I bought this game and played it over the weekend.

I've noticed two things that keep me from playing this game any further:

1) Chain reactions.. I think this a real game design mistake: The demand of goods has no buffer. As soon as an important source of goods stops working (e.g. in case of a fire) chain reactions are triggered - just because people can't live a half day without stones or wheat. This is annoying and completely unrealistic.

2) Fires. Show me a city where buildings catch fires twice a day! This is nothing unusual in GA:R. It get's even worse in campaigns, as soon you have two or more units of soldiers waiting to attack a barbarian village. I don't know if this a meant by design, but the game always keeps me busy with controlling fires as soon as i start building a small army. It feels like playing chess against a computer, which is suddenly turning five of it's chess pieces into queens because it want's to keep the balance of power.

Funny too: Prefectures can't extinct their own fires. They always need another prefecture. It's like a bakery that needs another bakery for buying bread.

3) Knowledge producing buildings are pretty useless in single player mode.
Actually you don't need more than one school.

And still: All these problems are just annoying. The game itself is far too easy. I played it like 6 hours and had a city stuffed with everythings that's possible. This is boring, as long as there's no real endgame.

Thank you.