So far beta 3 is much better than the other betas and much more stable, yet I am still dealing with the occasional crash to desktop and turn button sticking.

Fix those issues and the game will be good, but to make it excellent there needs to be way more spells and more random events.

Also I wouldnt mind seeing the following:

1. I would like to be able to upgrade old units with new equipment when its researched.

2. I would like for heal wounds to be added to the life spell book.

3. Also death needs to be balanced and life magic needs to be brought up a few notches in power.

4. There needs to be some form of spell or building that you can build that will protect your city from enemy spells.

5. Now concerning spells every school needs to have at least one single target direct damage spells, one aoe direct damage spell, one debuff, one crowd control, and one strategic damage or debuff spell. Also there needs to be at least 3 global spells for each school.

Examples:

1. Life
1. One global regen spell that affects all allied units.
2. Fountain of Life - A global spell that doubles food generation and population growth.
3. A global spell blesses all allied units.
2. Death
1. A global curse on all enemy units entering the players zone of control.
2. A global buff that causes enemies that die in combat to have a chance of coming back as zombies under that players control.
3. A global curse that lowers all enemy players production.
3. Fire
1. Armageddon - a global spell that causes meteor showers to rain down on random parts of the map every turn.
2. A global spell that places flame blade on all allied units.
3. Drought - a global spell that halves the food generation of all enemy players, causing populations to starve off.
4. Earth
1. Gold Rush - doubles the gold generation of all friendly cities.
2. Volcanic Instability - causes volcanoes to appear and erupt at random areas on the map.
5. Air
1. Enchant Roads - Enchants all roads in your zone of control, effectively doubling their movement bonus.
2. Fierce Winds - Causes tornadoes to appear in random portions of the map.
3. Global Guardian Winds spell on all allied units.
4. Some form of global spell that has a chance of dispelling all spells cast by enemy players.
6. Water
1. Deluge - Causes flooding in random portions of the map as well as halving the movement speed of all units outside of your zone of control.
2. Another global spell that causes random enemy cities to be affected by freezing temperatures for 5 turns, that halt the cities productions and causes all units that step out of the city to take cold damage.  

There was a post by Brad Wardell on this about two weeks ago, I cannot seem to find it. Has it been radically edited, or even removed?

I voted Good. I think the game is much closer to being amazing than a lot of people have been saying, apart from the city building thing (which is known about). I think the game is nearly there, the choices are there it just the AI to push the player to make them.

Same, but I really am not sure I like the vote (I mean what makes a Beta "excellent?").  I mean I really like the way the game is shaping up, but this is Beta.  It's not supposed to be a game demo.  That said, I have been enjoying it as a demo finally.  Previous builds have been far to unstable for me to even 'test,' to the point where I couldn't even get maps to load.

Now it seems that the majority of my CTD are after tactical battles or when clicking a little too fast on menus when 'stuff' is happening in the background.

Jopis79, be sure to keep an eye on the Stormworld mod: http://forums.elementalgame.com/421802

Does anyone know where the post by Brad is asking us to vote?

   Yikes!!

Just to review the bidding, I voted "Good" on the Beta 3, up from "Fair" on the Beta 2.  IMHO:

     FE is a fun game already; it is gettng steadily better; and I am confident it eventually will be Great !  

The other thread's view access was increased. It wasn't deleted. The feedback in the thread is being evaluated.

Perhaps there should be more events (like raging xy or marauding Bandit Lord x in the west/north/...appearing in x turns, or "global quests" (like missions that every player can fulfill) to make the world more "non static vital".

More movement/changes and "non-fighting-interesting-places"... perhaps travelling traders, smiths looking for ressources to sell special weapons, Castles where Collectors of rare Weapons live, mercaneries that work for you for several turns for money, Bounty hunting, neutral fractions with special interests or missions, Druids protecting their holy super-earth shard, witches evoking a demon at a stone ring... more "pseudo-roleplaying" making the world vital and telling storys... that would perhaps to much, but very nice would be when your actions would create positive or negative reactions (at neutral fractions?) or at least when you would gain influence-points.

I also liked the marry-idea in Elemental.

We have a fantasy-world here that can be creative filled, it has not only to be kill&loot.

The quests are good, but I would like to see more of this kind of gameplay.

"I always felt like Elemental had potential, but hadn't quite realized it yet." is exactly what I think, too.

The question always was "will it realize it/finish it at all?"

The main difference between Elemental and FE are for me the noticeable presence of opponents in FE.

Elemental was a little bit like playing alone sometimes.

It is more concentrated right now, where Elemental wanted everything but nothing really was finished.

For me some things of these "Elemental everythings" can return one day as expansions, when the main game is ready.

You can say I voted a "fair+". It is true that it is close to good, seen technical, but I am not sure how to see it as a long-time-motivating strategy game for ambitious players and if the AI ( or the illusion of AI) will arrive a level at difficulty "challenging" or "hard" that makes dealing with the opponents an interesting challenging fun.

I do not know how close is 0912 to the final game.

Sounds close to me, but on the other hand you can count endless, even when you count patches as well, so the steps can be 091 to 1.2 but it could also be 0912001 to 1.20001.

FE is looking much, much better.

There are still some stability issues and some serious polishing issues,  but we are getting there.

Please, Stardock, heed the suggestions from some of my fellow forum members. They have provided some amazing feedback. Some of it is so good that you couldn't buy it anywhere and they gave it to you for free.

Second this idea. It'd be interesting to see which specific areas of gameplay people want improvements to in order to get them up to "excellent" (if they're not already there). For me it's: AI, faction diversity, and balance of the tech trees/the different paths to victory.

You could actually do it with two questions: overall impression, and which area of the game do you think needs most improvement (like this poll combined with that one we got earlier). Although being able to rate every game area as excellent/good/fair/poor would be even better.