beefing up the Governor

The essence bonuses are great, but I think that more that one is a bit too powerful.  Maybe one at level 8+ and another at level 15+.  Extra essence on fortresses is amazing, and fortresses is where my governors hang out for the growth bonuses.

Slave driver and book worm would be great.

The experience bonuses are pretty much useless. 8 experience per turn is not worth it past levels 1-2, and I do not train level 1 units at the point of the game where I have level 5 governors, let alone level 11 ones.  You would be better off if you could just add one level (no more) to units produced in that city.

Something else would be extra growth on top of the +2 from the path, and maybe a discount on shopping. That one is probably impossible to achieve without help from the developers.

I have to say this though.  The harder the difficulties I play at, the more I find myself using governors.  I could not really make an argument that they are underpowered, given that when I look at my play-throughs, no class is more represented than governor.

I think that the game wouldn't know how to handle essence from a unit, since unless it was handled as a special case you'd be able to get an extra enchantment on the city. And then, what happens when your governor leaves because you decided you needed him/her elsewhere? I also agree that more than one bonus essence would be overboard. I'd also expect that essence bonuses would be a benefit of having a mage in town rather than an administrator.

Bookworm and Slave Driver look fine to me, and seem like reasonable bonuses from a governor.

The experience bonuses aren't particularly great, either, though if it's my only option (other than conquering the world) I suppose I could use it. But I don't see why I'd bother with it, since it would take too much idle time for units to gain levels beyond the first few.

I think that, if anything, the only thing governors really need would be the ability to gain experience from governing (some base amount per turn, with an increased amount if the city is producing something, perhaps with bonuses for completing a construction in place of the increased amount while the city is producing something). I don't know how much experience they should get for governing, but I do think that they should get something for doing their jobs. The only reason I don't really like governors right now is that, in order to really benefit from having them, I need to keep them in a city, but if I'm keeping them in a city they aren't roaming around gaining experience and helping my armies. They are certainly useful, though.

Perhaps a discount for rushing a project that scales as the gov rises in level?

Path of gov picked at 4th, so:

10%  level 6  Apprentice Taskmaster

20% level 8  Journeyman Taskmaster

40% level 10 Taskmaster

60% level 12 Miracle worker

Somebody come up with better titles, please, but you get the idea.

Multitasker I,II,III: boosts production from non-elemental resource tiles by 10/25/50%

Thieves Guild Leader: 50% of lost production is converted into gildar.

Warden: Deters monsters from attacking the city/group

Efficient Manager: Provides +2 movement for all units within the city's ZoC

Researcher I, II, III : adds one, two, and three research points respectively to city.

Bandit Leader: five percent cumulative chance per turn of "discovering" a random item your city can already produce.  You're notified of the item, which is handed to you upon entry.  The chance resets to 0.

The essence bonus is indeed powerful. To answer the question of what happens if your governor leaves the city you've enchanted:   You lose enchantments (I believed in order of newest to oldest).   Same thing that happens if your scrying pool is destroyed.   I've been considering changing the levels you acquire them at.  I like them butch, because it only affects one city.   I want the governor to have a meaningful contribution to combats, while he sits at home.  Perhaps just 2 essence, one at level 5, and one at level 12.  After all,  Nothing is going to compare to a high level path of the mage throwing blizzard around.

To reply to the idea that the essence boost is more suited to a wizard,  I think that is partially true.  While essence is all magic-y, It is still something that is harvested in cities.   

Also, Perhaps increasing movement of units produced in the city by +1?

 What if along side the experience point boost, it also offered a 2%,4%, 6% chance to automatically level up any champion in the city?  This way the governor won't stagnate as soon as you stick him on garrison duty.

While I like the idea to cheapen rushed production, when added in conjunction to the other abilities I can see that getting out of hand real quick.   But it did prompt me to think of something else to add.  (see: "waste not, want not" below)

So to summarize,  a few new things to add:

Forced March Training  :  Units produced in the city the unit is stationed in, gain +1 movement.  (level 15, rare, 100)

Warden : Deters monsters from attacking the city/group (level 6, uncommon, 200)

Waste Not, Want Not  :  Increase the Metal and Crystal production of a city the governor is stationed in by 50% (level 10, rare, 100)

Let Them Eat Cake  :  Increase the population growth of the city the governor is in by 1. (level 5, rare, 100)

Possible changes

Reduce essence bonuses to one at level 5, one at level 12.  (to clarify, the previous list was a total of 3, not a total of 6)

Add a % chance to instantly level any champion in the same city as the governor to the experience point boost.  

The thing I'm trying to accomplish here, is to cause you to have to move your governor out of your fortress, and move him to different cities.   if you want the Crystal, you're going to have to move him to a far off city.   If you want to build some units, he's going to want to head to your fortress.   If you're trying to get to that super important tech so you can rule the world,   move him appropriately.  While most champions double the power of an army,  I want to see the governor at least increase the power of a city by 50%.

Adding essence to a unit stationed in the city could be extremely buggy. The game does not update essence values very regularly. I am looking for some good governor traits for the affliction. Instead of adding a percent bonus to something, you might be better off adding a solid number to avoid scaling issues. +10 production is a pretty good place to start. My solution to giving Governors XP was to add a static XP to the cityhub and let all units gain it. Then if you want, you can have governors unlock buildings that give out more later on. There does not seem to be a good way to add it to a unit.

