Yes and no.

Will all magic require use of Essence?: No.
Will some magic be usable without expending Essence?: Yes.

I hate to give such adamant answers, since we don't really know for sure, but that's the general gist of what we've been able to assume or piece together. It's highly unlikely that the bulk of 'regular' magic will require essence.

The relevant post from the thread:

Yeah that's something that bothers me a lot. I,m trying to figure out what kind of strategy to use. To keep or spend Essence. I guess it will depend on how we can defend against a fully charged  Channeler. The way I see it if Channeler 1 creates a few towns and becomes to weak to defend against channeler 2 who as not created any towns, I don't want Channeler one to just loose his towns because the other guy walks in and steals everything. Seems to me this would be poor way to do things.

Then again if creating cities gives you the possibility to defend efficiently against another fully charged Channler then you have a real nice game going.

Otherwise I would just sit back and wait for my apponent to create a few towns. Then I would walk in kick him out on his ass and then I would have his towns and still be full of essence. I hope it won't work this way.

Thanks landisaurus!  That's precisely what I was looking for.

Traditionally in these type of games, towns have very poor defenses when they're first built. Early game you won't have many people, and you won't have much of an army. My worry here is a channeler rush strategy on small maps, where you charge the other guy ASAP before his towns can get going.

On a bigger map it'd take so much longer to get there that by time you do the towns have grown and have actual defenses. Though I guess it also all depends on how much stronger your channeler grows as the game goes on.

I really hope they change this. If everyday spells cost essence (which, from what I understand, is a resource that is gone for good when you use some of it) Then It seems like people who want a channeler that is as powerful as possible will not hardly ever cast spells....which seems counter-intuitive to me. Now this depends on how you get more essence, as they haven't specified that yet (pressumably you more essence each time you level up or something like that). Also, This seems like it makes the pressence of mana pointless doesn't it?

As has been said numerous times, the absolute vast majority of spells - possibly all 'normal' spells (those that doesn't actually imbue.. 'stuff') will not require essence at all.

Ok, I could easily be wrong...that said:

There is 'mana' for standard spells that is a constant income from owning shards.

There is 'essense' that your Channeler gains/unlocks as he/she levels up (or gains on quests).  This essense is finite.  It is used for buffing your Channeler, buffing your servants/buildings/items, and possibly for buffing spells (or for casting unique spells).

Hmmmmm, maybe 'The Spell of Return' could cost Essense instead of mana to cast.....sorry wrong topic but just thought of it while typing this.

Anyway, just wanted to say I fully support the idea of Essense being finite (gained only from leveling and quests).

Ooops, forgot to mention that Essence also seems to be used for making new towns as well.

Looks like Luckmann and I see things the same way in regards to the Essence game concept.  Good Stuff!

The problem there then being that the maximum value at both ends becomes minimum. It forces the game into a middle of the road play, some towns some essence and that's bogus as well. The balance should come that if someone expends all their essence on towns they should be just as powerful as the player who hoards all of his essence.

I've never been much of a fan of POWERFUL wizards or characters/heroes in these games anyway. What they end up doing is if you lose your main POWER character the game is OVER. Much like Heroes of Might & Magic, lose that level 13 hero and it's all over for you.

I'd rather not see the heroes/wizards specifically get experience or gain levels. What I would rather see is the power be determined by artifacts discovered or artifacts built/forged. This way if you do lose a hero or wizard you still have opportunities to build another one back up by mfg new artifacts or discovering new or better ones in REGENERATING dungeons/crypts and other explorable areas.

Too many of these games MOM included have a definite amount of ability to gain experience or item loot in the explorable areas. I propose that after a number of turns after some dungeon/crypt etc have been cleared that they regen with new creatures and new items, sometimes harder sometimes easier but never the same thing twice.

I'd rather see battles won by strategy & tactics than by MY hero is greater than your hero so you lose.

I quit playing HOMM and AOW and all the rest because of that stupid experience and leveling ability of heroes to make them so overpowering that they were the main role and purpose of playing instead of a fantasy war or adventure.

Read some of your fantasy novels you don't see any of those characters getting so powerful that if one was lost like FLINT in War of the Lance that there was no hope of the good guys winning. Only really Raistalin (sp) gained more power during the story, but, still he wasn't powerful enough to win the war for their side.

It should take the WHOLE team, the WHOLE army, the WHOLE faction to win not just one overly powerful character.

I am wondering how you are getting spells in Elemental. It would be strange that having lots of cities don't help you to gain spell very fastly ...

Well the intention for this game is that you lose if your channeler dies. So if you hoard all your essence for your channeler to make a "POWERFUL wizard", and then lose him you literally lose. Unlike where in HoMM where it tries to pretend the game isn't over yet.

But this is built off of a potentially flawed assumption. You assume that the world of Elemental will be as static as in most other games. But from the little snippets of information we've been given by the devs, the world will probably never be free of wandering monsters, dungeons will regenerate, etc. If you invest a lot in a champion and then lose him, you should be set back. This can be done without leading to HoMM-like situations - in HoMM it happened because having one super-hero was by far the best strategy. All they have to do here is make it just as viable to have more lesser heroes. Then it's the player's choice whether to put all his eggs in one basket or to spread them out, and thus it becomes a strategic decision.

But in this game, whether or not to concentrate on heroes at all, and then how powerful to make them, is probably going to be a strategic decision. They've already told us that their intention is to give the player many viable ways to play the game - including to forego heroes, or to rely almost entirely on them. For two roughly equal players, if one has a more powerful hero than the other, then the other likely has something to make up for it. At least, that's the goal.

There are so many examples of stories that rely on an individual character's survival it's not even funny. The Sword of Truth is the first that comes to mind. It's there in LoTR is a few manifestations as well (if Frodo died it'd have been over - without Gandalf Sauron would've won, too). The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Give me more time and I'm sure I can think of many more.

But if a player chooses to make his WHOLE team his one overly powerful channeler, why not? That is his whole team. He'd probably have some small army to back him up, but why prevent people from making that choice? As long as making your channeler incredibly powerful is no more viable a strategy than building up an actual army or heroes, there is nothing wrong with that.

One trick will be to differentiate between the center of power, and the center of gravity.  Though in some cases the two are identical, in most cases they are not.  if the game can separate them, we'll have a very interesting time.  If not, we go from version to version of the "Stack of Doom": the only difference being the size of the stack (one Channeler vs. hordes of whatevers).