crashing and corrupt saves are a bit harsh, but thats ok. It is expected from a VERY early beta.

its already somewhat fun, lots more work to do of course for it to be a complete game. as far as I can tell there are VERY few spells in existance right now... the best of which being charm monster. in my recent game i charmed 3 giant spiders and 4 trolls for my army... then I started killing trolls... each one immediately killed me with 200 damage, but also died from the army (I have no control over it)... i "teleported to town in the last moment" and leveled up... rinse, repeat... got me tons of essence, but I have no use for it

Easy use for essence .... create more cities!! But alas, you can also increase your attack.

My adventure kings can usually kill a whole troll army by themselves by level 3 or 4, and take on individual trolls at level 1. Alot of that has to do with all the pretty potions I find to increase my stats, as well as the rings.

Of course, my most recent Adventure-er king (wasnt actually an Adventure King but a Crusader King) ... he was accompanied by a Company of Elite Crusaders. Crusaders are basically Ubermench. I never had enough time to build a Paladin, for it was a suped up Crusader with +1 movement, and alot more defense. A regular crusader started at requiring 80 turns. Eventually an elite company required the same 80 turns. I think this had to do with building some barracks, and researching refined training a couple times.

Cause by the time I researched refined training, maybe 5 times, IIRC my regular Crusader could be trained in perhaps 11 turns?? honestly forget if it was 11, or if it was 20 and later dropped to 11. In any case, much faster. It was sometime after this that I was training elite companies of Champions every 70-80 turns, in each of my three cities. Upkeep was getting high, so I built Tax Offices in all my cities. Acaia for some reason had a much smaller plot of land to build on than Jerusalem and the other one. Maybe cause it was close to a forest?

In any case, for about 90% of the time I like the "capped radius" .... but that other 10% I wish there was a way to extend our buildable zone by some means, usually just in ONE direction. Like, three cities began in a somewhat close proximity, could build outwards in three different directions, and have their "build radius" doubled for one direction. Maybe a UI function as simple as "Southern Growth, Northern Growth, Eastern, WEstern, NE, NW, SE, SW growth" .... and that cardinal direction is doubled, but the max tiles/squares remains the same.

In an addition to that statement, I think it will be much better once there are certain improvements. Say imrpovements over "HOUSE" ... like Apartment, SlumHouse, TownHouse, ect. basically just House +1, House +2, House +3, and Apartment (better than House 3), Apartment +1, Apartment +2. In addition, such grande buildings as Improved Farm, Improved Apiary, Improved Orchard-> these should be unlocked the first time you research refined farming imho. Or maybe when you research improved farming, I dunno. I kinda hope refined farming increases Orchard and Apiary output as well, cause if it doesnt then there needs to be a Refined Orchard/Apiary tech.

Also, I think there should be a check to make sure there is at least one of each shard on the map. Not entirely certain if there is or not, but fire shards currently seem like an endangered species, while Earth, Air, and Water are quite prolific.

There should be a way for the capital to have more build-tiles than the rest of your cities (imho). That way, you can expand to pick up all your starting resources by the same city, if you choose to grow and nurture that city instead of getting 2 or three quick villages off. Only fair, fitting, and appropriate imho.

Also, on finished game, even though all the stuff looks prety, I think there should be somekind of Key to tell which land-type is which (swamp, desert, hills, ect) ... or at the least allow a delayed pop-up of detailed land information once your mouse rests on a piece of land (long enough to imply desired intent, 2-3 seconds or more).

The click n drag movement is fine for now, although I think in the finished game players should be able to use the arrow pad to swiftly move their "viewing screen" across the map. Also, a quick way to switch between Cities (and CHampions) would be a life-saver. Perhaps have the cities display an icon on the right hand side, or simply use comma to scroll through cities and period to scroll through champions.

also, is their actually a way to recruit heroes? they just seem like free exp to me.

Ive had lots of 1 vs 1 sovereign battles, and won each of them. Was very fun ... also fun when my hastily built peasant horde* defeated invading soldiers.

*-about 4 peasants vs 1 soldier, quickly became 10 peasants vs 2 soldiers (at a time)

My first 3 original cities spread enough "good land" for me to found 3 more without paying essence... I have captured tons of resources too, but for some reason I am now going broke and can't afford more cities. Also, there doesn't seem to be a point to expand further. I have no use for any of the resources. not the shards, not the essence, not the big glowly crystals (forgot what they are called) which are color coded.

Mine has 0 str, 15wis, 15int, 10 everythging else. and I used the rest of the points to buy access to every single spell school. then I gave him some flaws relating to combat to aquire talents relating to being a mage.

then I made a custom civ, I bought access to one extra school (the light magic one, which contained no spells at all).

He was meant to be a paper nuke, but having no control over him whatsoever he just gets killed every time. (he did gain some defense and attack by finding potions and tomes that increase those... but most tomes he finds give extra spell research points... which I don't need because there is only 1 or 2 spells per school).

There's a bug in the upkeep. Instead of adding upkeep, the game multiply it !

it should be 1st city = upkeep 0

2nd city = 1 upkeep

3rd city = 2 upkeep

So for 5 cities you shoudl have an upkeep of : 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10.

But with 5 cities you get : 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 = 24

And the 6th city will cripple you : upkeep 120

And if you get a 7th city ... 720.

Very crippling bug.

Thx for the welcome. I wish my ATI drivers would be as sable as a Stardock early Beta. I hope Stardock will have lots of sucess with this game.

Yea ... the bug is DEFINITELY a multiplier .... and I think its even worse than that!!! I had only 5 or 6 cities iirc with 600 or 700+ upkeep!!!

in addition, the "Making of History" game is damn hard!!! Being non-self sufficient sucks :/ ... grr trade deals

Thanks, clicking "show pre-release versions" fixed the problem of it not showing up on my list, naturally.  Would be helpful if that were on by default, or the email mentioned it.

this explain why my economy collapsed when I built the 6th city.

it is off by default on purpose... the game is an early incomplete alpha. most features are not even implemented yet, its not so much a game as a demonstration of early rendering engine.

you are supposed to jump through hoops to even see it, if you didn't, you'd install it and be pissed off at how bad it is.

man i'm finding it great fun well at least thinking of how fun it will be later on when it doesn't crash and i can look at something else then brown dirt and dull pictures of mountains that are really flat. it has a nice take on the way the citys work now we only have to wait till it gets more content & polish, starcraft 2 is coming sooner but i'm sure this will be funner in the long run