Give Governor a spell, where he picks what city to govern. 

Problem solved. Making him stay in a city to reap benefits is counterproductive, given how few champions you usually have. 

I have been thinking about governors.  The funny things about them is that it isn't very smart to make your top hero a governor, but it absolutely logical to make at least one of your heroes a governor.  As a result, governors are by far the most overrepresented class in my games.  So can you actually argue that the most common choice is a weak one?

That said, it would be nice to have more choices at level up.  Production bonuses, production cost reduction, unrest and growth modifiers, these are all very thematic.

The thing to realise about Governor is that they don't need to be parked all the time.  Once a city has hit its food cap and built unrest-reducing buildings, it's time for them to move on.  So they're relatively free to:

• Clear out nearby lairs for XP
• Go to the front line and fight a battle or two
• Station in a newly-settled town and speed up the production (by reducing unrest) and growth there.
• Park their behinds on a pew in the Adventurer's Guild and solve Sudoku puzzles.

To be honest though I think things could improve for them a bit if they're allowed to pick another path at level 8, or if Path of the Governor became an option at a level higher than 4, requiring that you pick one of the other paths before you can get it.  Then your level-up choices will not be limited to traits from one path.

On the other hand, in a more diverse and complex strategic game, say Master's Affliction, you will constantly have a need to move governors to new settlements and some will have to stay in your most successful cities to keep unrest in check and maintain food levels. Then you must spend influence to make a governed city self-sufficient. You will only ever see them outside of a city when they are moving on to the next one. I don't like the idea of a governor going about as an adventurer.

I'm not wild about having them running around adventuring either, but it's the simplest solution I could think of.

So I tested out altering the level requirement.  Bumped it to level 5.  Seems to work fine, apart from the downside of losing a trait choice at level 5 if you didn't want Governor.

It's actually possible to be a complete rebel and avoid the 'Path of...' trait choices this way, though they each have some pretty good bonuses so I don't know why you would want to.

I've tested the essence addition rather thoroughly.   I have not found any issues other than occasionally it will linger for the remainder of the turn the governor left the city in.   This isn't really an exploitable issue though.  

What about adding +1 to a city with 0? It would allow certain enchantments that don't rely on essence. You would be adding a pretty big cheat.

good suggestions here in this thread:

I posted some suggestions here a while back for giving them abilities to help defend cities.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/433493

The bonuses discussed are great.  But the Governor needs to start getting experience for being stationed in a city.  Without that it is very difficult to select the Governor option.

I do for the growth and unrest bonus, but it is few and far between, or late in the game.

If a hero is adventurer, they're good at roaming around, doing quests and killing monsters. That is their job, so that is what they get good at, and get experience from.

If the hero is a governor, they're a bureaucrat. They don't roam around killing monsters and doing quests, they fill out paperwork and manage the government of a town. This is their job, and so they should also get experience for doing this. They're essentially just a politician. Some politicians hardly ever move, but they're quite good at managing. (Others, not so good!)

I've tried to add an ability that grants experience while stationed in a city, but there are some hard coded issues hindering me.  About the best I'm going to be able to do, is have it so the governor will receive traits that unlock buildings that grant xp to champions stationed in that city.  Probably to the tune of 1,10, and 50 xp / turn, at levels 5, 10, and 18.  This should in no way outpace the xp gained by killing things, but still allow the governor to level up while governing.  I'll likely do 1,5,and 20 xp at the same time to these buildings to stationed units.

I'm also very keen on adding the +1 to movement for units built in that city.  

I have gotten path of the defender on my sovereign after taking path of the mage, so I imagine that that should be possible after having taken path of the governor also.  And if I was depending on a fortress to build my troops, I could easily imagine taking path of the governor... (but usually I am playing civ/magic realms, only getting military technology for horses and army size.)

Anyways, to get path of the defender some time after level 4, I think you have to be taking a severe beating in most of your battles.

  I think the governors in this game follow more the Roman model.  They would have made a name for themselves as Generals.  Then they would learn bureaucracy by becoming a senator/politician.  Then they get appointed to manage a province (city). 

From there they would still be in charge of a military, so could go afield if the need arose.  Otherwise they would sit in the city and manage the taxes etc.

Julius Caesar was a governor.  

This ^^^

I end up wishing for my cities to get attacked when they have a governor in them.

If you are using your governor to give frontier towns a boost until thy can get their bell tower or cleric built and/or until you can connect it up with your capital.... then you will probably have wildlands nearby that might need dealing with?  Also, troops might need time to heal between battles.

It could happen, but this depends on many factors...

totally off the wall suggestion (not sure if this has been offered before):  Get rid of the "Path of the Governor" but make it so you can turn any champion (and sov?) into a governor at any point (like after they are injured many times).  Then they trade in their previous level-up perks for governor based ones.  The higher level the champion, the better governor they will be.  This would be a one-way transformation.

They could then get xp from cities; it could be a simple x per turn, but I think it would be more interesting if they got xp when units/buildings were completed.  The higher the production cost, the more xp it gives.  It would make the xp a little more dynamic.

I do not know about "any point", but I have also been offered path of the govenor late in the game when my sovereign was mostly not able to get into combat before it was over.