Frogboy, regarding the 1.08 game I played yesterday. I was lucky enough to be placed next to 2 fire shards which meant I immediately tech'd up to shard harvesting.
It also meant once I had this, I was unstoppable. Because of the huge bonuses spells get from shards. I was able to one shot everything with the level 1 fire spell which costs 2 mana. I did an average of 24ish damage to every unit twice per round. I never bought my sovereign anything, because it was too expensive, while teching up in warfare allowed me to get soldiers that were better outfitted than the ruler of my kingdom.
Eventually I got fireball, which did double the damage of the first level fire spell but still at TWO mana. So I was doing like 46 damage x2 per turn. I marched into every other faction's territory, declared war on them and singlehandedly destroyed everyone.
There is a huge issue of balance now, because once you get a shard or two, its a wrap. I've won. Now I just chase down everyone to one shot them.
Maybe there can be some sort of natural HP growth as things level up, or you can get more HP when you buy new armor? Because when a sovereign levels up, just put your points in essence or intelligence. Everything else is a waste. There is no reason to melee when you can fire off spells like this.
