Why can't spell research be handled similar to tech research, where your sp/turn could = the research investment/turn you put into your current research project, and once you complete "fireball" you get a pop-up saying you've completed the research - select a new spell to research. Exceedingly simple, but better than a system that requires you to check a screen every turn or lose valuable research time.

What might make this more interesting is if the first city founded by the sovereign, which uses some (maybe not 5) essence would have some special ability, it is the first city after all. So it should be special.

As to what specialty the first city should have... I have no idea. It might even be something that grows over time with the city so it would make the essence feel as if it never disappears. (it is an intricate part of the world, or rather it should) 

Frogboy,

First, let me just say, I think you guys are doing a great job with the game. I consider myself very fortunate to be involved in the beta.

I think several folks have already thrown out some really good ideas for most of your points, so I won't spend lots of characters regurgitating them.

Interesting choices:

I really like the direction with city founding from pioneers/packs vs. expending essence & that essence can be used for better/more fertile land/tiles around your cities. I really like the idea where using more essence improves the output of various improvements too. Not really much more to add at the moment.

NPCs:

Seems like there ought to be a spectrum of NPC "types". I see no reason why those hired should be limited to your particular race/faction exclusively, but it does make more sense that certain types might require more $ or not want to join at all. Somebody mentioned using an alignment construct of some sort and I think that idea also has merit.

Also, would like to see some sort of basic summary tab of my NPCs/heroes somewhere, maybe off of the kingdom report page, where I can get a list of them and their location, basic stats, etc.

Quests:

Agreed. Allegiance tags and/or multiple outcomes would add depth I feel.

Spells:

I have to confess that one of my least favorite parts of the game thus far has been the spell system. How it all functions in conjunction with a sovereign's mana/essence and int/wisdom stats seems like something of a kludge at the moment. I have been more than a little confused by what I've seen in the betas.

Agreed a queuing system is desperately needed, but more than just this, here are some items/ideas that I personally would like to see handled more elegantly:

1. Spell Research - much better explanation of what a spell tech gives you. I just have no idea whether "Channeling" or "Summoning" or "Spell books" are what I need/want from what I see.
2. Some way to delineate when a spell is going to permanently lower essence (max mana) on the spell book/research tab. The "Requirements" area of a spell makes no such distinction presently. The essence cost can be pretty vital to decision making IMO when figuring which spell to learn next. At the moment, you can only see this information once you've learned the spell (unless I'm missing something) and even then took me several games before I was checking that routinely before casting.
3. EDIT: I am confused by a the spell point cap presently. Aside from being contrived mechanism to limit what spells can be learned, I feel one (or more) of the following would be a better alternative and add to the game's magic fun factor:
   
   1. No cap, spell points accumulate each turn...but better balancing of spells' research point cost. Generally costing many more points to learn spells. With the exception of having a handful of core spells easily accessible from the get-go, I think spells ought to be harder to come by, just not limited to a nebulous cap.
   2. Maybe in conjunction with opening an entire branch of spells once researched in the tech tree, there can be a LEVEL, WIS or INT dependency. For instance, once Summoning has been researched, then Summon Imp can be researched as a level 1 spell. Any caster can cast it (provided they have mana/essence). However, Summon Familiar might be a level 3 spell that only Lvl 3+ casters have access to.
   3. Require casters/researchers to be stationed in a city (or specific building) to receive the spell research points on any given turn...or drastically reduce the spell points earned if the lore master is outside a city. This makes it a very strategic decision to include casters with your armies, or keep them sequestered away learning new spells for the kingdom.
   4. Instead of once spells are researched for your kingdom being universal (IOW, all casters of your kingdom have access to these spells provided they have the essence/mana to cast), consider allowing each caster to have their own spell book(s) with the capability to trade/learn them from each other (can trade spells similar to items if in same party/city). I think this would make casters even more unique and important, and managing them more critical.
4. A more tangible way to understand what upping a hero's INT or WIS stats will buy for your heroes magic ability. Does increasing a NPCs wisdom really amount to an increase in contributed spell points each turn?
5. Additional ways to earn essence rather than just leveling up.

