Been trying to read through all of the posts, but it's bedtime. I just wanted to throw in my two cent's worth.
The magic in this game is very disappointing. I have read several posts about spells and damage and it's true--"so-and-so does damage equal to the caster's intelligence plus any "type" shard you control". Completely no variety or creativity here. Same spell--different name and/or effect. Of the myriad of tactical spells, I only use three. I bump up my caster's intelligence with every level (two per level), and it's complete waste of my time to try to control two air shards (or whatever type) to add two more damage to what--a max of 40 damage already? A pittance. I was really hoping there would be a "magical economy" in this game that had some teeth. It's *why* I bought this game... all of the hype led me to believe this was going to be a modern-day Master of Magic.
On that same thread, the mana regen is completely--I mean *completely*--wonked. When you have 6 mana to regen, waiting 6 turns isn't all that big of a deal. But when you get up to 30 or above, it's crazy to wait 30 turns for regen. I know, I know, you can pass along a small amount to your heroes thus essentially doubling or tripling and so-on since they all gain one/turn, but I feel there ought to be some benefit based on shards you control. Are you specialized in fire magic? Then for each fire shard you control you should get one addt'l point of mana regeneration (and maybe 1/4 point from all shards not in your mastery). Master all books of magic (a complete magical hero)--then you get a benefit from all shards you control. This one point per turn ends up making me completely not auto-resolve battles--even easy ones. I'll have an insane army, be attacked by a lone wolf (broken AI), and if I auto resolve it uses magic. Boom. Now I'm waiting 6 more rounds to regain wasted spell points.
It just seems to me that the algorithms in this game are exceedingly simple... what begins out as balanced and relevant just doesn't scale properly. I'm not sure if you guys know the game or not, but the simplistic and imbalanced algorithms remind me of the "Space Empires" series of games. I expect this from a small-time, basement-office dev group, but not from guys that have released titles like GalCiv and Sins.
Lastly, I keep unlocking new books of magic (or so it says), yet no new spells are available to me. Maybe I just haven't climbed the ladder high enough, but even at level 11 spells I'm pretty much dealing damage that maxes at my intelligence. Yet, I have a group of Lords (pick your unit) that can do 20 times the damage that I do and has 20 times the hit points. I mean--at this point the heroes become completely and utterly useless. And how exactly do spells "miss"???? That's ONE thing that could make casters relevant again. You KNOW they're gonna deal some damage, so you're more likely to keep them in there.
Over the past few years I have become a Stardock fanboy. GalCiv, Sins, and so-on. Games so VERY well thought-out that I just couldn't imagine ways to improve them, and if I did have an idea, it was a minor tweak. My mouth has been watering ever since I heard Stardock purchased the rights to Master of Magic. STARDOCK doing the next generation of MOM? To heck with MMO games... THIS might be the WOW killer! I'll have to admit guys, I'm deeply, deeply disappointed with this one, even excluding the sudden crashes and 1 fps speed late-game. This is a turn-based strategy--not Crysis.
However, I do hold out hope that this game will eventually become everything the hype caused us to expect. Stardock has ALWAYS had post-release support hat's second to none, so please don't change that policy on this title. It would be a travesty. Everything is mostly there... it just needs a major overhaul.
Sorry--one last blurb. Can you please, please have the game generate random opponents? I'm still in a state of disbelief this didn't come standard. I have to not only choose the number of opponents, but also the specific opponents? Give us a drop-down box allowing us to choose the # of opponents (or "random"), and then allow us to either choose the factions for each opponent or once again choose "random". The maps are already not really randomized, and this just further kills the sense of the need for exploration.
Okay--one last one. I promise. I think a LOT of the issues with this game could have been mitigated with a good manual. Heck--read through any manual and it's a way for a developer to sort-of "sales pitch" or explain why the various aspects of the game are set up the way they are. Instead, we've been left to scratch our heads doing the "WTF were they thinking here", when, with a good manual, we might get that "a-ha!" moment to see and appreciate what you were trying to do. I'm telling you--the lack of a good manual is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad--BAD!!!! At this point, you guys could just grab the hundreds of stickies on the web, get an out-of-work English major to digest it, make it look pretty and sound intriguing, and distribute it as a pdf file with one of your updates.