Bugs/Issues observed:

At around turn 28 one of the two lieutenants (Vertar) attacked the shard shrine located directly outside of my city. A hundred turns later, he still hadn't destroyed it. To compound the issue, he became unattackable once he launched his assault.

My enchantments fell off my units due to failure to pay the upkeep. The issue with this is- my mana income was not below my mana maintenance. The game consumed the mana for my enchantments before giving me my per turn mana.

Stuns don't seem to work very well. After dazing enemies using my ogres, they were not stunned. Going further and casting fear on the target, still did not cause the target to lose his next turn. Sometimes fear causes a unit to lose its turn, but I several times saw units receive the fear debuff and ignore it, even when my ogres weren't around.

Hypnotized units appear on the map after combat, even if they died in combat.

The quest to kill the sorcerer king doesn't allow you to instantly walk through the gates if you have the keys.

Invincibility (cast by archers, if that matters) doesn't seem to render units invincible. I saw units take damage while supposedly invincible. Also, if it does do anything, it seems to raise dodge by some ungodly amount. This behavior is strange (incomplete?)

It's difficult to tell what buffs and debuffs are on a unit. The information doesn't appear to be anywhere on the interface. (incomplete?)

Impressions:

Actually plays very similarly to previous chapters. As expected. Why? Basically, most of elemental is spent inside tactical combat.

The world is a lot less chance based. Alpha Centauri had events, enemies and expansion occur based off of technological advances, pollution counter and secret projects. Basically in game decisions, either by the player or the computer. This created a steady plot flow, and a generally "fair" neutral hostile environment. Even war and peace was largely based off of technology/player decisions. Looping back to Sorcerer King, the game flow here seems similar. This is good.

Maintenance is also reduced. I'm not constantly trying to swat the flies flittering around my outposts and resources. This is good.

The fire lieutenant was surprisingly weak. Much weaker than a pack of shadow wargs and dark riders. In any case, around turn 110 he wasn't able to put up any resistance in the face of Tandis, two archers and a dwarf. (plus some curse scrolls) One note- The resist chance on hypnotize reported 97%. Is it possible to tame the enemy lieutenant?

Game two- Both lieutenants down by turn 40. The timer isn't getting close to halfway through doomsday. This is on hard.

-130% to mana cost? -130%! That's a strong item. I can chain spam hypnotize. Of course, the game was already effectively over when I got it, so... even so, I'm just amazed how strong it is.

After a certain point, the enemy doesn't really have anything that can fight back. I guess, a level 10 hero with some shadow wargs and the like, is strong enough to handle anything.

I like the new city expansion system. It feels similar to War of Magic's city snaking system, but instead of being stupid and broken it's now fair and balanced.

Basically, the game concept seems to be-

-Strategy game players don't like multiplayer. Or rather, making multiplayer in any way fun, requires certain conditions of game design (like, turn times can't be too long, strategies have to make sense, the total game time is limited.)  Or, to put it another way, a well designed multiplayer strategy game tends to look like Operational Art of War, or Starcraft. Thus, games like Master of Magic, Alpha Centauri, etc. are usually played against computers.

-But computers lack human intelligence. Without extensive coding, they tend to behave idiotically. Or to spam the one strategy it knows in all situations and hope it somehow works.

-As such, game makers "cheat" by making the "world" fun and interesting rather than the other players.

-Since that works, why not eliminate the other players altogether?

The result of this line of reasoning is-

A Tactical RPG.

Sorcerer King has finally crossed the line from a "RPGish strategy game" to a "Strategy-game-ish RPG"

I am a fan of strategy games, Tactical RPGs and RPGs in general. So, that's not a problem per se.

Comparing Sorcerer King as an RPG though, the overwhelming issue is- lack of content. There isn't much characterization, plot development, etc. Hopefully, updates and in particular, the minor factions, will resolve that.