I'm hoping for a much less restrictive start in general, so I'm not real worried about the point allocation as stands.  A more refined book system more in line with MOM for instance.  The traits and such are rather pale by comparison at this point.  It's got a lot of room for growth without worrying about the 15 point cap that's in place.

I do have trouble spending my points right now though.  It's flat fucking impossible to make a specialized character when you can max out every stat, pick multiple spell books, and still have points left over.

I agree with you guys that the current choices are very lacking. And some of the disadvantages are really a no brainer. Take all the ones that offer penalties for being IN a city and make you SOV the best army general/adventurer possible. I mean why wouldn't you get the extra points if you plan to never park your SOV in a city?

Of course the reverse is true for the city bonus traits become worthless the larger the map is because then less helpful it is to have that tiny bonus in only 1 of your many cities. Even on the tiny static map in the beta we have had thus far I've never had less then 5 cities and the minor bonus to only one of them was NOT a fair trade off to having my SOV stuck at home.

If anything I think the majority of the SOV bonuses should be empire wide bonuses with possiblably a large extra bonus for actually being in the city. Such as say 10% bonus to all R&D empire wide with 30% or more bonus to the city the SOV is in. I mean because currently a university produces 10 R&D and you can only build 5 in a level 5 city. So that's only an extra 5 points if your parked in the city while you can get the trait the automatically generates 5 R&D regardless of where the SOV is.

i know the above example is in part balance related but even so I can't think of any bonus amount that would really make it worth while. The NEED to level up your SOV is pivaital to the game and thus you must spend much of your time out of the cities. It is especially critical early game when your SOV is your strongest unit and you need to use the SOV to explore and complete quest to help fund your new empire.

The amount of points are fine, it would help though if there were more option to choose from. Mom had a lot of options and therefore a lot of customization possibilities. This game has barely anything to spend point on. Spending points on stats like attack strength makes little sense to me, since I would very much prefer to spend points on traits rather than stats. Traits allow for better role playing, plus better traits would make it more viable for a sovereign to stay at home. If you have nothing but stats to spend points on then it makes more sense for the sovereign to wander the wilds to make the most of those stats.