First of all, thank you for making this game. Despite all the criticism that follows, please understand I wouldn't bother writing this unless I thought it was a great game with great potential. 
I'll divide this post up into several sections to make it easier to overview.
Just for reference, my computer is a low-end setup: P4 3.0 GHz, 2 Gb RAM, G-force 8800 card with 512 Mb VRAM (I think), Running Windows XP - system disk is a RAID 0 setup consisting of two 70 Gb Raptor drives.
Bugs:
- Stability appears to be extremely compromised when loading a game from within the game. There are no issues with loading a game initially following start-up. Before the 0-day patch (v1.01) I didn't manage to load a single game from inside the game. Following v1.01 I was able to load games for a while - but now it seems I'm back to what it was like before v1.01. When I go to load a game I 1) press ESC, 2) click Back to Main Menu, 3) click Load, 4) double-click the savegame I wan't to load, 5) computer thinks for a while, sounds start stuttering, 6) CTD. This is all the same sandbox game, a game I started prior to v1.01. Besides this the game appears very stable to me - i.e. this is the only type of crash I have experienced.
- Resource tiles fail to "link" to settlement. My first two I built close to two fertile land plots and both those farm have linked to it nicely. However, not too far away were two ancient libraries and so my expansion focus has been to develop my city in a direction in order to get these within my ZoC (Zone of Control) and then getting the city sprawl close enough that an actual link could be established. Alas, even now when I've almost surrounded these libraries they still don't "link" up to my city. Which is a real bummer since I've been specialising this city with a focus upon Tech research. I have seen the same problem with two other cities and the appearance of respectively a Drath village and a Dragon Roost. These resources appeared and I built the associate improvement upon the tile ... and they didn't link up. It should be mentioned that these two cities already have got a "special ally" village hooked up to them - spiders and slith respectively. However, I do believe this should be fixed somehow. I am not sure how, but perhaps add a "Link to Settlement" option on the resource tile and then allowing a range of X squares.
- Considering my low-end processor I play cloth-map only and with all settings set to the lowest possible selection. Whenever I load one of my savegames the game will revert to normal (as oppose to cloth-map only) whenever I e.g. have a hero go up a level or research a tech, but with pretty much all terrain details, structures, etc removed. Only way to fix it is to enter settings, disable and then re-enable the "cloth-map only" setting and then return to the game. After this it plays in cloth-map only without any issues.
- There are some issues with text on the unit/creature-cards in the lower-righthand corner. Sometimes the text overlaps and it's difficult to read the information. Caravans seem to do this a lot.
- Cities running out of tiles? No explanation why or how - just "sorry, we're out of tiles". And this is when there are plenty of tiles left all around the settlement.
Gameplay and performance:
- It would be nice if it was possible to turn off all animations during tactical battles. Just for us who are running old computers.
- The single most annoying issue I have with this game has to do with feel. This could be somewhat related to my low-performance rig, but I don't think that'll explain all of it. The best way I can explain this is that the gameplay doesn't feel crisp enough. Sometimes it takes several clicks before you manage to select a unit, you'll make it move somewhere else than you had intended, mouse cursor doesn't seem to be at the same place on the screen as where the game thinks it is (the displacer beast of mouse cursors), etc. To give a couple of concrete examples: 1) The "shoot-arrow" animation has a ridiculously long "cool-down", I have several units capable of shooting twice every round (combat speed 3.5) however I have to let the game sit for 5 to 10 seconds after the first attack before I can initiate the second - not good enough, 2) when fighting on a tactical map with significant terrain elevation the "cursor displacement" is very bad indeed. The easy fix would be to have a highlight surrounding the square over which the cursor is currently hovering - and that's both on the tactical and strategic maps. Something ever-so subtle would make a big difference.
- The weapons need work IMHO. There are no polearms, crossbows, etc. I mean, mounted cavalry needs lances - that'll give them "first strike". And you need pikemen with polearms that have a "negate first strike". How about stuff like "armour piercing"? These kinds of things are what makes combat really engaging. Also, the distinction between cutting and blunt weapons appear a bit... ah, unsophisticated. A warhammer having 2.4 times the damage output of a broadsword - really? I mean they are both one handed weapons. The difference of 1.5 in combat speed doesn't seem to balance it out. In fact if you consider an average champion with 10 str and 1 combat speed it'll take 3 levels to attain the 1.5 combat speed where as you'd need 7 levels to gain the 14 points of strength necessary to achieve a 2.4 damage multiplier. I know this parallel may be unreasonable, but hey... Why no piercing weapons after the "pointy stick" AKA Oak spear? As the combat mechanics are at the moment, whoever is attacking has got first strike - and that's not too good - if my puny peasant can somehow manage to deal that last 1 point of damage to the great dragon it'll be denied its counterattack and he'll escape without a scratch. Not good.
- There really really needs to be an option to auto-resolve combat without allowing ones sovereign to waste mana. I can't be arsed having to do every little insignificant battle in tactical mode just so I can save up mana to summon my next big-ugly-thing-that-kills-people-for-me. Seeing the results page and you see your sovereign having deal 203 damage and the single poor little spider has taken 5 damage - knowing you've just wasted 3 turns of mana regeneration that way...
- ...which leads me to the next problem. What were you guys thinking? ONE mana regained per turn? ONE? I mean, my 2nd child has got 58 essence, that won't grow back in a hurry. How about 10% of your mana regained per turn? That would make it a bit easier to handle. How about magic items that might speed it up a little bit? Perhaps resting in a settlement that has got a temple of essence could provide a boost?
- And while we are talking about champions. Constitution ought to be a multiplier just like strength, dexterity and intelligence. You'll find normal foot soldiers that have more hitpoints than my level 8 champions. If nothing else it means that having a close-combat champion is non-viable.
- Zone of Control (ZoC), what governs the sprawl of this? I had a pretty big city which was doing well for itself. The kingdom of Pariden placed a small town in a small pocket of neutral territory between my city and the empire of Kraxis. Inside a relatively short time Pariden's ZoC had expanded a lot and deprived me of several strategic resources as well as a couple of shards with my settlement even seeming to push back their ZoC to the slightest degree. What governs this? Is it prestige? Influence? Even so, there must surely be some underlying mechanism that calculates a balance of influence and then determines where the border lies. In this case it appeared to be "whoever builds first, loses".
- It would be nice with more in-game info and references about how the game mechanics operate. E.g. tool-tips, hiergamenon (sp?) entries explaining how caravans work, how to build roads, what benefits these provide, etc, etc.
-Cost of equipment for champions. If it costs e.g. 10 Gildars and 2 metals to give my swordsman a broadsword, why would it cost 800+ gildars for my champion to get the same weapon? (And he even has got less health than the swordsman so it's not like he'll be uber-powerful just because of the sword). I mean, it would be a pretty good business building hordes of broadsword-wielding peasants, sending them off to get killed by the nearest trashmob, and then send in someone to collect the broadswords which can then be sold of to the heroes of the land for great profit.
- An upgrade option for your trusty soldier who have accumulated experience (i.e. health it would appear) through long campaigns. I mean, if a broadsword for new non-champion soldiers costs 10 gildars and 2 metals it would make sense if you could take your shortsword wielding package of health and then attach a broadsword one way or the other. Another great feature would be the ability to take 4 single-figure units and pack them together in a party. I realise that this would probably be a rather difficult thing to implement at this point - however, I'm just saying...
Oh well, I guess that's enough for now. And please bear in mind that I've enjoyed my time with the game immensely so far. I hope you guys can use this feedback for something. Again, thank you.
/M
