I'm pretty disappointed in the game at this point. Particularly anything to do the with the way we build and expand cities and with the differentiation of custom sovereigns / custom factions.
Here is a short run down:
Cities:
Cities are easy to spam.
Selecting buildings for your city is trivial because you're building them all anyway until your pop caps.
City specialization as the cities level do not have anything to do with how you have been focusing your build. You can focus on income generation with building selection and then specialize as a farming city as soon as your city "level-ups".
Catch an enemy with a lightly guarded city and you can raze it that turn.
Sovereign building:
Very uninteresting and the choices you make in the beginning have very little effect on your sovereign with the exception of a few.
Faction building:
This is the same custom sovereign building. You end up with hearty humans, good researching humans or a unoptimized mesh in between where the differences are so small you should have just selected a default faction. Factions become even more generic in game since you create the units as you play, so everyone has a guy with a club, a guy with a walking stick, a guy with a hammer and some armor etc.
Interface:
Where to begin? How about with city building. Brad has already commented on how bad the UI is but let's look at a few specifics. When you are adding buildings to your city, often, the building selection screen will block your view of the city depending on your zoom level. This makes it difficult to select buildings and place them.
Turn events do not catch your eye. They are tiny little icons in the NE corner of the screen that you think about clicking on only because they build up and block your view. You have to click through every single event including the multiple event spam from researching something like a weapon technology that adds several new weapons (and events).
Faction comparison graphs live in a small box at the bottom of the screen that is difficult to interpret.
In conclusion:
Part of my disappointment stems from my high expectations. I expected something akin to a blend of MOM, Age of Wonders, Dominions and Civ. Instead I feel like I'm possibly getting a bland Age of Wonders with incredible mod capabilities.
With less than two months to go, I don't see how 3A can turn into the game I've been expecting. I think a lot will get cleaned up, particularly the interface. I've not mentioned any of the balance issues and game play pacing because I believe that is what is going to be the focus throughout July and August. But, Stardock has a huge mountain to climb to fix those issues and remedy the fact that the game is bland, boring and nonintuitive.
