I've played one game of FE since release (not entirely true, this is my second but the first came to an abrupt end when on turn 15 a wildland Troll pack that I had seen but not moved adjacent to came out of the wildlands and destroyed my only city).

It has been a somewhat frustrating experience. I find my tolerance for bugs is lower now that it is released than when it was in beta and unfortunately FE still has a large number of bugs. There are also a large number of what I would call gameplay flaws including the key one which ended this current game for me as covered in https://forums.elementalgame.com/435073/page/8.

To summarise: Despite the players best attempts to ensure killer monster stacks aren't disturbed in the early/mid game the AI still frequently disturbs them, either by settling/outposting within range of them or by settling a touch further away but then building monuments/town halls etc. These monster stacks then roam around, wreaking havoc. Occasionally they destroy AI settlements, quite often they end up at player settlements. The final straw in this game was when a Death Demon was disturbed by the AI and destroyed my best city (and only Fortress).

The solution: Disturbed monsters should immediately attempt to destroy the settlement/outpost that disturbed them, then go back to their lair (possibly if they lair has since been raided they could continue roaming, but only then). Furthermore to avoid the AI wasting decent settle ground by constantly settling in dangerous places, getting destroyed and the settle spot being salted, the raze mechanics should be changed so that when a monster razes a city there is no loss of settle spots.

I think the above change is necessary for me to really enjoy the game, it is just too infuriating that the biggest threat in the game is the AI's stupidity and there is next to nothing the player can do about it (leading roaming monsters with weak bait is one counter but it is cheesy, unreliable and the game should be fixed).

Unfortunately that is not the only problem. I wrote quite a list in the course of this one game. Some are my opinions, many are clear bugs and a disturbing number have been previously reported. 1.01 improved a lot (otherwise there would be another 10 items in this list) but there is still quite a way to go before I believe the game will be ready to get the reviews it should obtain.

Without further ado:

• Still got the bug making a custom sovereign where one of the magic proficiency rows gets stuck and stays highlighted, preventing seeing hints from the other schools
• Don't seem to be able to edit already created sovereigns to add back story.
• Bacco the Begger at level 1 attacked a darkling archer with 6 attack. I autoresolved and he lost. I have no idea how because when I fought it manually Bacco had two moves for every one the archer had and only took 3 damage out of 17 hitpoints to win. Borked up autoresolve? Tried it a few more times in different combats, autoresolving against ranged units is way, way worse than fighting it out.
• Had a Wolf's Army drawn at the intersection of 4 squares. Same with Oracle Ceresa's army later, etc. Happened many times.
• Started exploring, found a wildlands, it had a big troll army just inside the border. I didn't go adjacent to the army but nonetheless it started moving, beelined to my only city (about 5 squares away) and destroyed it. This would have been about 15 turns into the game. The stack had 190hp, 70 attack, shaman spells, etc. Nice.
• Found level 3 heroes with same number of abilities as my level 1 starting hero (ie 2 abilities). Should surely have more?
• Stables says 0 horse per turn (0.5 if hover over). Should display to 1dp always instead of rounding to 0.
• Ceresa settled on a forest square which was not valid for me to settle on.
• Doesn't seem to be a building completed notification when a city completes an improvement which is not directly connected to it (ie a resource).
• Altar completed Merchantcross Bazaar on turn 23. Really? Barely possible!
• Neutral hero Kulan doesn't have a path (ie warrior, governer, etc). Unless Beastlord is meant to count.
• I have Spellbooks available as a tech I can research but it doesn't show anything as being unlocked with it - isn't it meant to only be available with a different faction bonus selection? (I am Enchanters, not the Decalon (sp) one).
• Gold income is still setup so that Low is the only value that makes sense (or None early game while you can manage it). The jump in income from 0% to 40% is well worth 12% unrest but getting another 16% unrest for just 10% more income is virtually never worth it. The scale needs to be severely smoothed out (and yes I realise you guys made it 40% to compensate for making gold production buildings only return income from taxes, but you need to somehow fix the numbers anyway because tax rate is pointless right now).
• Right clicking on a random map square in the fog will sometimes bring up the diplomacy screen, presumably because an invisible unit is there.
• Auto movement is very annoying if the position you clicked on would require going through a neutral territory it will without warning walk you the other way to go around a lake or some such for 20 turns.
• Why do all these path of the warrior heroes have only magic path bonuses? Eg General Carrodus, level 9 warrior, 3 air, 3 life, general, no other combat bonuses (also should surely have more traits for level 9).
• A dragon moved on top of one of Ceresa's caravans. I couldn't attack it as a result. Why didn't it just eat Ceresa's caravan? Then I could have attacked it too.
• The game still throws all your unused movement away if you pass (press space) in strategic map. This was acceptable in the 90s but not in a modern game. Should still be able to move if the player then comes up with a plan to move them.
• There needs to be a way to see who has or is building the world wonders.
• Still have very odd pathing in tactical combat where right clicking to attack a unit a few squares away will walk half way around it to attack from an odd side. This happens even when there is only 1 enemy left so it isn't because it is trying to avoid enemy etc.
• Settlement upgrades still appear in random order which changes each time. Unless the goal is to confuse the user, why?
• Pathfinding can be completely stuffed. Resoln had just declared war on me. I was standing right beside their border having just killed a pioneer. I ordered an attack on their town to the south west which was 3 squares in from the border. My force was on a road square and the road continued to the town. My army then walked 7 squares east along roads and plains in my territory before running out of moves, the pathing then showed that they were going to go 1 south east, south west, then 7 squares back west to arrive at the square they could have reached by just moving two. I'm guessing it might be because Resoln had only just declared war on me? Either way it was stuffed.
• In roughly the same area I ordered an army to go from the Resoln town (which I now owned) to another town of mine about 10 square to the east. There was a road which went north east then south east to reach it, a total of 12 squares, but instead pathing decided to go across the plains, reaching about half way before running out of movement. By road it could get the whole way easily (4 move).
• Tactical combat with my sovereign and another mage after a few rounds got confused and decided that the other mage could cast flame dart for 110 damage like my sovereign, when really it should have been only 49 (based on the next combat). I think it wasn't just the tooltip that was wrong, the other mage was able to do it too.
• Took damage from attacking a Young Burning Wraith, presumably from the Feed the Fire ability but the description doesn't say it causes damage to attackers.
• Auto resolved a couple of battles against Young Burning Wraiths and my melee only army took no damage so Feed the Fire is meant to return damage then it isn't in auto resolve.
• I conquered Resoln's Tower of the Padars, but the same turn I could still start building my own one. It fixed itself next turn so maybe it would have been OK if I started one.
• Ordered a mounted unit to leave a city and travel to a point 3 square north. There was a road leaving from the north east tip of the city leading directly to this square. Instead the mounted unit exitted via the north west corner and walked across two forest squares before running out of movement adjacent to the target square. I've had this bug multiple times. This sort of stuff is bread and butter, it should just work, otherwise the player has to continually micro manage even the simplest movement for fear it will go horribly wrong. You do not WANT the likes of Gamespot reviewing FE until these fundamental bugs are fixed.
• Frequently a mounted army with tireless march on it starts a turn with 4/5 move. I see no good reason, can be very simple cases like a mounted hero (with tireless march) and a mounted soldier unit. Must be a bug.
• When building diplomacy deals can't remove anything that is already in the offer. This means if you make the slightest mistake you need to remove everything and start again. Considering the screen doesn't tell you what the perceived value of each of your trade items will be until you try it this is a problem because it is very hard to work out a complete deal in your head in advance yet that is what the interface forces you to try to do. Should be easy to allow the user to remove an item from the deal. Actually apparently you can remove things you have added from your side, but not things you have added from their side. Why?
• Graphics from spells on heroes get randomly left behind as they walk around. This seems particularly true of Mantle of Fire, although maybe it is just more noticeable because it is larger.
• Just tried to hire a level 9 hero and he wanted 2400 gold. Really? Considering I have to research a tech line for the right to try to recruit a level 9 hero this seems rather over the top! There is no way it is worth it even assuming I could accumulate that much money.
• In combat I had a hero with six positive enchantments I had cast on him. The enemy cast Pull of the Earth on him. I could see it listed in the tooltip but when I went into the unit details screen I couldn't see Pull of the Earth anywhere (I wanted to find out what effect it had). I presume it should have appeared under Enchantments, but a scrollbar to allow a third row would have been necessary.