City Improvements:

Generally I think city uniqueness adds strategic value to city building, so faction specific buildings are definitely a good thing. However, this doesn't necessarily have to preclude a good selection of general buildings. As long as the player is kept from building spamming (either by tile/level limit or some other more organic system) I don't think these need to be limited.

Along the lines of the NPC summary tab, a city summary tab would also be nice. City name, level, currently building, defense capability, garrison, etc.

EDIT: Also, I don't really like the spell cool down time. This seems redundant in some fashion since mana is also being drained by a casting and has to regenerate. Seems like a single mechanism could be implemented to deal with this.

 

What about this...

I find it hard to believe that magic, throughout the X centuries of existence, was ever just left at knowing the basic spell. Surely, someone out there had to learn how to manipulate magic in different ways.

I had a few thoughts that may help the system out.

• Spells have levels, that you manipulate freely. For example, the fireball spell. Let's say it does 10 damage to one target at level one. When I choose to cast fireball, I don't want the level one variety, so I move to cast it at the highest level, level X. At level X, let's say it does 100 damage to one cell and the neighboring cells, and applies a 2 damage/turn DoT to those cells and the third ring out. The cost scales exponentially - you can put more energy into the spell's max level, and get immensely powerful results - it's a trade off between a handful of godly spells and a godly number of normal spells.
• Spells have levels, normally. Casting a lot of fireballs will naturally make the fireballs stronger.
• Research upgrade talents. Instead of learning new spells, you could learn how to improve spells. These are basically D&D metamagic feats, and could be handled by casting prior to another spell. IE, cast Expand Magic before casting Fireball to get an increase in the fireball's area.

To keep factions distinct, have there be a limited number of possible upgrades. Also, I think that each faction should have one or two specific alterations that are theirs and theirs alone - these could be part of each player-made faction, too.

Maybe crystal shards contain not only magic energy but also life energy. If so, a sovereign could channel the life energy back into the land and revive it.

A sovereign would start the game with a one crystal shard which he or she could use to revive the land. The sovereign would then need to find more crystal shard to revive any more land.

Building cities and reviving the land should be two completely different things. You should be able to build a city on forsaken land and then, later, you should be able to revive the land that the city is on. 

Why not just let a sovereign’s champions build cities and resource outposts?

NPCs

 

I'd like to see NPC's have higher prices for opposing sides recruiting them.  I'd also like to see them leave if a player does a mission directly opposed to either themselves or their side.  *warning XXXXX refuses to follow you on this quest of folly and will leave your side if you accept/complete this quest*.

 

Adding in quests that directly affect the NPCs would be good too:

 

XXXX has a particular interest hunting down the Murderous Mamba Marmoset (It killed their father... prepare to die!)  XXXX gains +1 speed if you succeed in this quest!

 

XXXX has a deadly allergy to lobster, -1 to dex if that character completes the Shellacked Shellfish Showdown!

    *

Ahh always loved that feeling of finding that nagging bug or app-stopper.

Have a good rest .


        * Interesting Choices.  Being forced to spend essence to build a city is not a choice interesting or not.  I’m inclined to find some other use to revive land rather than forcing users to use it to effectively build a town. That is, we’d let the player build cities on the foresaken land. That’s a pretty big game change but when you add the new game behavior that the sovereign can only found their kingdom (after that, only pioneers can build cities) it makes things a lot more fun.  I’d rather see essence used to generate fertile land or something (as an example).

I like the pioneer and pioneer backpack option and using essence for other more unique options how about:

        * Empire can spoil the lands while Kingdoms can fertile it. Maybe more essence used they can do it at a longer distance - ie. in the opponents backyard
        * Essence in tandem with mana used for casting the world breaking spells? ie. volcano on the opponents lands
        * Essence still used to imbue heroes with spellcasting etc.


        * NPCs. Playing as a Trog today makes me uncertain why an NPC from the race of men would want to sign on board.  Should they just cost more? Or should they be hostile? Or what?

