As of now, once you find a shard, there is not too much to think about: you try to capture it and build a shrine to start generating mana. You can upgrade the shrine to get some area bonus in Beta 4 I believe. Each shard gives bonuses to spells of its element, and all shards contribute to generate mana to be used for all spells.
If Derek and the other devs have not thought about it, I would encourage them to think about a few twists in how the shards play a role in the game, which could potentially increase the strategic depth of the game with - I believe, but I may be wrong - little incremental effort on the game design part. These twists should be considered as non-mutually exclusive options to be chosen in the appropriate mix. In the following I use "Fire" to mean any element, "Water" to mean its opposite element, and "Earth/Air" to mean any element which is neither the element of the example nor its opposite.
1. each shard produces a different type of mana. Fire shards generate fire mana. Fire spells use fire mana. Fire mana can be transformed into Earth/Air mana at a 25% loss or into Water mana at a 50% loss.
2. once you find a Fire shard, you can choose to build a fire shrine and therefore generate mana at full-rate, or build an Earth or Air shrine to generate 30% less mana, but which counts as half an Earth or Air shard for spell-boosting purposes. Example: suppose you find one fire shard, one earth and one air. Building on each the appropriate shrine gives you 300% shard mana generation and +1 shard bonus on each element, while building fire shrines on all of them gives you 240% shard mana generation and +2 shard bonus on fire spells alone. Fire shrines cannot be built on Water shards.
3. once a shrine is built on a shard, this cannot be destroyed or unbuilt: it can only change controller (like outposts do now, I believe)
4. Make the type of shards that you control matter. For example, special fire spells become available once you control a given number of fire shards. Special spells become available once you control at least one shard of every type. As long as you control only Fire shards, all fire spells cost 50% less. Once you have at least 5 shards of a given element, all your units receive 10% less damage from that element. There are unlimited possibilities...
5. Child of Fire strategic spell: once you cast this spell, you renounce to use Water magic for the rest of the game. All your champions unlearn water spells. All water shards under your control, now and in the future, are considered as fire shards, but generate only 1/2 of mana and count as 1/2 fire shard for spell-boosting purposes. Non-fire spells cost 30% more. Fire elementals summoned by you or your champions are of a higher level. Flame Blade is cast automatically on your sovreign, champions and melee units at the beginning of every battle at no cost. You can cast Child of Element only once per game, and be Child of only one element at a time.
6. Bend Shard Essence strategic spell: trasforms target Fire shard you control into a Broken Shard of another element, which generates 1/3 mana and count as 1/2 shard of the new element for spell boosting purposes.
7. Once you have five shards of the same element, you can cast a spell that creates a pentacle, triggering a permament effect (also graphic) in the area that connects the five shards: this could be bonus to your units or damage to enemy's, or the summon of a very powerful elemental of that type.
8. Shard resonance: when a strategic fire spell is targeted on a fire shard you control, its effect is applied to all tiles and units within distance 2 of the shard. This could work on offensive as well as on healing spells, for example. The radius could increse with upgrades of the shrine.
The idea is to give players something to think about when they find a shard: which shrine should I build on it? Or even: should I build a shrine on it or not? Should I destroy it, change its element, or leave it as it is? And also give them a way to use shards throughout the game
