Wants to go back to the glory days when channelers were needed to found a city!

In beta 3 they were only needed to found the first city and there was no fertile land required for farms ..  You could build a farm in each city.. fretiland gave farming aboost was all.. so this did not eliminate city spam..

Oh ok, but i think random_targets idea sounds very good:

There's still code in the game setting for how much essence founding a city would cost. I haven't played with it much though, with the way the AI builds cities, their sovereign will be an empty shell real quick.

I really don't have any problem with city spam... I like spreading my empire ever outward and love it when even the far reaching city's sphere of influence reach my older ones.

At least according to the lore, yes, that is more or less what is supposed to happen.

Maybe a balance is required between the concept of terrain revival and the annoyance caused by dragging your sovereign around the world (things like long ranged magic, towers of restoration, magical imbued pioneers and results from certain quests), but I think it can be a good thing if the channelers play an integral part of the revival of civilization in this game.

If it makes you feel more comfortable, you can compare it to the "Disciples" games or to the terrain changing items from AoW instead of the zergs.

The information in the lore is not that detailed.

I'm not sure if the channelers are supposed to be something new that just recently popped, or an ability that always existed but for some reason never used.

But it does mention two things about the ability to channel magic: that it's a rare ability, and that it is the power that might restore the world.

The part about being rare is implemented nicely in the game. It requires children or a special magic to have other units with the ability to cast spells.

As for the "use magic to restore the world", it is only done by using the sovereign to create the first city. Hardly enough if they want to stick to the lore of the game, and I think it can be a great thing if they do since it creates a new concept and since it can be implemented in many different good ways.

I hope at least in an expansion that they go back to the idea that you need the sovereign to make the land fertile enough to found cities.  Its one of the concepts that made me excited for the game.  I'd figure saving it for an expansion would give them time to fix the more immediate problems and figure out a way to make it work.  Maybe have a magical building in cities that allows the sovereign to enhance his channeling abilities to allow him to make land fertile from a distance while he is in the city.  I was really excited about my sovereign restoring and manipulating the world, and anything to enhance that I'm all for it.  This especially.