    * Cost more
    * maybe have a lower morale though they will work for you (chance of deserting) this is where bard skills, and other units with similar skills in the army can make a difference (ala AoW)
    * How about a quest option (which could be VERY difficult and not always give you a chance to have the hero join) is given which would give you a better chance to hire, ie.:

Sir Reginald looks at you with disdain on your offer of gold to join your army.

You hear from an advisor that he searches for his sister who was taken by bandits to the lair of the ogre Lord. "Sire, if you were to save the lass, perhaps the hero may want to join you..?"


        * Quests. I’m inclined to have quests have an Allegiance tag. That is, Empires would get different quests than Kingdoms. Right now, they share them. Relias, the do-gooder might escort some princeling to his estate. Verga, however, would use his bones as a paste.

Good call. I agree, maybe to recycle some quests you can sue the opposite affect and outcome.. also have some neutral ones though that either side can do..


        * Spells. Need a LOT more default spells that you can learn.
        * Spells #2. Need some way to queue up spell learning.

Totally agree. Is there a list we can see what you have so far? Then we can give some ideas. Lots of enchantment options.


        * City Improvements. I’d rather see fewer general improvements and more 1 per faction (Imperial Achievement) and 1 per world (World Achievement) buildings so that specializing cities is more fun.

Totally agree. CIV (of course! ) is a good example of this. A good reason to go sack that enemy city to either capture the World achievement or destroy it so you can build it!


        * Empires are more polished. Ironically, the Empires feel “better” than the kingdoms in terms of balance. Probably because they’ve gotten more love (polish wise) with the notable and obvious exception of graphics.

Look forward to seeing them! Now time for me to get some sleep too.  

• I think essence should not be tied to leveling. Leave leveling to improving your sovereign. Make it simple and passive. Example: a player gains a point of essence each turn...something like that. Then the player can choice either to use that essence to build his nation or make himself into a mage god. Essence won't feel like a drag, but a resource that you must use wisely.
• I'd also like to see reviving land (and using essence in general) to be a bit more tactical. I like the idea of using essence to create fertile land, but also using essence to directly create revived land....instead of it just automatically being revived. It would make the player feel more involved in reviving the land. Currently, reviving land feels ho-hum and sterile.
• I agree, allow cities to be made on wastelands, and give buildings (or certain buildings) penalties if not on revived lands (such as farming and housing).
• This https://forums.elementalgame.com/380948...or something like it.

• It should simply depend on the NPC. Some men might be inclined to work with fallen...others not so willing...and vice versa.
  

 

• I'd really, really would like to see settlements where some act as the low populations "bread baskets" and others as the metropolitan powerhouses (supported by those bread baskets)..and other types too. I think once there are more options this might be the case, but I would like to see a building tree where certain buildings require others. So maybe huts won't upgrade to houses until you have a warehouse, for example. Certain high tier buildings need supporting buildings and such (some of which can be those 1 per faction/world). So a player can make a really productive farm towns, but must forgo the support structure to ever make it into a large city. 
• This https://forums.elementalgame.com/380948...or something like it.

I think this thread is broken..bleegh

Interesting Choices.

I think this is a step in the right direction.  But I feel like you want essence to be a resource, but implemented it like a stat for your Sovereign/champions.

- Have essence function as a global resource like food, metal, etc. Allowing you to choose where and how to invest it, your channeler is the only one in your kingdom who can use essence and that's what makes him special.

- Gaining essence should be limited to research, quests, and consumable items (ex: you find a gem and harvest the essence from it, destroying the gem in the process). Research gives all players a base amount of essence they can access if they choose the proper breakthroughs, while quests and consumables are fought over to give the player who gains it an "edge".

- Whatever essence gets used, can be extracted/recycled/reused.  If you spend 5 essence to make a powerful sword, you can destroy it to regain that 5 essence, or alternatively an enemy who loots it in battle can extract the essence.  If 3 essence was spent to make fertile land, someone can come and extract that essence subsequently destroying the fertile land. Obviously balancing would be important, but the idea is, each map would have X amount of possible essence available to be fought over, even if its currently used for something else.

- Essence and mana should be separate but related. Essence can be invested into unit to give them mana, as well as special abilities and higher stats, how that investment affects the unit is up to the player. Channelers and other units/creatures that can naturally wield magic have a base amount of mana without an essence investment.

