Alright, this is my first post here on the forums, but the reason I'm doing this right now is that I was inspired by the whole "wild spaces" concept to write this.
I enjoy the entire process of building civilizations, but I think this would be fun to do as well. Does anyone else think it would be fun to play as simply a very powerful single hero type guy the length of the game, investing your essence into yourself instead of building an enitre empire? I doubt the game mechanics would allow for this sort of play, but I think it would be fun to do. From what I understand of the way essence works, you can use it to imbue the land to create cities, you can give it to your followers to make them stronger, or you can keep it to yourself to create a "Sauron" like ruler. What I'm suggesting is that instead of making cities, you can simply wander around the world and not be tied to being a ruler but instead being whatever you would want ot be in the game world, possibly allowing for a more RPG like experience.
You start off the game as any other channeler would. Except you wander around and explore, go through dungeons and look for important artifacts, work on the master quest, et cetera instead of building entire civilizations. You could eventualy make yourself into a "super" entity and hold diplomatic relations with empires and other entities (liek dragons or whatever) that have been talked about. Maybe, instead of working to create habitable land for an entire city, you could make yourself your own "Fortress of Solitude" kind of home. Perhaps you can gather support from various contacts throughout the game world to allow you passage through neutral terrotory (if it will be in) and other empires. I think this would open up a whole new realm of possibilities in terms of how victory can be achieved. For example, you could loot dungeons to look for special magic items and spend your time trying to hone your magical ability (like a different form of "research") until you can gather enough mana to "break" the game in your favor somehow, or you could spend your time wandering around, gathering support from neutral creatures, allowing you to get a powerful enough army to conquer the world, or you could even spend your time trying to assassinate all the other channelers with your own character, thus winning you the game, or you could simply spend your time doing the master quest yourself.
Again, I doubt this would be possible to integrate into the game, but I still think it could be a really cool idea.
