Okay, here's our latest thought process on the sovereign.
First, let me say that the sovereign dying is a non-negotiable thing to us. It's an important core concept.
That said, we do not want users to have to play defensive with their sovereign. The idea is to give players the option to gamble it all if they want.
So here's what we're thinking:
Heroes will have a skill called Evade. The evade skill determines the odds of them escaping a disaster (lost battle, taking of a city, etc.). When they escape, they are transported to the nearest friendly city.
Players will be able to put points into evade when they design their character.
There will be major evade modifiers. For example, if your sovereign is in a city when it's attacked, odds are, he'll escape. If he's in a large army, he'll probably escape too. But if it's a 1 on 1 encounter, odds are, he wouldn't escape.
The entire system would be automatic and players worried about losing their sovereigns can simply put some points into him and park him in a city and not have to worry.
As many already said, a random chance escape is bad (was a very annoying thing in MoM already).
What I'd suggest is this:
A system of active use escape spells with cooldowns and/or counters. So when you see that your sovereign is at risk in battle, you use one of his escape possibilities. If you want to kill the enemy sovereign, you have to plan ahead to counter his escape possibilities or exhaust them. So assassination and sovereign loss is possible but not easy. Like to kill the chess King you have to block all this movement options.
Part of the escape spells would be inherent, some researched or depending on the spell choices you made at some point. So not all sovereigns would have the same possibilities to escape or counter escape.
Some examples:
Player A engages Player B's army which contains the sovereign. The battle goes well for Player A so Player B's sovereign decides to flee before he is killed (and the sovereign should be sturdy enough not to die easily in a battle). He casts Invisibility and therefore can leave the battle towards an escape field and run for one more turn before he is visible again. If all goes well Player A will not have enough forces near that point to kill you and he can escape.
If Player A had prepared better, then he would have brought a unit imbued with true sight (or an equivalent item) along.
At another time Player B engages the sovereign of Player A. Before he can be killed, the sovereign uses Emergency Teleport and appears at a random point at 3 fields distance. He cannot use that spell again for 30 turns so if Player B has enough fast units nearby to catch him again, he will be cornered (unless he still has another "Free out of jail" card to play).
Oh, its true! (spoken in the voice of K-009 from Earthean) which is why you'll likely find me "trolling" no other.
I'm so sensitive to it, that the heat I'm talking about is entirely friction. Its from the rapid responces. The constant movement of ideas and text is causing it to warm up. No sparks have flown yet, but I always feel like its rapid fire discussion with 2 entirely opposing sides and little budge room that causes it. I feel impending doom whenever there is too much 'debate' activity in a single thread over a short time. I don't even have time to edit my own posts before somebody else posts after me, possibly commenting on what I just placed. (Though, I do take a lot of time doing that. I'll admit. I'm a post editing whore. That was intended to be a pun)
I was also telling myself to go to bed. I figured if I told everybody good night, I wouldn't crawl out of bed to see what thoughts somebody posted and respond to them in kind (which has already happened anyway, as you can see. I blame wintersong, because his european life, combined with dedication to this forum, causes him to be reliably active when I should be in bed). I am loving this discussion so much, that making up excuses to leave and knowing that nobody expects my continued input, isn't enough to get me out of here. I'll have to try pulling my hands from the keyboard with my teeth... or actually turning off my computer *HORROR*
I really don't get why people are so hung up on this idea. How is the empire supposed to continue without the sovereign. It is HIS ESSENCE that is restoring the world. Without that it returns to a barren wasteland (unless they swear allegiance to a new sovereign)
My idea:
You can build a special, very expensive building in your capital. Only one of these buildings can exist at a time.
When your sovereign dies, he appears there.
BUT:
The amount of magic used to "beat death" is incredible. Your mana goes to 0 and the city with the building in it is completely destroyed by the magic energy that is set free.
This way, killing the sovereign wont end the game, but it will be a devastating blow to the enemy.
I don't think that we will be able to modify that. It looks like a hardcoded stuff to me.
Because that idea makes sense, and could work extremely well with the dynasty system. It's much better than a RNG based Evade skill. It is much better than a "Oh I am scared and don't want to risk the life of my Sovereign, because the game will end if he/she dies, so I hide him all the time" method.
This being sad, we should have the option to choose. If you want to play with the original settings, no problems. If you want to play with different settings [like the proposed dynasty/heir -> successor system], what is the problem with that? I am pretty sure that lot of players would prefer to play with the dynasty/heir method.
