An issue that I find currently odd, and something that I did post about during beta. But as powerful as people say a Channeler is. Their spells often do squat for damage. And yet giving them a bow, so they can do something every round feels bassackwards. 

There should be a base spell that costs NO mana. That represents a standard ball of damaging magic the caster can use, every round. It's something that was learned in D&D (took until 4th edition), but a player should be able to DO something EVERY round! No if's and's or buts. They shouldn't have to carry a weapon JUST to be able to do something. Currently this just feels wrong that you have to give a bow to a sovereign so they can be powerful.

I've got other ideas to.. many of them were in the beta forums that I posted on. Still think many of them are valid as well. All in all, I'm having fun but there are flavor choices that certainly need a look at once all the technical drama fades.

At the risk of sounding terribly ungrateful at all the wonderful work you guys are doing, I want to state one thing for the record here, and that's that it's really, really important that Elemental be able to generate random geography by itself someday.  No random maps is the one thing that will, 100% guaranteed, kill the game at some point in the future.  You can't brute-force it just by adding more maps every once in a while; even with a hundred maps of each size, the odds of getting a duplicate within ten games is something like 40%, and nobody wants to say "ugh, not this map again" in a 4x game.  In the short term it's fine to keep the furnace fueled with new hand-made seeds occasionally while you work on major performance and balance issues, but I really hope you guys understand how critical a true random map generator is for the long-term success of the game.

I only bring this up now because this is the second time "new map seeds" has popped up in a changelog, and I don't think there's ever been an official response on whether or not random maps is something that's on the table or not.

I'm glad that Stardock takes post-release support so seriously but I'm kind of paranoid that some design choices which are a huge concern if the game is to reach its full potential are just going to get completely ignored, since they seem to have been ignored int the beta. As is, this game lacking nearly all of the charm of Master of Magic, and I think a lot of the criticisms have really zeroed in on why that is. Weak and bland heroes, extreme lack of passive special abilities (in MoM almost every unit had at least one special ability and that added A LOT to the atmosphere), lack of differentiation between schools of magic, lack of differentiation between races/civilizations, no flight and other such important special abilities, etc.

I don't feel like a god-like wizard lording over a kingdom which employs powerful and flavorful individuals, and I think that's a bigger problem in the long run than the bugs and AI and balance issues which I utterly trust Stardock will fix.

MAGIC TECH TREE: Magic Tech tree is kinda barren. I feel like I get all the spells anyways so why research into magic?

Why not have the majority of spells only unlockable through research?? Then you would definately feel motivated to research Magic.

And what if you could focus on different schools of magic, fire, ice, wind etc within the research tree. The more you researched the more latent effects each spell could have - slow, DoT, miss turns, longer duration, increase in power etc...

As it stands I can just research spells independently from the research tree while the magic research tree only gives us shard usage it seems.

WAYPOINTS/TURNS: Need to see a waypoint line from your unit to the destination on the map and how many turns it will take. 

Sometimes it takes several tries to select a unit and give him a destination by clicking on the map. Overall clicking is somewhat unresponsive and somehow my unit always become unselected. Just clunky.

UNIT DESIGN: Need a reason to design your own units. As of right now there are none. Need to have advantages and weakness for armor and weapon types. Therefore choosing the right type unit to design will be important. Def vs slashing, blunts, piercing, etc. 

TACTICAL BATTLES: Need to be faster. Speed up the animation to make the battles quicker and snappier. Why does the entire army move at once? Have individual moves instead?

CHAMPIONS: Scale them to the late game, and balance cost to equip and purchase. Give them more viability within the gameplay.

ITEMS: Give items more umpf. Make some weapons have first strike or can attack twice, some attack slower but more dmg, bleed effects, or additional effects. As of right now you just chose items with the highest dmg. No choice no fun. Give us a reason for what we chose.

CITY BUILDING: Basically with each new city I just click every building I can build and plant it in my city. I don't even care. Cause there is no reason too. Everything needs to be built so I just build it as fast as I can. If this is the case why not just make building cities cost more and bypass placing buildings in the first place if everything will eventually be built? No fun. Give buildings more reason or choice. Right now I just feel like a monkey placing everything down. Since I can only place one of each building - least that is what it seems - maybe some buildings we should be able to duplicate? So we can specialize cities?

DIPLOMACY:  Dead tree... let's plant a new one...

PACING: The overall pacing of the game actually seems too fast. I feel like I speed through research, and learning magical spells. At turn 200-300 the game is kinda won for me. I have everything I need - up to like lvl 6 magic. Could change once the AI gets off its butt.

I agree except for 4 and 7.  Love complex tech trees and the UI for unit size is OK by me.

Awesome! Get some much deserved rest!

The game is fantastic as is, even with the bugs.

Keep up the great work and I cant wait to see what you and the community have in the future for this wonderful game!

Once the late game slowdown is fixed I will be a very very happy camper hehe.

This is the most fun ive had on a videogame in years, thank you stardock

Fear not, this is on the tweak list.

Excellent feedback on all points, gang. Thank you so much! We'll be taking a hard look at everything that's been mentioned for future updates.

Great to hear!

Guys please check out master of magic and the wide range of units in tac. battles. Notice how they all have all kinds of different abillities, strengths, weaknesses and things that set them apart. First strike, flying, made of ice... stuff like that

Emphasis added:

Don't forget about the Warlock from 3.5.

One complaint AI-related from nother forum.

AI dies in enemy territoy instant game over.  You conquer city next to AI, AI soverseign does a suicide attack.

nice keep up with the updates would love LAN though..

Mana regeneration:

 Tweak option: Make mana regenerate as a small % of total essence, rather than a fixed rate. This regulates itself. Large mana pools regenerate 2 or possibly 3 points a turn, in proportion to how large they are.  Benefit: can't dump wisdom and rely on a high regen rate for a smallish pool, if this is decided to be important.

Better Tweak option: Make mana regenerate as a small % of INT.  Players have already started dumping INT in favor of WIS as not having a significant effect on character, due in part to the questionable value of offensive magic.  This both reinforces the value of INT for spellcasters, and introduces a choice of caster build  directions:

1) INT based Sov (offensive caster/nuker) with smaller pool, but high powered attacks and fast regen rates to be able to cast offensive magic often, but difficulty casting the most powerful high end spells and summons.

2)Wis/Essence based Sov (summoner/big opportunistic magic) Big pool, slow regen, low powered offensive magic. Raise the cost of Summons (needs to happen anyways), and give the most powerful summons a material component cost in the form of elemental shards that correspond to their school. This caster can cast the big spells, but relies on summons and occasional buffs to do most of his magic damage, as he can't cast magic as casually as fast regenerating INT based caster.

Just an idea.