It's going to be hard being patient for the game. However I prefer to know and I prefer to participate in the beta that is only 8 months away. That is something cool to look forward to. I love it.

@Frogboy - those images are very, very small. 

It would in my book as well. It was a solid gaming experience.

Day 1 concerns:

1: The UI. It seems, well, too polished for this stage of development. One of the most crucial aspects of any UI is that it is made for the player. And until the gameplay is really nailed down, I'd be somewhat concerned to see a polished UI. It suggests that the UI was built while the gameplay was being worked on, which allows for another GC2-like UI: an interface that is not well-designed for playing the game as it was made, rather than as the designers thought they were making it.

2: Big numbers. Oh boy. Gold: 112,220, Population: 1850. This looks like it shows that this game is going to bear the hallmarks of GC2's gameplay: needlessly large numbers, and thus needlessly arcane functions and formulas over those numbers, to reign them in and prevent degeneracies. I had hopes that SD would have avoided that kind of thinking for this game. I really prefer mechanics where a mere +1 bonus would have some kind of impact, one where you can easily predict the exact consequences of your actions without having to plot functions and map equations that you don't have access to.

3: Tactical battles. I played a bit of MoM, and found this to be the most tedious part of the game. I very much understand wanting to take battles away from the simplicity of "bigger number wins," but this just makes it that much harder to effectively wage a war. A battle-heavy turn can involve 5-10 separate groups of units attacking. Having to micro-manage these (and I refuse to trust any automation to properly handle the battle, since they are never smart enough) makes any form of conquest victory aggrivating to achieve. Attempting to walk that line between tedious combat and tactical battles is not easy. I hope you guys know what you're getting into here.

Good things:

1: The UI definitely seems to have taken a few lessons from Civ IV, which has perhaps the best, most function UI ever for a TBS game. It needs some more widgets on-screen, though, but it definitely looks better and more useful than GC2's incredibly spartan UI.

2: The visuals. While I personally prefer visual styles that provide more details, I do have to applaud your willingness to break with tradition and not go for a photorealistic visual style for your game.

3: A Third Dimension. No, not 3D rendering, but a third gameplay dimension. TBS games tend to revolve around 2 dimensions: "cities" (planets, whatever) and "units". The magic and channeler system suggests providing a third dimension, complimentary to the other two, that has similar depth and complexity as those other two dimensions. Of course, it remains to be seen how this pans out, but it certainly has potential.

Earlier this year, Swedish developer/publisher Paradox, probably the game company most analogous to Stardock (complete with its own proprietary digital download store), announced that it would publish (though not develop) Majesty 2 next year. I believe the developer is a Russian company. For those unfamiliar with Paradox, they are best known as the developers of hardcore historically based epic stratey games, notably the Europa Universalis series. The games generally have a very high learning curve (much harder than GalCiv or Civilization)--I generally have 3-4 Paradox titles on my HD, but never seem to have the time needed to really learn them.

And speaking of Swedish developers, when reading the Gamespy description of the channeler, was anyone else reminded of the pretender god of Dominions III?

Well, while I do like the inclusion of tactical battles (just to make the battle part more complex and thus making more differences in units possible/necessary) I think the addition of an option at game start to disable tactical battles (permanent for a session) would solve that. At least, I would like such an option because I know I'm not steadfest enough to not play some important battles tactically and after that all battles that way. :/

That was my first impression.  I stand by it.  I'm sure you read my whole post that also said that I have faith that the game will be great.  And I understand that is early in development and the graphics will change. 

"Oh it's not rphotoealistic, it looks like a cartoon, so it's a kid's game."    Why do you quote me saying that when I didn't?

I never called it a kids game.  People sometimes have different opinions that you.

If battles are going to actually be tactical, then that means that there is an entire layer of gameplay involved there. Setting up your units, attacking the right units at the right time, etc. Which should mean that the rest of the gameplay is balanced to expect tactical battles to be there.

Players have a certain degree of mindfulness that they can spend on a game at any particular time. If a game provides more complexity than a player can handle, then the game fails to work for that player. Tactical battles require quite a bit of mindshare.

It's one of the reasons why the Total War games tend to massively simply the TBS portion of their games. This prevents overloading the player with too many mechanics.

Yes, you can just turn off tactical battles, so long as there is some automation system for them. However, if the game was properly balanced for mindshare, then now the game just lost perhaps 20% of its complexity, making the game less deep overall than a game designed without tactical battles. And if the game were balanced for 120% mindshare, then it has some fundamental issues to work out

Turning off tactical battles would be like turning off diplomacy in GC2. Yes, it's still a functional game, but it isn't nearly as complete as it was designed to be. The game will either succeed with tactical battles or fail with them; you can't go halfway with some option.

Fair enough.

Will they? Do you think that this graphical style, that clearly took time and effort to create, is just placeholder until they create the actual assets for the game? Do you think that SD would post screenshots if they weren't at least somewhat indicative of what the final product will look like?

And if SD does change them due to fan outcry, then I've lost all respect for them. Abandoning a visual style just because some people shout kiddy is pretty spineless.

I wasn't quoting you. I was mocking the mode of thought you demonstrated.

Ahem: "the graphics look like some kids game"

That time, it was a direct quote (emphasis added).

That doesn't mean those opinions are right, nor does it mean they shouldn't be questioned or discussed.

The graphics will be 100X better in the final version.

Ahem: "the graphics look like some kids game"

Looks like a kids game is not the same as saying it IS a kids game

Actually I think they might considering the developers have said so twice on this thread.

so placeholder graphics. very clever, I always wondered why not more devs do that, considering the tech level usuall changes a bit during a development cycle.

Now, for an operative question: I understand your power comes from your main character, it founds cities, determines heroes' strength and a few other things. but how can your, sort of, avator gain power? is it in the range of collecting artifacts or leveling up? or sitting in libraries studying stuff? also, are those values you divert from your power one-time effects or per-turn measures.

yup, fairly detailed questions already, but one has to start somewhere.

it may also do to communicate clearly what differentiates your game from HoMM for example (which I think is not a bad series at all). so far I'd see the ability to creaty cities yourself and possibly the potential of overland spells.

I wasn't too impressed by the graphics, but the thing that really jumped out at me was how your avatar needs to funnel their power to create cities.  Personally, I think this is a really good idea - this risk reward system of spreading out your power vs concentrating it all in one superman

I love the look of the game. The screenshots look fantastic!

It looks like it'll be easy to see what's going on, and the interface looks quite clear as well.

Too bad we have to wait so long for it now :/