In summary, make essence a resource, make it limited, and make it reusable. With that foundation, if its useful, essence is made important, desirable, and interesting. Obviously it may be too late to change how essence is implemented in this way, or perhaps you simply prefer your current system.

NPCs

What determines if an npc joins you or not, should be a combination of racial disposition, alignment compatibility (empire/kingdom), negotiation (diplomacy rating), charisma, and deeds/achievements.  Thinking about trying to calculate all of those into something that makes sense in the game, hurts my brain. I think flat out restricting the ability to hire champions based on being kingdom or empire, is worse then not restricting it at all.

Quests

Faction restricted quests can be fine, where they make sense, but not all quests should be kingdom or empire. Most quests should all either faction to initiate and complete them. What would be even more interesting would be to have many quests with multiple ways of completing them based on the traditional 3 gaming moral paths of good, evil, and neutral.

Addition:

Have the Seed of Life or Revive Land or any other "Essence investment" remain in the game as a dispellable/removable effect.

If the Essence effect is dispelled or a unit enchanted with Essence gets killed, the Essence tries to return to the original caster. When the Essence is released, there is a Death magic spell to steal it.

About city specialisation : have some specialist buildings share the same "slot" : you can build a market for more gold *or* a monastry/school for more reasearch *or* a military academy for a training bonus and so on ...

You could have several such buildings, or higher level buildings needing the lower level one (so to build an university you need a school)

 

About essence: if you really want to have it based on sovereign leveling, have the essence increase automatically each level and not be something that you must chose over other *persistant* stats.

Having your sovereign gain some XP each turn (even if only 1) would also help players who like the sovereign safe in their city

Well, technically, it only forces essence to build a city that's not on "green land". This is actually good, since it prevents rapid resource grabs. How will it work if you remove essense cost and give only pioneers the ability to settle after the first city? Will they still need green land to settle? If so, then you've just made it more cumbersome since you'd still need a Sovereign to go there and revive the land, but now you'd also need a pioneer trailing him to settle the city. If you don't require green land for city, you open it up to fairly quick resource grabs (yes, I realize pioneers cost a lot but essence cost of founding a city trumps resource costs). Especially players who take a faction that gets bonus resources at start can get this going pretty quick. Basically, requiring essence to build a city off "green" land serves a pretty important purpose of making player expansion a bit more natural, rather than scouting all the juicy places on the map and putting a city down at each. Please account for that when you're re-designing this behavior!

Well, if there are "men" NPCs wandering around, it would make sense to have "fallen" NPCs wandering around too. In this case, recruiting them could require magic, but offset by the unique bonuses they may provide. For example, Men have their Merchant NPC that generates gold. Now, I can't quite picture a Trog merchant so it would definitely make sense if Fallen didn't actually have any Merchant NPCs. So, say, instead of making a deal for gold, what if cross-race NPCs required a maintained Charm spell? Essentially, they would be hostile until you charm them, at which point they join you, for no gold cost. Since Charm would be a maintained spell, they would go hostile and leave you if you ever stop maintaining, and since there will be a limit on number of spells to maintain, that should be enough of a "cost" to not require gold for them. It would also mean some more interesting choices for the player, if he wants to maintain more buffs on his army or maintain charms on unique NPCs that provide otherwise unavailable bonuses. Logical gameplay choices are great.

I could see some quests being different, but not all. For example, this morning I found some ruin with writing on the wall that led me to some tomb with a demon. This kind of quest is pretty neutral, not requiring any character interaction, so should be available to both races. But those quests you get by walking into an inn.. well, "A wraith walks into an inn....". Let's just say humans probably won't be quick to ask it to escort their kid *anywhere*. On the note on quests, it'd be great to have more than just the "good" and "evil" ways of completing quests where such choices are presented. You can only ever either let the Dark Wizard go and take his money, or kill him. Help the wolf give birth, or kill it. Get the Knight's sword from the bandits, or take their money and let them go. These are boring choices. It would be fantastic if, for example, your quest doer's Charisma stat opened up more inbetween options - think D&D dialogue where you can Intimidate or Persuade. So instead of killing bandits for the sword, you can threaten them so much that they give you the sword, money, and run away screaming in fear.

