now that sounds fair enough. after all, even as a uber character you probably have to have some kind of infrastructure and territory. and defending it does not end with defense or your town(s), you also have to protect resource points, roads, maybe important strategic points, etc.

a fine balance indeed that we have here. good that beta is so long, that should give time to get it about right.

Threadwinner. Although I think a lot of times people discuss topics just because they are going so batshit crazy waiting to get their hands on it. It's like phone sex - it's not what you REALLY want, but it does give a degree of satisfaction.

psychoak often makes me think words that are not OK for the underage market. Truth can be a real bitch.

That and Kitkun. And Annatar.

Indeed. I am getting a bit tired of the bear theme - it was funny for a while, now I hope they put bear mounts in and make them were those silly tutus and foofy collars and maybe even a clown hat....

For example, I'm leaving one sentence out of this post and adding this one.

If hording essence means you're an army raping god of war, that is a feasible strategy.  Guy with 20 cities goes oh shit, it's the enemy channeler, ahh!  Poof, city dissappears.  You'd have an overwhelming advantage where ever the blighter was at.  My guess is that you'd have to play more offensively if you really went small, but you'd still have a titanic force at your disposal that your opponent had to match with overwhelming numbers.

One thing that I thought of was "self-increasing divergence": the more you go Gandalf, the more your champions and heroes effect your research. The more you go Sauron, the more important buildings become. Plus, as opposed to champion-centric research, it might be nice to learn spells via dungeoneering: the ancients probably built some BIG libraries.....

I assumed that the power of the channeler would be like Master of Magic. Which means that a essence hoarder can devastate enemies with Fireballs and stuff but so can any other channeler who knows the spells and got sufficient casting ability (In Age of Wonders you had to research "Casting Specialist 1-5" to have more mana to use every turn).

And I don't know if it's a good thing if someone can neglect the citybuilding and just boost up heroes and powerup his spellcasting....it will become harder to balance if there's different ways to play. If everybody have to atleast build some cities then the game will be easier to balance because of the similarities.

More importantly though, like someone said it's much easier to go with magic power and a few heroes instead of multiple cities (like the difference between a assassin and a general in Demigod perhaps).

Also, one of the two playstyles WILL be more powerful on maps with a certain distance between startlocations and that advantage will only grow the bigger the map....

I for sure wouldn't want to balance THAT mess