Most either apply to the city they are stationed in, don't require you to do anything, or don't work: Bards and Royalty don't seem to work, Merchants don't need to be stationed to gain income, Administrators need to be stationed for the 10% construction bonus.

You may want to check out the "Abilities and Traits Mod" or see Heavenfall's "Hotfix" fixes. They fix or improve the abilities quite a bit.

I completely agree. Once Stardock allows <Calculate> work for traits and ability bonuses we'll be golden. I promise you.

This idea is interesting and would give you more individuality to the champs once they are just part of a garrision.  I would still prefer that they didnt give their bonus until they are in a city though (to give you a choice to make).

It's because those abilities aren't rechecked every turn. In general, stuff that have a "use" can use calculate, because you can just calculate that at the time of use. So I'm pretty sure you can use calculate on active abilities, then again, those are just spells anyways.

Passive abilities only works with static values, because otherwise, you'd have to mimic this by "reusing" them over and over to recalculate values.  You'd end up doing tons of calculations for every ability every char every turn. It's not really an ideal solution.

You might think that's true for what you plan to use it for. However, adding calculate to abilities has much farther reaching implications. Just about any ability have to be checked to see if it needs recalculation, even if it actually doesn't. Even totally random, non hero unit abilities that never needs to. Which could get out of hand real quick if they plan to add more special abilities.

Oh, and if you're talking about calculate on level up or ability increase, then you're also adding duration timers and triggers to the process (which actually makes it more complicated than just a per turn recalculate). It would be easier to have abilities be able to upgrade like buildings than to use calculate in that manner.