There is  a difference.

Back in 2010, he was saying WOM is just fine when it wasn't.   Crunch does strange things to the minds of folks .

Now, he's saying the game is fine, but may not be what some of the fans want.

It's impossible for a game to please everyone completely.  

The Taxation trade off at least in the current Beta is very clear to me.  There are numbers under the selection red meaning a decrease in effectiveness and green meaning an increase, with zero taxation being a nice way to boost research. I still have not gotten a proper grasp on the economy as Gilden seems to be maxing out income early as usual - but the demand tribute feature to me is brilliant. SO I was able to subsidize my income using them and slowly impact their growth.  

the Grain reserves does not work that way in this game BTW - but cool idea, just I dont think it works here

Changed my mind, post deleted.

I voted poor.

It is an improvement, I guess, over the previous beta, but overall I rate my game experience as poor. My main issue probably is balance and pacing, I have no sense of where I should be at so many turns in etc. Even on easy I often find my units getting tooled by monsters to the point I have to forgo exploration in favor of tech research and building up my initial city. Then, after about 300 turns of repeatedly hitting enter and managing research queues, I have units that are at least on par with the hords of elementals three tiles away from my city (meteor shower...). Even had one unit that got to level 10 and single handedly took out half the monsters on the map... I was trying to kill them off (disbanding felt like a waste). Then I run across another empire who decides to stomp me cause his faction power is triple mine at this point and his killer units make mine look like newborns.

I have a request that I would personally like and which I think would make the game more user friendly, the ability to assign spells to hotkeys. Every turn I had to dispell a curse on my city put in place either by an enemy faction, or the meteor shower event that went off, I'm not sure. Sometimes I would forget and have to dispell a stack of 8 or so of these curses that set fire to my city... or something, not really sure. So, I had to go all click click click click... in and out of the spellbook, mouse all over the place, clicked the wrong spell a few times. It would be nice to hit like 1 click 1 click 1 click etc. Same for tactical battles. 

I have not had time to actually sit down and play a LOT, just a few hours each beta (full time engineering student and all that...). So, it very well could be that I am playing this game wrong and after experimenting some more I will figure out a better strategy. If that is the case, this may just not be the game for me, a somewhat casual strategy gamer. I love RTS and TBS, grew up playing Total Annihilation and Age of Empires, love games like Sins and Sword of the Stars, Heroes of Might and Magic was great even when I had no idea what I was doing. There is just something missing for me in FE right now. 

I look forward to future updates though, I still have hope that this can be a great game. 

I wish Frogboy would be able to say "we like this mechanic, we will keep it" without people regressing to E:wom release, proclaiming Frogboy's greatest error is not listening to them.

That said, Dragonrider has some crazy good feedback, and they would do well to listen to him where applicable.

Agreed FB.  Maybe the same "go big or go home" approach should be taken with the above.

City spamming is improved, but has been replaced with outpost spamming.  Early on the correct (i.e. only viable choice) is to rush pioneers.  Just as growth is limited by prestige, the numbers of outpost that a player can effectively support should have a limiting mechanic.  But this is a problem in general for 4x genre...

At present I do notice the slowdown in build rates when tax rate is increased, but the tax rate is normally of only short-term concern.  Most games I play usually with Low or Normal tax levels, switching to None when I have a flush gildar balance, and occasionally Oppressive early game when I need to support more units.

There are choices to be made, this is true...they're just not very weighty right now.  Early game, yes, very big tradeoffs.  Not so much as you progress into mid and late game.

As to the general vibe wanting more choice, what is being asked (as far as I can tell) is the need for more strategic choice.  If I'm going to invest heavily in the magic path, then I should be mediocre at best in civics and warfare.  If a settlement has a large number of gildar buildings (merchants, tax office, etc) then maybe the units I train there shouldn't still be the caliber of Sparta's 300 (think of the scene from 300 where Leonidas is comparing the other Hellenes to his Spartans).  I think this is mostly a balance issue.

