How would you have mana upkeep in current system?

Individual mana-pools is fine for an RPG, but for a TBS it doesn't work very well.

Being able to pay upkeep is like being able to pay rent.  Or pay your soldiers.  Or anything else that you have to manage as a resource.  It's part of the game.  If you want to summon UBER MONSTER X, you have to pay the upkeep cost.  This helps balance summoned creatures against other creatures in the game.  Also, global mana pools allow number of other advantages, such as multipe feed sources, upkeep pools, and universal access.

However, a popup, "casting this spell will deplete your mana pool below your required upkeep" would not be a bad idea. 

There are some good points made here. I too am concerned with more "Globals" as I see it as a way to simplify detailed mechanics. I'm fine with some things being global of course, but other things being global feels too "gamey", "gamey" as in something that only makes sense in a video game and not even in Sci Fi or fantasy literature.

To give an example of how global things feel to me, think of this made up example from Star Trek. Bare with me on this, I know this is a sci fi reference but the same thing applies in my mind at least.

Lets pretend that in Star Trek they still had weapons that needed ammo. In the middle of battle if your ammo runs out, they have a transporter system already set up with beam in coordinates set to beam a full ammo magazine straight into the chamber of your weapon, without you even having to stop to reload. The old cartridge is beamed out while the new full cartridge is beamed in. Even with Star Trek transporter technology that just sounds Lame and Uninspired to me. Even with the Sci Fi lore that just sounds like a lazy and cheap explanation as to where your ammo comes from.

In my mind that's kinda how I see some of the global systems in Elemental. Sure, you can explain it like this, but it takes away from the feeling of accomplishment. Now, if I had to actually do a little work to get to that stage, say by having to research the transporter tech, find the materials to make the ammo, then have the ammo sent to the transporter reloading station, THEN I wouldn't mind having my ammo transported into my unit's weapons without me having to do anything. Any other way though and it just sounds lame to do.

In traditional forms of Fantasy Literature, Wizards, Magicians, Mages, whatever you'd like to call them, all have to study and learn for years before they can cast even the simplest of cantrips or spells. It takes a lot of work and effort to become even a moderately powerful spell caster. Having a vast pool of power just handed to a unit with no work to earn that vast pool doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

I'm greatly hoping Frogboy's environment of this new Global Mana will have some depth and detail to it other than just giving a pool of ammo to a bunch of weak casters. They need to have other ways to differentiate themselves from each other or each caster will just feel like a walking mouthpiece for their respective sovereign. For now I'm simply waiting to see what the chief comes up with and then after we know what's up with that we can concentrate on hammering out the finer details of it assuming Frogboy and the devs let the players have a chance to change things like they did through-out the beta process.

global mana is a great idea. this way your faction's mana regen rate isn't a product of the number of channelers and imbuing becomes what it was always supposed to be: a method of sacrificing your individual casting power in exchange for the flexibility of having channelers all over the board. currently it's stupid not to imbue four or five people, because it increased four or five fold the total amount of mana you'll get.

I favour a global mana pool heavily.

Why because you have to budget with it them, you have to think to yourself how much mana should I commit in this battle and how will that weaken me until I rebuild my supply.

But of course it needs balancing appropriatley how much mana can a Kingdom store, how much does it regenerate in a turn, there should be way to enhance both of these and of course spells all need rebalancing.

And why spending all your mana in a single battle will temporarily render spellcasters inert the mana pool will soon rebuild to  the point where they can cast low level spells again.

Basicly the new system makes mana a proper strategic resource for your kingdom and if it's balanced right will work very much better than the current system as well as opening up other possibile ways of spending mana now it's a resource.

So in summary I'm for mana being a global resource what worries the OP is actually a good thing from my perspective.

Personally I loved the global mana system that MOM and AOW had.

Global mana works well in Age of Wonders. To summarize how it works, you have a mana resource, which is aquired from various sources (in EWoM it would likely be shards amoungst other things). The upkeep for things like summons is subtracted from income. Finally, units that can cast spells can use a finite amount of mana per turn based on their ability to cast spells.

