I wholeheartedly agree with almost everything the OP said. 

Two things:

1.  Diplomacy is the Achilles Heel of this game - GC2 was a masterpiece that may not be replicated in any game any time soon. In fact the AI in that game was a work of art.

2.  DRUID HERO!

I agree.  I do miss the Dynasty system & dual build / train system from the earlier games, and I wish they'd do *something* with all that water just sitting around, but in my opinion FH is much more *fun* than either of it's predecessors.  But what do I know, I like playing Warlock too & apparently that game "suxors" as well.

Yes, it is.  Any chance you can fix it?  I know you have the ability because I own GalCiv 2.  It just boggles my mind how a LH faction can go from neutral to hating my faction, to liking my faction within a 15 turn span, without actually communicating with me.

@Frogboy - some good posts there thanks.

We have been!     And yes I agree.

Yes pls me too, i'd pay for if it... hell put it on kickstarter and i'd sign up tomorrow.

The final missing pieces...

One part pirate, one part diplomat, one part baby's momma. 

Then we can call this thing done. 

In terms of relations, that system works pretty well. The situation you describe can't happen simply because the evaluation system doesn't occur that often. The reasons they do or don't like you are displayed in the foreign policy window. The more negatives, the less they'll like you.

In addition, while in the beta the AI could break its treaty obligations, that bug was fixed (that's why we have betas <g>).

A lot of the things I've read in this thread simply aren't applicable and haven't been in awhile or we simply disagree. A beta isn't a released game. Condemning us on bugs in a beta version, especially after those bugs were addressed isn't very constructive. 

My suggestion to the OP is not to play betas of games. The sausage factory that is game development isn't for everyone.

I'm renaming the topic since its a bit ridiculous to make a rant about about bugs encountered in the beta and then refer to it as the "final verdict".  

The team has a strong core of empire building to work off of, which is great. I think most people agree with this. There needs to be another pass on faction differentiation, since that has kind of fallen by the wayside, and you now have a grand total of 1 interesting race (Resoln).

IMO the game just needs more interesting and more powerful heroes, including better items, more powerful early game, more access to XP (splitting or not doesn't mater, the amount and spread of XP matters), and WAY WAY more interesting skill trees.

My opinion on the last: there should not be a single trait that the design team feels is boring. Leveling up is rare enough that it should not be a disappointment to the player at any point.

OK, I've been trying to hold back a bit, but now it's time to say how I really feel...

Dear Developers.

Please stop making this game more like Civilization or (insert title).  If I want to play a game like Civilization, I'll buy that title.  I don't want you guys to make another Civ game.

I originally bought Elemental because it did a lot of things differently than Civ does.  But I am currently seeing a lot of Civ-like mechanics/conventions/design choices in the current version of LH.  In fact, I'd still be regularly playing the original Elemental game/design regularly today IF it was as stable as LH now is, with a few added features you've come up with since that release.

Sure, there are still some innovative concepts that have survived.  But this game continues to get dumbed down, and become even more Civ-like, at a time when many of us expect more depth and sophistication in our designs, and better from you guys specifically.  This was no time to be taking Occham's Razor to the extreme.

You brought us Galactic Civilizations, an award winning design and certainly one of the Definitive 4x titles out there.  A good number of us want more the magic of THAT game in this one.  In fact, this IS why a lot of us bought Elemental in the first place, because we had faith that you could successfully bring many of good features/innovations from that title across to this one, along with a bunch of new innovations that you've shown us the ability to bring us in the past.

And there were some deeper concepts and intricate game mechanics in Galactic Civilizations, and one phrase I'd NEVER use in describing that game is dumbed down.

Is LH a decent game?  To a degree yes.  Is it worthy of it's predecessors, though? A good number of us think not quite.  It'll probably sell fairly well, but the Elemental Franchise could be SOOOO much better than this result.  And it breaks my heart to see you guys 'settling' instead of innovating further.

Get back to your roots please.  The flotsam of good features that have been thrown on the pyre is sickening, really.  AND NO, I am not referring to Encumberance, and I don't appreciate you trying to imply that this is THE major issue a good number of us have with the most recent iterations of LH (while it was a nice innovation that a lot of us would like to see kept as an option at least, that's such a minor issue in the grand scheme of things really).

Unfortunately, Brad has recently alluded that this might just be the last iteration of Elemental, so it's probably too late for an appeal to have any effect.  Which is sad.  So, this essentially means we will NEVER have properly working Dynasties in Elemental, Boats (outside of scenarios), Unique Tech Trees for each race, actual dungeon maps instead of the repurposed maps, more flexibility in Hero/Champion design (on the game end, not the coding end), and a good number of other things that have been mentioned numerous times.

