I agree that the Sovereigns need to be better indicated as "more" than their champion counterparts. Otherwise, why don't we have 35 factions? These sovereigns are world-benders for a reason.

I agree that a large portion of the solution lies in how they handle magic, but would be very against the "all sovereigns have all schools" method of doing so. First and foremost because of how it would dilute both the ability to gain higher level in magic without focusing on it to the exclusion of other things (5 schools filling up your trait pool at random instead of 2-3).

I feel that the solution lies in two things in terms of the magic aspect, and then others as indicated above.

First, sovereigns should be the only units casting global, city enchant, or strategic general spells. Those guys are badass spellcasters and the BREADTH of power that suggests helps support this. In addition, it helps limit what sort of access a given sovereign will have to spells in a given game (can;t rely on finding a Fire Champion to give you Curgen's Volcano). Champions, conversely, should be strictly limited to tactical spells, strategic summons, and unit enchants. They are casters, but not really super powerful ones.

Second. Champions should largely have access to one school of magic, with champions with a second school very rare. I think this is pretty much the case now, but have admittedly neither taken strict notes, nor seen every champion in the game (a testament to the number of champions there are)

Non-Magic Related. I would LOVE, as the OP suggested, to see the number of points we have at sovereign creation to increase, the actual costs of things to diversify, and additional legitimate equipment choices to appear. We do already have some pretty awesome magical choices to start with, but what if we want some standard, sturdy, simple armor?

Mals, you did it again, your a genious! , how is it you write what I am thinking about... Sneaky mind reading... Dragonthingie!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I have been waiting until Beta 4 to speak up about Sovereigns. After they fix improvements, things like this are hopefully on the table for improvement.

On the champion-magic issue: Can we also have champions with better back-stories? I know you mostly only look at them once, and a few of them are good, but most of the backgrounds  boil down to "I fight for money", or "I like to kill good/bad/any things". To me, the come off as average schmucks, and the fact that these guys have magic further dilutes it for your sovereign. As others have said, it's incongruous enough that your sovereign leads a kingdom/empire because of his/her magic powers, but just as much, if not more, magical power can be hired for ~100 gold. It's worse when the other guy's back-story is "I read a book once".

"Oh you're Magnar? Oldest being alive? Apprenticed to the Black Sorcerer? You know the secrets of the Dread Lords? That's cool. Im Bob the Champion. I'm illiterate and come from a long line of rat catchers, but I'm a way better wizard than you."

What you want is EXCLUSIVE stuff for your sovereign, like spell, abilities or even equipment.

Anything that cannot be duplicated by a champion or army or race would fit here.

Don't limit champions to a single elemental school.  I like playing magic users and buy books to introduce new schools to my champions.

As it stands right now for me, champions are pretty much worthless.   There is no need to have them.  I get my Sovereign up in levels and equipped he pretty much just auto kills everything, even deadly mobs.

I used to explore and grab as many NPCs as I could, but since you shouldn't have more then one in a stack (exp loss), I just don't bother.

Kingdom NPCs tend to have the lower end Gear and Abilities compared to Fallen.  As a result I just kill the Fallen and take all of their magical weapons and sell them. (side note, why is it now that items are only worth a 1/10 of their value..they are magical and valuable right?)

Or if I find that Administrator / Merchant NPC I will equip them and park them in a city for their bonus.  I don't do it for combat as I think in all the games I have played my cities are seldom attacked, probably because I am able to forge NAP with everyone and build up til I can walk over them.

At that point they are so weak I can just us my sovereign and auto battle them.  I don't even use any spells. No reason to. They are just a waste of time.  I just get that druss blade or frost / fire sword, champion armor, obsidian shield and my sovereign is unstoppable melee machine. I don't even make armies anymore.

So basically what I am saying is Sovereigns are powerful as is and Champions are the ones that need a new look at.

Champions are all bland to me as is...their skills and magic are pointless, Give them a weapon armor and they can do what a sovereign can if you bother to level them up.

Champions should be like this:

1. NPC is an adminstrator, ok. Then he should gain exp by being in a city assisting it to grow, not out fighting.

2. NPC is a merchant, This unit could improve roads and run trade missions..ie have special quests for them.

3. NPC caster, Make them have one area of skill, have the ability to have decent unique spells and for gods sake make the staves better.

