At the moment, Champions seem to fall into one of two categories. You have the Adventurous ones, the combat-ready soldier types that you would want to put into an army. Then you have the Scholarly ones, which are best served generating one resource or another in a city somewhere. This strikes me as terribly boring. Furthermore, since the world of Elemental is so massive, I've had some fairly cluttered late game activities (managing resources, buildings, and armies). I've come up with some ideas as to how these both can be fixed.

Stats are pretty much combat-only in their use. A smarter, wiser champion only benefits if s/he can use magic, while the strong champions are best used cutting things into tiny pieces. So, I figured that it shouldn't be too terrible to make stats matter more in other areas.

One thing that seems to make sense - appoint a champion as a city's governor or mayor. A governor would benefit most from high intelligence, wisdom, and charisma. Since governor-types won't be seeing much battle, they'll gain small amounts of XP for everything they 'supervise'. Thus, anything built or trained by the city they control will give them some XP. Furthermore, high production cities would give a small amount of XP to their governor.

Intelligence and wisdom combined would improve building/training speed, up to their values combined in a percent (15 INT + 10 WIS = 25% faster productions) and charisma would increase the happiness of workers, netting a production increase. These three values, combined, would determine how advanced the AI is for the city. Players could appoint a governor, who would take over the city entirely, building a small defense force and taking advantage of resources to make the city as good as a player controlled one (a governor with all three stats high) or a lousy one (low stats). Players could also appoint a governor without yielding control of the city to the AI, and at any time can override the orders of the AI.

Something that I was excited to see seems to be something that's thrown on the back burner - letting your champions lead your soldiers into battle, so that yuo don't have to be in charge of every single conflict. Thus, you could appoint a champion as a general. Generals take all stats into play (so you can have a good general that's melee based or caster based) and each stat influences the army they control. Strength increases damage by a percent, dexterity increases movement by a percent, charisma increases morale by a percent, and intelligence, wisdom, and movement are taken together to increase defense by a percent.

All stats would be weighed, with intelligence, wisdom, and charisma being slightly of higher value, to determine how advance the AI is in leading troops into battle. Having high stats would allow generals to use the more advanced algorithms, and give a boost to the army they lead. Armies that are controlled by the AI can, at any time, be taken over by the players. This way, if a player doesn't want to deal with everything at once, the AI can take some of the burden. Further, players who are not tactically gifted could still be decent in warfare, but will still not be as good as a real human.

Lastly, I figure that some 'universal positions' would be useful. These positions are basically the high-up politics of your faction, and you can assign loyal champions to them to give benefits and increase autonomy of your empire. The first name is the Kingdom, the second the Imperial.

• The Chancellor(Elder): primary stats, Charisma, Wisdom, Intelligence, in that order. A chancellor increases prestige in all of your cities, and generates diplomatic capital based on his stats - maybe every 20 cumulative points = 1 capital? Would need tweaking, naturally.
• Magus Emeriti(Warlock): primary stats, Essence (mana), Intelligence, Charisma, in that order. Magus Emeriti is the head researcher, the royal librarian and scribe. A magus emeriti increases research and spell production by a percent, influenced most heavily by Essence. A Magus Emeriti can be set to automatically learn spells, with more advanced algorithms lying with higher cumulative stats.
• Spymaster: primary stats, Dexterity, Movement, Strenght, in that order. Your spymaster is just that, the master of intelligence of your faction. Spymasters of high stats provide information about factions that are near yours, dependent mainly on a mixture of Dexterity and Movement. Spymasters can be set to automatically produce and control assassins and scouts. Can override a governor.
• High General: primary stats: Charisma, Wisdom, Strength. The high general is the de factor leader of your military, beneath you. High Generals of high stats give a morale bonus to units going into battle. High Generals can automate your military - they produce and control soldiers. The player can, at any time, override the general's command on any unit.

I don't think it would be terribly hard to make these work, either. Since the AI will have different settings, higher stats will manipulate what 'level' of AI is used in which area. A competent high general, for example, will act with the maximum AI possible (going no higher than the highest AI opponent +1) and will only affect the production and command of units made for battle. Likewise, a good spymaster will have scouts roaming the lands, and will report on various locations, such as a city being wide open for attack or too heavily defended to be worth it, marriages between factions, important events in general.

And, it gives a use to those champions we've had around since the start, or champions that are naturally high in stats. With the limitations on the algorithms used by each position, players in a game with lots of tough AI opponents can focus on certain areas, or let others go, without being harmed to brutally.

Not to mention that simply having a position filled is its own reward, and the player never has to let the AI take over.