Okay, now I am going to do a big write-up in this thread, because this response concerns me a little.

I'm not saying you need to ditch outposts or have Civilization-level complexity in the economy.  I'm saying that a player who aims to expand and gather resources and found cities should be faced with decisions that have consequences.  That aspect of the game has close to zero depth in the current build.  There are no meaningful investments or costs to expanding, either via outposts or via cities, in either the short-term or the long-term.  More is always better, it's always better starting immediately, and there's no reason not to do as much of it as possible as fast as possible.  The player never has to ask, "Can I afford to take this city?" or, "Is it worthwhile to raise my taxes and hurt my research and production in the short-term in order to secure this territory right now?", or "Should I shore up my infrastructure instead of making another pioneer?"  There are no competing interests, at least when you're not at war.  Balancing competing interests is kind of a thing in 4x games.

It's not that you can't do a fantasy TBS game without having a super-complex, Civ-like economic system.  In fact, outside of Fall from Heaven, I can't think of one which DOES.  Look at Master of Magic.  It's got some detail, but by and large the purpose of your cities is to become productive enough to progress through their build trees so you can make your awesome high-tier units: units that cast spells, units that fly, units that regenerate even if killed, units that can obliterate squads of spearmen without a second thought...whatever your race does.  The only meaningful form of long-term non-military progression that exists is magic research, which of course is focused on summoning more awesome creatures and casting devastating spells and killing dudes.  The economy, as far as gold and food is concerned, is really light and exists only to serve your army.  And that's fine; it works.

Or look at Heroes of Might and Magic!  Its economy is so paper-thin that it doesn't even really qualify as a 4x game.  And that's fine too, because HoMM chooses to focus quite hard on the tactical side of things rather than the strategic.  The only thing that matters is your heroes and the awesome, varied, and powerful creatures that they lead.  Your cities are there to make more awesome creatures to give to your hero.  And good times are had.

Elemental isn't really the same as those games, though.  You don't have a menagerie of really varied and exciting fantasy creatures to do war with.  By and large, apart from your Sovereign/champions and their magic, you have dudes with melee weapons and dudes with ranged weapons.  In other words, the tactical military side of things has less complexity than the games I mentioned.  But your cities and overall imperial infrastructure is more complicated: the game tracks individual members of the population for research and taxes, territorial control is a huge focus, you collect lots of different strategic resources to spend, you have a whole tech tree, and so on.  This strongly implies that your goals with the game tilt more towards the strategic side of things than the tactical.  But right now the strategic management is the SHALLOWEST part of the game, requiring very little actual decision-making from the player.  I'm pointing this out as a problem, and you seem to be kind of blowing it off.

Is Fallen Enchantress NOT a largely strategically-focused game, moreso than the likes of Master of Magic (though obviously not as single-mindedly as, say, Galactic Civilizations)?  If it isn't, then where's the focus?  It can't be army tactics.  The only alternative is that it's supposed to be focused very heavily on the Sovereign's adventures and questing.  But if that were true, then why is the overwhelming majority of design space dedicated to city-building, resource management and civic infrastructure while your sovereign's magical progression is handled via a simplistic experience system?

I think it's fair, you got a pretty good base, but the game suffers from a certain sameness in my opinion. Like for every aspect there is really one path to use and you can use others but it end up the same anyway

For instance I love the idea of the heroes various paths but they largely play the same as far as I can see.

Same thing with weapons and armor as far as heroes go - there really is vary little incentive to not strap on all the armor you can and for the weapons aside from a very few high end, really heavy ones you have the same problem. So you end up with everyone looking/playing alike

For the tech trees there really is not a whole lot of choice or variety here - have you considered maybe something like the Master of Orion 2 where you choose a upgrade from a selection for each tech? Or maybe you select branches of tech where you get say the econ branch and get good versions of econ stuff and poor versions of say farm stuff?

For spells it even worse everyone, of every path, faction, champion etc has mostly the same stuff and for the most part the same strength as well. This is before you take into account that only a handful of spells seem all that useful. Most of them I simply ignore really, this is partly a balance issue I think and may well be fixed, but also some of the mechanics as well - take counterspell, useless against no cast time spells which you really have very little option to defend against and at the same time makes spell with a cast time disproportionally risky to cast, especially as they are often not significantly better then there no cast time counterparts.

