I agree - having more land changing/healing spells would be wonderful. In fact, I would have imagined on reading the background of the game that most of the magic I'd be casting would be raising/submerging land and altering the face of the world, both to help my nation and harm my enemies and they'd be doing likewise to me.

Doing stuff like creating fertile ground and whatnot. Maybe do away with fertile ground as a resource that's already on the map (except maybe in very, very few quantities). Make me have to consume essence and research magic to create fertile ground at the cost of my essence. Basically, trade some of my magical power to put life back into the land and sea. I think it should be a permanent loss to create living land, just like for embuing champions. Want it back? Level up and put the point in Essence.

Gives me something more impacting to do with my mana instead of building it up just to cast 2 or 3 chain-lightning spells in battle. 

Agree with this totally, as originally the land part was really one of the big things for me. It got me thinking of AoW and how each different team practically had its own terrain type (snow, desert, wasteland etc) - which added to the cosmetics of the whole thing but also influenced mechanics. 

It feels really cool when you have the power to warp the land around you to meet your demands, and it also gives you a vested interest in the world itself. Right now the sovereign isn't unique in any capacity, and the land is just a prop for the city building. You don't feel as though you're healing (or warping) a destroyed world any more than you feel as though you're wandering through a desert. 

Giving the player (through the sov) more dramatic and variable capabilities to affect the world would greatly increase variability, immerse the player more in the world, increase the feeling of us guiding 'our civ' (which in all honesty is currently nonexistent), and ultimately increase replayability.  

I have a couple of suggestions with regards to possible things

1. Magic is obviously the obvious thing here, as I think there's only about 4 or 5 spells that have a lasting effect on terrain, and even these are relatively trivial unless you're using petty tactics like city walling. Implement more permanent (both cosmetic and non) spells that give variability to the terrain. Footstep enchantments (wherever sov walks the ground is turned into x terrain [snow, desert, swamp, etc]), perma-terrain painting spells, varied overland spells with regards to terrain (unit gains +2 mov on swamp, unit gains water walk), and more geo-shaping spells would all help increase the feel that the soverein truly does have the power to shape the world around them.

2. As an addon to this - shards. These things have so much potential and have completely gone to waste, if they are the untapped sources of elemental power in the world it should feel like it. They shouldn't be just sitting out in the open waiting for anyone to just come and slap a brick tower on them, it's ridiculous. Have shards deforming the landscape around them, especially upon release of their elemental powers. An earth shard could be surrounding by spires of stone, or have the land underneath it rising and falling, becoming mountainous  and other things. Water shards could be located in the middle of icy tundras or even in swamps or water, periodically flooding the immediate area or freezing things within range. Fire shards could be releasing motes of lava or create a desert around them, scorching anything that attempts to grow; and air shards could have lightning coursing around them, horrible storms and the like. 

     Tying into this is the idea that controlling these shards is not just a matter of building on them. It should directly involve the sovereign (being one of the most powerful people in the world) and require their attention, and should have benefits and effects (not necessarily positive) that truly are gamechanging - giving players a reason to fight over them. Controlling an earth shard could periodically let you throw up a mountain, or even give a one off ability to summon a mountain range or something upon capture. Water shards could raise the ocean level (would be very difficult to implement) or freeze huge portions of the landscape. They need to feel like unleashing them is an immense (and like I said, gamechanging) occurrence. I've made a quicky tile in about 5 mins (Using the very, very good editor provided) below to show how the current scale doesn't give them the credit they deserve (and that is possible).

As can be seen above this tile is simple to make (literally took me 2 minutes), but also feels much more dramatic than the normal 'untapped' earth shards provided in the basic package. If spell effects and animations were to be added to alter the geology of the land it would really give the impression of something powerful and game altering. 

Put simply, I completely agree with the OP and the lack of any ties to the land. There really is no point for the green and black texture change and it doesn't really fit with the feel of the whole kingdom vs. empire thing either. The empire do not by any means feel evil enough to warp the land in such a malign fashion, nor the kingdom el natural enough to bring about trees, flowers, and fairy dust. 

All that said I realise it's high past time to make any changes, hopefully this all provides some modding inspiration and gets the devs' attention.

Sorry for the wall of text and I can't wait to play this game!

Paradoxical

I like the idea of the Sovereign being tied to land, and I agree it doesn't feel much like that at the moment.

The way I would probably do it is:-

-Take out Old Growth Forest, Fertile Land, Orchard tiles. They seem a little forced to me (why does my kingdom only have two farms? why can't I harvest wood from just any forest?)

-Make the area of Greenness that your Kingdom creates represent fertile areas. You can build a limited amount of farms/lumber mills as city upgrades, and only on green areas.

-Break the connection between your borders and the green area. Borders represent political influence, nothing more.

-Give spells so your sovereign spends essence/mana to greenify an area.

-Certain techs and city upgrades might auto-produce green around cities, but I don't think it should be by default.

I don't think sovereigns should be able to create gold mines, lost libraries etc. because this doesn't make much sense to me and could be overpowered, particularly if someone focused putting masses of resources around a single city.

There would be problems with the Empire factions with this, as their blackness seems like it should be more associated with industry rather than fertility. But then I only play Kingdoms

Edit - 2nd idea. Maybe the green/black areas should give a % bonus to any cities or resource tiles within their area, and are again created only by an ordinary spell, not by natural city expansion. So if you cast "fertilification" on your farm, a green area covers it and surrounding tiles and you get a +20% bonus on food production. This would be less overpowered and you could justify spending ordinary mana on this rather than essence, as its only a small bonus.

You could ignore it if you were not magically inclined, or use it a lot if you prefer magic to ordinary civ upgrades. Ideally there would be two tiers of green/black, so that you could work your way up to Lothlorian green or Mordor black.

Also it would be easy to use offensively to harm another player (defiling the land etc.). Empire and Kingdom could not coexist easily, as their actions on nearby land might nerf your cities or resources.

Would allow you to easily add "snow" or "lava" races later on too

They'd be trading that economic boost for being able to cast spells, in effect crippling a magic focused sovereign in order to do it. Every resource square you create is going to be another spell you can't cast or another champion you can't imbue. Plus I think magic is somewhat more important than an economic bonus; being able to create more troops is pretty meaningless if the other guy can summon an entire army from thin air.

Meh, Canon is whatever you make of it.

Instead of being able to create resources out of thin air, how about letting the sovereign spend essence to enhance existing resources?

I think both qualitative and quantitative enhancements could be fun:

  - Quantitative: the resource makes more of whatever it makes (farms produce more food, gold produces more gold, etc)

  - Qualitative: the resource changes to a different kind of resource.  Degree of similarity to the original resource could vary -- so maybe horses turn into dire horses (which look big and nasty, have more hit points and the ability to attack), but iron mines turn into crystal mines.  Could be a lot of fun, but also obviously potentially unbalancing.  Note also that you lose the original resource to get the new one, and the new resource might not be strictly superior to the old one; if you turn your only iron mine into a crystal mine, you will probably be a sad panda.

Honestly, I think having resources be much rarer would solve a lot of issues with overabundance of wealth, etc. There should be much harder choices for healing the land as well. Using essence, etc.

A sort of "king of the hill" feeling would be great for shards.