So, I found out how to change the amount of levelup points a champion/sovereign gains per level, and how to change the amount of statpoints each level-up point gives (The former is in ElementalDefs.xml, while the later is located under CoreUnitStats.xml).
Now, my problem is: In the interest of making my mods small, easy to manage, and less likely to negatively interact with other mods I decided to ONLY mod the specific entries relating to leveling up (Detail at end of post) while not even listing the other contents of the <ElementalDefs> tag. I figured if I dont list any, they won't be changed. However, since I didn't list any other contents of <ElementalDefs> the game seems to think that I want to use hard-coded values, and completely ignores the content of ElementalDefs.xml - which results in funny things, such as me starting new games with 1000 gold, and an income of 3 gold, 3 tech, 3 arcane knowledge per turn.
Is there a way to get the game to load all the original information, and then target tiny changes without re-listing the entire content of ElementalDefs.xml?
The referred code is:
<ElementalDefinitions>
<ElementalDefs>
<!--** LEVEL UP **-->
<StatPointsPerLevelUp>2</StatPointsPerLevelUp>
</ElementalDefs>
</ElementalDefinitions>
The <ElementalDefs> in ElementalDefs.xml contains many many more tags, and apparantly adding a mod with only the code listed above causes all these tags to be ignored.
If you want to try this yourself, the mod is in my public Dropbox, simply save, then copy the following into your /My Documents/My Games/Elemental/Units Folder - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9164057/Malloreon_LevelupChanges.xml
NOTE: You have to rightclick this link, and select Save As.. in order to get this.