Really like the chances (well most anyway )  Played Tyrant, priest & commander; default; beginner/normal/hard. 

1] The difficulty balances feel pretty good to me.  Hard can give you a run for your money but totally playable (haven't spent the time to do insane yet). 

2]  Placement of the forge feels right after playing, first you moved it too far forward but the player needs to make some hard choices as to what to get first.  Lots of good choices early on make just bee-lining for it probably not the best option.  It typically was my 4/5th pick.

3] Spawning of non SK armies seemed excessive (all 3 levels), epically early game, but not too bad.  Generally all hero buffs tied to level/# of shards felt really satisfying ant balanced about right.  Reduce doomsday spell mana cost is ok but a lower lore cost would be good.

4] Tandis and Varda- MON OH MAN! They both start out a bit  slow (under powered) but they turn into mega howitzer toten tanks by mid-late game.  Even on hard I could solo both of them with the right equipment.  Really fun, hate to suggest this but they may need a little late game nerfing.

5] Really like the common “specialty” buildings. High cost - fine; the buffs are worth it.

6] Priest and Keplin.

Skill trees could use a little love,, keplin needs more skills.  Arcane missile/spread are good, powerful but not too early-mid, lost some usefulness in mid-late game.  Might look at just a tad more boost/level or add +1/shard.  Spell selection was ok but holly/dest. werath  &dest judgement were bad due to land type restrictions, making favor points pretty useless. Unique buildings were good and felt balanced ok.

7] Guardian/ranger

Really liked playing the ranger, all good-excellent skills Except for grapple shot.  Why would a ranged low HP hero ever use this?   Guardian – lots of good skills, some bad.  Fertility- nice skill but too far up tree; same with pathfinder.    Root Of Evil- pretty useless and a waste of skill point

 8] Tyrant/Naphaz

Nice full skill trees of mostly good stuff.   Dark spread and drain life suffered the same late game problem (felt a bit under powered).   Might look at just a tad more boost/level or add +1/shard.  Indoctrinate comes too late to be useful,  by the time you get there your basically done with faction teaming up or not.   Not sure what your supposed to do with Demonic Reinforcements,  I swear they attacked me!