Not true.  If you only gain essence by questing or combat you HAVE to build a tank from hell.  Otherwise eventually your Sovereign is going to die, but you have to use him in a combat/questing role in order to have a shot at winning the game.  With them separated, should you choose to use him he will become stronger as an individual than a sovereign that is not in combat (not to mention you should be able to, in fact need to, use essence to buff stats, or on artifacts that buff stats, to make him stronger still so he doesn't die in the course of his fighting/adventuring)... but that sovereign that is not out fighting will be using his essence on things other than buffs to keep himself alive, but will also be a much lower level as a personal combatant.

In order to become a godlike tank without getting yourself killed, you will need to expend essence on things/yourself to make sure you don't get killed.  If you don't, you may not be required to, but your odds of survival would be significantly lower.  Whereas an option for that sovereign staying at home is to expend all of his essence buffing his champions to equal you.  Or improving his land to support a massive army.

That assumes that your sovereign can become a supercombatant without buffing himself/artifacts with essence.  That also assumes that the other sovereign who is staying at home hasn't buffed a number of champions with essence/artifacts, and that they do not now equal you in power.  And thirdly, it assumes that the empire that has a huge territory and army because they focused essence upon improving the land in which they reside isn't able to swarm your supercombatants under with superior numbers of soldiers.  And that the sovereign who is staying in his own city preparing world ending spells doesn't unleash said spells upon your nation.  I think it should be really easy to balance out the "supercombatant" strategy, especially with essence de-linked from experience.

You assume that a sovereign needs to be a tank if they don't want to be killed.

YOU CAN USE MAGIC TO FIGHT!!!!! GRAWR!

I mean ... you are assuming that you can't use combat spells, or that combat spells won't be able to kill your opponents. Its a side effect from beta 1, yes, but doesn't mean it will be in the final game!!!

The current essence system [gain essence @ lvl up] will only work if your sentence -what I've quoted- is valid. Read my post about the AI, and you will understand that what is my biggest concern with regard to the current system. However even if the Sov won't die on the battlefield..perhaps there should be other ways to gain essence as well. [I've posted some ideas about special sites for example.] Why? Because I am pretty sure that the available essence simply won't be enough in late game if we can only get it @ Sov lvl up.

Bleh, I replied in the wrong topic.

I'd rather address the experience system itself than just divorce Essence from it; a grand total of half the game's base attributes (Intelligence which increases spell learning, wisdom which makes spellcasting cheaper, and Charisma which influences diplomacy) have quite little to do with combat.  Questing is a viable alternative, but still limited in that quests generally revolve around wandering about and getting into fights, and sovereigns should be able to stay at home and cast spells without being entirely gimped.

I would rather see experience doled out for a bunch of other things.  Governing, questing, overland spells, etc.  Maybe even exploring.  There's no reason why, equipment being equal, someone who's been fighting for ten years should be a better scout than someone who's been scouting for ten years.  Characters will, generally, invest those points in doing what they do better.  If the sovereign instead chooses to half-focus on their full-time governing and spend all their time at home sparring, more power to them.

Hm...I guess I missed that one.  So basically it will work like now, in Beta 1. I thought that they only made it like this for Beta 1, because the tester's job is easier this way.

I don't really care about XP at this point, I was talking about essence only. My suggestion was, that essence should not be gained only by leveling up the Sovereign, because if you gain let's say 10 essence @ lvl up, it surely won't be enough in late game. [It can be tweaked like gain 100 essence @ lvl 30 of course, but it won't work very well either ->] Sure it's all about balance testing, but you cannot balance this properly, if there is only one way to gain essence. Either the early game or the late game will be imbalanced. Not to mention, that it will take [...it should take at least] a lot of time to lvl up the Sov in late game. Getting enough xp for lvl 2 will be easy & it will take a few turns, but getting to level 30 from level 29? I don't think that it will take 2-3 turns.

Either way, we must wait for Beta2 or Beta3, because we're just guessing right now. However it's good to talk about this now, because the devs will have enough time to think about this as well, and maybe they will make some changes for Beta2/3.

The map is currently tan but it will probably be purple at release so your ideas about essence are dumb!

We're you dropped on your head as a small child?  I was, went right down a flight of stairs when I was four years old.  I find it explains a lot.  You should take it into consideration, and assume they're lying if your relatives deny such an occurrence.

When one argues against a point, one has to actually argue the point in question, not ignore it and pick apart the argument with another point in mind while making factual errors.

Like I've said..me either. I took a look at the essence system & possible tweaks from a very different perspective.

Well, I personally think that the core mechanics of essence should not be changed. IE essence should be related to Mana Caps.

Good point.

A godlike sov would get more essence than a researcher one, because he doesn't go at war. That would make no sense.

So why not adding something like : each turn where your sovereign doesn't move at all, he can concentrate and improve a little his essence skill ? (and maybe using the MoM system where you have to split your concentration between some things like essence, life spreading, spell points, etc.)

Maybe another idea : if essence is your bind with shards, then each shard you control gives you one point for (at your choice) : improving essence, spell points, incresing life spreading,  creating crystals from nowhere, etc.

I think you may have misread what I wrote. Having sovereigns the only ones with control over magic does not diminish the specialness of Essence. I'm pretty sure we agree there. What I was saying was the corollary of that: A flood of NPCs will the ability to innately cast spells would diminish the specialness of essence by making it something everything had.

you have 40 essence, you have 40 mana.

You use 5 essence, then your essence (and mana) is at 35.

And that's a good point in my opiion. If you want a great wizard then you'll have to spare those essence points (so less cities for instance).

It depends on how many mana costs any spell. At the moment a new city costs 5 essence. You satrt with 10. And teleport costs 5 mana, while mass heal costs 2. Some spells don't cost any mana at all (like reign of fire or a name like that)

So 10 essence is a goodstart I think with the actual values, because you can save essence if you build new towns on the revived land. So with a bit a tweaking in the life spreading speed you could just spend the first 5 essence to build your first city.