I agree with EVERYTHING above.

Sovereigns should have an ability to start with some basic attack magic or defense magic.  At the very least, there should be a profession that the sovereign can start with that lends to magic use and magic warfare.

I created two cities and now I can't learn the upper level spells.  My essence has dropped to 5 (started with 15), and I was able to build it up to 8 through leveling, then I died some, and now I can't even teleport home to cry about it.

A couple of tweaks recommended:

MAGIC:

• Mana = Wisdom x 2 (or x3), Essence = Wisdom; keep the stats separate.  Essence can get reduced each cast so you essentially run out still, but still allow mana to be used to cast other spells. 
• Also, there must be a way to get essence back without leveling.  THAT is a game breaker, without which the game will not be fun.  Possibilities:
  • 5 - 15 turn creep that builds it up, adding a perminent +1 to essence every  X turn, and the ability to research a quick essence turn gap (bringing it down from 15 to 13, or so).  Then, create a ceiling on the max amount.  This would create an incentive to use up the essence pool rather than hording it for some sort of essence spam.  (In one turn, create a volcano, and summon an elemental of each type, etc. etc. etc.)
  • Attach the essence stat to the amount of spell points generated per turn; so if you get two loremasters that generate 2 spell points each, two research academies that generate 1 spell point each, you have effectively increased your essence by 6.
• VermillionChaos is dead on with the favorites tab.  A nice way to get to favorite spells would be keen.

SHARDS:

• I would greatly prefer to get one free shard in one of my cities, a type of my choice.  Several reasons:
  • I can't use any spell worth mentioning (except wildflowers, pretty!) without a shard
  • When I choose or create a soveriegn, I lock into one type of magic, which is pretty useless since I won't be able to cast any of those spells without a shard of that type.  While I can research up to get other magics, there is no value in starting with a special school if I cannot cast those spells without a shard
  • Shard spamming: I could easily see one player take every shard just to lock it up from the opponent, not entirely feasible, but possible in a large game where multiple PCs are trying this strategy.
• So, if shards are not easily accessible, I would rather they have a different function:
  • Shards only used to grant access to higher level spells
  • Shardds add a cumulative bonus to that type of magic

ADVENTURING:

• Right now some of the technologies are redundant.  I can already recruit, and yet I am researching the ability to recruit
• I'm not quite sure what a lot of the guild halls do.  I haven't seen new champions running around afterwards, nor have I been able to build specialized assassins
  • Small note: assassins should probably be later on in the tree; right now they are the first thing I can get.  Even though I don't know anything about what they do, it does not sound like the first thing a guild would set up, right?

Permanently trading your Essence for something beneficial is a core concept of the game and should not be changed. Losing 1pt of Essence from dying is appropriate. Death should always have severe consequences instead of being a minor inconvenience. I would even take perma death and game over much rather than making death inconsequential and the game world less immersive as a result.

But maximum Mana should be separated from Essence completely. I would rather have a Mana Vault / Mana Crystal city upgrade if there really needs to be a maximum Mana.

I didn't have much time last night to play around with it, but I agree with the spell issues.  Some quick thoughts:

The spell info 'page' does not display Essence cost - spell card (from character spell tab) shows both Mana & Essence costs.  I want to know how much Essence the spell costs to cast, before I learn it.

Spell breakdown:

I think there should be 3 'types' of spells.  Generic (anyone can learn), School specific (must have the school, can be chosen at creation or maybe found as a book/reward), and Shard based.

Hmm...  If I create a Sovereign with no schools of magic chosen, I would be able to learn Generic spells, through research.  If I want to learn Shard spells, I need a city tapping a Shard resource.  But I would not be able to learn School based spells at all.

Let us learn schools, possibly from a quest reward, or random cache reward - but those should be 'phat lewt', rare & with tough guardians.

On the other hand, if I create a Sovereign knowing the Fire School, I should be able to learn 'minor' Fire magics - Firebolt & such.  If I want to get the Wall of Fire spell, I need to build a city at a Fire Shard, and research it.

