Yep, if you go with this idea please make a button. I loaded up Master of Magic and forgot that at the start of the turn it moves all your units. I just lost a city because of it. Damn you Horus! Oh Phantom Warriors are still a PITA.

Swarm does seem a little overpowered now.

All the things you mentioned such as the lack of information (tool tip) when it comes to the trait screen as well as world objects should be addressed.

*It also looks like Kraxis doesn't have anything new yet.

*Is the flame tongue ability a racial or unique to the hero? If it's a racial it's not very good.

*Overall the graphics look much better than vanilla FE.

Edit: while on the topic of racials i believe something needs to be done for racials such as fortify and berserk. Early on fortify could help in Vanilla FE but now it's useless since melee units are right on top of eachother. my suggestion is to make fortify not count as your action for turn meaning as soon as you cast it your character can perform an additional action or maybe make it so fortify automatically puts the fortified unit in defense position.

Berserk is simply awful beyond useless my suggestion is to remove it and add "+3 Attack power" to the racial trait. 

Swarm doesn't literally let multiple units attack at their full value.  The actual effect is that swarm reduces the defense of the target unit (due to being occupied by the other units). 

The game looks beautiful!  I am really happy with the hero recruitment and the tactical battles seem better (though clearly the game need a better UI clue for when a unit has ranged attack -- how frustrating it was watching you end-turn on your fire-mage).

Is it too late to make a common-sense UI suggestion?  Watching your play-through, there's an issue with flavor text dialogs breaking the flow of the game.  Flavor texts are important to establishing the lore and encouraging immersion, but they should be able to do so unobtrusively.  If they interrupt the game for meaningless decisions they're not providing immersion.

The first (and most egregious) is the book at the start of the game.  It's just a total waste of time.  And confusing to boot.  I think we can read the flavor text on the sov's details page, so why force a modal dialog on the user at the start of the game?  Take it out!  Get us playing, not reading.

Another bad flavor text moment is the goodie huts.  You get a OK dialog with something meaningless like "There's nothing here, but this one thing."  OK, it's a goodie hut, I know that already.  Clicking OK brings up another dialog with the thing you get and more flavor text (which doesn't actually describe what the thing does) and the awkward Use/Trade/OK options. 

I recognize that it's important to inform the user of what's going on, but these interactions are needlessly awkward.  Dialog-itis!  The frustrating part (for me) is that you don't need them.  You have a really terrific notifications system already in the game.

So my recommendation is that you try to get rid of all the modal dialogs that don't present an actual choice and replace them with notifications.  (In this case "Strike the Earth!"  or "Item found").

Umm, no. I enjoy reading these

And you would still be able to read them.  Whenever you want.  Because they would be notifications, not modal dialogs that force you to read RIGHT NOW.

But if you watch Frogboy play you can actually see (and hear in his speaking) the awkward effect of these dialogs.  They totally break his concentration and knock him out of the game.  He's not reading them (because he already knows what they say) and just clicks through as quickly as possible.  The point is frogboy has a plan for the next couple moves and the game interrupts that plan with inconsequential modal dialogs.

I too enjoy reading these in their current pop-up form.

I noticed in the vid that the injury the one champion obtained (the ear), the was no longer a pop-up for that announcement. I think that detracts from the RPG element. The pop-up should stil be there.

imo, there should be even more rpg pop-ups and cutscenes along the way.

I noticed in the tool tip that it is 2 dmg per level.  That would be, what, 20 damage at level 10?  I agree, not great at all.  However, what if it was made true damage or something, where resist doesn't affect it, or like a spear, where it penetrates 66% of the resist?

Since Lairs seems to be more relevant and important now, what about making them have their own ZoC? (Mini Wildlands) That means you can't build stuff next to them, and if it overlaps with any outposts etc. they still keep it 1 square around them. (by default, dragons etc. could have bigger ones)

I think that would solve lots of stupid stuff the AI does, and give a more predictable game. It would also make it possible to design maps where you need to clear lairs to get resources etc. 

Other than that, fun video.. though I *slightly* disagree with your choices

I second sweatyboatman's dialogue suggestions, especially that "far beneath the withered... blah" at the beginning of the game.  I have NEVER been able to get my custom sov/faction text to show up in that window ever.  Ditch it.

