To address various points:
Well, it's the same way in GalCiv2 whereby the pre-made races included bonuses would entail more points than are available if one were to build them as 'custom' races.
This is quite possible, but I never noticed it as much.
I suspect that a part of this is that with the pre-made races (in GC2) or sovereigns (Ele) is that they include things that you wouldn't otherwise spend points on. Such as receiving all 4 elemental spellbooks + life, or 15 points for a spear, etc.
But then why does a spear cost 1/3 of my starting points? If it weren't so expensive, maybe I'd buy it. That doesn't really address the problem.
From a longer-term perspective some of these don't make sense (you can still only research 1 spell at a time, I presume, thus having 4 spellbooks might be more useful than 1, but may not necessarily result in more spells per-se, for example; or spending 15 points on an 'oak spear' isn't something that anyone might normally do because one could just wait xx turns/months/whatever and buy one with the money being thrown off by their kingdom/empire), so these are 'nice' but not necessarily all that powerful in and of themselves.
Determining what spells you have access to right off the bad has been, in my experience so far (and I've played quite a few games), not game-breaking but significant nevertheless. And, as I said, if the spear isn't so powerful (I don't think it is), why does it cost so much?
Additionally, using a pre-gen sovereign eliminates the ability to stack some very powerful combinations. I have not played the beta, but they are sure to exist (such as the 2 abilities that give +1 movement, plus the ability that allows everything in the stack to keep up with the sovereign's huge movement).
I'll grant you that one, certainly.
This has actually always bothered me a little bit in GalCiv2, but not enough to go in and modify the various racial abilities as I'd always figured that they were pretty well balanced. I'd guess the same is true for Elemental and might venture to say that you should play the game a few times through before deciding that things are unbalanced. I suspect that the pre-gen sovereigns are for people who just want to play and don't yet really know about how to go about designing a specialized sovereign for their particular play style (ice-master, or super-breeding super-recruiter, ugly man-killer, etc, etc). If you're making a sovereign that is alright at most things but not really great at anything, it doesn't necessarily make him/her better overall than a specifically designed specialist - even if it takes more points to make them not get killed off right away.
But consider: for specialist caster, we have Procipinee (max stats in both casting stats and all elemental spellbooks, in addition to a staff.) For warriors, we have Irane and Markinn. I didn't look at the Fallen sovereigns while going through this, I'll admit, but I suspect that they could fill in many of the roles mentioned to a similar degree.
Wait you have not been able to make a custom sovereign that wins against any of them? My custom wipes out 3/4 of the map's opposition w/o every using a built unit The only time I ever had to go back was the Emp already had a bleedin' dragon.
it's not about total points , it's where you put the point!
I've never lost to the computer with my custom sovereigns; this is partially because the computers in the beta are as dumb as bricks. I've played quite a few games, thank you, but I fail to see what my personal ability has to do with this.
And yes, the location of the points is equally important, but, as I've mentioned above, pre-made sovereigns can fill most of the roles you'd make custom sovereigns for, and you'll get other bonuses. They can't have certain specific combinations like a custom sovereign can, but this seems akin to saying that, in D&D, one player rolls 3d6 straight down for stats and can assign them wherever they like, but another rolls 5d6 and puts them in the order rolled. The first may be more specialized, but the other has a far higher overall basis of abilities and is just generally better. They might not be as good in one specific area, but they'll have stats that won't be too much worse in any one and will have bonuses on others that the lower-powered character couldn't dream of.
Specialization tips the scales toward custom sovereigns. I will not dispute this, and I will admit that it is certainly worth something. I still say, however, that total points count toward equally as much.
SEVERAL EDITS LATER: Quotes are formatted properly now.
