I've been playing now for a couple of hours without any real issues (I windowed the game and this seemed to help with stability). Anyhow, I'm really starting to enjoy the game. I'm being drawn into the game world which wasn't happening before this version.

So thank you and well done to all the team at Stardock.

These are some short notes on what is working and not working for me:

Tactical Battles

I'm enjoying these now more and more but I think there is still some work to do here.

The balance is much better as it is no longer an exercise in 'insta-kill' but generally the battles are a bit too easy if you have magic and missile troops.

I would like to see a short summary as a tool tip if you have a soldier selected and then mouse over a target. Eg Select an archer and hover over a spider saying something like:
Base attack: 6
Distance modifier: -2
Height bonus: 1
Base defense: 2
Terrain defense: 2
Miss %: 50%
Max damage: 3

Maybe also a tool tip for melee as well that covers the likely retaliation strike.

Combat speed is way way over-powered in its application. Much prefer missile and magic troops to only be able to cast or shoot a maximum of twice per combat round. Melee is fine because of the retaliation strike.

Retreating is too easy. There should be an attribute (Dexterity difference between retreating unit and highest dexterity on opposing side) that needs to be tested before the unit can retreat. Attempt retreat and fail test is a wasted turn.

Path Finding

Seems as though the units only either know that they can enter a location or not. Often have units duck into forests when it would have been much quicker to skirt around the edge.

Magic

I'm not going to go into this much because I anticipate this will be quite different in the final version. I don't feel as strongly as others have about this aspect but I do like the balance between the power of spells in combat better in this version.

All I ask is please tie this more solidly in with the shards. The shards should be the strategic focus of the game and the spells should be the pay-off for controlling shards.

Tech Tree

Getting better. Still not there yet through. The effects are too over whelming and the tree too short. I'm guessing this will be much different in the final version anyway.

Perhaps a slider could be used with research where you can allocate some research points to research and other research points to development where you pick a bonus such as income boost, mining boost, farming boost etc.

I'd also prefer to see a cadre of base weaponry that can be accessed from the start such as short-bows. Research would open long-bows and they would have a bit more power. This would help balance things a lot.

AI

Haven't seen much of the 'I' yet in the games I've played. They are tending to spam a couple of cities then sit back and do nothing. A bit too easy to roll over at this stage.

Sound

I would really like a lot more ambient sound to help make the game world come more alive. Zoom into a city and hear the hum of the people, scroll to the mine and hear the hammering. Move to a forest and hear birds. Swamps and you hear frogs etc.