Once you get some Shards and some mana producing buildings, mana goes well. As long as you don't waste your mana in pointless casting. And now with that new mana generating talent, even better.

Enchanments without upkeep costs don't seem a good idea to me. +5 Attack for free until I cancel it? Even if you increased the casting cost of it, once casted why should I ever cancel it then?

Right now it's a very MoMish.

If you connect your shards to your towns and build the mana producing city structure then mana isn't much of an issue aslong as you dont do silly thing like keep summons constantly active.

Hmmmm... I never seem to have a lack of mana, if anything I almost think there is an overabundance.

I general grab attunement for my SOV, Doubles mana production initially. Get shard harvesting early in order to start building a base of production.

I almost never have any persistent enchantments running including imbue champion. I ALWAYS cast before battle and then dispel afterwards. Also I generally only use spells on big battles, e.g. when I'm about to capture an enemy capital.

Currently sitting on turn 138 of a game. Hard difficulty. I have 738 mana in reserve. However in this game i did get lucky and score two shards near my capital.

Okay, I missed that one somehow as well.

So it's not just enough to have the shard in your sphere of influence?

Hmm...

Except that the Greater Shard Upgrade and Temple of Essence require it to be in a city.