Survey: Your favorite/least favorite Sovereign customization options

Sadly even the "good" bonuses feel fairly meh.  Yes the knowledge ones are almost overpowered at the start, they feel useless even by mid-game.

Equipment?  Don't get me started.  10 points for a weapon?  A crappy one you can replace pretty quickly with magic research?  Sheesh.

Organized and tracker are good. The research points options are just too expensive to justify to me (if you have left over points they are fine). Some of the weaknesses are nice, especially the ones that have no effect as long as you stay out of cities. Most of the spell books are useless because of weak magic. The best spell in the game is teleport. The only real reason to take spell books is for summons.

I like taking a sovereign with high wis (for teleport) dex, con and str. In my opinion, int and cha can be ignored since magic and champions are so weak. Give the sovereign a bow and he can be a powerhouse early game. Mid game having the sovereign in battle is pointless because armies are so much stronger/cost efficient. Pump map movement so that the sovereign can be used as a tax cab.

What I'd like to know is why wisdom as start stat cant be levelled in game, only at the start?

RAT

My biggest issue is that there needs to be more transparency on what some of the abilities even do. For example civilized is suppose to make it cheaper to build a city, but as far as I can tell there is no cost for that other than the pioneer unit. Death magic is supposed to give units +10 hp but I can't tell if it's even working or how to get it working. Better descriptions or tool tips explaining the actual mechanics behind all the abilities would be a good place to start.

Civilized makes the pioneer unit cheaper, although I'm not sure by how much. Death magic is not working as far as I know.

Some things I don't like:

1)Spending character points for equipment.  Waste. You can buy a decent weapon to get you started just as easily, and you're going to get a better weapon/armor at some point, basically meaning those points are wasted, unlike points put into a stat or ability, which are useful the entire game.

I'd rather see a choice of starting equipment "packages", separate from the point buy, that you could balance amongst themselves. For instance, one might include a club and health or ranger kit, another might include a spear and some starting armor, another might be simply a shortbow (range weapon at beginning of game > sword and board).

2) The "when stationed in a city" weaknesses. I think one is "Insanity", cant remember the other one off hand.  Basically you get free points in exchange for a penalty when your sovereign is stationed in a city. My sovereign is virtually never in a city, except right after he takes it over. Why wouldn't people take this every time?  These penalties should be global passive, and have their penalty adjusted accordingly, otherwise there's no point.

Things I like:

Having an open ended point buy custom Sovereign at all.  I love the fact this option exists, and greatly look forward to seeing it further balanced and expanded.

Whatever happened to the "active abilities" that were supposed to replace at least some of the only low plusses and minuses? Seem to remember Frogboy made some indications to this effect sometime after it had been up on the forum. Maybe in an expansion, or someone will have to mod that in.