'Epic' spells should require both knowledge of a school and access to a Shard of the same kind.  Maybe anyone learning the Fire school could throw a Fireball, and anyone controlling a Fire Shard can raise a Wall of Fire - but you need both the School & Shard to raise a Volcano.

Research:

I would rather have a similar mechanic that Master of Magic used, instead of how it is currently.  (Not sure if you can change it at this point)  Instead of being able to learn anything that I had spell points for, with points growing to a limit, I would rather set a 'Spell Research target', and have the points feed into it until completed.

Either that, or you need an extra icon on the left icon bar, that lights up when you are at max spell points again.

Perhaps the Loremasters would let you set multiple spells to learn, instead of simply giving spell points.

Love this type of spellbook organizational idea!

Also love the idea of a slow Essence regen.  I read that you are changing city creation to requiring the Pioneer Pack, and the Sovereign starts with only one.  So, all the Sovereign can do is found one city then run around and create a lot of fertile lands - but you still have to train the Pioneers to start new cities.  With the changing of the city founding mechanic, you should rethink the permanent loss of essence.

Yea if there's one mechanic I hate with a passion in this game right now, it's giving up levels for stupid little summons. 

I have to say that I agree with pretty much all of these suggestions, but since the people here seem to have some of the same basic ideas that I have had, I'll re-iterate my specific issues with Magic so-far:

Spell Points:

I really dislike the current spell-point system, because not only is it unintuitive, but you can lose the opportunity to learn things by not paying attention to it. (You have a max of 15, if you don't choose to learn something, it stays at 15...you could have learned a ton of spells in say 10 turns at +2 SP each, but instead you were busy doing other things and forgot about it, while the CPU most certainly will not.) Learning spells should be more like research and you shouldn't be able to unintentionally gimp yourself by not using them up.

Mana: Mana at the moment is based on Essence, and I really agree that this should be changed. The best suggestion is that it should be say based on Max Essence, and that 'temporary' essence should perhaps have some other effect.

Essence: I like the idea of Permanent and Temporary essence. I am thinking it represents the sovereign's level of power and weakness. I don't think you should ever permanently lose essence, but the higher your essence is (and closer to max) the more bonuses you should receive, and the lower it is the more penalties the sovereign should have.

This way the essence expended by spells and founding cities would temporarily weaken the sovereign, enough that even a powerful sovereign might need to rest in a city for a few turns after expending a lot of essence, but it wouldn't be a permanent barrier that would make you suck forever.

Obviously, if a sovereign dies they can be dropped to zero essence and receive a ton of penalties which slowly go away and are replaced by bonuses as they regain their essence over several turns. There can even be buildings or specific items that allow a sovereign to gain essence back more quickly.

Changing Essence in this way would also benefit sovereigns who focus less on magic, as the bonuses from having full essence could apply to combat, too.

i agree as well with whats being said.  i love the concept of essence being a powerful resource, but it should be separate from max mana.  then again if instead of a 1 to 1 ratio it was more like 5 or 10 to one, i find that acceptable.

i think shards should only be required fro very powerful magic.  if you have 1 shard you can do amazing things, get 2 and it should scare the hell out of your opponents, get 3...well its Armageddon time.

maybe no spell should REQUIRE a shard, but every shard you control increases the power of the spells exponentially.

so you can still volcano without any shard, but it is a small volcano only taking up 1 little square in the city(basically destroys improvement, tile is useless until dispelled).

have 3 fire shards and its a massive volcano(you should be able to choose the size if you wish, small to huge) that destroys an entire city.

I agree also, and have some suggestions about handling Essence:

I agree with Hound that paying Essence for beneficial things is a core concept, but it seems to me that for all the things it is used/required for, and for the cost of those things, that the existing mechanism to get more Essence is insufficient.   You pay it to create cities, you pay it if you die, you pay if for some beneficial spells, it sets you mana limit.  Heck, there's even that Strange Noises quest where you pay 5 Essence and get a few wolf units!  Personally, if my sovereign dies, I will reload rather than pay the Essence cost.

