so the best idea for a sovereign build

I dont know, i did the opposite.

Made a mele havy no magic at all sovereign on hard map and hard opponents and was able to easily "rush" them...

so even if magic is such a big part of the game u can do very well without any magic at all... if thats your thing

  Yeah, but my point was that you can make your sov melee heavy easily by adding as many str and def rings as you like.

The best idea for a sovereign build? Hmmm ... let me quote Shakespeare: "As you like it."

The wonderful thing about strategy games like Elemental is, that its not so much the minimaxing of particular character attributes that matters as rather your overall strategy in game and its adaptation to circumstances.

Your sovereign is (sadly?) just one unit out of many.Powerful, but still not omnipresent. So you can design him just as you like.

But more on the question: while being a caster surely has it advantages later on as the sovereign is one of the few (or rather the one) caster chars you have. But earlier a fighter might make it easier for you. Essence is nice, but without spells?

Rabenhoff

PS: Oh how I love to have left the minimaxing of World of Warcraft or other MMOs behind me. Put one skill point different from THE raid build and be prepared for hours of flame over voice-over-IP. This might also explain, why my post is maybe a bit aggressive. So please forgive me.

Magic is butt useless right now, as are sovereigns in general, so whatever.

And I think the fact that you can load up on unlimited amounts of certain gear slots is obviously broken (or horribly bad design).

I give mine the thief profession for more spoils from victories since you fight a bazillion battles in this game.  Gildar from beating up the endless beasties is a major revenue source.  So why not and no other profession is really worth much long-term.  You never stop beating up beasties unless you get bored sick of it (which I kinda already am, I avoid mobs when travelling eventually since it just slows me down).

I give him organized and tracker so he moves faster and his army moves fast with him.  Getting around quick for those bazillion battles is handy.  First two level ups I boost his foot speed (could do more).

I give him the ugly trait because you still get a bunch of kids (4-5).  I give him the stupid trait because magic sucks and it doesn't matter if learning spells is slowed slightly.  Once you get rolling you learn spells so fast you wish you could make it stop anyways.

I put all extra points into con for more initial health with the plan being to put armor and health on the sov as he levels so he doesn't accidentally die while automating battles, since tactical combat sucks too.  Eventually I start giving him essence for the ultra rare times I do tactical and wanna watch him cast near useless spells.  I keep hoping magic will suck less, but as the game progresses it becomes more and more of a joke.

Basically my sov is just a cheerleader and teleport bot for my death squads.  Tech up warfare to make parties, tech up equip til you get med kits, custom design troops with armor (def) and medkits (health), train squads.  Own.  It starts sick and just gets to be ludicrous as you ramp up warfare tech.  I put the best armor I can on my sov and give him a med kit and health items so he doesn't die in easy battles (annoying because when you have uber death squad units your sov should never take dmg, but the autoresolve thing is kinda iffy at times).

You will make squads, because your enemies will make squads and because beasties will start to get really nasty, much nastier than your feeble magic or summoned wusscakes can handle.  Once you embrace squads, everything falls into place and you realize just how effed up this game is. 

All this is subject to change over the next several months as this game gets finished and balanced, magic sucks less, sovereigns are useful for something other than the first 30 turns or teleport bots, and so on.

Reminds me a little of Heroes IV... sure the hero could be pretty powerful... but once the stacks started getting bigger... instadeath

So my sovereign is relegated to pumping int and essence so I can do stuff like locking down an enemy with freeze or stab of ice. And summoning the odd sacrafice who will soak up counter attacks so I don't have to sit in town for years while my squads regen.

Putting points into constitution or wisdom at character creation is a bad idea.  Once the game starts, main stats gain 2 points per level up, but HP and Essence get 3.  So it's better to spend your starting points on other stuff and then get your HP/Essence up during your first few levels up.

I think it depends on how you fight.  Magic sovereign is probably really great in auto-calculated battles, but magic damage does not currently scale correctly for shards controlled and misses far too often in tactical battles.  That has been aknowledged in the support forum by stardock and they've already got some ideas on how to fix it. 

If you stick to tactical battles then a brute force champion would be the best choice- as their damage and to-hit will scale correctly.  That is correctly compared to the insanely high stats you can get from stacking items.  It really depends on whether you want to take advantage of the lack of a limit on rings and amulets, how much you want to take advantage of it, and how much you want to spend on a single champion.  A balanced champion (though I haven't found much use for charisma) works pretty decently too.

I've become a big fan of pumping points into movement at start-up and early levels (organised, tracker), and charisma at start-up to help early recruiting of heroes - the bonuses they give are powerful early. I take enchantment as the only spellbook to be able to cast the small city boosting spells early, and basically use my hero to pick up level 0 locations and ferry the army around.

Equipment boosts his combat sstats enough later, use him as an archer if nothing else

You can actually hit mid-level creatures with a bow?  Man hitting things with bow units in tactical combat seems like a frustratingly rare occurrence for me no matter my stats.  I find I get better results with a melee power-house armed with either a lord hammer or the elementium sword.  To keep him from dying, I just let his bodyguard units soak up all the counterattacks before he steps in and whomps whatever it is he's fighting.  Although if you do autocalc battles, it seems that bows hit more often and they should prevent characters you've equipped them to from being one-hit counterattacked in the autocalc.  I learned that with my first couple jansuks.  Poor little bugger didn't seem to know when to sit back and let the peasants soak up the spider venom before he ran in swinging.