This model fits well with the game's backstory. Channellers draw power from the shards, and then use it themselves or "feed" it to their followers to use.

That's actually not a bad way of thinking about it. There was a fantasy book I read years ago, and sadly I can't recall the name of it since it's been so long, but in the world there was a class of magi and they could only learn magic by having the spark of power given to them by a mage. All magical power in the world came from the first magi, some uber powerful guy that was born thousands of years before and who became the god of magic or something like that when he gave away the last spark of magic to make another magi. It was a really kick ass book and I'd kill to remember the name of it. Elemental reminds me of it a bit.

global pool of mana is a no brainer. But this imbue thing is confusing issues..

Mana global pool is determined by improvements, shards, and wisdom/essence of soverign. Maybe even spellbooks taken or level achieved.

Early game it would depend heavily on the sovereign (as other factors like shards dont come into play yet), so stats like wisdom/intelligence, spellbooks taken would heavily influence how much mana you get.. That way, you could have a warrior type soverign but would have less mana to throw around..

I assume, if your sovereign  has say a wisdom/essence of 10, you generate x mana every turn say.. The important thing is to allow it to accumulate. Not like the currently RPG system where you have a fix cap , which regenerates..

On top of that, each caster can channel only a limited amount of power each turn. 

Champions imbuded with power could say channel up to their wisdom in mana each turn. As they level up, this could increase.

Soverigns as befits their status will have much higher limits say they can channel up to 3x-5x their wisdom or even have no limits (mod perhaps) ! In late game this would make soverigns very fearsome units as they could rain down insane amounts of magic in one battle. 

In a typical MOM by late game you would have hundreds or thousands of mana.. imagine between able to rain down a larger fraction of this.. If two soverigns squared off it would be really a huge magic duel.. the ground would shake in the battle.. summoned creatures would duel with each other..etc..

Imbuing champions should have a tradeoff. Each champion you imbue can either

a) Reduce the soverign's personal power, say it lowers his essence/wisdom?? which lowers how much mana he can channel each turn

and/or

Reduce the overall mana that is generated as soverign's essence/wisdom is a huge part of determining mana inflow..

I suggest maybe only (a), so a high wisdom/essence soverign would always be able to produce X amount of mana, but the choice is between having several casters + a soverign that is able to channel less power and one soverign but one that is able to generate insane amount of power but only at one spot at a time..

I'm thinking of balancing against warlike soverigns with low intelligence/wisdom who plan to imbue champions to do spell casting. ..  Depending on the numbers and other factors (how important soverign is to mana generation compared to shards/improvements) a warlike soverign could get away with imbueing lots of champions who in total could channel the same amount of power as a magical soverign. 

That's why ( is important so even if this happens..  they might be able to match the casting ability but would not have the sheer casting power/mana. 

I suppoe I am looking at this from a ver Lore-oriented point of view - which befits the variety of gamer I am. If I were a channeler then allow other to cast from my mana pool (Imbued Champions) wouldn't be a big deal. The problem arises when you consider my childen - they aren't imbued they have inherited my "magical nature" - not my magic, the essence of being magical. This should mean that they generate their own mana as innately magical people - they don't depend on my continuing existence for access to power. If the mana from both sovereigns and offspring goes into the same pot - that just doesn't make sense from a Lore point of view, no matter how much strategy and tactics are improved by the change.

We might have pretty similar takes on TBS games. I've been 'role-playing' them since Civ 1. And I remain convinced that one of the top 5 mistakes the Elemental devs made was to treat the cosmology (metaphysics) as a decorative detail that could be left very rough long after the mechanics were 'nearly finished.' Now they are left with the task of reverse-re-engineering things so they are both more fun at a raw game level and more immersive at the story layer.

Complicated stuff has also never been a problem for me (as long as the UI can explain it somehow), so I find the idea of a mana pool for each channeler or scion to be yet another good idea to add. Especially if scions end up being able to imbue their own champions. That could lead to very interesting situations where a sovereign needs to work hard at keeping family relations strong because a couple-few of the strongest scions have their own imbued champions and losing the lot of them could cause all manner of problems.

See https://forums.elementalgame.com/397160/#2778711

It's worse than I thought.