Frogboy said something cool in this post: https://forums.elementalgame.com/386232/ Reply # 17

If this is the case perhaps we research the books we have. We might all start with the four elemental books and the life/death one, and in sov creation you choose one (or more) of the books to specialize in. In turn they cost around 10-15 points instead of the measly 3 they do now. This would make that jack of all trades much harder to have.

When you research a book, you pick a new spell or improve an old one. Dependiing on the sovs specialization and the difficulty of the last spell researched (so that you pick a hard one it will take longer for the next one).

This presents an interesting idea for shards. Every shard captured increases the speed in which you research spells in that book.

And by tapping the power of the shard you instantly research the new spell but the shard damages the land around it and the shard will be useless for a set number of turns so that this is bad in the long run.

What do you think?