I have to disagree, well only partially but still, Essence IS available on a decent level or at least can be with a bit more tweaking of numbers. There are Essence potions or whatever those are called they add .5 essence to sovereign. I've had +2 essence in 10 to 20 turns simply from errand quests. THAT means 2 fertile grounds for example. Heck, that's worth something. Think about adding that to a city with 2 more food sources, food enhancing buildings and food specialization. It's hutfest time!
Maybe I got lucky, maybe I my estimations are off, but the potential to work is there, and the idea itself works.
Keep in mind I haven't dug deep enough into mysteries of the arcane, as a matter of fact that's what I was planning for todays playthrough.
Miracles aren't something to be throwing down the wind.
Essence is meant to be a mechanism that limits the use of very powerful spells. Those can range from sovereignoforming to Frog knows what.
The Idea is to allow something very powerful but to prevent its overuse, and essence does that perfectly. (What we need, i believe, is some mana regeneration tweaking, but that's not a very qualified opinion). Spells that use essence are meant to be used with merit and care. I have my doubts that summoning for essence is right, but I don't give it a second thought that revive land is worth something permanent.
It's not the first suggestion to suck out the energy from land. Think about it. You notice a fertile ground... nah, I don't want an outpost here, but my metropolis needs a lawn... You notice your opponent building a city in a strategic environment, haha! I'll eat his fertile ground! He should have known better not to leave it around.
I think some spells that allow to remove unclaimed resources would fit high level magic, but they shouldn't reward player with anything other than their direct sabotaging effect.
Land is not meant to revive sovereigns, sovereigns are meant to revive the land.
And, just to remind you, there are already spells to turn water and mountains into land (dunno how else you plan to get essence from them) and back and it already costs mana, and does so for a reason... Landscape is a powerful gameplay element already. Whenever from consuming it or simply holding it turning it into essence harvest would result in havoc.
We may, need/get more spells to cast than we currently can with a given level of effort dedicated to building essence, but that's just number tweaking, concept itself works.
Bottom line - Essence is meant to be as scarce as it is.
P.S. Oh, and spell power (where applicable) is already based on int, although there might be better ways to scale spell power.