Overall though, I like the general direction.  Voted "Good".  Balance needs work, but the core game itself is enjoyable.

Found it kinda fun for a play through doing the zerg and city/outpost spamming, not about to do it a second time though.

A possible way to improve the game as mentioned by others would put a upkeep on outposts and fiddle with the prestige buildings and bonuses to the reduce the city spam. City spam can be fun for a little bit but doesn't make for a long lasting experience with multiple play throughs. The only thing limiting city spam is clearing out the high level monsters, although pioneers are expendable and u can usually sneak one past.

The tactical battles are 100% better than the last build

Also need more and different style quests. Although i really want more quests because i find the city/outpost spamming tedious after a while and quests are a good distraction.

I find quoting dragonrider really sums it up:

 "Also, I have to ask: if you (somehow) feel that diluting your prestige matters so much, then why did you program the AI to expand so aggressively?  I have yet to see terrain so arid and lifeless that the AI will not settle in it.  They even take the lousy 2/3 land that I don't bother with (more out of laziness than sensible strategy, probably).  That's part of why it pays to city-spam yourself: the AI will take all the land if you don't."

Ceresa's AI in my games for this and the last beta does not seem to city spam and fails badly as a result, or maybe her AI is just broken in other ways.

Outpost limitations [idea]:

Must be built within 5 tiles of a city.

Cannot be built within 5 tiles of another outpost.

There is some death spell out there where if it kills a unit in one turn, a lurker is raised.  Can't remember the name...

Good point and post.  

i was deciding between fair and good but in the end voted fair because of some comments by frogboy.\

honestly, i am a old school Mom diehard fan. i am okay with city spamming, god like champions killing everything etc.. that's MOM after all  which is the spiritual sequel to after all not civ 4/5

that is why FE Is still only fair now. more and more faction differentiation - super elite units for each faction, more spells including counter magic, metamagic, summon, unique items maybe even abilities is going to push FE towards MOM like games.... though i do note that it was mentioned that tactical combat isn't a focus either.. so i am a bit confused....

like many i find the "tech tree" pretty boring. spells are improved but still boring mostly. 

i hope my comments don't get me a "this game isn't really for me" reply

I voted fair, I was seriously expecting better than that !

I mean the crash are still there and ittear rally annoying to play a game crashing so much ! At beta 3 I think the crash problems should have been resolved but even if it crash less, it still crash A lot ! Which doesn't make the game really enjoyable

For the rest, the new change for races is cool but I was expecting more And different kind of mounts too

As for the spells, theyre still largely under where they should be, more diversity and AGAIN, will someone ever read me... Earth magic really stinks ! I went quite far in a game with gilden and earth magic and I keep pestering that the spells are close to useless Even if nice sometimes ! Fire could also use a wall of fire tactical spell ! But earth magic definitely needs more of that "shake the earth" kind of magic.

The units and the rest is totally great, the game is taking a great direction but still needs a lot of work ! Congrats for tidal wave which became one of my favorite spell totally awesome ! Same in fire some awesome spells

Another great point, the research trees, love them a lot ! Please don't change them anymore !

And as for cities everything is great, diplomacy works very well for me graphics are amazing as well as effects and tactical battles works well for me except the screen should scroll when we put the mouse on the edge of the screen.

I will still hope for city battles to get better and all it needs really is a wall system with turrets or not... To make them more interesting !

There, I think I talked about everything,

The landscape generation is amazing, units and their customizations are awesome although some more equipment could be used, magical effects on Weapons could show more than what it is now, some magical weapons don't show any effects while others shows perfectly.

Except my complaints, everything works well... Hope for a crash bug fix very soon ! FE will be amazing once all those problems will be fixed and if someone even reads me... Which I don't believe anyone does actually :/

I voted good. Haven't had any crashes (outside the diplomacy thing) but have had some weird slowdowns and graphical bugs. I guess my biggest concern at this point is replayability - do I want to play any more games before the next beta release?