Well, it should be a bit more indirect. Give all the different spell books more low-end spells, so a Sovereign that's more focused on Magic will have a wider spell choice selection, but someone who just goes with the Basic will still have just the necessary essentials.

Maybe, maybe not. Notification that you have the max spell points would be great so you don't lose production because you're capped. But you'd have to give the player control over the queue, which more or less means they'd be spending the same amount of time in the spells window, just more upfront to throw them in the queue. As for how to implement it? In the Spells window, make 3 (or however many) empty circles and label them something intuitive ("Spell research queue" or something). Clicking on a spell in the book adds it to the queue (FIFO). As soon as there are enough spell points for the top queued spell, it gets learned and the rest of the queue moves up. Clicking on a queued spell removes it from queue. Can do more fancy stuff such as if you have 3 queue slots and 1, 2 are taken and 3rd is empty, if you drag a spell from the book over 1, it becomes 1 and the existing two spells in queue get shifted to 2 and 3.

With fewer improvements you'd need to drop the number of build space available. Cities aren't just unspecialized because there aren't any 1 per faction or 1 per world improvements, but because you can build basically everything in every city and there's never a reason not to. There have to be more improvements than build space so if you really want to make a city into a military training city, you sacrifice gold production or food production in it almost entirely. Or if the city is in a food sweet spot, there would be very little room left for anything else, so on. Basically, it has to be balanced such that there are enough improvements for every main city "function" that doing it prevents expanding the city's other functions to their entirety.

Is it just me or does this thread look funny after "ThreeKing's" post? Looks like the lines that box everyone's posts in are gone. Ok....who broke the page?

Forum Snafoo?

• Interesting Choices. 

The biggest comment I can make on Interesting Choices when it comes to cities is Terrain. From what I can tell, Terrain doesn't affect the city at all unless it has improvements built on it. Somehow, the terrain the city is built on and surrounded by should determine certain factors. Maybe desert cities have a prestige penalty, grassland cities get a food bonus, forest cities get a material bonus, mountain cities get a defense bonus, etc. Right now, we can really make cities anywhere and they all function generally the same with specific resources being the only difference (by this I mean iron, horses, etc.). The basic resources (food, materials, defense, population) should all be affected by the area the city is built in. That's an interesting choice.

 

• NPCs. 

I love this. It made me excited. Quite frankly, I think certain races should always be hostile towards Kingdoms and vice versa. With that said, you would need to remember to make NPCs that are more friendly towards the Kingdom races. Your ogre camp video is a good example. There should be opposing forces from creatures like that so that Kingdoms can recruit non-standard NPCs. Maybe Fairies, Giants (standard human looking ones) and some kind of Mercenary NPC group would be nice additions. With that, there should also be neutral, impartial NPCs and NPCs that are always hostile regardless of faction.

• Quests.
  

Definitely have quests different for each faction. Although the quests are unpolished in the beta, I can see their potential for uber fun. To create a completely different feeling for each faction, these would definitely need to be different for them. I'd love to see quests with more choices, too. It would be nice if quests had 2 or 3 choices with 2 or 3 different rewards, and to go another step forward, 2 or 3 choices that lead to different segments of the quests (Meaning, if the witch told me to go an inn and at the inn was a guy who asked 1, 2, or 3, each answer would lead to a different second part of the quest. Like a tree, the quests could end up with 6 or 9 different results by the time we got to the end).

• Spells.

My biggest issue for spells is Shards. I researched all the spells I could and I couldn't cast half of them because I couldn't find a bloody shard. I have 2 suggestions for this:

Number 1: The Sovereign should be attuned to an element (or 2) through creation. This needs to mean something. I don't like how I went to create an ice queen but only found fire shards - that's not interesting. Maybe the Sovereign can count as a shard of the element they're attuned to, and reduce the needed shards for those spells by 1.

