So many posts complaining about bugs. Beta is by definition unfinished product, that's why it is Beta.
From my work experience in Corporate Finance QA there are 3 ‘test’ processes.
Peer testing: This is developers checking each other’s code. This is where the major ‘defects’ are found very early in development. Forgotten tables, tables not linked, do tables populate… Very basic flaws. There usually is no formal defect process for issues. It is brought up person to person in the development team and dealt with. It is much faster this way to correct issues. This is also where major conflicts can be found in coding versus the specifications.
UAT or Alpha Testing: User acceptance testing. This is an in-house group that has worked closely with the development team and the customer (if applicable). They have been involved since day one in meetings and through all the functional specification reviews. They are intimately familiar with the program, its functions and the business needs. They write and perform all the Test Cases that were drawn up and based on fully testing the functionality of the program from the functional specifications. This is where things like data in tables, formulas, reports, screen functionality, typos and such are tested. This is also where full regression testing would occur. There is a formal process for reporting and documenting defects and re-testing the fixes.
Beta Testing: This is a sub-group of the end users testing the program. They would use it as ‘real world’ as it is intended. There are no official test cases, they are given real world work to check functionality. The same Defect reporting process as in UAT/Alpha would be used to track defects and test the corrections. After passing Beta it goes right into Production.
For something like the event count crossing between QI and St P event, that is a tough call if UAT would have caught it or not. The developer might have given UAT a heads up to look at it. Something like.. “I touched the event code when I added the QI counters. Run QI parallel to the current event to make sure nothing is broken”. Otherwise, it indeed may have been completely missed by UAT.
For the settlement and population counts, not being able to delete buildings, Euphoria and all, that should have been an easy UAT catch doing normal functionality testing.