[beta 5 idea] Should Champions and Units have an Essence rating too?

Unit Spell buffs are pretty powerful. I look forward to the upcoming balance work on the game looking at some of these, which needs to happen regardless of anything like this. But another poster suggested to me that when the AI learns how to start using magic more widely, the game might come down to an arms race where everyone has to buff every unit to be competitive.

The idea didn't appeal to me. I already think that buffs tend to diminish the importance of military tech and a unit's natural combat abilities, by being able to buff anything up into a formidable fighter. Buffs should enhance, give them an edge over a similar unit,  but not make a leather clad unit as good as a chainmail unit by giving it +12 to defense, and making it heal 7 points every turn for free.  I don't want to think of a bunch of homogenous units that must always have all the same buffs to be competitive.

Now  the concept of Essence is in for cities. It needs its own fine tuning.  But I like the idea of essence as an indicator of the number of enchantments that can be run simultaneously.

If Champions and Units had their own Essence rating, it could be a measure of the number of magical effects they could channel through their body before the powerful energies ripped them apart. So if you started with a default of three, you could run three enchantments at once (as opposed to every enchantment in the game). Here's what I think that does:

1. Could be one step towards balancing unit enchantments, and forcing player to make tougher decisions rather than the no brainer of throwing everything on a single champion. Other balancing in terms of cost and power expected as well.
2. Encourages a player to spread the wealth, and make tactical decisions (strategy!) about upcoming battles, rather than running units permanently buffed with every available enhancement.
3. Provides more opportunities for unit/champion differentiation. Always needed.
4. Helps provide value for the use of armies again, rather than individual super champions for most of the game. Needed.
5. Provides another opportunity for champion level up traits. +Essence perks
6. Provides another opportunity for traits in the unit designer. (this unit gets +1 essence)
7. Provides opportunity for +essence tech in the magic tree
8. Provides opportunity for +essence magic items
9. Yada Yada +essence Soverign and racial traits
10. Perhaps Procipinee's crown could be valuable because it also gives a + value to #essence, giving the wearer the ability to stack X additional enchantments right from the start

11) And here's an interesting one:

• Perhaps certain armors are better at channeling enhancements than others. Perhaps heavy armour interferes with magic energies somewhat, making lighter armors weaker defensively, but more versatile magically.  Right now the game has little compelling reason to field light troops given a better choice, other than cost or encumbrance which aren't particularly fun reasons. All other things being equal, the game considers heavy armor melee troops to be a "better" version of lightly armored melee troops, instead of different categories of armour having their own progression, and distinctive value. Perhaps Heavy armor gives an essence penalty, light armour has no penalty, and a robe has an essence bonus. So even someone with a high degree of military tech might decide to field lightly  armored troops if they are magically oriented, and want an army of "jedi" or magic monks.