Shards are supposed to be very rare now, so their will only be like 4-8 of them in the world rare. Of course they should up spells more then int. You can gain int every lvl if you wanted too.

I'm fine with the idea of rare shards and big benefits. I'm not okay with auto-winning the entire game without creating a single combat troop.

It REALLY makes the first turn advantage stand out when on the first turn you are able to consistantly do hundreds of damage to a group of opponents with an int 9 hero.

Starting damage is too much. Shards give too much of a bonus. Intelligence may be something you can gain every level, but the bonuses are very small, meaning two things: 1) theres little reason to get int. 2) high level spell casters who focus heavily on int are just barely stronger than low level spell casters.

I noticed this in 1.06 and 1.07 too, when playing with mods that fixed shards damage scaling. But main difference is that then shards did simple doubling of base damage. One shard did +100% more damage, two +200%, etc... So it did made Intelligence become better over time, unlike current solution.

Or that pulling them together is only cost effective way to use magic (due to low mana regen per single person).

I mean, I could cast up to 3 spells per caster in single round (combat speed above 3.0) with my army that was 5 channelers (yes 15 spells), but that's wasteful. The only reason I stick them together is so that those with highest current mana do the casting, while other rest.

So they behave more like single caster with mana regen of 5. Or two casters with mana regen od 2.5.

P.S.

Casters really should not be allowed to cast more then single spell per round, ever.

The shard balancing is completely out of whack. Right now if I see someone with a shard I like, it's like auto war, even if I wasn't even planning on rushing.