At the same time, the "anchor to sustain" model while a Sapphire Circle Sorcerer does need some serious bling, they don't need to conquer the nation. They can get by perfectly well with their status as a king or court sorcerer, a strong artifact, and probably a powerful familiar for Sapphire anchors. It does put limits on them, when it comes to things like calling up demon lords and the like, but the limit tends to be "you can only do one of those things at a time" rather than "you can't do them at all", which is much better gameplay-wise. In addition, a conscientious PC can make the effort (or the sacrifice) not to give into temptation presented by the system, and succeed, while still being a powerful sorcerer. The same applies to the Adamant circle, to a somewhat lesser extent.
I think the ability of the system to accommodate players who don't want to end up evil is an important one. Communication of expectations is a key part of an RPG, and in any big-name RPG, or RPG meant to handle a wide range of game types or genres, you're going to get a wide range of player types interested. Thus, any system that intentionally limits, nudges, (or much more commonly) assumes the type of character the player will make (in personality or abilities) must be handled delicately, or else make clear communication of what types of characters the system Does Not Allow.
Exalted is one of those RPG's that handles a wide range of players, and is aimed toward new players as well as experienced ones. (It's one of the reasons I prefer 3e to 2e; 3e is less likely to self-destruct in the hands of a ignorant player or DM.) Because the lore does not forbid or prescribe a various types of sorcerer characters, it needs to be able to handle players who want to play them; good and evil sorcerers, rebellious and conforming types, loners and social butterflies.
Where I think your hack is nicely made is 1.) the requirements of the anchor don't outright prevent the character from doing any given sorcerer thing, but more commonly the scale of it, or produces inconveniences that can be worked around ad-hoc and 2.) whether a sorcerer chooses to go anchor-heavy or anchor-light, the issues they face align well with the "empire builder vs. personal free agent", rather than frustrate their character concepts. On the second point, players who choose to go the anchor-heavy route are the ones who are going to be most interested in building up the empires and merits. It limits their abilities, but not the direction of their ambitions, and essentially becomes another facet of their empire building. Those who go anchor light are more limited in the amount of force they can project; Ultimately, they're more limited to a more personal scale- which is where they want to be anyway. A character frustrated by the limits of one path has to deal with the limits of the other- but the limits don't create a "wrong" path that is limited or frustrated compared to the other. Ultimately, what the anchor system does is say "to be this type of sorcerer, you must face these types of limits". The elegance of the system a player who just chooses based on the type of sorcerer they want to be doesn't hit deal-breaker limits later on.
On the first point, you don't end up with something where stable pocket dimensions or demon summoning are the sole province of anchor-heavy sorcerers, and anchor-light sorcerers can't do that at all. Rather, a sorcerer working on a limited number of anchors means they're limited to one demon lord at a time, or one pocket dimension, or only a band of 5-6 lesser demons. Importantly, it lets players make a powerful demon-summoner who is also not the empire-builder type.
