I wanted to like this game. Hopefully it changed a bit from now until final release.
Here are my complaints.
Tries to be an rts and 4x but turns out to be more of a resource management game.
-so the main issue with this is expansion is hindered by upkeep on all resources. You want a town? that's command point and water, plus that water? that never comes back. 4 water for each village.
How do you get water? you spend one of your 2 building slots at the village for water traps. There seems to be a bug where wind level doesn't matter and it gives you a flat 15 or so water per wind trap.
you want to build buildings? costs plastisteel + upkeep in plastisteel. spend a building slot for a plastisteel factory.
Ohh you want to man those buildings? needs manpower. out of man power? spend a building slot for +4 manpower.
If you find a zone that has a bonus to a certain resource? only can build one factory there.

You can expand your villages to 5 building spots but it costs 3-100,4-300,5-500 plastisteel. In the beginning of the game that's a big deal.
So besides the mechanics of constantly having to give spice out, there's also command points on units. can't have a zerg in the beginning of the game, nor the late game.
Then we got credits. The lifeblood of this game. There's upkeep on that as well. i forget if it's buildings or troops or both.
beginning to mid game you'll have only like 2-4 troops because they eat up your rss you need to expand.
command points are used to take over villages. you only get like +7, no way to increase that with a cap of 500. the further away your main city is, the costlier it is. the map is fairly big so this will become a big problem later on where villages cost like 400 out of 500 command points.
so ok, you're juggling all the rss and gaining spice and credits. lets start building units and playing the rts.
to start off with, it costs 75 for the basic trooper and up to 500 credits for the royal guards (house harkonen). what's the difference? troops have an attack of lets say 16, and 3 life bars, but cost like 3 command points. royal guard have an attack of like 17 with 5 life bars. that's not a lot of difference with a huge increase in price. you really just use them to attack villages for expansion, or to fight off the native population which invades every so often (for no reason).
end game i was at like 50 command points, so i could sport about 8-10 units (depending on the type makeup). this is as big as it gets.
The problem here? the starting cities. they have the hitpoint of 20k (your guys do 13-19 damage per round of combat) and do 60 damage per missile. It's simply impossible to defeat it outright. you need to do hit it for like 1k damage then run back to a friendly village to heal up, rinse and repeat like 20 times.
There are no vehicles in the game besides harvesters and ornithopters. your guys get shuffled around via an airfield or just walk across the sands. there are 100 wind territories that will damage them. no warning about it though, they just take damage and die.
there's also supply associated with the troops. it's not a big deal in most cases, you just can't march them across the map unless you have a controlled area. but there's no warning when the supply is running low and they will almost immediately die if their supply runs out.
Ex: end game, attacking a freeman village, destroyed it's missile turret and 4/5 troops defending it. was one zone away from occupied zone. took a while cuz melee combat is slow. right before i destroy the last troop they somehow declare a ceasefire (special ability or covert ops?). my troops just sit there standing around their base waiting for the cease fire to end, but i didn't pay attention to the supply.
supply runs out, every single one of my units dies inside the village. yey.
harvestors are there to collect spice. when a sandworm pops up, they run away to the village. then you have to manually tell them to continue after the threat has passed. i mean, ok? automatic withdrawal but manual deployment.
ornithopters are just there to scout and to find bs spots to search.
bs spots are locations of interest that pop up on the map from time to time to send your extra intel agents to find that give some meh rewards
should you have free intel slots? not if you want to win. they should be applied to chom or the factions to run ops against them. or maybe have them assigned to the larger native villages for bonuses, but you're limited to 10 or so intel agents. so it's kind of limited.
ops? limited to your spy tech tree.
tech tree is like 4 or so deep with 4-5 spacing out. there's not a lot here but units are hidden in there as well as ops abilities. but then there's the economic tree which is absolutely 100% needed at the start so that's kind of an issue. credits are a big problem so when you see a tech tree that allows you to build a processing plant on rare resource zones for a 30 flat credit increase that's huge. other stuff isn't that big but helps out.
you'll get to the point late game where taking out main cities is a pain in the ass, yet those 8-12 units you can finally afford to muster are being used to assault as well as defend your entire empire. that's really not enough. city has garrison which is just a credit dump. those guys can't do much. you can build missile turrets which turn a losing battle into a winning one easily, but the manpower maintenance costs on that goes through the roof.