Any solution that approached the "Contingency Plan" model sounds good to me. It doesn't change the basic idea of "SD=GO", and adds more options (which can mean more fun).
-Relics: be it a la Lich or a la Sauron, Relics are a nice solution. Should be of different levels of power. So you could have low level Relics that will save your life once (and you can only have a relic at a time so still killable if not given time to create another) and high level ones that could save it unlimited times unless destroyed (which would mean insta death or whatever).
-Clones: you could create a clone (or some) that would activate in a safe place (just pray that the safe place isn't destroyed before your sovereign's death) when the sovereign dies (in case of being more than one, you could choose which one awakens). The level of the clone would be the same that the Sovereign had at the time of creation and would have no equipment (ok, let's leav him some clothes because of ESRB). The process wouldn't be cheap and costs experience.
-Reincarnation Spell: Altough the original use would be to reincarnate dead heroes, if spells can be set up to be triggered under certain conditions (be it a Skill or Perk or anotehr spell you can research), it could be used on the sovereign at the moment of death. Mechanics? Like the one in D&D (3rd edition at least as I don't remember otehrs right now), so you could end with a Dog Sovereign.
-Avatars: The Sovereign can act trough other living beings under his service (who need to be imbued with Essence first). These actions would be battle/spells/bonuses related. And as long as the Sovereign is acting trough one of his servants, he cannot move or do anything else with his original body. The body switching can be repeated every turn but the mana costs increases proportionally and lowers the Sovereign's life (being able to die if it reaches 0, also receiving some damage if his current Avatar dies).
-Espionage System: Decoys: for city affairs, nothing like protecting the Sovereign from are spells and or assassin from the enemies with the old good decoy.
Altough those ideas wouldn't fit exactly into the lore (I'm supposing here), they wouldn't negate the "SD=GO" mechanic and shouldn't break the lore too much.
I like the idea of Sov dying = game over. I think it makes things more interesting. Already in the beta ive had mine squashed by a troll. I didnt feel it wasnt fair, or ended things prematurely, I did something stupid, I paid the price.
However like alot of what I saw upon skimming this thread, RNG is meh. I would prefer to be in control of it. Escape tunnels buildable in my cities, bodyguards that hold off the enemy specifically so my Sov can escape, maybe items to get out of a bind too, some form of short range teleport, or a bit of flight. With magic especially I believe there are many interesting and imaginative ways in which to help delay that crushing defeat. Stick a cost on them, some spell research or technology as well, and when that enemy of giant pink bearknights crashes down your gates after spying on your sov for months on end, youve planned ahead and get a solid chance of escape.
So if I understand clearly, if sovereign die => end game IS a core concept and killing ennemy sovereign IS ALSO a core concept
If I understand correctly, that means that another core concept is that the normal way a sovereign should be played is that it isn't hiding in city but acting on the map.
Since it is a strategy game where one ending is through the death of your sovereign, we need:
- to have way to avoid the sovereign being killed by an unlucky dice roll on the start of the game
- to ensure that you can kill an enemy sovereign in a fair way (aka no volcano spell in order to kill enemy sovereign), both for MP interest and AI computing
- make the hunting sovereign a viable but not too cheap strategy compared to other way to win the game
A proposal I have made few posts ago is to have a Highlander like way to handle sovereign death: sovereign can only be killed in combat when another channeler (a sovereign or a magic user hero) is involved directed, hand to hand. The sovereign can be defeated in combat (Hit points drop to 0 in the battle) but wouldn't die if no channeler was involved on the other side.
This would increase the immortal aspect of the sovereign (few things can kill him) while allowing some harrassement strategies: a lone sovereign attacking a well defended city without any defending channeler will be able to reduce garrison, and even take it (but that would take very long since it would been defeated for lots of turns)
I like the idea if your Sovereign dies, the game is over.
However; there should be defensive spells to auto-protect your sovereign should you want him to use the spells. Maybe your enemy turns the city the Sovereign is located into a volcano. The whole city is literally destroyed, BUT your Sovereign still has a ton of essence left, and uses it to create some sort of barrier around him to protect him from death. This allows him to escape, but the essence is practically depleted!