Number 2: Maybe we can choose or change the element of the shard when we first harvest it. Maybe they start off as a Shard of Magic and, when harvested, we choose their element and that's what it gets locked in at. That way we have more of a choice of what brand of magic to pursue.

• Spells #2. 

Queuing would be nice, but every interface component related to spells drives me crazy. Spells to research and spells Known should be two completely different screens. We shouldn't have to page through the same book to go between what we know and don't know. I also think Queuing would be good because the way it works now makes the spell research feel like a store. I like spell points, but I'd like to be able to already pick a few spells to move towards and just see the "You have learned Nuclear Launch!" screen.

• City Improvements. 

Agreed! Basic general improvements are okay - the new house vs garden change feels really nice. It was a lot less clicking and achieves the same result. Back to what I said about interesting choices, it would be nice if the city itself changed base off the terrain it was built on. Maybe a mountain city can get a specific style of wall unique to that Kingdom that vastly increases its defense (but is only available at city level 4).

Citywide "1 per" upgrades would definitely be nice. I think we should definitely be able to designate a capital city, as well, and that the capit city benefits should change per race. An example might be that Capitar gets more tiles for buildings per city level while the other race (sorry, name escapes me) gets bonus research based on population. If the capital benefit was tied directly to city level, that city would definitely become the almighty Capital city that looks awesome because leveling it would yield the maximum benefit. A single improvement could designate the capital - Sovereign's Keep, Tower, Palace, etc.

My feeling on using the pure Magic path is: too similar to Warfare path.

Why? Because to get experience I need to kill stuff, and to kill stuff I need to build an army. Then, to build an army my choice is to wait for mana regen and spell cooldowns with magic, or wait for money/supplies/iron for troops. The end result is a very similar army, with little differentiation.

While I think summoning is ok, differentiating the troops would be very nice. Generally, I feel what is needed is the ability to give troops low powered combat spells of various kinds. This would both allow a hybrid approach of say, rather than giving a unit plate armor, giving the unit a low powered healing spell (cleric instead of knight) or giving it a low powered fire ball (mage instead).

This would also allow the summoned units to be meaningfully different. For example, the imp could be only 2 HPs, but could have some power like magic resistance, invisibility (can move on tactical field without being attacked until it attacks), etc. (see Heroes of Might and Magic for about 200 ideas on special abilities for troops).

As it is, my summoed army feels almost exactly like my trained army. Pretty boring.

MadMagus - you're a man after my own heart.

I really like some of your ideas and think they would effectively solve some of my issues/pet-peeves (or replace my proposed solutions)

I'd give you some karma if the thread wasn't dorked!

Guess it was my post that did it. I used up too much essence to form the post...

Unfortunately I cannot edit or delete it.. 

Interesting Choices

Since we are talking about the Fractions 1st city and likely capital, how about using essense as a 'investment' in the area. This investment can vary from 1 to 5 points - which the more essense you invest, the more bonuses/better terrain options you get. This only happens for your 1st city. So when you find a area that you wish to build on you are presented with a dialog of choices, much like if you are creating your own soverign.

Revitialize the Land costs 1 pt, having a mine in the nearby area 1pt, fertile land 1pt, gold bonus, 1pt, research bonus 1pt, crystal shard, 4 pts - some picks might increase in cost when certain picks are already made. For example, if you pick a having a nearby mine resource, then perhaps having a fertile land tile now costs 3 additional pts. In this way, your primary city can be unique and you can ultimately control the amount of essense you cast (only from 1 to 5 points). If you pick good enough options, this can be a fun way to make your capital city unique. Here are some options off the top of my head (no costs though, that would be for others to decide):

Crystal Shard tile, Mine tile, Fertile land tile, Horses tile, Twilight Bees tile, Beach tile (if near water), Defensive bonus, gold production bonus, food production bonus, research bonus, prestige bonus - maybe even have a random 1 only type of item like Tree of Life, Fount of Knowledge, Dungeon of Dispair, etc.

Customization of your 1st city layout could be about as much fun as customizing your Soverign.

Just a thought. Perhaps someone finds this interesting, maybe it could be elaborated upon.

 

 

 

I just had an idea. I'm posting it here, but it applies to all aspects of gameplay.

