It is possible to make a powerhouse champion

In my experience, your champion could still be taken out by a couple lucky shots by a big creature. Maybe this has changed in the last couple updates, though.

That is true.  The random numbers makes things difficult.  Same way a unit with 1107 attack (burning blade abuse) managed to do 2 damage.  That's why I used a bow though, and the champion never traveled alone, less chance of ever getting hit by those lucky shots.  That AI tends to target low armor units first and 42 health is enough to protect against most AoE spells.

Now that you can only build one temple of essence, how'd you get their essence so high?  Even on a huge map, I'm never able to find more than maybe 10 of those 0.5-mana boosting potions.

I usually have 15/20 heroes like this if the game gets to 300/400 turns. Leveling up your guys many times in long games is not that much of a problem. I've been able to get my sovereign up to level 14 and many champions in the level 10 to 12 range. You can actually get constitution up higher too, but typically you want champions to be useful so either raise essnce/int (spellcasters) or strength for bowmen. I usually shoot for 30 hp which is about 20 constitution, similar to the OP screenshot. I agree don't risk them in direct melee, they tend to die at 30 hp, archers are your best choice. 

I think the soverign actually gets a percentage of everyone's experience gain because I've seen my sovereign level up after other champ's battles.

Essence can get way high if you choose it every time you level up, even with 20 temples of essence it gets out of hand, especially for heirs, I've seen guys in the 300/400 essence range, other player's mention 800/1000 mana. I think it's kind of useless that high becuause you can never regenerate it, it would take 200 turns to get a 1000 mana guy up to 200 from zero, maybe more if he had that wonder improvement, which I wouldn't count on in a multi player game.

I should point out that the moves in Rilis profile are 7 while the moves your cyan arrows are pointing two are 5.5. This is an indication that those attributes are for the stack, not Rilis. I played a game where rilis has similar starts to what you have there but she kept getting massacred.

She had moved that turn, didn't notice that.  But if you notice Rilis is selected from the stack so it is her stats only.  Those companies in the stack have longbows and every possible attack boosting magic item (except the +3 attack -3 defense ring).  If it was the stack stats it would be over 1,000 attack.

I got the essence that high because I have 10 shards, and have captured the cities of 6 AIs.  I think at least 4 of them had a temple of essence built.  Didn't really pay attention because as CPL_RK stated after a point max essence doesn't matter.  Somewhere around 50-70 I stopped ever having max essence.  Oh, I also had magic research done and had taken the max essence +10% a few times trying to get arcane research +10%.  I think Rilis's natural essence is something like 15 give or take a few.

Nice stats, but.. how does she compare to any of your 12-squads? I don't remember the stats for 12 elite longbowmen with some leather armor offhand, but I'd bet on them to beat Rilis (more often than not, considering randomness).* Less damage output, but more health, etc. It's not that champions are bad, it's that regular soldiers are better - making champions weak by comparison. Take any champion, and an equivalent squad is faster to train (compared to levelling up a champion), immensely cheaper (compared to buying champion equipment), and not subject to randomly getting killed whilst levelling up (training). And consider that red shirts can get levels too, for what it's worth. The numbers need balancing, basically.

*Edit: Thinking about it, 12 guys with longbows and leather may not kill Rilis there, but you get the idea. Even if it takes 24 basic longbowmen, or 12 well equipped ones with magic items and such, they'll still end up being faster and cheaper to get than a fully equipped level 15 champion, which is the problem.

Of course champions have spells/abilities which should theoretically balance out weaker raw stats - but that entire system is due to be overhauled in 1.1, so any debate that touches on the current spell system is moot. Not to mention changes to squad training times, specialists and population use for military, and so on. Which reminds me why I was trying to avoid balance discussions until then, let's just wait for 1.1

I loaded that game to check this.

Attack 225, defense 23 (they're archers and never get hit), 3.3 combat speed (though it's actually 4.3 in combat because of the typical +1 everything gets) and the biggest difference is the one I checked has 1,159 health (it's level 13 and was trained as a veteran I think).

