Tested this and completed wealth victory with two different heroes - one who had achieved wealth victory last alpha.
Having the new character in Zodchiy does make it more of a challenge.
The improvement of only needing one architect in your country and the rest from Zodchiy was a big bonus especially where you did not really want to build another town and play "hunt the architect".
It was harder and significantly longer to complete the victory in the hero who had the previous victory and the additional steps in the quest.
One confusing thing is that the achievements are at the user level (ie across heroes) but the ribbon on the medal is at the hero level (ie you only see the ribbon on the medal if you are in the hero that achieved the victory). I haven't restarted the successful hero to see if the ribbon has changed after two victories.
Another nice addition would be to have a reminder of what you are doing and the amount of resources required in the quests panel. I had to keep going back just to find out how many resources I needed.
Being in a helpful, supportive alliance does make the victory achievable and it is a shame that the alliance does not get credit and is penalised (eg by loss of world map contribution) when the victory is achieved
