Who goes on the epic quests of epicness?  YOU ARE DEAD, you cannot direct a hero to do the quest because YOU ARE DEAD>

Yeah. So do epic quests when you aren't dead.  You don't need to be dead for quests to happen.

There is also a possibility to let the sovreign (and heroes too?) flee a battle, by using a "random jump" teleport spell. It should be something that cannot be exploited (did I metion I hate teleporting\teleporters?) - Using such spell the sovreign could be able to just jump away from a fight and then end up a few hexes away, on the strategic map, after the fight (could work like an eject seat of sort). That could result in some pretty funny situations which would call for example for a retrieval in enemy territory... But again, I insist that the sovreign should be a rather weak unit and all effort should be put in not encouraging its use in battle.

I think we are thinking of two different kinds of battle-maps. I now think I understand that battle-maps will need to stay grided for the time being (wether square or hex).

Placing that data aside, for one moment, I think we can take the "swamp battle" demonstration, and consider that to be a narrow lair after several sucessive battles in swamp-land to get to that part of the "swamp dungeon"

However, a battle on an open battle-field, with possible walls and forts scattered throughout, would easily be 10 times as wide, and 5 to 10 times as long. This way, you can try to gain the advantage of terrain through greater movement. Also, it makes it harder to retreat once you are locked into battle, and a much more arduous task. However, once the battle commences, you can send a light cavalry ahead of time, directly toward the enemy, to gather troop data. If you feel you are outclassed, and have decided to mostly hang close to your border of the battle-map, you can choose to retreat, leaving the scout to near-guaranteed certain doom. The battle is shown as a defeat, and you instantly lose alot of ground, potentially moving past other armies/ reinforcements that were on the way to aid you, say next turn. Perhaps some of them will be lost to the incoming massive army. Although your Sovereign is the most important. If Sovereing was not in battle, it might have been best to play it out and try to porportionally cause more losses to the enemy, while they are within your sights.

But then your opponent should, if clever, systematically do the same and avoid fights when you have the advantage, which means you need to play a war of positions just so you can finally corner an enemy and force him into battle. That can mean pretty long tactical maneuvering on the strategic map just to force a fight.

This is why I would rather have no retreat option possible, or only if yoru units have a mroe or less expensive promotion like being faster than opponent and/or having a skirmish ability. Other units would just die if fleeing against faster or same speed units.

I suppose you could spend a large percentage of "sovereign points" on cavalry proficiency, which would greatly increase his natural evade when mounted (although would not guarantee a mount would be present).

I simply like having a very war-like general. Am I not allowed to retreat family members from losing battles? Generally the only retreat I have seen (with less drastic consequence of course) is when both armies are nearly exhausted in man-power and the generals are running around trying to kill each other. then Usually either one breaks and flees, or is far enough away from the general where the simplest option would simply be "to flee"

Although I suppose this ties in with Having a Large army = general will most likely run away.

In such circumstances/games (total war) generals attributed certain bonuses to their army, although I suppose it would not be as large a bonus as if the Sovereign led the army.

Personally, I would prefer the decision to be wether he fights as a general, or greatly improves cities as a governor/mage.

I would rather the combat/non combat decision be made rather than Hide or Don't Hide and do something. Don't hide and do something simply means where-ever your Sovereign is located, is the most dangerous for everyone else. I can see ways in which it would be fun, although the concept that Sovereign deaths SHOULD be common-place rather than unlucky or miscalculations, seems kinda rediculous to me. I mean, in a game or a campaign, how often to you die and have to reload? Granted it depends on the game ... but still ... there are ways you can have Sovereign Death to be a some-what horrid mistake/ rare, and still not impossible. After all, I quested with an army in FFH to kill the super unit with the amazing 90% withdrawal. I caught him without an army, and was able to finally kill him before he could run away.

