This is a large mod which radically improves city development and specialization, as well as adding a variety of new abilities to champions on level up. I've tried to be creative, but not overpowering. My main goals were to make city building more intuitive and reactive to geography while increasing the amount of specialization and game play available. 

For Champs, level 2 now offers a dozen new abilities which tend to offer special abilities (think of the zodiac). Some of these like Star Song, Winterborn, and Magebane unlock related traits down the line, others like Panther Companion and Favoured of the People are just a one off benefit. The 3rd level abilities offer some special city or army skills, like Engineer or Researcher, or tend to benefit key stats while penalizing others. This gets your champs off to a good start and due the increase in abilities, you should always have a relevant, desirable choice when you level. Early city level ups have also been changed, with some of those buildings freely available or unlocked through other means, and some new buildings introduced. Some such buildings are:

The Park, which offers -10% unrest, and -25% unrest when the queue is empty.

Clay Pit, offers 1 Clay Pit, and produces the new resource Clay. (useful for building Clay Golems)

Retired Adventurer, offers +0.5 Diplomatic Capital and -5 Unrest.

Foundry, offers +1 Iron

Cities can now specialize depending on what's around them.

If you have Lumber and Iron, you could build the Manufactory and become an Industrial base. If you have a manufactory and crystal you could build a Crystalworks. Or, if you also have crystal and a life or death shard local, you could build a Crystal Golem Manufactory. If you have the iron and an earth shard you can build an Elementium Refinery. There are about seven possible Industry buildings but even if you have all the right resources in one city, you can't build them all, because they each cost a local Industry resource to build, and the Manufactory only provides 3 of them. So even if you have multiple Industrrial bases, those cities are going to be different (and expensive to maintain).

Once you have a level 3 city, you can build your Seat of Power. Instead of a local Industry resource, this gives you 3 local Governance resources. These allow you to choose between about seven Political buildings. The Pony Express provides increased sight to all your units. The Geographic Society sells maps that provide +1 move, and unlocks the ability to ally with small forest and swamp communities. The City Watch trains soldiers who can be stationed in cities to reduce unrest. The remaining Governance buildings provide choices for the tone of your empire. Will you give authority to a King's Hand, earning extra Governance, or a High Priest, earning extra Religion. Will you unlocks Gallows in every city, or a Thieves Guild? Will you commission a Trade Cartel, or the Royal Engineers?

If you have an air shard, you can build a Shrine, and start a warrior monk Religion. Spread Faith through your cities to increase the speed at which you can build more Religious buildings and unlock stronger and more powerful Monks. Or become a Monk yourself (or an Alchemist - and brew acid and web bombs to throw in combat).

Is your city weak? Exploit it with a Lord's Manor, and other keeps which reduce it's grain and materials production, and allow you to send those needed resources to where you want them.

On a river? Once you have a harbour, you can build the Merchant Guild, unlocking Merchants in every city. It produces a local Commerce resource which can build a Brewery, to unlock pubs, or a Tinker's Market, to unlock the same such markets in every city, or build a Counting House and earn gildar from every local Commerce point you don't spend! And are you stock piling an unneeded resource? Ship it down the river in a Trade Ship to earn a steady flow of income. 

Your Capital city now heals you a little bit faster and gives your stationed heroes 1 xp per turn. It also produces a little unique bonus depending on your faction. All cities are stronger. City Militia is stronger. Cities need a bit more population to level up, but grow a bit more quickly depending on how much excess food you have. Large populations cause unrest.

The Elemental Defs are changed in a variety of ways to balance things out. More HP for more intense battles. Higher wages. Encumbrance is more present. It's expensive to demolish buildings.

There is way too much in the mod for me to go into detail on the options. But I've tried to make it intuitive, so you can explore and read the tool tips and in game descriptions as you go. They seem to be accurate.

This doesn't touch the core files, so you can just unzip the file into your mygames/fallenenchantress/mods folder. This includes my previous Alchemy and Manorial Lords mods, so if you have installed those, remove them before you install this, or you will get some doubled up effects. Be sure to check enable mods and you should be good to go.

Also - there is a huge map option.

If you'd like to try it, download it here. If you want to use any portion of it in a mod you're working on, please do.