The change to having a global mana pool was an excellent move, but I'm finding character creation and spellbooks pretty lackluster.  That's not to say that the revamped spells don't look pretty and all.  In the new incarnation of Elemental 1.x, Character Creation became vanilla.  Race choices exist that impact your empire growth, but as Elemental is inspired by Master of Magic (itself inspired by the Magic:The Gathering card game) the Mage Creation feels nearly pointless or just plain odd.

Starting a new empire, you might get lucky enough to have a magic node near your city.  Odds are, it probably isn't of the magic sphere that your character was conceptualized around.


Here's what I would prefer to see changed/overhauled

Magic Nodes should be colorless.  Just like any power, it's not having the ability to wield power itself, it's how you use it.  If my Mage is a Firebrand, then he should be able to research tech to change the colorless Mana node to a Fire Node.  This allows my Character to invest into Magic Elements in a meaningful way.  Defined nodes could still exist along side the colorless/generic nodes, just much rarer to encounter.  Character Creation then becomes more functional and representative of the players choice.  Not just happenstance.

Hero recruiting also becomes more interesting, as Heroes may have leanings toward differing Elements than just your own.  Hero leveling could then become more complex/interesting than just throwing all their points into Intelligence.  I have more thoughts about this, but that would go into a separate thread.