Seems like Champs should have personal guards.
I don't know if I like the idea of "Personal guards" for champions. This could be an interesting idea for the sov as it would make sense in the lore, but I think that champions should be thought of as captains/lieutenants which oversee various aspects of the faction. Considering all the changes moving into 1.1, I think that the role of a champion should be expanded.
Currently, A champion has three basic roles. Firstly, a champion is an upgradable combat unit, capable of being tailored to the needs of a faction. Secondly, A champion is a city support unit, with abilities which modify the cities in which it is stations. And Lastly, a champion is a spell caster, capable of being imbued with magical abilities and becoming a supporting spell caster. The general problem with these roles is simply that they do not scale very well. In the first two roles, champions find themselves becoming obsoleted or in the last, becoming far OP as all spell casters. So the question becomes, how does one balance these roles with the progression of the game and expand them to offer a more robust set of roles? Considering the major changes to spell casting coming in 1.1, I think that only the first two need to be expanded to offer better scaling.
As far as the champion's role as a combat unit, I think the first step is to make champions attachable to a combat unit. This makes perfect sense and inherently deals with the scale problem of dealing with 12 man units. However, this is simply the tip of the iceberg, as this would simply make champions nothing more than glorified units and would not confer a real bonus for using a champion over a high level well equipped unit. To this end, Champions should be expanded to gain some kind of skill points along with normal xp. With these points, player could buy new skills to expand the usefulness of their unit. These skills would be seperated between new combat abilities to enhance the unit as a competent warrior and new support abilities to incorporate the idea of the unit as a savvy general. In this way, champions would become more than mere combat units, but would become the captains and lieutenants of the sov's army.
With respect to city/faction support champions, these units can be split into two categories, moderately useful and increasingly meaningless. Consider a champion which gives a +10% farm bonus v. a champion which gives a +1 arcane knowledge bonus. With the farm champion, the bonus is moderately useful for the entire length of the champions life, as he can be moved about to maximize his bonus. Yet, the +1 arcane knowledge champion is useful until you build even one arcane research building, at which time this unit's bonus become marginalized, and even more so, since it is not effected by the multiplier structures of a city. Now, the first change here is obviously to make the +1 bonus people give their bonus as a city bonus, so that they can be effected by the bonus structures of a city. The second is similar to that proposed for combat units. If champions gains some kind of city skill points based on how each turn they stay in a city, these units would be able to gain civic skills which enhance their city/factional support abilities. So if a +1 research champion stays in a city and works the libraries, they can eventual have a +2 or maybe even a +10%. And lastly, I think it would be interesting to allow these support units to act as a specialist unit so that if I have a city with 2 champions, then the city can utilize two more specialist run buildings which are run by the champions themselves. This would then give a player both a reason to promote these types of champions, as well as enhance the bread v guns choices with respect to champions.
