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.

Your entire critique is null and void, on account of being wrong.

Lets pretend you didn't see the last two paragraphs, go back and read them.  It shoots the hell out of your entire post without me needing to post a response.

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!!!

While true, if experience gain only comes through combat, as he's stuck on assuming, one would still need to fight, and be unable to play a "runs the show from behind the scenes" kind of sovereign.  Much better to have it come from multiple sources where one would actually gain experience doing things.

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.

Nothing in those two paragraphs in any way nullifies anything I just said.  It is a way of gaining experience without combat, which is completely different from not gaining any experience at all outside of combat, but still gaining essence.  And still doesn't provide a solution to the question of how to balance essence generation and use.

So how about we pretend that I didn't respond to those two paragraphs because it wasn't necessary to the point I was making, which was de-linking experience and essence will not automatically make every sovereign a tank.

Bleh, I replied in the wrong topic.

I guess that is a crux of the matter.  How will the magic system actually be implemented and balanced, and how will the essence system play into that?  If that ring that I've funnelled 20 essence into makes my channeller while wearing it more powerful on the battlefield than a channeller who has hoarded 50 essence, is that a good investment?  Balancing essence generation and use is going to take up an inordinate amount of time.

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.

True, it's not like it really nullified everything.  So you don't actually have to fight to gain essence if you don't have to fight to gain experience anymore, and you don't lose your sovereign when it's defeated in battle...

I guess it really did?

It is, the frog himself said it.  Your sovereign teleports home when he gets smoked.  Don't you guys read the dev journals?

Two of you!  When one specifically states a preference for having experience also come from other activities besides combat, one is not expressing a view that essence should only come through combat.  Obviously if you level from other activities, leaving essence tied to leveling would no longer have such a restriction...

As to the more general "amount" problem.  That is called balance testing.  The mechanics of how you get it are irrelevant to the quantity, something easily doubled with the change of a single digit.

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.

Um, no. 

There need to be significant consequences to losing your sovereign, even if they aren't game ending.  They are very easy to add.  Amazingly easy even.  If there are significant consequences to having your sovereign die in battle, the system becomes viable.

You know, it is amazing how much gameplay is changing at this point. Have you been following the game development thus far?

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.

I do not know where you came up with the idea that there was "consensus," but I am certainly not part of it. A cursory inspection of this forum will show *several* people getting dogpiled over complaining that you can't auto-gain essence.

I am not at all in support of "essence" being gained over time.

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

The real fix is delinking essence from mana cap, and tying it as a flat modifier to spell power. 1 + (essence/100) * damage etc, exploring alternate one-time essence gains, and alternate XP mechanisms.

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

I don't agree, because I don't see essence as mana cap being a core mechanic. I view it as "something you could do with essence, I guess," which explains why we have completely different views.

I won't try to persuade you that it should not be a core mechanic, but for other people:

Why would Essence be linked to mana? That would imply that all casters have essence, and we know that's not the case from the lore, and would really diminish the "specialness" of Essence if we could just train up a company of spellcasters in our city if we gave them essence.

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.

Only Channelers have mana. Channeler means to have Essence because wihtout it, no magic can be channeled from the Crystal Shards. No Essence = no mana. Only Sovereigns have access to the Revive Land spell, currently the only spell that requires to spend Essence to fuel it. (not to mention that Sovereigns are supposed to be able to imbue champions to give them the ability to cast spells, that Frogboy mentioned a few times that those channelers have Essence and could get it increased at level up...)

As far as I know (if I'm wrong, please provide me with the correct information), Lore beats your argument. And it doesn't diminish the "specialness" of Essence in any way but encourages it (if you plan to do anything related to Essence, be it building cities in forsaken lands or to be able to cast the most simple spell). At least as I see it (which is subjective therefore not a very valid argument). Beta implementation of magic system and lack of proper information (so newbies and similars don't get confused about how it works) are another topic.

Edit:

And you cannot train Spellcasters in Elemental. You can train farmers and then imbue them with Essence so they can cast spells. Or imbue your Knights. Or the Scouts. Or... But there are no Mages/Clerics/Druids... or something like that. Which means that to be able to spend Essence on them to make normal people into "spellcasters" is a big deal.

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.

Here is a question I would like seen answered.

If I gather 40 Essence, I am then entitled to a Max. of 40 Mana.(Y/N)

If I then consume some Essence, but not Mana, does my available Mana POOL stay at a reachable MAX. of 40? (Y/N)

Or does the decreased level of Essence, via useage, reset the current MAX Mana allowed to be Pooled? (Y/N)

Otherwise, I would suggest that the Mana Pool, if left directly linked to the current Essence level be changed such that whatever I have managed to push my Essence Pool up to (max. at any point) be the new and persistent Mana Pool level, despite having used up Essence after the fact.

That way Mana (important for Magic) stays in relation to Essence, but not based a a direct +/- sliding correlation.

How Essence is then generated could be more flexible and not so detrimental to your current Essence Pool.

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).

Given that, and I know it is a Balance question at this point, but what might be a good starting Essence value. 15 certainly isn't it?

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.