I don't see how swapping mana types for shards-as-spell-prereqs does much good to help that basic "game being won in the first 10 minutes" problem. It just changes "the first 10 minutes" to "the crucial 10 minutes" on a given map. Having shard pre-reqs seems a very neat idea for late-game, world-wrecking types of spells, but I'm still hoping for an overall approach that shakes out along the lines of the spell book system in MoM, i.e. a major setup choice should be whether your sovereign specializes in one element, and if not, how he or she is diversified.

I like the pent-up insight model quite a lot, but I'm skeptical that current game AIs would be able to use it well. Maybe the AIs could handle it if the spending rate for accumulated points was based on the sovereign's essence. That way, someone wanting to do an 'exploit' like Ragnar describes would need to be a committed essence hoarder and an aggressive land-restorer would need to plan ahead for spell research because even simple ones might take a few turns, at least by mid-game.

I think Raven, that would be like resources in Civ IV. Just because a civ has iron doesn't mean he'll rush you with swordsmen. He might not have the tech yet, or he could have a personal affinity for a different school... This is assuming he has the means of getting in enough mana to use the shards in the first place.

Need more details! Can't wait to see spell research and casting in action.

The original post prompted a question in my mind, why research spells at all?

Your character is a channeler right? A being that is "somehow able to access magic". Well, isn't that ability innate to that channeler? Isn't that natural (or supernatural) ability one that makes your character fundamentally from most other beings in the game?

Only channelers can imbue their essence to make an area habitable to make your first city, right? That's clearly a magical ability (maybe a spell) that is performed without any researchers at all. How does your channeler know how to perform that spell? There were no researches available to teach it to him right? Well, I guess he just must have an innate ability to channel magic, as the name channeler indicates.

What I'm getting at is this: if the ability to channel magic is an intrinsic ability for the channeler, then why does he need some non-magical researchers to make his spells for him?

The idea that an exceedingly powerful, intrinsic ability possessed by a few very rare being can be "researched" and improved upon by a collection of non-magical research dudes doesn't make sense to me.

As the original post pointed out, typical spell research is boring. I argue that ALL spell research is boring. It's boring because it's a mostly passive system. It's boring because its cliché in this type of game, and it's boring because it doesn't really make sense.

So what is the alternative to the old and boring spell research? Replace it with a new and engaging spell power  system.

Here's the scenario: The acquisition of new spells is brought on by increasing your magical power. This can be done by gaining experience points by taking to the field yourself (risky), sending out your imbued heroes to fight on your behalf (less risky), personally defeating enemy mages and magical beings and devouring their essence (very risky), and/or claiming magic shards and redirecting them towards yourself, gradually increasing your essence. Additionally, your essence naturally increases as your cities prosper, sense they are imbues with a little bit of you.  

The best part of the above suggestion is that it is an active and engaging system that encourages players to actually go out and knock some heads in the pursuit of raw power. You don't just select a spell to research or click the spell you want when your academy oven timer goes off, you have a spell system that seamlessly integrates with your goal of dominating your opponents, and that rewards you for doing so.

Am I off-base on any of this?

Wow, I agree.

Taking into mind that I don't know how spellbooks and everything else of the magicsystem works my suggestion is best viewed as a "Don't fall into other games traps".

Have you considered making the shards mana-neutral?   Right now it sounds like Disciples II where you collect different types of mana and I think that made things too random. We've also had Age of Wonders with Life/Death/Air/Fire/Water/Earth nodes that gave more mana the more books of nodes type you had. That was a bad system since it was random.

Age of Wonders II and AoW II Shadow Magic was much better in that there were only "nodes" which gave you mana. You still choosed your spellbooks.

Master of Magics magic system beats all of the abovementioned ones though and it's high time that a system of a 17-yearold game got beat.

Mana is already neutral, you just need to control X number of Y types of shards to cast a spell. For instance, say you have 500 mana, which is enough to cast said rain of fire spell in the screenshot above.. However, if you only have 1 fire shard, in addition to the earth shard, you can not cast that spell. You would need another fire shard in order to cast it. The way I see it is that shards change the neutral mana into the type of magic you want it to be when casting a spell.

Well I am afraid in 4X game the size of the kingdom allways matters. You can see that in real life too. If the USA, China or SU attacks somebody, other states in the world protest but never do anything. Why? Because they are huge. And because they are huge, they are strong.

Limiting spells to "once per combat" and similars are bad ideas. I'd prefer restrictions based on costs (that don't need to be based just in mana and shards. They could be fueled by life, temporary lose/drop of stats...).

But yeah, AoE DPS Effect ftw. I suppose it could be also a matter of not havin other interesting spells to use. And when I say interesting, I mean spells that give you a good advantage that you can really appreciate like good old direct damage.

Why not instead of shards giving mana (discarded) or spells needing X shards to be able to cast them, shards work as magic amplifiers? The more shards you control, the better your spells work (or they gain extra effects or whatever).

I thought the original idea was that if you accumulated mana, and therefore spells, you would be limited in other areas, like strength in armies and cities?  Let's say you did accumulate mana/essence, you wouldn't have much of an army at all, and therefore you would still be limited in the same vein that people who chose to build massive armies/amounts of cities would be hampered in ways of magic.  Does that not balance the game?  If you are worried that a build up of magic towards the begining of the game will be a problem, how about giving players who choose to go the build-cities-and-armies-and-people route a better chance at quests that give protection (maybe in the form of relics or items?) against strong magic? 

One thing I never hear about in this game is religion.  Instead of only having magic adadamies and magic tech trees, how about praying to get spells?  Or, how about having a choice for all three, or even a combo of all three?  I never played much D&D but didn't clerics and druids have to pray to get spells?  If a sovereign becomes an all-powerful essence type of guy, then his opponents' citizens could start to see that all-powerful Sauron-type of evil sovereign as a demon and begin a religion devoted to counter him/her in the same vein that people formed religious sects to counter magic users in the Wheel of Time Series.  My memory is a bit foggy, but didn't they form huge, strong military/religious cults and divisions to counter anyone channeling magic in those Wheel of Time books? 

Here are some quick replies to replies

No research system idea: You could have all your spell at the beginning of the game, you choose a dozen of spell that you will keep for the whole game. When you acquire more power, you simply increase the power, range, area of effect and the number of time you can cast these spells.  This way you never endup with many spells that does the same things or with some spells being overused because they are better than other spells. It is also easier to remember from 12-20 spells in your book than 40-50 spells.

Channeler in or outside city: It think this could be relative to empire size, when you have a large empire, you are more likely to send heroes under your command doing quests rather than doing it your self. But if you have a small empire, you will do it yourself.

Small VS Large Empire (size does not matter, or matter little): THIS IS ESSENTIAL! You should even make some test to see if it can be done. Have 1 player have an empire as large as all other empires combined together. See if the players can team together to pull the large empire down. To do this, these players must work together and target the right keypoints of the larger empire to destabilise it which will take more time for the larger empire to retaliate. You could also have a cohesion system so that if some part of an empire gets seperated apart from it's capital, it suffer various penalties dues to lack of supplies. Right now, in games like MOO 2 and MOM, you need to get the right spell or technology that will make your opponent defenseless in order to punch through a larger empire. So  in these games, where you are behind, you try to do tech rush.

Seconded.