I have to admit, that even after seeing your responsiveness over the years on several games, it still amazes me.   

As a software developer though, I have to say that it must be painful for some of your employees to see you sift through the forums and then schedule a 'design meeting"   -  "Oh no!!!!!  Brad is coming with more ideas from those stinking forumites - Can someone please crash the forum!!!!!!"   

As a consumer, I love your attitude and responsiveness.   I'll continue to support Stardock as much as I can because of it.

/stardock fanboy mode

MAGIC....that is the main focus of my playstyle, and it probably will be even if I get 10 goldmines and no shards close to my first city, I just can't help it, it is the way I love to play.   I don't mind losing though, so it won't bother me if I get ground to dust for making a stupid choice.   I agree that the magic system needs to be streamlined and made more "exciting" for lack of a better word.   I want to say "Yes!  I finally got raise land, now I can ....."   or "Fireball!!!!!!!!!  Awesome, I'm going to go take that apiary away from Procipinee".   I just don't feel powerful enough yet.  Part of this is tied to the fact that essence is limited (this has been discussed a lot recently), but I will hold off judgement until the new build to see how magic is doing.   I guess my plea is to make being a magic user exciting, terrifying, and fun!    

UI .... Would love to see improvement to the UI.   Need a HUD for figures on the screen (HP/ATT/Faction/etc.)   Like to have more information immediately available on the main screen without having to dive into more menus.   I'd like to have a way to see what benefits my race and faction bestow on me.  Right click context menus on the medallions on the left side of the screen, build for cities, inventory for characters, move, cast spell, center on, etc.

Considering most of the world is a wasteland and people are coming in from the wasteland where they can barely eek out an existence, food, shelter, and security are going to keep people happy. I don't think a separate happiness system is really required, the game is complicated enough as is.

(Besides, part of the point is to have uber cities. The best way to counter city spam is to make having a few great cities better then having 50 smaller ones where people are easier to keep happy.)

Seconded.

Somehow Stardock seems to have figured out how to make design by committee actually work.

As a developer, the thought of having the forums drive as much development as it does here, gives me the chills.

It's really amazing that you guys (the dev team behind the scenes) can crank out the work and not punch holes in the walls.  

I second this as being an awesome idea!

Bear in mind that there is still a lot of work to be done on the AI. No point in fully developing it if it'll need redone for every one of these fairly major changes. At least I'm hoping we'll see good AI, ala Galciv. Curious to see how managing spell-casting sovereigns pans out. Hopefully in a good way

This new direction will certainly boost the importance of what you seem to want to be the core gameplay: territory and resources. Personally I think this version will be much more fun that 3A's garrison and forget it gameplay. I am curious to see how monsters will interact, assuming the aggressive option is enabled, with resources. Are they going to be attacking my lost library so that I need to have significant military presence in my land, or are they only going after cities?

My preference would of course be to have them attack my resources, adding a need to defend beyond chokepoints with light mobile units. Charm magic would also be useful here. One thing that will need to be done after a few months of gameplay is making spells for specific situations that we often come to in the game. We probably win't know what they are for a while though.

These are really great changes. The map is really starting to look a lot more organic, and the 10 square spacing will help with that even more. I agree with some of the other posters that some of the resource points look odd when compared to the cities, but I am pretty sure that will be easy enough to change if we want to.

I am looking forward to this next build, but still not as much as beta 4  .

Are there game play issues with letting Pioneers build on resources outside your area of control?

Normally, on principle of the theory alone and the realism it may add to strategic game-play I would have to agree with this.

For Elemental however, I think I'd rather Not have a "Happiness Modifier" for the population. In a strategic simulation I would like it, but this is a fantasy setting. On top of it being a fantasy setting, in this particular setting the world has been ravaged and mostly laid to waste. Food barely grows. Large and Powerful monsters roam the country-side. The townsfolk of Elemental should be AMAZINGLY HAPPY just to Have a City to live in instead of trying to grow food on a mountainside while dodging being eaten by a dragon. Honestly I think this would be the Only instance where I would argue for less depth in the game.

Also, another thing that really annoys me as a strategy game player is when I play a game but I can't conquer the entire world because once my empire gets to be a certain size people start revolting. I always thought these reasons were tacked on and arbitrary. In real life Loyalty can be guaranteed if properly motivated by money or by threatening people's safety. If not, you wipe out the population and populate the place with people loyal to you. They wouldn't get mad just because they live far away from the capitol of the empire (which is how most games determine a happiness modifier).

I do agree with the principle, in my opinion though I think this particular mechanic would be bad for Elemental.

I agree. Happiness shouldn't exist in Elemental except MAYBE very large cities (especially unprotected ones). Prestige is as close as you get to 'Happiness' and it's primary purpose is to control growth rates and culture boundaries. 

This is evidenced by the "Slum" improvement, which has a negative prestige cost. 

It's really looks much improved and I like this new direction. Seems to strike a well considered balance between building cities without spamming them and claiming resources in an intuitive manner.

Being a wargamer, the borders being close together doesn't bother me at all. Wars are meant to move borders. It gives each faction an established area that is like their nation and it helps to make diplomacy and border control more a part of the game, which considering how much potential I also see in the diplomacy system that is a great thing.

I too would really like to see cross-faction caravans and forts/border keeps. Also allow you to station troops inside of an allied factions border keeps.  Both of these things would be useful for yourself and to help allied factions out and give the player some ability to assist them. In some of the early screens of Elemental you can see walls and keeps that are built near the borders of the faction territory.

That just made me think, it would be great to have a high level summoner spell that spawns tons of nasty monsters around the map and then build a big wall to keep them out of your own territory while they wreak havoc on the other factions. Anyway can't wait for tomorrow's update!

How Awesome would it be if you could Steal Essence from defeated enemy Sovereigns? That would be excellent indeed! Great Idea.