Ok, so I was not involved in the Fallen Enchantress beta even though I beta tested War of Magic.  But that game left a bad taste in my mouth and I felt like I had wasted my time, so I decided to wait to see if Stardock could redeem themselves. 

Now I have had a chance to play FE since I obtained it for free and I must say that it is what WoM should have been.  It is a much more polished game and the mechanics are much smoother to work with, since in WoM it seemed like Stardock tried to do too much at once in one game. 

I would also like to mention that the way Stardock handled the people who purchased WoM and got a rather bad game is why I'll be sticking with Stardock for the forseeable future.  That is how corporations should act when a product is of poor quality and their customers expected better.

Anyway, the city mangement is much better and the technology system is more streamlined.  The special abilities of the cities, units, weapons, and champions are all very well done and generally well balanced.  I would have preferred the old champion level-up system and just added the abilities over the top, to appease my spread-sheetiness, but it works well enough. 

The quests are much more fun to go through, detailed, and varied and the monsters are well balanced and interesting.  The factions are well done but I tend to always think factons could use more differentiation, in any game not just FE.  I would have liked a form of dynasty and navy mechanics but those are not essential and maybe a mod/expansion will make those fit into the game well.

I hope now that we can stick with this game and continue to improve it with mods and expansions to make a good game into a truly great game!

Now as someone who just started playing the game with no preconceptions, other than WoM being bad, I have a few suggestions for changes and improvements. 

Diplomacy-  This is the worst problem with the game.  I appreciate that the AI is supposed to be difficult but right now this mechanic has no use whatsoever.  It amounts to appeasing the AI until war is eventually declared by one side.  We may as well just be at war as soon as we find each other. 

I understand the AI's are meant to ruthless but I don't want to feel like I'm playing a machine designed to win, I want to feel like I'm playing a reasonable opponent who will generally be friendly if I'm friendly or be aggresive if I'm aggressive.  Each faction also needs an AI personality, even if it is random.  Right now all AI's act like the same and that is to kill everyone else, starting with the weakest.  The AI's focus should not necessarily be on the weakest and how to kill it but on how to beat the strongest.

Garrisons- I really like that cities now have citizen garrisons and can be upgraded with more powerful guardians, but I would like the same ability for outposts.  I have never liked to manually defend every square inch of my realm with armies that must be moved around.  I consider that to be too tedious, and it takes alot for me to consider something tedious.  The armies should be used for large assaults and to counter enemy armies, not for petty patrol duties.  If this were changed I would be fine with monsters being slightly more aggressive toward civilizations, and I actually want monsters to be more aggressive too.

Champion Equipment- I generally think this is too expensive.  I seem to have trouble making my champions strong enough to take on tough monsters and AI armies and the equipment cost just makes this tougher.  Maybe I'm just not good at the game yet. 

Anyway, the really frustrating part is the spell books.  I just spent all this time researching the spells and them I have to buy them too?  Isn't it enough that we must reseach them and then they have a spellcasting cost without adding in a gold cost? Weapons and armor cost research and gold to use, while spells cost research, gold, and mana to actually use.  I have found it is hard enough to make a good mage champion and this makes it harder.

That's really it for now.  Besides diplomacy, these are just balance issues, but that's a good thing.  The mechanics are good enough that balance is really all we have left to debate over.

I look forward to seeing how this game will evolve in the future.  Good job Stardock!