Deterbo

Sea Monsters. That is all.

had same issue, save game and quit then reload, mana regens again

I have been getting crashes while setting up my sovereign in the editor today, now I can't even get the beta to open up

I had stutter and CTD also, have to go to work though no time to check if autosave will open

CyrusNunn I think you have the right idea, essence should represent a limitation so that we can not cast some massively overpowered spell every turn, but it should never be able to drop so low that our ability to cast spells is crippled. I still think that questing should restore essence. A good character might recover essence through good actions, an evil one through evil actions.

Essence = mana could work but there needs to be a way to regain essence. maybe killing powerful creatures or stealing it from locations on the map. Maybe you find a small village on fertile ground and instead of helping the locals you suck the life out of the territory to expand your own power, something like that. Characters should probably recieve experience for using magic as well.

These are all great ideas, a leaders charisma rating and actions throughout quests should also affect this, if you have a low charisma and choose to feed a blind peasant to a dragon rather than magically restore his sight your "good" champions might despise you while the morally ambiguous ones will not care, and the down right evil guys would probably be pretty excited about your vile course of action.

Some sort of market system to sell excess food or production points could balance out the absence of metal in some starting locations.

Same here I actually got the quest twice in the same game with a custom leader "you received a horse!", but there were no horses to be had.

The first city I built with a watch tower is surrounded by fog of war and it will not go away.

I got sidetracked does the "wildflowers" still produce metal?

That's all, my ore shows up as wildflowers, i am using the leader ability that gives an ore by starting location.

No, it happens with male too, I noticed it today when my sovereign had 4 kids in the 20s and him and his queen were only 27 at the most.

The randomly appearing dragon fountain, cave or estate on the map kills some of the go out and explore mood. A possible solution would be to show an area where the quest can be completed in so that you get a general idea of where to go, a more challenging quest might produce a wider area to search in.