No, give it a month!  Happy Halloween!  Trick or Treat?

so long as the final release is pushed back accordingly...

However, correcting balance issues can always be done through mods, right guys?

There's no rush.......except for the fact that now its updating the same day Torchlight 2 comes out....................

Dammit

If it makes you feel any better, they could push beta 5 back.  Possibly one week, perhaps two.

I would have to side with parrottmath on this, although my description would be slightly different.

Modding is a way to make the game more enjoyable to a wider audiance, its like tuning a car. You like yours stock? I want with tigher suspension, different tires, I want it tuned to how I like to play.

A car manufacturer is only going to add so many customization options for the car. The rest are all aftermarket, and you know what? It works out, those who want modifications can take the time to do that. Otherwise, the vanilla game is already quite good and I am excited to see the tweaks and balances that will be coming in the next update. 

A small update would be nice !!Whatever you got, alms alms for the poor!!

verygood， I want beta ，how can I get the beta？

I wanted to give my voice to the crowd that wants the game to be the best it can be without modding. I see modding as additional content or alternative way to play (like changing all races into LotR races, or removing magic or removing city building). If modding is needed to make the game playable (worse case) or needed to make it better the game itself failed. 

Obviously you know that's not the case with FE, right?

I never really bothered with modding GalCiv 2, not because the mods were bad, but because it was kinda clunky to install mods.

Hopefully this is not the case with FE.

Civ 4, folks could have an .exe install mods and click to run mods, never saw that with GC2- I think that did a lot for modding.

I don't understand the people who think mods available at release is somehow a bad thing or indicative of a larger problem.

The beauty of mods is that they give the players choice.  Maybe I don't like a particular design feature that the community or the devs love.  Mod it away.  Does that mean the underlying game is weak or poorly done?  No, it just means that my preferred gameplay is different than what the devs have in mind.  

The game that gets released stands on its own or it doesn't.  The existence of mods is irrelevant to that question.

In GalCiv you simply have to copy the mod folder to the Mods folder, and then select the mod from within the game. It's pretty straightforward.

On another note, I think the game might suffer in reviews because of lack of multiplayer. While I do not mind this at all, and if I remember correctly from the poll, half of us don't mind the lack of multiplayer, the reviewers tend to penalize that. I strongly support the idea of a focus on single player and strong AI, rather than investing in multiplayer. That's what made GalCiv 2 great. But hopefully the reviewers will understand the focus on a great single player experience.

I play AoW2. The game lives on multiplayer. There are a lot of mods. Each mode is 2.5 people. But a large Number of people play it in multiplayer patch. Where no "pink dragons", etc. Duel, the FFA and the game with the unions , what could be better?

AI will never be good in these games, there will always be exploits and methods easy game against him. 

I've used CivIV mods extensively, but I've also tested each executable with Kaspersky.  An executable is a very easy and thorough way to conceal viruses.  Much better to simply tell people in which directory to drag and drop a bunch of files: nothing is concealed, all the content can be viewed and even edited by the player.  Look at two of the most active and complex mods out here, now, by Heavenfall and SeanW.  See for yourself just how easy installation without an executable can be.

No, I don't know. But some people here think it is OK that the game comes out whatever and they can fix it with mods. I don't want Stardock to read that and feel the same. I had enough of that shit with NWN2 where without 2-3 mods the game was barely playable. Later with all patches done you still needed at least 1 mod.