(I don't have/want a Steam account, so after two or three days of extensive testing I'll summarise my experiences here - maybe someone will read it... )

Altogether the version plays quite well. I like the new handling of businesses. For 'employees' of houses there could be more possibilities. Some of the Guild atmosphere is back. But it's more a RTS game now... Using items and special actions gets lost in rising and falling numbers which are much more influenced by other things. Visiting places in the game world is not so fun without really entering it. Influence as currency is simply bought by money (but nobody told the AI...)

Well, the AI ... I don't know if it should behave better in this early state but it has very much to struggle with similar problems as the predecessor. Having very easy times at all difficulty levels I have thought of an own challenging mode to test the game for a while: The Robin Hood mode. I tried to keep all dynasties alive and to make them as strong as possible - which was actually not that easy... Well, I really played Guild2 a lot and the 'new' AI reminded me very much of the problems of Guild2.

AI / Dynasties
* Dynasties build several houses (preferably farmhouses), although they could have better ones
* Dynasties build a lot of small things (butcheries, herb huts...) in the villages and thus 'clog' their free slots for businesses -> hardly any development
* Dynasties lose their offices because officeholders do not apply for their posts -> further delays development
* they need an incredible amount of help in order not to stagnate or even rise a little: even with an enormous amount of financial aid and donated businesses their titles rise only very slowly, they are repeatedly threatened by bankruptcy, behave suicidally (are constantly punished, even sentenced to death - without heirs...) or kill one another if you're not looking
* I don't know for what they waste all the money I gave to them... I've given more money to them than I invested in my own business - but they absolutely couldn't keep up
(* altogether I'd love to have a mode where AI starts as millionaires with high titles and me as poor fellow - this would save me lot of time of feeding them up. Unfortunately I couldn't find any config files to mod as I did in Guild2 to have this game mode)

Annoying / uncomfortable
* Carters are shown in the list of idle characters while waiting for work
* 'Actions' in the operating system are not saved -> a bit annoying, if you don't want for example ambushes and forget to change the settings when reloading
* constant back and forth from "reputation fallen/risen", sometimes more than 10 times in a row -> exhausting...
* Officers of the own dynasty have to apply for their position each time it is advertised
* Kill that cuckoo! You hear animals all the time at certain places which is really annoying if you start in such a position

Bugs / problems
* long list of open court hearings (events). Dates are in the past: participants were banned or dead
* Law changes have huge influence on relations with other dynasties (partly from completely green to empty) - the correlation isn't really evident, is it?
*... hey, I can't remember more bugs at the moment - that's great! :)


(Playing the german version I don't know if I used appropriatet ingame terms here)

Observations / bugs(?):
* Allies do not react to fighting - shouldn't they intervene?
* constantly annoying diplomatic messages (denunciation etc.), but no message when an ally ends the alliance with the player
* Suggesting an alliance works (almost?) always - leads to relationship improvement, not necessarily to alliance, if relationship is too bad, can be repeated until alliance exists
* henchmen apply for offices
* no message when school is finished
* no message when summoning is completed
* the arrow to expand the selection list for diplomatic actions sometimes doesn't work
* henchmen receive EP when espionage is started (can be repeated infinitely)
* dynasties don't move to better houses (looks strange when they live in farmhouses while they own mansions...)

Opinion / suggestions:
* Praising and denunciation has too much influence on reputation
* Dynasties spam with denunciation / praise and other 'cheap' actions
* overall reputation and relations are too unstable
* message for beeing insulted comes too late and contains too little information - the offender is often already gone when you jump to the event