Thank you for playing and for the extensive feedback! I agree with much of your observations.
Some core mechanics are still up in the air hence the lack of balance.
1. I think it depends on the map generation and spawn locations. AI having access to wonders at the start just provide more of a challenge and incentive to harm them. Due to so much random generation I have had many games that are challenging and other that are too easy. I will provide more way to configure the map so if you choose you can play without wonders.
2. The motivation to create more towns is 1. a town can only have a max of 50 units so defense is limited, you may want to max out multiple towns. 2. you may see resources that are in other areas that would take too long to expand to. 3. The more towns the more of the map you can see and take advantage of encounters you find. 4. You can reach further out in the map with more towns. 5. Towns population generation maxes out at 10 units per turn. so multiple towns is useful to have multiple source of unit generation.
3. The goal of the game is to have many paths forward or combinations of gaining fame to win. Combat is probably providing too much fame. I have gained fame many other way, exploring, missions, wonders, and even hunting (killing the rare buck). All skills should be viable but will require much balance.
4. I agree in general that the proc object need to be balance. WIzard are cool since they hit for 3 and have a 50% to chain lightning to the next guy. Wolves hit for 1 but then cause bleeding of 1hp per turn. Dragons will hit all opponents for 1hp.
5. so the idea is that each encounter object requires a set number of units, however combat encounters are different in that they use up to 25 units. (5 stacks of 5)
6. Morale is a % that is added to every chance and should be working.
7. food and ale are auto consumed (1 per turn and provide a bonus to morale)
8. Sand is supposed to be useless, its generally a tile to avoid when setting up a town, or can provide a challenge when starting with a town. It should not spawn more than other tiles its pretty much up to the random generator. You can regenerate the map as many times as you like in the setup.
9. Correct, the red/green bar should indicate your odds of success. Dice rolls take longer, require more screen space, and are more difficult to understand a simple percentage. I like the animation to make it feel like a dice roll. However I will consider other options here since it likely will be confusing at first since no one has every seen it.
I would like to keep in touch since your feedback is very valuable to me, would you mind joining my discord channel? https://discord.com/invite/YbmZS6SXGw