This is exactly what I believe it should be too. Unable to build pioneers, unable to recruit Champions, and Sovereign stays inside national borders.

However, it should build units, buildings and attempt to agress nearby cities.

Try not to have too terrible a time of it. It's becoming harder and harder to release something you actually care about in this business. The fact that you're willing to stand by a game just because you want it to be great may eventually speak louder than any number of release woes.

I would like to see minor factions be ableto spread by taking oer cities instead of having pioneers.

Welcome back mister. While the game might still not be in top shape - although it really improved in a very short time - I've been mostly having a lot of fun with the XML resources as I'm trying to figure out what options are available to modders. Kudos for making the game so open and moddable. Despite the design shortcomings and engine bugs, I'm fairly sure you guys built a pretty solid platform. I hope the python API project didn't sink too deep in the priority list as I'm really looking forward to peer under the hood

EDIT: Regarding bugs, I've been playing the game on three different machines, one of which is a cheap*ss laptop, and even though the performance is not always top notch, I haven't experienced any CTD or game breaking bug since beta 4 (except on alt-tabbing but that's a common occurrence in games).

That would imply that Procipinee, unless Canon Sovereigns are exceptions, cannot start being the superduper Channeler she is supposed to be.

Cannot agree with moving the books into the tech trees. Totally moving away the magic from character creation isn't nice, even if we get the default Life/Death from Alliegance. I'd muchly prefer levels into the books, much like MoM, levels that can be developed through adventuring in the world and through research.

Mana pools based on shards? Er... You mean in some kind of inner value of the Channeler plus Shards, right? I say this becuase totally depending on finding a Shard, altough clearly not impossible (it is quite normal actually), seems a bit extreme. I suppose it could make sense in the canon sense though. Not that most of the players care about the canon stuff, you know.

Also ... I think on Sov creation, maybe Sovs should be able to pick a basic weapon for free ... like maybe the Dagger and the Club are free or something.

I know that many people out there won't agree with me on this, but I actually like this game and I am not too bothered by both it's launch nor its state right now.  For a few weeks I played the beta and like many others I played this on day one and noticed many of the issues that were around there.  However unlike many other companies out there, they put in a lot of effort fixing issues immediately and for free.  There are other big name games where well known common crashes are still occuring several months after launch (ex: Bad Company 2).

To me Stardock is approaching game development in an Agile like approach as opposed to the Waterfall approach other development companies follow.  This results in a constantly evolving game that changes based on constant input from people playing it.  With the Waterfall approach they assume that they know what people want and design the majority of the game before anyone even gets a look at it.  By following the waterfall approach the game you get at the end of the day will be more what we really want and end up being quite amazing.  Galactic Civ 2 is a prime example.  Many companies rely on the Beta period to get that sore of feedback but usually in Beta period people are playing much less, are less thorough or detail-oriented, and overall people are more laid back and just will think the game will get

I've been managing and designing software programs for the last 15 years and in my experience, this type of approach almost always results in a far superior product.

Cheers

That sounds perfect.

- I would really like to see minor factions to grow and interact more, and perhaps trade on a more even level than primary factions.

- I don't like the shared mana pool idea.  I'd rather have essence and intelligence put together, or be given more level up points to distribute.

- I don't really get the tile placement restrictions on city building, I feel like sometimes I can't build something and I don't really see a good reason not to.

I think the spell books being researchable is a step in the right direction, but it still leaves the sovereigns feeling similiar. Maybe more flushed out spell books, with it being harder to choose more than one book per sovereign?

Also to help with diversity are you thinking of implementing more unique character skills. Maybe levelable skills? As it stands the skills or traits seem pretty flat, and some are just underwhelming. I have played games before where I forgot what special traits my sovereign did because it seemed to have no impact on how I played. Was my leader charasimatic ugly insane... I didn't really remember, it never enter my thought pattern when I was summoning elementals and stomping across the board.

I am loving the updates so don't get me wrong, I think you are moving in the right direction but the rulers and heros seem to be lack-luster in many ways.

If you do this, could you kick up their Guardian Unit spawn level to 3 or 2?

I've been experimenting with 3 today. It's obviously overpowered (you usually get 2 good random spawns. I got a Pack Drake + Troll Shaman from my capital @ level 2. Probably too good for level 2... but okay for level 3 and certainly okay for level 4).

I think giving minors a Guardian Spawn rating of 3, and having them level up to 2 naturally would give them a nice army that could let them fight and take over other cities, since they would really only generate 1 Material per turn or so... 

I personally also think that the players' Guardian Spawn rating should get knocked up to 2, but we'll see about how that is... It's uncommon because Guardian units are usually kick-ass single-model units instead of "Squads of Doom" the game likes right now.

Along those lines, a fun alternative game option could be playing as a "Minor Faction", especially if it came with the enhanced Guardian Unit spawns. It would be similar to the One City Challenge mod in Civ IV and would be a fun experience.

Someone, somewhere put it best:

Under the current syste, the spell of making is a 20 mana spell. That's like 3 chain lightning spells. There's nothing to "save up" for. It also drastically hinders any sort of real POWER in the spells as they stand now.

One of the funnest things in MOM is the anticipation of being able to save up to cast something particularly nasty.