invidual piece, while the oppenent trys to regather them together.

The balance is pretty good as far as things go there and there are multiple ways to win the game. Leaving players with options on the gameplay.

Welcome to Elemental; Fallen Enchantress. This will be your best Fantasy strategy experience ever, at least it is for me.

When it comes to AI; It's already better then in most, if not all all other strategy games, and this being a Stardock game you can be sure they will continue to improve on it. They even improve the more you play the game, because they will start using your own unit designs.

I guess many of your first questions can be found in the manual in the first pinned post of the forum

https://stardock.cachefly.net/FE_manual.pdf

For my own experience with the beta, I can tell you:

- Replaying with same faction is perfectly possible. Each map is random, so your strategy will have to adapt to the available resources. Of course, strategies that you find usefull, you will repeat...but you can try a lot of new ones...

- A nice balance is between 2 resources: metal (for weapons/armour) and crystal (for magic weapons/other stuff). As said, depending of wich one you have more available, you will have to develope the technology tree that provides the improvements. That may be different on each game.

- The same with magic. You can play full warrior, or use a lot of magic. That will depend too in the magical resources you find (shards).

- I find more interesting in customize the own sovereign and faction...you can always try that after playing the default ones...

- The unique units for factions is maybe what I miss a bit. Only some of them have unique units. But you will customize your troops, depending on the technology you research, and once more, the resources you have. You can summon creatures too.

- The AI depends on the difficulty settings. After many plays on "challenging", I think I will play one more level of difficulty (and still 2 or 3 levels more), to try. There are some testers playing on "insane" and "ridiculous", and they say it is really hard now... AI is far from being perfect, but it has improved a lot, and Stardock says that they will keep on working on it, so I'm sure there are many things we will see in the future

Anyway, the game provides not only the AI challenge, but the lairs and the Wildlands Quests. Big part of the game you may want to do that to improve the level of your champions, before battle with the AI... Developing heroes is the RPG part of the game, and what probably makes more interest in wanting to end the game: to see your powerfull heroes and troops. You just can avoid it and start an AI hunting too...

I recommend to see videos and Let's play that other posters are preparing for the release day, to have an idea.

Another good point is the mods that are being prepared too. If after 10-20 games (I have 85 hours on the game, if the counter is right) you want something else, you can try them.

So at this point...and awaiting for the final release, I really think this game deserves to try.

Thanks a lot for the information. Really apreciate the answers.

 I feel like this game has a lot of potential from the manual/youtube/forum. However, usually when it comes to strategy, some games implement a feel of grinding instead of countering, dont know if i expressed myself right. I mean when you get advantage from a single event, suddenly it develops into a snowball and the winner is clear from that point, and it is only a matter of time when the game ends. This is when the challenge is gone.

Im really glad to hear, that AI is decent enough and there is ever-present randomness that keep things exciting. I guess i will find out more in a few hours, when game goes live (cause i found about it some days ago, kinda i thought no reason to get into last stages of beta at this point).  

I'm 110% sure you will love it! As yourself I'm a great lover of grand strategy games, and also the ones with a fantasy setting. This is the game I have been dreaming about for ages in the fantasy strategy catagory. Your kind of gamer will embrace this game and almost cry of happiness when you realize a game like this excists.