4. NPC is assassin,  They can run assassination quests to eliminate unit's captains/generals/city officials.

5. NPC is Hunter, Does great against beasts and tends to enhance Horse/Warg abilities if stationed in a city.

6. NPC is Warrior/soldier/etc,  They and they alone can command units, tend to be good a one weapon (ie force to use something other then just  

           Uber sword). same for armor..help prevent all from wearing champion plate, mega shield, warhorse, uber sword..ie melee gods.

7. NPC is Adventurer, Only one able to do quests besides sovereign. Skill set towards this goal, They don't run cities or lead armies.

I could go into whole lot more detail and I might later, but for right now, Sovereigns are just like champions. They are all just best armor, best magic weapon, best shield, best mount melee machines.

I know other will say they use them differently and I applaud you for your ability to immerse yourself and role play the NPCs, ie mages only wear robes, wield a staff and use magic. Great for you. We all have different styles.

As the game stands right now I have played 5 games with the exact same results every time...On Hard mode for all, expand quickly, kill other sovereigns close them early. NAP with other, form trade and use them to advance my tech (which should be removed as I get 100-500+ tech points from it and out tech the NPCS), Use sovereign to do adventures, level up, get gear and slaughter all at end game. Not once do I have to worry about the NPCs attacking me or winning.

I would much rather see the time used to increase map size as Large seems small to me. If we aren't gonna have ships remove all water and just put in rivers.  Allow for better player starting areas or resources near them. I played to many games where the NPCs all have a gold mine next to them but I have never got one next to me on start.

Also make more interesting and challenging quest, diplomacy, and trade.  Maybe new trade items and please adjust the value perceived by the NPC. I am so tired of them not wanting my metal but then want to charge me X100 times more, or crystals being over valued.

Anyway, I didn't mean to drag on.  I want to say that I do like the game and am hoping for a lot more improvement as it advances in Beta.

Oh, and it seems there is a bug with horse.  All my games I have them as a resource but can never buy them in store. I have to go to my neighbor and buy them.

I wouldn't limit champions to just one school.

I would give soverigns some big magical advanatage though. Whether it is ability to cast global spells, or ability to break the rules by casting multiple copies of spells in Tactical combat . 

Unfortunately, when all champions became magic users, I think the Sovereign became less powerful.  The Sovereign has become just your first champion.  If you work through the recruiting tech fast enough, they may not even be your best champion.  I still feel this has become a big mistake.  The Sovereigns were supposed to be unique in the fact that they could access the world's magic.  I like the imbuing part from WOM.  I really think they need to go back to this.  Champions should be fighters, and chosen by the Sovereign to become more.  However, this is at a cost to the Sovereign, they need to lose something.  Perhaps, they could change imbue to give a spell level to a Champion.  By giving the Champion a spell level it gives that Champion the ability to cast that school of magic.  However, the Sovereign loses a spell level.

I picked up WoM cheap off Amazon.  I was pointed at this site from the Master of Magic 2 wish site (I picked up MoM when it first came out, and still ocassionally enjoy a few games). I'll probably be signing up for FE fairly soon.

A "Sovereign" (ie Wizard as actual unit) is something I thought would have been an awesome addition to MoM.

Limiting champions to their own limited pool of mana, and/or perhaps just to tactical spell may work to differentiate champions.

Implementing a "Skill" trait limiting the amount of mana that the sovereign can burn on Strategic spells may also be a good thing.  The Master Spell certainly doesn't have the build up of the Spell of Mastery.

I like how AOW2 and AOW:SM handled thier heroes.

In order for hero to cast spells they have to get the ability "Spell casting (forget the actual name)"  and it would have different levels (1-5) which would dictate how much mana points that the hero had to cast a spell. Each level was 10 points so a Level 45 Spell Casting hero had 50 mana points to cast spells. This ability is choosen from a list of abilities (and there are a lot) that you can choose from each time a hero levels. Max level is 30.  So no you will not make every hero a magic using hero due to all the really cool abilities to choose from so you can specilize your heroes

And the game has an EASY to use Hero and Magic item creation system that you can use to put heros and magic items on your maps. They also have an ingame magic item creation building that you can build to create magic items (it is a high level magic building.)

The Kingdom has a mana pool as well that all mana to cast spells are pull from so if a hero has 50 mana but the pool is down to 20 mana then the Hero can only use up to 20 mana. Kingdoms generate mana each turn based on number of spell casting heros and mana nodes as well as a few other things.

The hero pull from the pool of spells that the Wizard (Soverign) had. Plus some heros could be made with the hero editor outside the game to have a spell unique to them if you want. But this is done outside the game and the hero added to the map your playing.

IT is a really good system