Also, as I've said before, in Elemental, such flee-ing should only be allowable ONCE PER TURN!!!* If you have surrounded the sovereign's army with OH MY GOD! actual tactical maneuvering? no frikken way man! .... then yes, yes you can finally corner and kill the dude.

retreat from battle should only mean one extra chance this turn to escape death with the tattered remains of my army. Or the army representing whichever point in the battle I decided to flee. Obviously such an army would be unable to go to camp, meaning no supplies, most likely a loss of gold, possibly one turn until they reach exhaustion ... basically crappy BUT STILL ALIVE, however able to quite readily be slain by a determined attacker.

*you can only flee from one battle, in a single turn on the world map

Sorry, but 1000 thousand great story reasons don't justify a bad gameplay reason. This is a game, not a story. Justifying sovereigns not dying in certain conditions because powerful people don't die in books makes no sense because this is not a book. If you want to justify it, justify it around gameplay.

And story is not required, I don't remember MoM having story to be crazy enjoyable (and deep, and complex).

its just to avoid the two huge stacks of doom meet, and both have soveriegn. A player is going to die this day 100% guaranteed, unless there is some manner to avoid that. I guess you want a more fast-paced game? As long as you keep winning battles its no problem ... but ...

In essense, I would have to try out the system before I can make any final conclusions about it. However it seems that you have a VERY short time at the beginning to send your sovereign out and level up, perhaps in later stages of the early game, you can use said leveled sovereign to boost a city for some time, but once enemies are strong enough to start invading ... lets play hide the soveriegn! Then, the next and last time you see the soveriegn is in that last ditch effort to prevent your final city from being taken. If your lucky, there won't be a family member leading the opposing army, and you might be able to repel the first stack.

In Total War series, for me, it was EXTREMELY FUN to hunt down the entire royal family, especially since ransoming back an incompetent leader was the best way to get MOAR CASH NOW to buy even more units to help slay their next army and so on. Maybe its cheap, but its just so incredibly fun. Also, for Dread lords, you get alot of extra dread for out-right executing an enemy family member without even ASKING for a ransom.

Also I don't see what you mean by tedious to defend .... its a pretty good deal on the defense, an extra life this turn woo hoo! its the Offensive that has to have FULL STRATEGIC CONTROL of the surrounding lands in order to surround, capture, and or kill the enemy king, which yes is a somewhat tactical move ... although it requires a certain strategic planning beforehand.

I don't see why we want to win one battle and wipe a civilization from the game.

If that's your definition of story in a game then I can't understand why you said chess has no story : I'm killing armies with my soldiers, using clever tactics until I can overthrow the enemy king and conquer the 8x8 known world  But I wouldn't say the game is telling a story in MoM or chess, I would say you are building a story yourself out of the events of the game. Pretty different than what happens in Baldurs Gate for example, where you are told a story.

This is the main point: I didn't said a good story reason leads to a bad gameplay reason, I said a good story reason leads nowhere.

That the game is right now pretty complex and that we shouldn't add more complex mechanics for sovereign dead, and that if you are going to defend a mechanic, I think it's a far more effective defense if you give gameplay reasons for it.

Yeah Winter, I'm tired of sounding like a parrot too.  For the record though, my point has gone utterly missed by your posts.  They were excellent arguments against loading, but that was never the direction of my point.

This is getting a little off-topic, but well.

No, I didn't say it because it sounded good: saying it looks cools on books to defend a game mechanic is nor good or bad, it's totally unrelated. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

If you design pen and paper roleplaying games you will know that they have math behind them. One doesn't simply go to design a game and assigns difficulty numbers, attributes, skills by what looks good, but by using math. If you want hard things for your players and you know that in average they will score 10, you put things in 12. But you need to know the average, you just can't go and imagine it out of thin air.

For example, there are lots of topics in RPGs about using linear (d20, better for heroic games) vs gaussian (3D6, better for realistic games) distributions, the math and flaws behind DnD 4e skill challenges and how to fix them, I think there were also some recent articles from Catalyst about why they went from 2D10 to 2D6 from Mechwarrior 3e to Mechwarrior 4e. And they are all math related.

