So far, every single thing seems to be improved lol. I know thats a broad brush but really, a fantastic improvement. I would buy this game now!

2 Things that stand out to me however:

1.) I set monster spawn to sparce...on turn 3 6 armys of monsters were in my territory.

2.) Diplomacy is still...terrible terrible terrible. Before Ive even had ANY interaction, havent seen a unit, seen thier empire what have you, everyone declares war on me or immediatly demands money. Nations that I have roflstomped still wont do treaties with me because my army is "weak" even though I just took every city they own but one. People of my same "faction" are every bit as hostile as the Fallen ones. I recall looking at the diplomacy files (and posting this same thing) in original Elemental, and there are just some glaring math errors in the value assigned to certain forms of treaties. I feel like diplomacy is just useless and should be cut entirely from the game since I will just only be at war with everyone unless I just pay them all every turn in increasing values. Binary choice: Fight or be a vassle. Not very engaging.