I grabbed the demo for this and had some high hopes since it was put out by Malfador and I loved SE2-SE4 (SE5? notsomuch...). And it definitely feels like those old SE games.
Fun...but very very rough.
A lot of balance issues and a lot of AI issues plague an otherwise clean and fun system. But just like in the SE series, there are a lot of options, but very few that seem to be worth their cost. For example, unless I'm missing something, why would you ever build a city? Even in a 'good' territory its going to earn about $2 a turn, meaning at least a 50 turn time to pay off! Or I could invest that $100 in more military and take an $8 or $10 territory in few turns. Ditto for many other options...neat concept, but not a lot of return on investment.
Anyways, I'll keep an eye on it since Malfador has a track record of supporting games for a long time but at this point, I dont think I can justify the money spent for what amounts to basically a game still in development. But here's hoping it gets polished up into the solid, light little gem that it seems like it can be!