Yeah it's still lurking about
I consider it an exploit though, and would prefer not to use it if some other method is available.
Well, since you can do it, I've used it as a feature - that's why there are Noble upgrades, Nobles can be upgraded to Sceptors, and why there are Sceptor upgrades. So it is really a feature, and that's how I've decided to use it in Hyperion.
If you go ahead with the packing idea I'd like to see them packable in the singleton cities (shield, church, palace, etc) and in factories or one of the other construction buildings (so you can build the building underneath the sceptor where needed).
It will probably be hard to do in more than just a few cities, since you have a choice between one city or all of them. You need to add another unit for each different city you want to add, and so I'm not even sure where they'll fit right now, but for each city I make them buildable in, I'd have to add a duplicate of them somewhere that is buildable in a different city. So... I'll have to think about that!
Yes, making them buildable was an excellent idea, though the battlemaster armour bonus is insane since the armour values were dropped
Right, Battlemaster turns ordinary units into godly units (well sort of), but don't forget that the Noble stack is still vulnerable to Psy attacks and that only a few of your stacks will have this ability. I could simply rescale the armor values, but since Battlemaster adds +20, you'd have to think of a good value to multiply all the attack strengths and armor values by. But then they'd be easily over 1000 and then hard to read. So I kind of like having the super Battlemaster Trait because it really encourages people to use their Nobles, up until the point where they attack a Cyber Mage stack and get wiped out!
Aside from that, though, it is pretty awesome (and why in PBEM's it is +10 in the Hyperion Trait Selection System).
Matt