This topic started with a very specific game mechanic: evade as a skill with a random posibility of succeding. The "sovereign dying = game over" is the premise the designers have set in stone, we don't have to argue about that, we have to argue if we want a mechanic that places the destiny of the game in a random roll, and if we don't like that post other mechanics that achieve the same result but protect the player from simply losing because of bad luck and if possible place the possibility of dying in his own decissions (in the line of the solution Stardock already posted).

Aye, perhaps completely unrelated, but in the hopes of telling a story, ahem .... I would have a soldier that reconquered the heartland, and gave rise to high skill in commanding troops.

This general then became mad with power and glory, and demanded that the heartland set sail to foreign lands in the hopes to capture and conquer.

The old caste of leaders were hesitant to make such outlandish acts, and for the time being the country remained mostly isolationist, and stayed in good favor among the Grand Council of Nations.

Vladimir could not stand this passive folly, he wished for all the lands to become a great war-zone, and he believed he was an immortal chosen by the gods to fight for blood until the day of Ragnorak.

Although badly scarred, and somewhat ugly for it, Vladimir was extremely charismatic, and bred a powerful following among the army and the peasantry. As he trained fresh recruits in the army of slaughter against helpless peasant rebellions, some staged and some genuine, slowly his agents were assasinating tertiary supporters of the Old-king's passive views.

Still a royalist however, he did not dare to out-right kill the king. So instead he merely grew his power and holdings among the empire.

The nearby nation of wales was attempting to break off from the Royals, and were whispering of secret dealings with France. Without asking for permission from the King, vladimir rushed off to put Wales to the sword.

Vladimir's forces met those of the Welsh king outside the capital. There was a bitter battle, however Vladimir personally led the cavalry charge that out-flanked the enemy.  It was then that the majority of his forces were in position to strike the enemy from behind, thus severely breaking their morale. Vladimir found the King's personal guard in battle, and broke into their formation with his own retinue of elite guard in tow. (welsh king will be referred to as Wilbur).

Wilbur's guard blocked off Vladimir's retinue with a wall of shields, while wilbur raced off to give orders to his right flank. Vladimir however, wanted a direct contest of martial prowess. A small gap was able to form between the two small armies of Men-at-arms entwain in battle. Vladimir had a stronger breed of horse, and was able to catch up with Wilbur. Given no choice, Wilbur took up the battle. They spent long and arduos minutes painstakingly moving to out-manuever the other. A second felt like an hour, a minute felt like a day. A wrong move and either king could expect a sword through their gut.

With no further patience, Vladimir charged directly at wilbur, full gate. Suprised, and caught off-guard, Wilbur turned around- adrenaline at full blast- expecting to parry, but at an odd angle.

As Vladimir crashed into Wilbur, the parry was sucessful and ended up cutting into Vladimir's off-hand arm. At the odd angle however, it caused Wilbur to be launched from his mount.

Around this time the bodyguard notices their king in distress. Wilbur's guard breaks from Vladimir's troops in order to help their king, and Vladimir's troops follow suit.

It takes time for a fully armed soldier to get back upon a horse, and Vladimir and his men would use this time to surround and destroy their enemy.

Othenbul, chief of Wilbur's guard, knew that rescuing the king would be near suicide, and without some extra action they would all simply be killed. Therefore he sent those with the fastest and lightest horses and payload/weight off to rescue the king, while he and the rest would attack Vladimir.

As they turned to face Vladimir, they saw a crazed general come flying at them full hilt. His lance ended up piercing the armor of Othenbul's righthand man, knocking him off of his horse. They clamored like bees against a bear to sting Vladimir with their swords, however none of the strikes connected. Vladimir pushed past them, after Wilbur personally. Some ran off to chase him, but the rest turned to bravely face the enemy bodyguard, twice their current size, in order to give Wilbur time to flee.

