Ok, love the game.  Yes, its a little buggy...crashes to desktop with an "out of memory" error every hour or so, but im loving it anyhow, and i know they'll work it all out eventually.  GalCiv2 was perfect by the time i got it, so i know this will get there.  Anyway, i took the necessary technologies to "channel"  IE: to hand off some of my essence to my heroes.  But now i cant for the life of me figure out exactly how its done.  Any suggestions anyone?  That aside, thanks so much Brad and co, and to all the beta testers, for all the effort you have put into the game and all the effort im sure you are putting in even as I type this.  The fantasy TBS 4x is way to scarce a genre now, and this is turning into a real gem.