Reviving the land around the cities and turning it green again is a really cool part of the game - I'd prefer every city to be surrounded by green, rather then the mechanism mentioned somewhere of converting a single square to build a city on without revving the land.  As it stands now, a magic focused character will be completely gimped if they crate more than one city.  That seems really unfair. 

Picking a single point of Essence at level-up in lieu of all the other stats is too high a cost, for too little a gain.   Some ideas:

1) Sovereigns gain Essence automatically as they level up.  The rate could be based on Widom stat: over 18 gets 1 perlevel, 15-17 gets 1 per 2 levels, 12-14 get 1 per 3 levels, etc.  Alternately, it could be based on choice of profession, which would provide another way to differentiate them.

2)  Essence regenerates back to its original max slowly over time (ie: something like a point every 10 turns).  Perhaps being in a city increases that rate (or allows it to regenerate at all).  Perhaps a special city improvement is required to be researched and built first.  Being in a city to regenerate Essence has the opportunity cost that your sovereign isn't out exploring, finding treasure, leveling up, etc, so the regeneration still has cost.  It even has the benefit of making a weak "stay-at-home" all-magic sovereign a bit more viable.

3)  Selecting Essence at level up increases max Essence by 1, and restores some number of Essence points.  The number restored could be based on Wisdom, profession, a random roll, etc.

4) Some combination of, or all of, the above.  This would make Essence a fair bit more plentiful, but ideas 1 & 3 are tied to leveling up, while 2 works against leveling up.   This could also be balanced my making Essence needed for more things and putting in a spearate city cap of some sort.  And since current Essence would still be the mana cap, spending too much essense would still inhibit your spellcasting until you could regain all those points.

If you really don't want regenerating Essence:

5)  At level up,if Essence is chosen, gain 1 or more points based on Wisdom score, ie: 18+ gets 3 Essence, 15-17 gets 2 Essence.

6) Make Essence less critical: Remove the connection between max mana points and Essence, remove quests and lesser spells that require Essence.  So only major big-time benefits will use any Essence.

I can't really see anything to add here as these are some great ideas except another post supporting and lending weight to these ideas.

as far as enchantments go.  yeah its overpowered as is.  i like the enchantment slots as long as each city has its own enchantment slots.

each city should have an enchantment slot area.

there should be one for global enchantments as well.

there should be improvements that can be built that hold enchantments in city.  you build one and it gives you 1 or more enchantment slots.

Actually pad152, at current it is the other way around.  Civic > all other.  In 2A I could have you swimming in 2 att 3 def 10 hp units by like turn 70.  Just research civics up to houses and t2 research buildings, then go over and research up to 10man squads and hardened leather armor.  Then build 10man caravans between every city.  Then start city spam up, till you have cities pretty much every 4 tiles .  The caravans pay for it all, and add so much work you can swamp everyone with wave after wave of crap units, and you have a mountain of research from all the towns.

So dirty.  But I am sure they have disabled that caravan plurality via companies by Beta 3 .

My idea for death consequence is pretty simple, there should be a loss of str, dex, end, wis, cha, or int and 1 health to reflect the cost of getting safely away with only injuries, and maybe there could be a building in a level five city that eliminates the penalty if you get sent to that city after escaping death, like a channeler's tower.

Going to agree on the regenerating essence bit, make it towns only (that should prevent the insane and inneficent traits from being freebees). It should also be slow.. like 1 every 10 turns, with the possibility of a building or research lowering it. Maybe death should take more than one essence if it is returnable? How about having it start at 2 and increasing by 1 for each death. Eventually your soveriegn will simply die, which I presume is supposed to eventually happen anyway, for your kids to take over.

Actually right now there is an issue with the sovereign's children - they don't gain essence, which If I recall correctly was supposed to be one of their major benefits..

I agree with the entire OP apart from the 200 spells. I think 100 is a nicer number, there's enough that you don't instantly learn them all but not so many that it'll take too long to learn them.

Bonus DLC and expansions can add more so we learn them as they arrive. I'd even prefer it that way.