Looks nice but the lack of actual control makes this game insufferable. Everything has been simplified to a point where you can only control where specialized buildings go but everything else in under the mercy of the AI. This includes fun villager features like:
- storage workers walking across the map to collect resources because you don't tell depots to collect only from certain buildings/areas,
- housing density crashes because the AI suddenly decides that it doesn't want to patrol some of the houses,
- no control over which houses your villagers live, meaning that if you want a villager to move closer to their workplace, you have to demolish the house they currently live in and make everyone else move out in the process,
- villagers walking across the map to satisfy their basic needs while they live less than 30 metres away from a food stall,
- workers failing to satisfy their needs from whatever they make (like cheesemakers getting angry about not getting cheese while making said cheese before going home, getting water, going to church and enjoying their free time before passing by the cheese merchant selling the very cheese the worker has made on their way back to work),
- villagers raiding the mess hall(s), which, and I quote: "lets you provide Food to Combatants" of your castle, leaving your soldiers hungry and unhappy (unless you have food stalls in your village, hopefully near the castle (which will also get raided by your villagers)),
- farmers not utilizing the entire crop field, giving sub-optimal harvests, thus lack of wheat and finally lack of bread,
- granaries and warehouses filled haphazardly (do NOT use "stockpile" -feature, BTW), which can result to a worker delivering two fishes across the map,
- pings from unhappy villagers who don't know how to satisfy their needs in a timely fashion with seemingly random, illogical and unhinged work times and
- soldiers refusing to complete their training, thus making them likely to be injured during their next mission if not straight up dead.

Add the other issues like not having even a vague estimate on how much of each resource you're expected to be making in certain amount of time (meaning that the best you can do is spam and reduce production based on how much you've piled up in storages and HOPE you don't run out of something like food), having to find out the hard way what needs the villagers have after promoting them, rushing to get whatever they need to prevent them from leaving and the constant lingering feeling of uncertainty to the game. And what do you get?

Another game you'll be happy to uninstall. And for your sake, I hope you're not an achievement-wh**ing completionist like me. "Just" two more and I'll be done too...

- - - April 8 - - -

Holy f*** nuggets, the devs even screwed up the bailiffs. Okay, let's set the scene: you can nominate a bailiff to your town, who will give you a buff, like 10% trade price bonus. You can upgrade this bonus by increasing the "splendor" of the bailiff's office, which will then increase the bonus. Nope, you'll also have to fire the bailiff by changing the office to "free build," back to office and then hiring another bailiff to refresh the bonus.

My final city made it to almost 700 people. And it was horrible. People got more and more unhappy because they started to take so long to fulfill their needs. That's right, if your city grows too large, the people will take MUCH longer to go from point A to point B. Because they game will have so many dumb AIs to sort out that it takes ages to process each task.

If this doesn't give an idea of the kind of slugfest you'll be in, I don't know what will.