First off, by "mage-type sovereign," I mean a sovereign created in the sovereign creator to be a good spellcaster from the start, but who may lack the talents/attributes/class that really benefit the warrior-type sovereigns that this game seems to favor.
For a mage-type sovereign to be viable in the early game, as things currently stand, you cannot really afford to cut str/dex/con for int, spellbooks, and talents unless you are going to be a VERY passive player until you have a few supporting peasants and/or champions. On the other hand, a warrior-type sovereign can easily be the most powerful unit in the world in the early game by maxing str/con, minimizing int, and taking the right class and talents. To balance this, I would suggest that a mage-type sovereign be granted 1 or 2 spells, possibly even 1 spell per starting spellbook, that can put an early game mage on par with an early game warrior. This would mean, at minimum, a tactical spell that does 2-5 damage for 2 or 3 mana to match the amount of damage that a warrior could put out with a basic staff which a sovereign can (or does) have access to at the beginning of every game.
One way that this could be implemented is by having each spellbook selected grant a point or two that can be used to gain access to initial spells in the equipment list. Or, choosing a spellbook opens up a list similar to the talent list beneath that spellbook and you get to select any one spell from the list to start with.
As far as early game mana goes, I think that the sovereign's mana generation should be affected by his/her intelligence and the number of starting spellbooks that the sovereign takes. For instance: the 'real' mana generation by the sovereign is (base_sov_mana_gen)*(0.9 + int/100 + 0.1*num_start_spellbooks + class_mana_gen_modifier), where base_sov_mana_gen is 2 without Attunement and 4 with it, int is the sovereign's intelligence, num_start_spellbooks is the number of starting spellbooks taken (0 - 4, or possibly 1 - 5 if you count Life/Death - I don't because you do not pay for Life/Death spellbooks at sovereign creation), and class_mana_gen_modifier is some penalty/bonus of a magnitude between +0.2 and -0.2 depending on class taken - I think that for most/all classes this value should be 0, but having it available could be useful. Assuming that the class modifier is 0 for all classes in the game, this produces an initial mana generation with a minimum possible value of 1.9 (int of 5, no attunement, no starting spellbooks -> multiplier works out to 0.95 applied to base mana generation of 2) and a maximum of 5.8 (int of 15, attunement taken, all 4 starting spellbooks -> multiplier works out to 1.45 applied to base mana generation of 4). This system would give primary spellcasters a significant early game mana generation advantage over warrior-type sovereigns that becomes somewhat negligible later on as more shards are controlled. Also note that the multiplier is ONLY applied to the sovereign's contribution to mana generation, and that, realistically speaking, a sovereign is not likely to become a mana generator of great significance late game, since the multiplier only grows by 0.01 for every point of intelligence.
As a side note, I noticed that a couple of the Fallen races have access to a 'Dark Wizard Cloak,' and some of the races of Men have access to a 'Wizard Cloak' - perhaps these should be moved from clothing to equipment and give +X int while casting spells? I also like the idea of having separate point pools for equipment and attributes, but the current unified point pool works well enough.
