You mean, return to the untouchable abomination that War of Magic was? FE still needs a lot of work, but come on

LOL OP!  Time to brush up on your modding skills for FE or shake the dust off EWOM.  I'm sure Brad will be happy to hear that he gets to add one more notch on his bedpost.

I know this , but that mechanic of WoM just made sense, and had more atmosphere than the mechanics of FE right now.

I am not unhappy with FE, quite the opposite, but the changes and additions in my original post just makes sense to me.

(Edit: typo)

I am curious what you hate about the non champion ideas, would you like to elaborate ?

I agree that the champions in Fallen Enchantress are overpowered.  I like the suggestion of imbuing by sacrficing a shard.  I think that would be fun to play.

Just having outposts have a construction time and have a gold and material costs would go a long way to fix pioneer spam.

Champions are indeed overpowered, but it's not the case of spells or imbuing, because sovereign is also OP. The problem is really simple: you have two heroes from the start, and they can easily, without any risks, kill all the near fauna, quickly gaining levels. This enables them to kill the more powerful specimens (maybe previously buying some armor in a shop), again boosting their strength. And so on, up to the point the two of them might just as well steamroll all AI opposition. Meanwhile, you can manage cities all you want, but it's not really even necessary.

I say: delete that starting point champion, make mobs deadly enough that players will fear sending their single sovereign, reduce XP gained and HP bloat, increase offensive potential while decrease defence and maybe then the game won't become Herohammer. In Master of Magic, you didn't rotflstomp enemies with heroes only, because they, awfully powerful as they were, made easy targets for damage spells which the otherwise brainless AI used.

In my oppinion the gap between champions and regular units is caused by the level difference and the amazing gear they can get from quests or monster looting.

If i replace the assassin blade with one of the swords regular troops can use, my unbuffed lvl 24 warrior is no longer dealing over 100 dmg/hit to the best enemy troops. He stil wins the fight (quite easily i think ) but he needs 3-4 turns to kill a unit instead of just one.

If i replace his armor (with average armor not the best available for regular troops) he might lose vs several packs and for sure he won't be able to  wipe complete armies one after another.

Even with this gear the toughest monsters I've met so far are kill-able. I might need to use some buffs and more troops and maybe even lose some of the regular units but imo those fights will become better this way.

I know removing extraordinary gear will diminish the excitement of exploration and monster fighting but something needs to be done to decrease the gap between regular units stats and champions.

Maybe make the regular units more attractive: more powerful / give them special abilities / allow players to keep upgrading and improve them whole game long.

Some mix might also work: make regular units cheaper and more powerful (mid late game )  and heroes less powerful and harder to come by. 

Magic has little to do with why champions are so powerful compared to regular troops.

The spells i use are mostly buffs and i can cast them with 1 champion on any unit not just champions.

Damage spells are far too expensive for the dmg/utility they provide.

Debuffs are nice but also optional, I only used shrink once in a while to make sure my units were not oneshot by epic monsters.

I think some forms of magic play should be improved to make them just as attractive as buffing/debuffing. 

I'd love to have a champion that can afford to spam damage spells at low lvl and win fights just as easily as a warrior or mage with buffs/debuffs.

I'd love to have an mid/end game champion that can be as efficient and successful as a warrior or debuff/buff mage .

And since I started rambling I'd like to see scary champions fighting with ranged weapons. 

The first paragraph right under return to the roots.   The 2nd paragraph I don't necessarily agree to, but not as strongly as the first.

The additions as you call them with numbers, I can agree to those.  Not sure #2 will get looked at as I wonder won't some/most say that you can do that by setting density of resources already. 

Well we will have to agree to STRONGLY disagree.