Then there's rebellion ops that basically make your garrison rebel that you have to send troops to quell.
if you don't quell them then all the improvement upgrades you put on that village disappears and they go back to being neutral.
so yeah, that's the game in a nutshell. end game is a management nightmare. i didn't discuss the politics side of things because it sucks.
also factional communication typically goes like this. opposing faction sends troops at my city, loses due to missile base and being eaten by sand worms. afterwards calls me up to complain. every single time.
anyways, needs end game units, needs to rethink this mess of a resource juggle, needs to increase the pace of the game (waiting around just to get the command points needed for a new village capture is weak), needs a trade system to trade one resource for another, needs to let water accumulate (you got 15 extra water? it just sits there unlike all the rest of the rss). the search a down harvestor/ornithopter/shuttle mechanic needs to be redone as it's just annoying and ignorable mid to end game. the random complete this or that stuff that pops up is just random. the building limitations are annoying. the main cities districts is some end game idea but not well done. you want me to spend 1500 credits as well as other resources to build a district that gives me +20% attack power or some combat points? no thanks. it's too little too late that costs too much. no artillery units (that i know of) to destroy cities end game. the bonuses of some of these units are kinda whacky. increase to attack power when down to 20% of their health? ok... but they're probably going to die.
sandworms as they are now are annoying. even if you're not moving around they kill you. no thumpers, no getting them to move away, just run to a village and you're safe. on the flip side, encounter them while your traveling? it's just a timer, once that timer runs out you're dead. you can only create units in your main city which is annoying since end game you might be fighting 15 zones away. you would think that you could build at a military base, but no, that building slot just adds 20% attack power to all units in that zone or one zone away.
if you're playing the game right, you'll also have to put a maintenance building on almost all your villages because it's almost absolutely needed to keep costs down. there's also no way that i know of to see which zones it affects.

I wanted to like this game. Hopefully it changed a bit from now until final release. Here are my complaints. Tries to be an rts and 4x but turns out to be more of a resource management game. -so the main issue with this is expansion is hindered by upkeep on all resources. You want a town? that's command point and water, plus that water? that never comes back. 4 water for each village. How do you get water? you spend one of your 2 building slots at the village for water traps. There seems to be a bug where wind level doesn't matter and it gives you a flat 15 or so water per wind trap. you want to build buildings? costs plastisteel + upkeep in plastisteel. spend a building slot for a plastisteel factory. Ohh you want to man those buildings? needs manpower. out of man power? spend a building slot for +4 manpower. If you find a zone that has a bonus to a certain resource? only can build one factory there. You can expand your villages to 5 building spots but it costs 3-100,4-300,5-500 plastisteel. In the beginning of the game that's a big deal. So besides the mechanics of constantly having to give spice out, there's also command points on units. can't have a zerg in the beginning of the game, nor the late game. Then we got credits. The lifeblood of this game. There's upkeep on that as well. i forget if it's buildings or troops or both. beginning to mid game you'll have only like 2-4 troops because they eat up your rss you need to expand. command points are used to take over villages. you only get like +7, no way to increase that with a cap of 500. the further away your main city is, the costlier it is. the map is fairly big so this will become a big problem later on where villages cost like 400 out of 500 command points. so ok, you're juggling all the rss and gaining spice and credits. lets start building units and playing the rts. to start off with, it costs 75 for the basic trooper and up to 500 credits for the royal guards (house harkonen). what's the difference? troops have an attack of lets say 16, and 3 life bars, but cost like 3 command points. royal guard have an attack of like 17 with 5 life bars. that's not a lot of difference with a huge increase in price. you really just use them to attack villages for expansion, or to fight off the native population which invades every so often (for no reason). end game i was at like 50 command points, so i could sport about 8-10 units (depending on the type makeup). this is as big as it gets. The problem here? the starting cities. they have the hitpoint of 20k (your guys do 13-19 damage per round of combat) and do 60 damage per missile. It's simply impossible to defeat it outright. you need to do hit it for like 1k damage then run back to