If you choose not to save up some essence in case this event happened, too bad. While this encourages a defensive play style, the amount of essence lost could have been used to vast destruction on the enemy. The amount of essence could also be related to the significance of the spell that would usually destroy the sovereign.
Example: Maybe 50 essence to survive a volcano. 20 Essence to survive hurricane. Who knows.
Just throwing out ideas.
I'd say in general that your sovereign is powerful enough that he can easily protect himself from long range spells like volcanoes or similar stuff (like a protective shield around himself with some levitation) except maybe some special anti channeler spells that can hurt him (but not kill).
So if you want to kill the enemy sovereign, you have to get him with an army.
Ok, I think a few of you are getting a little paranoid about the "lose a battle over a dice roll" thing. It's not that simple. Look at the big picture. A battle is Never one dice roll. First off what level is your Sovereign? Is he wearing armor that gives him a defense bonus? Does he have any defense enhancing enchantments cast? (you know those will be in there somewhere). Does he have enough power or enough spells to obliterate everything in front of him except maybe a Dragon? (You know he will eventually). Battle in this game will never be down to a simple die roll. I'm sure even the "Auto Calculate" we have now is based on way more then just one number "one set of variables".
Maybe instead of allowing escape make the sovergin become "mortally wounded" but still alive for enough turns to comission a quest that would heal him, the quest could get more expensive the more you risk. Say you send him out on a major attack and loose it would cost double or tripple what it would cost if you were attacked in your own city. i personally like the idea of the game ending with the life of the sovergin but maybe this would strike a nice medium with people.
I like the idea. If you're in a situation where your your capitol city is being sieged, the idea that your game could end with a dice roll doesn't strike me as unreasonable (Sins of a Solar Empire?). There are plenty of games where if you lose your capitol, it's game over. Here you actually have another safety net - your sovereign may escape.
It's largely a question of how you view the game concept. If you are playing an empire, like in civilization, then losing a city should not end your game. If you are playing a character, like in Master of Magic, then losing that character means you lose the game. The world doesn't end, but your role in it is over. Reload or start a new game.
Which one you prefer is a matter of personal taste. For myself, I like having an avatar in the game. Here you play an unaging sorcerer trying to build your own empire and dynasty. But from your perspective, it's all over if you die. I think putting the player into those shoes reinforces the whole dynastic perspective. Rulers have always cared about dynasties, but they also care about their own skins. This rules mechanic enforces that perspective.
Duly noted that sovereign death = game over is not negotiable.
But will it be moddable?
Regarding evade or hide: Those are kludges. They all try to prevent the sovereign form being killed, thus rendering a 'hunt the enemy sovereign' strategy worthless. Hiding renders it just plain impossible, no matter what skill opponent uses. Evading is slightly better but far too random. The Evade skill looks pretty bad in terms of defense. I think one might want to use it if he plans to gamble his sovereign away but it's porbably going to be a waste of points no matter how you do it. In SP, save/reload will be more efficient.
If you really want to allow a sovereign to be able to both defend themselves and be able to risk their lives adventuring, why not making them stronger in their own territory (a la dominions again)?
So if your channeler is in his castle at home, he's super tough as a defensive unit and super hard to kill. If he moves out of home, then he becomes an easier target. The difference with 'hide' is he can still be targetted and killed if an opponent puts enough thinking and energy to reach that end without taking the whole kingdom first.
I like the idea of getting a choice before the battle ensues. Either you flee to the nearest city and lose your entire entourage, or you engage in battle. You cannot flee if you are alone.
Hmm...after thinking about this a little more, it seems too easy to exploit. Run around with one additional weak unit in your army and any time you get engaged, it's a free teleport back home.
Like I've said, I doubt it. It looks like a hardcoded gameplay element. Hopefully I am wrong.
*edit*
Even if it's not hardcoded I am not sure that how could we mod it properly? Which modder could create a new Sovereign system basically? Eh...it sounds way too hardcore to me....
Sorry for bringing up Age of Wonders all the time, but I followed its creation very closely at the time in the forum and that experience I believe could be useful. The thing those developers ended up agreeing on, was that the most features were optional the more the game was going to be successful and the "Leader" was definitely a key factor of gameplay. To put it very simply the leader could just exist whether or not a unit representing him is actually on the map. In other maybe his actual presence could be moddable or at least his skills so that he could be given an infinite number of hit point and zero attack skill so that killing him would be impossible and he would be unable to hurt anyone in battle.
