After reading some of the comments on the proposal, I decided to play around with the formula and see how it worked. I'll list a few examples of cases below, then state what I realized.
Formula: [Total mana spent on units by both players] * [80% scaling factor] * [# portals player found / sum(# portals found by each player)] = base essence points
Player 1 (P1) summons units worth 18 mana -- basically, one unit -- and finds 1 portal. Player 2 (P2) summons 180 mana of units, and finds all 6 portals (curbstomp). P2 receives
135.8 points, and P1 receives
22.6. Sounds pretty fair, for a blatantly skewed scenario, but that's testing.
P1 summon 18 mana again, but somehow finds 6 portals. P2 summons 180 again, but only finds 1 portal. P1 receives
135.8 points, and P2 receives
22.6 points... wait, I've seen those numbers before! It doesn't matter how many units you have, only the number of portals!
P1 summons 18 mana, finds 2 portals. P2 summons 180 and finds 3 (and kills P1). P1 receives
63.4 points, and P2 receives
95 points. Low numbers, but fairly even, despite P1 losing all his units.
I could go on, but I think that shows the important parts. As people are complaining, the proposed system is all about portals -- it doesn't matter how
big your army was, that just determines the base essence granted to each player. The number of portals acts as a multiplier, so straight-out killing your opponent (final battle) or building massive armies isn't really that rewarding to the victor. The formula needs a way to reward players for building an army, *without* encouraging "I need more essence, so I'll wait and grab that last portal once my army is bigger."
I'd like to say I have a solution, but I don't yet. I think the big flaw is the fact that the essence system is merely scaling the same number based on how many portals they found -- there is no consideration for how many units the player put in themselves, or whether they won.