Now that I finally managed a playthru of the game, let me just start by saying the Stardock team is doing very well.

For the purposes of this post, I will let you know some details and how it all turned out in the end. Originally I have having serious crashing issues with one of my older files, eventually I gave up on it and deleted it. The new one, I started out as Pariden and played a mage class as well as I could. I had set opponents to two, hoping that by the time I encountered one they'd have a big army to fight. It may have also prevented the crashing I had before.

About 10 turns in, one of the opponents got killed by monsters. I was somewhat depressed, but I figured, "there's still one left."

This was on Normal difficulty by the way with everything set to normal or average except Dense monster spawns. Total game length was 326 years in the end. I actually didn't find a single hero I could use in the areas I explored. I tend to play defensively and don't expand much, and only explore a lot if I feel my main stack is strong enough. So I actually only uncovered about 1/4 of the Large map. Also I didn't actually encounter the other civilization at all. On the one border of what I considered my lands cause I had 6 cities all in a somewhat condensed area was one of those event zones (which are totally cool btw, I'd love to see more of them). So I guess the others were on the other side, I trekked around and cleared all the monster lairs rather slowly with sov and the troops I made. Got knocked out a time or two. By the time I'd uncovered everything before the event zone where the boss was, I had my sov up to level 32, with archmage in all 5 elements she could use. I took her and my best edited units I made to go try to beat the boss in the event area. I forget his name but he's the big worm looking creature that lives in the chasm. Well, I had a real hard trying to click on him to issue attacks and spells, eventually I got frustrated and hit auto-battle. And promptly got my butt kicked and my solders all killed. Ouch. Zapped back to town and out of action for I think 60-ish turns. Ehhh. While this happened I finally completed enough research to get the Book of Making. Which, when my sov was finally able to get around again, first thing I did was cast it. Woo...game over. Anti-climatic, but...victory is victory.

So, my impressions. I really like the combat system, though I often sit and stare at spells trying to figure out which one to cast, hehe. I wish there was a way to group them, like offense, support, healing...etc. Would help me in tactical. Second, the perks at levels are pretty nifty too. Actually like them the most, though there could be more, of course. I like levelling, and setting up perks to go with different champion builds. Was doing that in my first try, then that file got fudged up. Not being able to get a champion to help slowed down the game a bit for me, but I don't mind. Haven't really gotten a lot of high level cities, though their unique improvements are nice. Like the Amethyst Vault.

One thing I did run into that bugged me a little were the wild improvements that there was no way to build a city near them cause the land didn't produce any grain. The outposts solve that problem somewhat, making so I can still get resources off them, but it would be nice to devise a spell that fertilizes the land so you could settle on it. (if there is one already, I must have missed it).

Next, the boss fight there was quite epic...though I guess to have any hope of beating that guy you need archers, or there are problems with that map so melee soldiers just stand there and get killed rather then go up and try to fight. Unsure. I did see them attack a few times but from only 1 spot. 

Aside from that...I think you're doing really well so far. I like that if you forget to loot an enemy den after killing the defenders they keep spawing. I would like to see some different kinds of monster behaviors though...like...say that ogres don't like shrills for whatever reason and will go to kill them if they see them. Or maybe there are like, champion monsters that go around hunting empire/kingdom soldiers, caravans...etc. Reason for this is it makes it feel more PvE-ish like it's been mentioned that the world should be like. I also think that if that ogre warrior killed enough shrills and became level 20 by the time I stumbled upon it, it would be a much more exciting fight.

Well...that's all I have for now. Will post more impressions as I finish more playthrus.