I've been playing this game a lot recently, and it's quite good fun. I'm on my third city right now, my first one I restarted after at a couple of hundred population because once I got a handle on the resource extraction mechanics and scale the game requires I realized that being in the middle of a infertile resource less wasteland isn't that much fun. Second city I ended when I was about 1200 pop into a only lizardman city and sorta started to understand the game isn't made to be played as a single race city and complex industry is very difficult to support with the wrong races. At least early game. Now I'm at about 2700 pop with a decent mix of all 6 races. Still a small city compared to the npc capitals and the 15000 title, but I think I have more or less seen most of what there is to see in the game thus far.
I've conquered or purchased 6 nearby cities, including 2 npc capitals which I've been building up to be fairly major vassal cities (Both much larger then my own capital lol) Too an extent I feel like the game is breaking down now and becoming less fun to push forward. Conquered cities produce such an amazing overabundance of raw resources that I've stopped expanding any races parts of the cities except the dwarves to craft complex goods (mostly paper) and the humans to deal with the ever expanding bureaucracy. Combat, now that I've getting into it seems... Bad. I've never had an absolutely huge fight with thousands per side, my biggest was 500 troops on my side and about 1300 on the enemy side... The fight consisted of my 400 lizardmen melee troops being totally useless except as arrow catchers as my 100 elven archers shot the entire enemy army to bits... Maybe it changes at higher numbers but the AI seems to love to stand back and loose a ranged fight, arrows seems hilariously lethal compared to melee, and controls for actually getting into melee combat seem unbearably awkward and slow. All together combat is not a very satisfying experience.
That said, I'm excited for early updates to polish up this part of the game. And certainly the more early-midish game is imo pretty great. There are some weird niggles with some mechanics like furniture and maintenance that I hope are dealt with, but overall I've certainly been enjoying it and I think it's worth the price.
By the way, I'd be interested in seeing peoples towns. Here's a big ass screenshot of mine.
As you can see, still tons of room to expand. Although might need to set up more suburbs. In this I have all 6 races for the most part in their own areas, although 4 are quite close. The central area are humans and a lot of the services, to the south of them are the farms with the Cretonians (pigmen) living nearby. North of the humans in the mountain are the Dondorians (dwarves), and then on the other side of the insect pens to the north of the dwarves are the Garthimis, who farm the insects and mine. West of the humans are the Tilapis (elves) who tend to animals and farm trees. Elves also make and train with bows And far to the west in the lake and on the island are the Amevias (lizardmen) who fish and become soldiers. Humans have almost run out of room, if I keep playing I think I will need to make a new suburb area, probably south of the farms.
I do think one of the best things about this game is how satisfying it is to have a real town with thousands of people living in it. It just feels a lot better to me then a lot of other games in this area, even like dwarf fortress, where your city ends up holding only a few dozen to a few hundred people.