Panic77

Hexes have less connecting spaces, when allowing for diagonal movement. Also, hexes don't like up to the cardinal directions, which makes my brain uncomfortable.

Another way to slow down expansion would be to make the wandering enemies aggressively attack your cities, and make them much more abundant and powerful. Then you would have to balance expansion with making sure that everything you take is secure. To balance this, the player would probably have to start off with a couple defensive units to station in their city. A side effect of this is that there would be much more experience gain.

If the side that goes first only got half their actions points the first round, it would make it a little more fair. I think the core problem is that you can burn through so many spells a turn. Being able to cast chain lightning 4 times in a turn is pretty unfair. Casting times probably need to vary per spell and be much longer, on the whole.

Any time a spell or character ability is a "must use" in a game, it is limiting choice. At 15 mana teleport is for emergencies only. I would prefer to see it researchable and have you start with a cheaper version that only lets you teleport a shorter distance and maybe doesn't teleport other units. On a side note, it concerns me that thinks are being "tweaked" by 200%.

I am opposed to the Global Mana pool. Just because other games did it this way does not mean it is right for this game. There are interesting choices made when you have to decide who casts a spell, and you have to be aware of where your casters are. The problem with the way it currently is set up is that you can really only boost your mana regen by getting more casters. This is the real problem. The global mana pool changes a LOT about the game to fix this one issue. A better fix is t