 

Essence and/or Mana Sliders.

 

Basically, when we cast a spell (Imp, for example), it prompts use with a Slider of how much Mana we want to invest. Say for 1 imp it costs 5 mana and we have 15, we can move that slider up to 3 and use all of our mana for 3 imps on one cooldown. For Essence, we can do the same thing. The Amount of Essence we invest into a more powerful spell can determine all kinds of things; strength, duration, making it more difficult to dispell.

The same is for Mana. The more Mana we invest, the more powerful the spell is. I know right now Brilliance and Productive stack (I don't think that's intended, like someone pointed out, 200 research cities o.O) but maybe on the initial casts of spells like those, we can invest more mana to intensify the effect.

Finally, spells that don't require Essence can use this system with 2 sliders. If a spell requires no essence, maybe we get the option to infuse Essence in it in addition to the standard cost, yielding spectacular results (making an enchantment permanent or extending the range of said spell).

Just another constructive idea!

 

I am guesing it would be more difficult to leave the quests unkeyed to a faction, and instead allow multiple responses the player can choose from about HOW to respond to a quest (with different results of course):

Ex: Nobleman asks you to escort him to his castle.

a - Agree to escort him.

b - Hold him for ransom instead.

c - Rip out his entrails and feed them to the commoners, etc.  LOL

Interesting choices: Reviving the land is kind of an interesting concept so I hope you keep it in some fashion.  There are several routes you could take to change things up though.

1) Make the revive land a ranged spell so your sovereign doesn't necessarily need to be at the location of the revived land.  Personally I think it is a good idea for most spells to be able to be cast from far away for the sovereign.

2) Allow building on forsaken land but have some real penalties for doing so.  Maybe not being able to build gardens and some other buildings at all and have others be less productive.  Also the city should take a big prestige hit.  If you do this you should have options for reviving the land later though (definitely from a sovereign spell but maybe also some other way).

3) Do what you were talking about above and just have spells to create fertile land for farming.  Maybe not quite as interesting but it works.

NPCs: I definitely would like to see NPC's have personality and be unique.  Give each goals and history which limits who they work for and for how much.  I would prefer it not to be cut and dry though.  I don't think saying that no men will work for the fallen is a good idea.  It should be an individual choice but overall it would be rare for instance.  I like that better.  Also what about having other criteria besides money be involved.  Maybe that great researcher won't work for you unless you have a library?  The great knight only if you have a command post and armory.  Also things like prestige level, city level, etc could come into play.

Quests: Making the sides feel different is a must and this is one way to help differentiate them.  I don't know your lore well enough but I would think it would be more up to the personality of the sovereign than the actual faction type.  Are all fallen evil bastards?  Are all kingdom nations saints?  I'm guessing the answer to both is no so more variance would be better than only based on faction type (fallen or man).  Choice is also a good thing so don't limit us too much though.

Spells: Agreed.  Also find the system confusing.  I research summoning books but when I research spells I have no summoning options and end up running out of spells to research without getting one.  Why?  As I don't know the cause I don't know the solution but seems like something needs to change.

Spells#2: Definitely

City Improvements: Everything is too generic right now city improvments being just one of many cases.  I really can't tell right now what nation I am playing other than the color and name.  Right now the sovereign seems to be the thing that makes you different, not the faction.  Research, weapons, armor, city improvements, unit stats, etc should all have some variation in my opinion.  Also need more options for city specialization as you stated.

The idea of changing the shard was brought up a long time ago and at the time I thought this was a given.  I definitely agree we should have a mechanism for changing the shard type somehow but I don't really like the idea of only being able to do it when harvested.  Personally I think it should possible but hard.  Make a powerful (but shardless) spell, have it cost essence, or have it take a really long time and take it out of play while changing.  Without doing this specialists won't really be viable unless you want to rely on luck.

Good idea but i'd like see a Sovereign with the fire book be able to cast fire spells without a fire shard. Then if/when he finds a fire shard and starts to harvest it his fire spells gets a free boost over the guy with just a shard. Also that means if i don't have the book but start to harvest a shard, fire magic becomes a choice in magic research.