I like what I see so far, but to be honest I think you need to make some changes if you want to have replayabilty, as base you need to have choices and that means things you wanted to get but do not have. Which at this point doesn't seems to exist - the choices you currently have seem to be mostly cosmetic really at this point - either the alternative is heavy outclassed, the differences are miniscule, become irrelevant as the game goes on, or can be acquired later. Make me make hard choices - make me choose between deep core mine and core waste dumps (moo2 ref), make me choose between have all the various low level spells and being a archmage in 1 or 2 areas, make it so I'm temped to throw on a mage robe instead of a full set of crusader armor as a pure mage. That what it boils down too I think

From what I have read that is the main issue coming through.

Decisions should matter.

Your decisions should change the way the game plays out for that sovereign. 

I voted good, which is up from my previous vote on the last beta - I've only played about 6 hours so far, but I like the changes; the factions have more character and the game seems to be pacier now - I havent been able to really assess the development in the AI, thats going to take a few more games but from my limited play time it feels harder anyway. The tweaks to tactical combat are big improvements IMO - you guys have done a whole range of balance tweaks here and it shows.

Well done Stardockians, this game is improving nicely

It's a beta, not a demo. 

I'm not sure why I'm included but in all seriousness when I post I almost always suggest things that are possible through xml modding. Even if somehow FE isn't "my game" I can always mod it like I did to WoM to fix the more blatant balance issues. Dragonriders ideas didn't even seem to be content requests to me, they seemed to be purely balance like adding upkeeps to outposts. Let alone huge things like removing tech trees all together. It's always your call what stays and what goes,  I'm glad you have mod support so I can do what I think works for me.

Except we disagree. Obviously, it's Kael's game and design here but I still totally disagree with what you write above.

If you had said "I don't think there is enough" then I might have agreed but you say there is NO meaningful decisions.

• If I am building up my infrastructure then I'm not training a unit. That is a trade off.
• Whenever you gain a city (conquer or found) you are diluting your growth speed. Fewer cities grow faster than more cities.
• Raising taxes lowers your research and production but provides capital to buy things sooner at the cost of slowing your natural progression.

DS Raider and all, I hear what you guys are saying with regard to economic/empire management and in an ideal world I'd like to see this area developed further too but I've basically curbed my expectations in this area and accepted it at face value - I see this as a game where you wander around with little warbands and the cities basically represent control nodes that you need to capture to win - expansion has almost no downsides but you will need to fight monsters or AI opponents to build/capture those extra cities (which makes AI crucial) - as long as the AI is savvy to the rules of the game it's OK - and TBH I often just focus on developing 1 city for a long time and I do alright with this approach too (at least in the last beta)

The modders will run with this and I'm pretty sure some empire management mods will pop up within a year of the games release.

It seems to me like "decisions with consequences" are largely a function of balance.  Provided the underlying systems are good, imbalance will remove consequences and good balance will reinforce them.  Seeing how we're 4 to 6 months minimum from gold and still lacking at least one rumored significant overhaul (city development) as well as 8 of the 10 significant faction differentiation results we should expect things to be wildly unbalanced.  

Don't get me wrong, I think there is still quite a bit of work to be done and the underlying systems need to be fleshed out.  I also think things are clearly not balanced yet.  But the level of balance that makes for decisions with significant consequences, the kind you agonize over before hitting the turn button, requires a significant time investment.  That granular level of balance must come last, because everything else has to be in place and locked down otherwise balance changes will be ruined every time a mechanic changes.  

I voted good.  I think that's the level the game is at, right now.  It's still lacking in enough distinction between the various factions in terms of both immediate "feel" and (in some cases, only) longterm gameplay, but it's really getting there.