Instead of a roll for escaping, why not auto-escaping BUT ... you get permanent wounds .. like being blind, or dumb, or afraid of big potatoes ... or ...
AND with a good escape value you get lesser wounds (STILL permanent, but weaker)
That would create some good stories "You !! You got one of my eyes, but i've trained since last time. Prepare to die !!!!"
Thats why the teleport should be available even if alone. Just make the teleport costly enough either in massive mana usage or even possibly a small essence cost - this will prevent peopl from just running around killing stuff and porting out any time danger rears its ugly head. Or actually that might be a viable strategy, but it will definitely entail a heavy cost. If it costs 5 essence to found a city, it seems like a cost of 1 or 2 essence per port would be pretty costly, but still provides an out for hitting the panic button.
I don't think the hide button is a kludge at all it is a viable option that provides a choice to the players - you either get to have your channeler out levelling up and contributing to combat (and taking risks) or hiding, researching and being safe. And I agree the channeler's life shouldn't be left to a dice roll - well ultimately it will be no matter what, it is always going to come down to the die roll that lands the killing blow - but there should be plenty of options available to play it safe.
I think comparing it to AoW's sovereign hunts, it's probably a fair concern to raise, but I think they are already showing some great ideas to nip that in the bud. Calling a solution a kludge is just stupid, it is only saying "I want you to use MY solution, I don't like YOUR solution."
For the reasons I have already stated I don;t care for the evade option, but I'm willing to see how it plays out. Other people have pointed out bad things about evade (why spend points to mitigate a bad outcome over spending points to avoid a bad outcome?) and again evade is just too dicey - give people a SURE way out, but force them to exercise the option at the start of battle, not halfway thru the fight when things have gone poorly.
The "save/load" option is invalid. people are going to exploit that in single player no matter what you do - I think it is lame and sucks, but there is no getting around it, and games should not be designed around negating that. In SP people are gonna do what they are gonna do. /shrug
Unless the TV show doesn't count any beheading works. I remember one episode where there was a "Special" highlander. I forgot why, but neither one could bring themselves to cut his head off, so they convinced him to lay his neck on a railroad track.
I think if the sovereign dies it shouldn't be 'game over'. It should be 'half-time'. And everyone gets a little refreshment before starting up again.
Well, I don't mind the Death = Game Over way this game seems to be going to work. Having played rogue-likes a lot (Mostly Angband) I'm a bit used to this and I think it really makes you think about the way you play. Should I attack one more monster, or run away for a bit to heal up... Off course dieing from a stupid decision or a bad roll isn't fun, but if you can learn something from it, it can make the game last that much longer.
In the end, a game like this is one dice roll after another so the end of a game always depends on a dice roll one way or the other. Getting a great starting location on a random map can make a big difference in the end. Finding a nice artifact at the right time might make a difference in a fight a few turns later and could mean that you win instead of loose. Both of these examples depend on a dice roll, but I don't see anyone complaining about this.
As I said before in another thread, I've seen people asking for a way that won't make the end game get boring. Hunting down every last family member, destroying every last city to finally wipe out an enemy would get pretty boring pretty fast I'm afraid.
Why would it be? I mean, having your sovereign in a battle will / should give you an enormous advantage when fighting an army without a sovereign. A battle you probably would have lost suddenly becomes an almost certain victory. I imagine it will be easier to get a higher level sovereign when you use him/her in battle a lot. Off course you'll have to be carefull which battles you choose, but that's part of the strategy to play this game.
So, you have a high level sovereign that get's killed by some other player/ the AI. The most powerfull unit you had (Well probably) is lost because you couldn't / did't keep him / her safe and you want to replace that unit with a new lvl 1 unit? What chance do you have to keep this oh so weak unit safe where you couldn't keep the high level one safe? Losing your sovereign will probably mean you're losing the game anyway, so why prolong the agony?
I haven't been able to get my sovereign killed in the beta yet, and have been using him to completly discover the map, killing spiders / trolls / other sovereigns whereever I found them. I've defeated a lvl 10 troll with a lvl 4 sovereign. What some people might forget is that the sovereign is a powerful unit and might not be as easily killed as some think / fear. In the end, I wouldn't mind an option ot have an heir / spell / building to keep on playing after sovereign dead, but maybe we should all take a breather and wait and see what the future betas will have in store for us and see how easy / hard it will be to kill a sovereign.
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