You are very right they would beat Rilis in a one on one.  But Rilis as is can take out any/all wandering monsters I've come across alone and as a "commander" of an army is absolutely excellent.

The cost I don't agree, all the equipment for a champion is around 3,000 gilder.  Those 12 man squads are (roughly) 2,800 gilder, 190 crystal, and some materials (never pay attention to mats).  Also with the current bug of a injured unit that levels not gaining current health only max health, if the unit gets hit by the time a 12 man veteran squad gets to even level 5 and full health I could have easily leveled a champion to at least level 10.  Seriously, healing from around 300 health to 800 takes about 60 turns stationed in a city, with the medical kit and a 300/800 health 12 man company is actually only a 4 or 5 man squad and so not as effective.

The only real problem I see is that champions/sovereigns need hit points that scale linearly with level.  Really, who doesn't instantly push the auto-resolve button and reload when a champion dies?

High level champions should be able to wade in and go toe-to-toe with any opponent in the game (and to do that, they need a lot more hit points).  It should take a serious army of peons or a comparable champion to take out a champion.

I've had stronger champions, but they still didnt have the HP to be really powerful.  What can a 70 hp champion do to stacks of enemies with 1000 hp and 400+ attack?  Not shit.

I don't. When a guy dies, he dies. If my soverign dies, game over. It happened one time, my only loss. I do occasionally underestimat some of those monsters, there's a wide variation of those drakes, which I learned the hard way.

I just don't have a desire to play a game after I've "cheated" & restarted, it just trivializes the game somehow. Even if I won, I'd know the win was only because I cheated ... but this is just me. Other players are probably different. It's partially why I try not to create uber-characters, because somewhere, somehow, someone is just going to create a character that's more uber than yours & you'll lose him at some point. And this goes for other uber-things too, like dreadnought type ships in 4x space games, sometimes they do get destroyed.

I'd rather have multiple strong characters that can "fill in the gap," so to speak, if a strong guy happens to die. I think this is especially true in this game since squads are stronger. You can spend 400 turns making your sovereign or some other champion uber stong, but if I get a first shot with my level 10 8-man horse archer squad that cost me 2800 bucks, 190 crystal, 100 material, and 50 metal to build with an attack strength of 120, your soverign is going down, if not with the first shot then the second or third.

The more strong a player makes a character the more "attached" you'll feel & the more letdown you'll be when, cuz you know that's gonna happen, he dies .. especially when you play multiplayer and/or FTF. I've lost many tiger tanks in my day.

But, this is all kind of moot, because apparently the 1.1 version is going to implement *major* changes to T.battles. From what I gather, it's no longer a one-side-moves then the another. It's going to be based on "piece by piece" by "initiative" which I take to mean combat speed. Also, spells are going to take longer to cost (according to another post I read in another thread) and archers are going to be prorated with range (reducing their strength with distance), again according to another post I read by one of the devs. So, putting it all together who knows what the end result will be? Obviously, combat speed is going to be a significant attribute in the new system, but as far as how everything else is affected, who knows? Archers may not be as strong as they are now, they might not even be viable as a combat unit if they end up nixing them too much in the new version. It's all a matter of degree and balance.

I think *any* change will be better than the current "move-first-I-win" combat system which really sux big time. If champions happen to get a little stronger in the new system fine with me, if they stay about the same (in relation) fine with me too .. I'll find a place for them to fit in my army anyway.

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Exactly, it'll be a totally different game with 1.1 ... I hope better

Imo, you waste the atk scroll on your champion, you know that you can get sarog at about turn 100 and give him all your atk scroll and he can have 300-800 atk depending on your luck on finding tandis vs talax book , and that takes only 1/2 of the turn you need to make such a champion, and he does fixed defense piercing dmg.  No champion or sovereign can have 80 str in normal game (no trainer, no bug abuse, no mod).

Well, the fact is champion in this current version of elemental are trash, the only way to go is armies. Ok, champion as magic user is still better than the combat specialist one, especially the non dmg dealer magic user, especially if u want to abuse fear (can keep champion with mana regen always have max mana), haste, burning blade and its kind.