I like playing magic users (though I'll also play others, occasionally), and I've been focusing on Pariden.  I'm constantly faced with making meaningful choices.  Take the early game: do I work on research right now in my city, or something to aid growth, or spawn a pioneer or two to drop outposts near shards?  And if I do spawn pioneers, should I prefer a decent city site typically without shards instead, since in the medium term at least I'll need the research points it generates from buildings?  It's vital to get the Sorcery tech, but should I go for that right away, or try for some Civic techs to boost growth and research?  And what about a couple of early military techs, just to increase army size and give me a decent chance against some of the monsters?  Where and when do I do that?

What spellbook books should I get for my sovereign, and my other champions?  And how will I develop the money for all this?  Do I sacrifice city growth when a level is made to increase gold, instead?  (We really need to be able to minimize those level up screens for cities and heroes, by the way, Brad.  Just so we can first check out the relevant city and hero and make informed decisions.)  Do I sell something to a rival faction for gold, when I'd rather they not get anything from me?  Hoarding info sounds good, but I need the cash.  Should I spawn a few extra pioneers to sit around in cities that would otherwise snooze, while my stack(s) are elsewhere?  Saves time for later, when the cities may have leveled up and be engaged in building, but I spend on pioneer upkeep.  Plenty of meaningful choices.

In the matter of difficulty, I have no issues.  I can create a fairly easy but fun game, or a very challenging game, just by changing the different starting parameters, and choosing different sovereigns with different perks.  I don't want to see very easy or very hard games eliminated in favor of an evenly balanced, deceptive mean.

More remains to be done, but much of it is what I'd like to see in the way of providing users with more options, more eyecandy distinctions (airy feeling for Pariden cities, seething clouds for Resoln, woodland for Tarth, etc), bugfixing, and balance tweaking.  I think there's a good game here, and a great game inside it.

I'm not going to try to speak for who you quoted, but those things really didn't matter in the games that I've played thus far. Building multiple cities is always a bonus because:

A ) it adds build queues... this allows you to build units and infrastructure at the same time. So anything past the first pioneer really starts to reward the player. This, IMO, is not really a choice, because it's almost a no brainer. Spending a few turns to double the build queue? Who wouldn't take that choice.

B ) lowering growth means practically nothing because most of the time my cities are stuck at 0 growth for food demands. Unless you found some godly 5 food + 2 food bonus tiles space for your city, you're going to hit the food limit not too long ... so expanding and maximizing your influence seems like a much better option, IMO. I have yet to find a situation where fewer would be better. Maybe if food was more plentiful the choice would make more sense? But not as it is now.

C ) My Tax is pretty much always at 0 percent (ALWAYS), maybe low if all my cities has unrest reduction. I haven't found a time when I needed Gildar so much that I'd raise tax, and yet I'm still rolling in thousands of Gildar despite pimping my heroes. Keep tax low or non-existent means my research and productivity is off the roof, so the AI has a very hard time to keep up.

D ) Speaking of which, it's hard for the AI to keep up with you, if your heroes look like this:

That Dodge & Spell Resist... I wonder why she was rolling everything. To be honest I was rolling stuff by level 12 or so... and it just gets worse as I went.

Maybe that's just me, my playing style, or perhaps I'm exploiting too many balance issues in the game at the moment, but the fact remains that the options that should be there, as you mentioned, really isn't. Having more would be good, but perhaps you might need to revisit these things to make them a bit more meaningful before that.

As for AI, as I've touched on earlier, I think the real problem is that it isn't handling the exploration/questing/leveling portion of the game very well. As a result, their leaders are crippled messes while mine just curb stomp everything to the ground.

Still, out of the 2 solid games I got in over the weekend, I'd have to say it was enjoyable (voted good on the poll if that matters). Time seemed to disappear way too fast while I was playing, which is a pretty good sign. Had a few CTDs, and had to restart the game a couple of times after playing a while due to massive slow down in tactical combat. Hopefully those issues will be resolved. Exploration and leveling your heroes is fun, if not a bit too OP. City building is still a bit bland... I really think there needs to be more interaction with the terrain to make things more interesting. Haven't got a chance to mess with all the factions enough to give feed back on the big faction differentiation (Gilden/Magmar) but Tarth's blood seems like a really good bonus for heroes (might be too good).