My impressions of version 0.2.3:
* Finding and equipping characters for each production building is a lot more fun now. Many genes that actually improve production, for example.
* If characters' clothes are unequipped for any reason, and then re-equipped later, they lose their color scheme. I don't like it.
* Mainland requests are still giving a boatload of mana. But I don't have enough warehouses to store all that mana. And I can easily fill my meager mana storage with some fighting. So the requests look totally pointless now. Maybe in the really late game, when I have whole cities made of warehouses.
* Breeding got a lot more difficult, as breeding high-level genes requires high-level strapons. Which you are not guaranteed to get from the books.
* Speaking of books, is there any point to paying x10 for more advanced books? Do they have some exclusive recipes?
* One can now unlock a technology without its prerequisites. Like a reinforced dildo needs a wooden butt plug to make it (and not a wooden dildo for some reason), but you aren't guaranteed to have the wooden butt plugs being found first. I guess it makes sense when looting random books out of a dungeon.
* There is never enough wood. Looking forward to dryads. Or maybe I should build a second woodcutter after all.
* It's good that every resource can now be harvested in a ranch. But ranches suffer from the same cost increases as everything else.
* Cost progression on outposts encourages getting tricky with them, for good or for bad. I have 3 outposts securing my main base, and I'll probably need at least 2 for every shrine. Except for the one on the little island - it looks like it could be just cleared out.
* Genes that increase skill damage by a set amount are powerful. Especially when one replaces ordinary punch with quick jab from the cestus of speed - it becomes much more devastating than a sword.
* P.S. And the new encounters at the end of dungeons? Bring plenty of slave gear, so that you can take them with you! Because they naturally have 2-3 tier genes, while most other enemies have just tier 1 genes.
It still works kinda... problem forests, leather, mountains, iron, aphrodesiac are all no build zones. I think mines you can build on mountains but they are not outposts. So you can fence off a bit but most of areas are nonbuildable zone. Though I guess you can find way to slowly pacify large area from coast to coast I guess but it would be annoying. Need to clear enough dungeons, need clear outpost tiles, need clear road times to bring roads to outposts and then hollow out the occupied area. Pretty huge and usually with level 5 areas. though I think those can be isolated with outposts the most of them have enough buildable terrain around those.
Well, that's just something you overcome with strategy and city planning. Without that, the city-building side of the game would be too easy and boring.
Note that you don't need to connect everything to your main city, it's enough to connect them to the nearest port.