a friendly village to heal up, rinse and repeat like 20 times. There are no vehicles in the game besides harvesters and ornithopters. your guys get shuffled around via an airfield or just walk across the sands. there are 100 wind territories that will damage them. no warning about it though, they just take damage and die. there's also supply associated with the troops. it's not a big deal in most cases, you just can't march them across the map unless you have a controlled area. but there's no warning when the supply is running low and they will almost immediately die if their supply runs out. Ex: end game, attacking a freeman village, destroyed it's missile turret and 4/5 troops defending it. was one zone away from occupied zone. took a while cuz melee combat is slow. right before i destroy the last troop they somehow declare a ceasefire (special ability or covert ops?). my troops just sit there standing around their base waiting for the cease fire to end, but i didn't pay attention to the supply. supply runs out, every single one of my units dies inside the village. yey. harvestors are there to collect spice. when a sandworm pops up, they run away to the village. then you have to manually tell them to continue after the threat has passed. i mean, ok? automatic withdrawal but manual deployment. ornithopters are just there to scout and to find bs spots to search. bs spots are locations of interest that pop up on the map from time to time to send your extra intel agents to find that give some meh rewards should you have free intel slots? not if you want to win. they should be applied to chom or the factions to run ops against them. or maybe have them assigned to the larger native villages for bonuses, but you're limited to 10 or so intel agents. so it's kind of limited. ops? limited to your spy tech tree. tech tree is like 4 or so deep with 4-5 spacing out. there's not a lot here but units are hidden in there as well as ops abilities. but then there's the economic tree which is absolutely 100% needed at the start so that's kind of an issue. credits are a big problem so when you see a tech tree that allows you to build a processing plant on rare resource zones for a 30 flat credit increase that's huge. other stuff isn't that big but helps out. you'll get to the point late game where taking out main cities is a pain in the ass, yet those 8-12 units you can finally afford to muster are being used to assault as well as defend your entire empire. that's really not enough. city has garrison which is just a credit dump. those guys can't do much. you can build missile turrets which turn a losing battle into a winning one easily, but the manpower maintenance costs on that goes through the roof. Then there's rebellion ops that basically make your garrison rebel that you have to send troops to quell. if you don't quell them then all the improvement upgrades you put on that village disappears and they go back to being neutral. so yeah, that's the game in a nutshell. end game is a management nightmare. i didn't discuss the politics side of things because it sucks. also factional communication typically goes like this. opposing faction sends troops at my city, loses due to missile base and being eaten by sand worms. afterwards calls me up to complain. every single time. anyways, needs end game units, needs to rethink this mess of a resource juggle, needs to increase the pace of the game (waiting around just to get the command points needed for a new village capture is weak), needs a trade system to trade one resource for another, needs to let water accumulate (you got 15 extra water? it just sits there unlike all the rest of the rss). the search a down harvestor/ornithopter/shuttle mechanic needs to be redone as it's just annoying and ignorable mid to end game. the random complete this or that stuff that pops up is just random. the building limitations are annoying. the main cities districts is some end game idea but not well done. you want me to spend 1500 credits as well as other resources to build a district that gives me +20% attack power or some combat points? no thanks. it's too little too late that costs too much. no artillery units (that i know of) to destroy cities end game. the bonuses of some of these units are kinda whacky. increase to attack power when down to 20% of their health? ok... but they're probably going to die. sandworms as they are now are annoying. even if you're not moving around they kill you. no thumpers, no getting them to move away, just run to a village and you're safe. on the flip side, encounter them while your traveling? it's just a timer, once that timer runs out you're dead. you can only create units in your main city which is annoying since end game you might be fighting 15 zones away. you would think that you could build at a military base, but no, that building slot just adds 20% attack power to all units in that zone or one zone away. if you're playing the game right, you'll also have to put a maintenance building on almost all your villages because it's almost absolutely needed to keep costs down. there's also no way that i know of to see which zones it affects.