Another thing I forgot to talk about is spells classifications !

I mean ok, we have a bunch of spells but after a while it gets really complicated to find the one you want to cast :/ a little bit of orders would not hurt in there

Especially in tactical battles where the spells gets really messy with the bunch of small icons at the bottom of the screen !

If needed bring back the spell book instead of the icons but please do something about classification !!!!

After reading through this thread, I realized what was lacking for me in the current build.  (I voted good, not excellent.)  What I really find missing is that I was able to leave all of my cities undefended and never needed to build even basic guard troops.  I was playing on challenging, and never felt challenged.

This is a good sign for me, as it means with a little tweaking of the AI the game, for me, can go from good to excellent.

Voted Fair.

Game looks like its going in the right direction!

However looking to see some mechanism to city spamming and steamrolling AI cities once you defeat their main army...

As far as spells it needs to be made clear from the Cloth view if your city has a negative spell on it. The computer was spamming one of my cities with a spell and I was unable to notice it  until I zoomed into the city.

It would be nice if we could hover over a spell symbol on top of a city, and get a popup of what spell it is, perhaps with the effects.

Thanks mate, didn't have to check the forums extensively!

Agreed.  There's a perception on the part of all of us human types that we know better than the creator/designer of anything about what would work and sell--and a sense of outrage if we're invited to give our opinions, without having them actually turned into reality.  I suspect some Chinese peasant in the time of the Mings grumbled that they never listened to his ideas when they created the Great Wall, and it would be gone in 30 years. 

If we all shared the financial burden for the game, I'd say we had at least some small reason to expect each of our specific views to be attended to, even if they weren't implemented.  But we don't.  If the game fails, it's Stardock's rep and money that drain away.  It's their responsibility to make decisions.  I don't care how "right" or "wrong" my opinions or anybody else's are.  We need to keep a sense of proportion, state something once or twice, and back away.  It's their game, no matter how open they are to outside testing and views.  Their game, and nobody else's, and their vision too of how the final thing will play.  Just my two cents.

I don't think the answer is in limiting population and cities. I like being able to build lots of cities and I wish I could grow larger populations.

But that goes against the misplaced sense of entitlement of the internet hordes!

@Glazunov1 

I agree to a point, in fact for the most part I've been personally sitting back and remained silent, especially about things that by now I know are not gonna change, for better or for worse. Many have been doing the same lately, judging by the forum's reduced traffic (pre beta 3). Actually, I broke my silence only to praise Stardock's policies and general behaviour.

That said, Frogboy DID start a poll and ask for a "verdict". Since they've been asked, you'd think people would be free to state their opinions without being told once again that FE might not be the game for them. After all, they're either new, paying customers, or people who have been patiently and loyally waiting for a while around here.

About those Chinese, many peasant had been die by building those wall while Ming might not do work while major peasant work, that is diffent, building a wall at cost of live is not something to taken lightly. But again, no one know what readly going on back there since we had not been back there.

I can't and won't argue with any of this.  What you write is accurate, and sensible.  But there have been occasional folks who put up one lengthy post about their ideas solving everything, and then repost it five and six times with different titles.  And there have been a few others who have plenty of ideas, but finding those not accepted, have moved beyond offering these into discussing the game's probable demise.  I've even read damnations of the game based on not implementing suggestions in FE that were made for WoM.

This is where that sense of entitlement Cauldyth mentioned comes into play.  Everybody should have their say, and does.  But unless we are willing to take the loss from our pockets and our reps if the game folds, we just don't own it.  It's a lesson I took a very long time to learn: when to pick our fights, and how much of ourselves to invest in our ideas.  I have a really strong respect for some of the posters who take exception to FE's direction, and would love to see their elaborate ideas implemented, but it's not going to be in FE.  Restating those ideas in half a dozen threads or more isn't going to change that, and it just clouds the air with a lot of tension and anger.  Which given how much respect Stardock and these people deserve, seems a real sad waste, at least, to me.