Glowing Ember the best way to prevent ridiculous mana costs late in the game would be a mana bleed per turn.  It would effectively cap your maximum mana based on your mana income, though you could still save.

One FFH modmod called Master of Magic uses this (right now the best of the modmods of FFH, though it's very much changed)

You can also give people other things to spend mana on that have upkeep, like global enchantment spells or big summons.

That's true, you can do that.

But i see a big problem on small maps compared to big maps with regards to the number of magic shards available. Considering that you only need one of each type and a whack load of mana that you spent 100+ turns accumulating (not even that in some games, all in all a very short length of time for a game winning event that can't be stopped because no one knows it is about to happen. I liked the count down timer that gives other players - ai and people - the warning that they have x many turns to gang up on you and hunt you down like a stray dog) It's a big letdown for me to cast the master spell. Did it once, not gonna bother with it again. sigh...

There are fun factors to consider here that other games had that this one just doesn't... right now im entranced by dominion 3. I want to be entranced by elemental, but right now it just feels like a bare bones game to me because it has a lot of systems in it with potential and everytime something starts to get worked out, i feel it gets tossed aside as too difficult and they try something else. It's gottent o the point where i just want to mod the thing and make it my own. So at this point, i am just waiting on the update where they open up the modding.

ttyl.

Ember.

To hell with essence, I think it's clunky and unweildly as a concept.

Looks like it is back.

Maybe not. It was on Brad's v1.3 running log when he first posted it, but it's gone from the OP now and there's no comment from a dev about the deletion that I could find.