Other thoughts:

 Instead of the equip/trade/ok screen can we just have the sov/hero inventory screen with scrolling arrows for multiple heroes in a stack and the ability to assign the item right away?  I noticed you forgot to equip the poison vial to your sov when you first found it.

The Fame icon should be in the popup with the lair cleared message: +1 Fame (symbol).  I hope there are fame multipliers for epic city battles or sov/sov battles.  Or victory against great odds.

Also, could we at least get a figure outline/paper doll for our heroes/sovs for item equippage?  ala HOMM3?  A little more intuitive and fun.

You never built on the shards within your ZOC throughout the demo, could the yellow turn button be expanded to prompt you about undeveloped resources in your ZOC?  Please make this available ESPECIALLY when you unlock the NECESSARY tech for an initial build or an upgrade.

I lol'd at the ctrl-n at the beginning with the essence-less start.  A special capitol building that gives +1 essence per level would go a long way to making the capitol special and fun.  Or use the governor traits mod from Emmagine and the unit traits from Dsraider to spice up the cities and the unit abilities.

Can we snake a tile or too as the city grows like Parrotmath's mod?

The tactical battles look awesome!  Love the new mechanics.  Agree with Nichtganz as to the "casting" of special abilities at the start of combat.

Would love to see a special morale ability that occasionally gives a unit two moves in a row.  Or make it monster only 

Please give me the choice of ALL basic weapons at game start and let me improve them with research.  Crude/Basic/Advanced/Masterwork or something like that.  The Armor techs over time make more sense, but the weapons restrictions are silly.

Give trained units a bonus trait every 5 levels or so to make them more interesting/deadly/usable as the game progresses.  Fix the Upgrade system to be more consistent  (i.e robes vs. leather breastplate, one needs crystal, the other doesn't).  Or make it available as a default option.  

Definitely develop a summoner path and give summoners access to special units no other sov can get based on different magic types.  Joeball123 has good ideas above.

One other fun idea ala Magnar's slaver trait.  If I defeat a settler unit, my nearest settlement should get a +30 pop bonus.  

Keep it up, you guys and gals are making me drool!

There are a lot of things I love about FE and a few things that I hate... glad to see some of them being addressed in FE namely:

a ) movement path with # of turns identifier

b ) attempts at solving the pioneer spam problem

c ) closer tactical battles so that i stop winning every time with ranged units

d ) champion level-ups

e ) champions come to you

Governor with the modified skill tree is actually a great path for one of your champions.

The problem with the old governor in FE is you were presented random upgrades. 

With the new system you can build a custom governor that focuses on research or credit upgrades. Much more powerful and unique this way.

What I would like to see with the customization is more skill or spell unlocks rather than base stat upgrades. Even passive upgrades that do something in battles would be cool, like immune to swarm or something like that.

 thank you for the vid Frogboy

some comments:

- i like the new hero level up system and the whole fame thing. i disagree that path of the governor should be replaced, though. i always thought that governors would be way better if their bonuses were not restricted to a single city. just make their opener something that also works while they are out in the world exploring (like -5% unrest in all cities or something). as a special little perk they could have abilities similar to silver tongue (bribe enemy trained units and/or bandits with cash) or better loot from defeating armies. they would suck at combat, but dragging them along with a personal army would still be worthwhile.

- i really like the improved tactical combat system. i love that swarm mechanic. i hope this mechanic will also be used to make infantry units more useful (by giving lower/no swam bonuses to cavalry and/or making cav more vulnerable to swarming). in FE, once you can have horses, you really don't have much reason to build infantry units.

- city growth based on food makes a lot more sense, and merging prestige and influence into the new fame score is probably a smart move. please consider an option like in civ 4/5 that forces you to build something in cities. it gets annoying to manage a larger empire when you have to manually check your cities at the end of the turn. not sure if this should be mandatory, but i'd love to see it as an option that can be turned on by lazy folks like me

i smiled when you mentioned that you played a paladin in world of warcraft that was my main character, too when i still played that game

The 3d map is almost taking on a spartan, WoM-ish look.  I personally would prefer an option that added ground cover.

Looking really good. Bring on that beta!