Well, I liked the way my kingdom developed on the last playthrough, unlocking stuff fast ment I could tackle tricky stuff fast. But I'm in the "completion's it's own reward" demographic I guess.
The problem, though, seems to be that what you unlock in the beta is tools which seem necessary. In the alpha there was no CP (past the glyphs) and all gods started unlocked, while the classess were relatively easy to unlock. People will rush unlocks in the beta - I've tinker scummed for them occasionally just to give myself options.
So my line of reasoning is what I said up there - if players feel the need to rush unlocks to get to the "intended" number of shops, all classes and all preps, altars and stuff, and the perceived "intended" number means all unlocks asap, then the only way to reward the players is to start cutting unfair advantages on the other side. The players starts at an "option hendicap", but if it weren't way to late, the vicious dungeons could keep the player at the options hendicap unless proper completion was achieved. The end result would be proper "campaigns" in every direction to make inroads which would bring vicious down to your level once you've unlocked all the options and beat horatio.
And err, sorry if this looks like complete reiteration.