I would like to see each fraction play differently in tactical battles and attacks on their level 4 or 5 city.

What would I like to see?

Tactical battlefield's for an attack on a Wriath, Trog, Mancer or Tarthan Level 4 or 5 city should be dramatically different, and if possible altered by improvements built for that city.

Tactical battles with each fraction should feel different.

Each fraction should have early access to spells and weapons that are specific to that fraction. Other fractions can uncover these spells and weapons; however, it will take research for other fractions to gain access to them.

Fraction?

Yea ... you know. The thing with a Numerator (the leader) and a Denominator(the people).

Yea I have to admit I just assumed people knew that FE was still early in its development.

I blame version number. It can lead to false expectations. I do still remember those crazy beta numbers back in WoM though.

If FE was a house. And the BETA are stages along its building. At what stage of construction would the house be?

If the game was a five-dimensional portal, and one end was the sound of summer, and the other end was the colour of dreams, in what manner of time units would you describe the current state of the beta, mutatis mutandis?

And don't just say "Friday". It's soooooo predictable.

Reminds me  of certain TV ad about tampons.

Question:

Answer: 42.

I think a lot of people are used to Betas that hit one or two releases and then go prime time. Not to say there aren't lengthy ones out there (Diablo and Minecraft come to mind), but like Wintersong mentioned, I'm sure it's the version number that seemed to indicate a full release may be near.

Do the version numbers "mean" much? I mean, is it going to go to 1.0 after .99 or will it follow and go to .10, .11, etc.? Does the versioning indicate feature-completeness?

In the past they have gone to .99a-z before release.

It's just that, for those that were in the WoM beta from the start – at least, the state of FE BETA is still better than WOM at start (maybe even better than WOM... nom).

What we can play with "looks like" it's in the balance phase of a usual BETA.

Must have been listening to the beta-testers before I saw your post.

I had assumed WoM was still early in its development...

Fortunately FE is looking like a far more viable project. 

But once burnt, twice shy.

I never seen the game broken into 3 acts. Every game I ever played goes like this:

Act 1:  scouting the world, Build city, encounter non-aggressive monsters and meet some Factions. Find some quest but these are usally just minor stuff that rarley gets completed due to Act 2 when all hell breaks loose.

Act 2: usally turn 30 or so. All out war with factions. Monsters start to become more aggressive.

Never have an Act 3. Never encountered any of the World areas (I forget what they are called) except the one where you can't enter due to a bug.

So pretty much the rest of the game is war (which I don't mind I like an aggressive AI just wish the monsters were more aggressive) Too busy to explore except to get more resources.

I have similar experiences.

Act1: Explore with champions, farm weak monsters and go around tough monsters while building cities. Monsters don't really stop you from expanding because you can just build 3-4 tiles away and then your territory will drive them away. The #1 thing that prevents me from building cities is the AI beats me to it and takes all the good spots. Cities get placed fast, in fact if you build anything other then pioneers first then you probably won't get more then 1 or 2 more cities.

Act2: Get into a fight with another civilization, fight some of the medium monsters.

Act3: Mop up of other factions and maybe clear a Wildlands if I can.