Played the Tinkerer on normal first
Can confirm that the threat levelmed way screwed up. There were threat level 5 monsters wandering around the map when I had zero threat. Of course, I lost. I also found that getting sovereign point felt like it took much longer than in previous versions. This was on normal magic.
So I tried easy with supreme magic and still it felt like it took forever to get sovereign points. The reason this is important is because Tinkerer sovereign has special abilities that help with crafting and enchanting. By the time I got to the legendary crafting, I was already on the SK hitlist and screwed. Plus, I had half my party wiped out by those 72 hitpoint stalkers with maul.
I must admit that I did not craft as a tinkerer. I didn't make one item. Main reason: I didn't feel like I had enough material to make anything. I didn't feel like I got more loot than normal from battles and I still felt like making a chain coif for three guys was going to run me out of supplies pretty easily. I didn't enchant either. It just didn't feel fun but I've never found the crafting system that fun and it normally boils down to feeling like I never have enough resources to make decent armor or weapons.
I will say that this is the first time I really didn't have fun with the game. I may need to play as the Wizard again to see if it's just the tinkerer though.
I also wanted to make sure that the SK will destroy the players city if wins the city battle right? I wish it just took it over and maybe lost a level of food. That's really a harsh penalty because even if you destroy the wandering unit (the city got destroyed by the spawning because sk is grumpy units) then there is no option to rebuild the city. You have to start all over from level 1 whichi might be realistic but wasn't very fun.
I should point out that I really want the game to succeed. I've had a lot of fun with the game just less so in the tinkerer playthrough.