Sure, the modders will try to rectify some of these issues (note what they did with further balancing the Tech Trees and such in TOA after you guys shifted focus from that game, not to mention all of the cool mods).  But a lot of the above mentioned Elemental issues are beyond their control/reach.

So, I'm guessing this appeal is too little too late, but if LH does well enough to warrant a fourth look, PLEASE get back to your roots, and reincorporate the design decisions you originally made (your 'gut instincts' as it were) into the current engine.  Your initial instincts were on the mark, the implementation just wasn't given a fair shake.

And stop trying to clone Civ or (insert title)!

I dislike you for the following reasons:

1. You appear to think that removing any features, no matter how "dumb," makes the game more shallow. I'd rather spend my time making real decisions and choices rather than brain-dead choices and navigating through systems that don't go well together. Everything that has been removed should have been removed, although perhaps these removals were not prioritized as well as they should have been.
2. You seem to want LH to be more like E:WoM, which is one of the worst games I've ever played.

That said, you do have a point that the game should not be trying to clone anything else. It has distinct advantages which it should be utilizing.

I have to agree here with tjashen.  I really liked the original game and with a few of the features of the newer versions added to it would have made for an amazing game.

Some simple things that could have been.  While I love the food/population system I have some things I wish could have been implemented with it or brought back.  Excess food converted to a exportable food instead of a faction bonus and then imported to a specific city since food is a finite resource.  One, or many, could be food exporters and one, many could be food importers which is the way it works in the real world.  The specialist system was absolutely brilliant and I would love to see it make a comeback as it solves support issues for population/troops/buildings.  Dynamic production values for population sizes should never have been cut in favor of flat values for city sizes as once you level a city up it just becomes a static value no matter if you have 1 person or 600.  Population is a resource and should be treated as such not a growth mechanic.  Some other simple things that could have been backported was the simple system for dodge versus accuracy.  This was very easy to understand and with the stat systems in E:WoM would have worked just fine.

Hmm the more I think about it the more I think many of us would like to be able to just either tinker with the more basic functionality of specific designs, basic stats, or have an updated patch for E:WoM which allows us to implement these changes back to it.  Or better yet bring the changes forward from E:WoM to FE/LH engine.

Let me reiterate what I have said before, I love this series but I wish it went the direction of E:WoM and not Civ with magic.

I think you guys may be looking at WOM with rose colored glasses. The game was terrible, terrible, terrible. You don't have to take my word for it, just look at the reviews from critics and players alike. Fallen Enchantress and Legendary Heroes have greatly improved upon the original product. 

That being said, I do agree with the last few posters that it does seem like some of the neater features have been stripped out of the game over time, but those features were poorly implemented to begin with. The best case scenario for this series would have been to improve upon those features instead of cutting them and changing them, but overall, the things that are still left are at least done in the right manner and they actually work.

WOM felt like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle that was partially put together, the expansions feel like smaller jigsaw puzzles that are at least almost complete when they release.

It's like talking to a wall.  Stardock's vision for this whole series is a strategy game with RPG elements.  There's no ambiguity there.  Frogboy has put that right on the table in this thread.  You may want this game to be X, but the people who are making this game do not want to do that. 

I know you think you're offering constructive criticism, but what you're doing is straight-up whining.

The hilarious thing is to read people saying that removing poorly-functioning mechanics like encumbrance or dynasties or weapon-type-damage is dumbing the game down.  When in reality the game has become more complex and more challenging every step of the way.  FE was better than WoM, not because it was simpler, but because it was more fun, more challenging, and more interesting in every way.  And the same is true when you compare FE to LH.  LH has been clearly the better game since the very first beta was released.

Where were all these Elemetnal War of Magic fans back in 2010?  

This read is such a good example of revisionism. The original WOM was a mess. legendary Heroes is so much better because they went in and made e player's choices matter. 

can't comment on WOM - never played it, but in my opinion, LH is a lot better than FE. can't really follow the theadstarters line of reasoning (if there's actually a line of reasoning in that post). had to laugh hard at the "balance is destroyed" comment (point 6). the balance in FE was nowhere near what we have now in LH. there may still be some issues, but for the most part, it's easy enough to not use the handful of obvious exploits if you're looking for a more balanced game. at least you can no longer win the game without even settling your first city.

also, judging the beta version of a game by the amount of bugs is just dumb. 

don't get the comment about boring early game either. in fact, if i had to name one strategy game with an interesting early game, it would be LH.