Well after nearly 2 years of playing Elemental and now Fallen Enchantress I have finally been able to play a game to the end without CTDs, to much lag and stacks of doom (NPCs).

It felt fulfilling to have completed the game.  I played on a large map with max opponents and all set to absurd ability.

my take on it.

1. The opening of the game is usually my most favorite. I get to explore,  quest (but very very few quest locations), kills some monsters (dense setting), and start to feel boarder tensions.

2. The maps for me are to small even on Large setting. If we don't have ships any more could we eliminate ocean tiles all together and just have more rivers? 

3. The AI still is dumb even at Absurd levels. True their aggression went up but they still make silly choices for units and armies and never upgrade them.  I had AIs attacking my cities with naked club wielding peasants and pioneers even though they had more combat tech then me at the time.

4. AI still tries to stack its champions thus ultimately gimping them. Lower exp, unless that doesn't' apply to NPCs.

5. At least they AI would ravage and pillage my resources thus forcing me to sally forth and slay them, but 1 unit heavy cavalry could mow them down as most were peasants, pioneers, and sometimes lots of mage units and archers, but no match for a heavy cavalry charge.

6. Mid to End game the whole adventure idea petered out and monsters were almost non-existent.  I did notice Golems and Spiders spawning on mountain tops and in oceans, thus unreachable.

7. Final part of the game was mostly my sovereign running around solo or with heavy cavalry and mounted archers.  I would open up combat with my fireball spell (with 5+ fire shards) I would decimate or obliterate the opponents forces on the first turn of combat. 

8. Magic was sort of a joke.  AI only cast curse on my cities which I couldn't remove so cast calm to counter act them.

   I primarily used Fire bolt, Fireball, obscuring cloud, haste, crusader ( to get troops faster) and (unsure of spell name) to increase their level by 1.

   I played around with a few others but they just weren't worth the mana to cast or maintain.  Like 10% gold, why my cities were producing tons already without it.  Damage army spell in territory. Again, why? I could just sent out a few units and whip them out faster.

9. Overall I had fun with it but as it stands re-playability for me is nil and I will wait to see what new comes and hope it improves the game.

10. If you are interested in more detailed observations let me know and I can give you exact play by play and impressions from the results.

     As well as modifications I have made to improve the game play. Not godly, invincible stuff but mundane balancing.  Such as correcting the materials that appear along with grain on tiles during city creation.   The tool tip said to pick a place with 4/4 grain/materials as a good starting location with higher materials needed for end game cities.  I never saw 4 material consistently so changed it to give more 3/3-5/5 variations and it affects all players.

Thank you for a good turn based game and I hope you continue down this genre as there just isn't enough of them out there worth anything.