1.1 and finally passing some judgement - disappointment :(

The ability to specialize cities means there needs to be  a reason to specialize.

Far as housing is concerned.. seems to me your ignoring the civics techs which improve housing.

Houses allow more people per building than huts.. and villas are even better. Meaning less housing using space, so you can build more stuff. Its not unusual for me to cap it out then hit up civics techs and once i upgrade to start removing buildings to make space for other buildings.(or it wasn't before 1.1.. pretty much gave up due to crashes)

I know how the OP feels about the path finding functions, they are awful. I would like to see a nightly build or something update it so it could include a line to show how your unit is getting there and how long it will take.

For me 1.1 really made a game fun.

It feels more "complete" this way. The main downside is "learning curve" - it took some time to understand whats going on if you came from 1.0 era.

As for "take forever" - for person like me, who usually plays Civilization on marathon speed and still thinks it too fast - it's really really a good thing.

Too slow? Man, I don't know what you are doing wrong but it is definitely something. Once you get up 4 or 5 decent sized cities you can basically pump out new techs and spells every couple of turns. You are obviously not playing the game well. You can also change the speed of research and stuff you know. you can also lower the difficult of monsters and the AI. Are you playing on a lower difficulty if it is too hard? Or did you just try once and then come here to complain?

My only compliant so far is that in tactical combat there doesnt seem to be an auto combat feature that i can choose and be able to watch the combat play out. Instead Im just given the combat results.

Ya I can usually get most the techs in the game by turn 300. Here is a hint, never stop building studies and get housing/research tech. I once got a city to +240 tech knowledge. I love the monsters, get early armor and you are fine. Monsters prevent people from claiming half the map before even building a single troop. Learn to play 1.1 instead of 1.09.

Thanks for the tips. I really want to like this game, im not here to just complain.

I did put the tech speed up a little, it helped. difficulty doesn't seem to be the big problem, since im not being overrun by the AI, its just massive stagnation. NOTHING happens.

some specific questions....

@Fistalis, @Dsraider
So I don't really understand how to not hit the tile limit on cities if I'm just pumping a ton of studies in there. And the housing techs seem really far down the tech tree, to the point where I don't seem to be able to research anything else? or does the research go so fast at that point its ok?

I think what would really help is some way of quickly knowing how many of a building i have in my city, and how may tiles i have left... am i missing that display somewhere?

@BlackRainz
I know I'm not playing the game "well" - but im not dying either, I'm playing on Normal and just stagnating the game out....into boredom.  

 Yup. Click on your city portrait to bring up the City Info page. Read through all the data there, you will see 1 listing for city tiles used/free. Another thing for population regarding Empire factions. If you work towards a surplus of food then never build a Slum. Instead build 4 individual shanties. You will use up twice as much food but have more population in those 4 tiles than you would have had with a 2 food 1 tile (4 square) Slum. Rresearching tech+ & housing+ are the only sure fire ways to speed up research & ensure your cities have the most tiles free for other structures. No clue if the Kingdom faction plays the same way... never very interested in trying them out, maybe someone else will tell you.

 One tip you should know. Allways scout the world map asap with whatever hired heros you can spare. As soon as you discover a spot with2 (or more) of those Lost Library resource locations get it. Settle it, kill for it, etc. Build that one city into research monster by snaking your cities expansion to gobble up those tiles. Obviously the more Lost Libraries the better... then build all the best Tech bonus buildings in that 1 city... hmmn... yeah... kinda agree with you bro that it gets pretty damn boring ~allways~ playing this way...

 Whatever you do, don't play on ridiculous... it's even more boreing than normal... hahaha. (no joke... I'm not really laughing)

Good luck & have fun.

Cephyn, you need to up the difficulty on the AI to at least Challenging. Also, try the test EXE that frogboy released, it has much better AI. You must set each AI difficulty manually. A lot of people are getting confused by this. This means that there are two difficulty levels. The first one that you see is just the world level, that affects resources and monsters and such. When you are picking which AI's you want in your game, there is a difficulty setting you can set. You must set each one individually. 

DarDiamond, You are most likely setting the WORLD DIFFICULTY to Ridiculous. This will make monsters extremely hard and resources very rare. This DOES NOT AFFECT AI DIFFICULTY. 

 Yarp, thanks for the thought, but I figured that out the 1st time I made a new game for myself. Wish that were the case. From what I've noticed the AI simply massively outproduces you when on those settings but not much more than that. I still find it ridiculously easy to beat the game on ridiculous world & ridiculous faction settings with weapons & armor... Looks like I'll have to practice my patience & wait for whatever aditional changes they plan to make to magic (as well as diplomacy & AI tactics) to be released. Because as I've repeated numerous times; magic is simply not fun enough to draw me back to play for days on end. Really wish it was. I do... I wish I was playing 20 hours of EWoM a day to keep myself entertained & out of trouble...lol... but I've had to fall back on older games & booze. Sure has turned me into a grinch this x-mass season... On a positive note, some familly may never speak to me again.. woo hoo! Score! Hehe

 Again thanks for the tip... wish it had helped. Have fun and all that. l8rs

Diardiamond did you try the experimental EXE that frogboy recently released? 1.1c? It makes the AI much better.

  Yarp, 1 game now of about 10 hours.... ridic large map/ridic max factions. 

It took my Sov & 2 hired heros over an hour in tactical combat to kill an enemy Sov and his spouse in there capitol at turn 20 of the game, just made sure they all had healing food/potions & weapons&armor from the neutral faction.  Ahh... bummer; after that combat I lasted untill turn250, at which point I stopped from a growing lack of interest in finishing my current game. The world npc spawns were wildly varied... but it all felt disjointed somehow. The AI seemed moderately improved in a limited capacity regarding the use of there hero's & equipment; while their production of gold & other resources is totally off the scale...  By turn 250 with 10+ heros with 30+int magic was still pathetically underpowered compared to cold hard steel. AI cities still build much slower than mine since they do not seem capable of building the neccesary housing structures & AI diplomacy is still broken being able to "extort" thousands of gilder from them. At that point in the game the AI factions still alive had tens of thousands of gold with nothing to spend it on... At this point tactical fights were lasting hours since for the most part neither myself or the AI could hit each other once we were fully decked out in gear; the few times I hit auto resolve from sheer apathy resulted in strange outcomes. Sometimes I would win without a scratch or they would... seemed almost random. So in conclusion I no longer feel that its ridiculously easy to beat ridiculous AI opponents... but still without a doubt easy. ^^haha..sigh

  I appreciate the work Frogboy has put into this but 1.1c regretably does nothing for my disapointment regarding magic & numerous other detractions in the game.

  I will give 1.1 another try when this feeling fades...

Maybe pacing is set to epic? If so, try switching it to fast.

Does anyone know whether AI in tactical battles is being touched? 

I am waiting for that to come back to Elemental ....