First the group fanned out in order to dissapate the effectiveness of the bodyguard's collective charge. Once the initial charge was broken, the battle broke into a less organized brawl/melee. The welsh soldiers soon found themselves facing as many as two to three opponents at once, having to be extremely wary of their opponents movements. Some like Othenbul was able to make a few kills of his own, while their forces were slowly diminishing. He called a rally, that they fall into the woods in hopes of finding some tactical advantage.

Instead of pursuing the chase of Wilbur, these bodyguards took far too much after their master. They were on the blood-hunt, and pursued the men they wished to kill.

Upon entering the forest Othenbul gave the secret distress call of a Welsh royal unit. Luckily there was an archer company located nearby, and responded with a coded, favorable response.

The english bodyguard crashed into the forest, and almost immediately came under archer fire. Ochman, a fanatic supporter of Vladimir, recognized where the fire was coming from. He ordered for a small contingent to keep the chase against the Knights, and to make alot of noise while doing so. Meanwhile, they would charge directly at the archers, making a good bit of noise themselves.

In the noise and confusion, there was a slight hesitation before the welshmen knew which unit was more powerful. By that time, it was too late for the archers to run. As the knights came upon them, the archers were squashed flat, although a few Knights fell of their horses due to ill-placed terrain. A few archers survived the encounter, and ran for the hills without looking back. Ochman chose to personally pursue these archers, and took the time to decapitate the leader of the archers (the one with the most medals) and place the head upon his horses armor, by rope, for decoration. A few of his other soldiers gathered ears for their "kill" necklaces. Meanwhile, the small detachment sent off to fight Othenbul was slowly fighting to the death.

Othenbul was wondering by what luck they managed to avoid immediate slaughter, and actually victory looked well within grasp. The force sent against them was steadily falling, although something was strange about them. It was as if they died with a smile on their faces ... there was no fear in their eyes.

As the last englishmen died, Othenbul wiped the leather of his arm-mail upon his brow. It looked like they would be able to return and help their king. As they were about to move, the majority of the english body-guard was yet upon them ... now 3 x their number and seemingly without loss to morale or fatigue. They gave an almost laughing war-cry as they charged.

In the forest there was less room to manuever, and the forward momentum of the englishmen enabled them to mostly surround the welsh in the initial charge. There was some lucky initial success on the side of the welsh, however the battle quickly fell into english favor. As the killing was only half done, the majority of the survivors broke into full route, a few of them died simply trying to break from battle, and some accidentally fell off their horses, got up, and started running as fast as they could in knightly armor. Othenbull looked back to shout for a rally, although most of his men had already been killed or ran away. He was about to express something vocally. Wether a prayer or a curse we may never know, as soon after turning to look, two enemy swords pierced through his neck-mail ... drowning the phrase in bloodied gurgles.

Ultimately the King Wilbur escaped the battle with minor wounds, and Vladimir broke off the chase in order to organize a swift end to the Welsh army.

Once in control of the Welsh Capital, Vladimir burned it down to the ground. He then had the local population herded into holding pins. They were required to kneel before him and swear an oath of fealty and obedience to Vladimir and the English Crown. If they did not, they could find themselves either meeting a swift end, suffering under public execution, sent to the torture dungeons ... or the worst, witness their family tortured/ publicly executed, and then sent on exile in a small sail raft with no supplies.

Vladimir would do the most infuriating and purile things to the peoples of the countryside, in the attempt to work up a local revolt. When an organized fighting force rose against him, he would ride their personally to see to their deaths, killing many personally. If it was mere rabble, he would usually let Ochman or some other Rabid supporter do their worst. It was good exercise in merciless killing. Good for the morale of his men too.

Vladimir and his agents controlled much of the information which left Wales, although from the few rumours the king was able to garner, he was infuriated. Vladimir had to personally return to use his charisma to talk the king back into good senses. He also told the king of reports that King Wilbur had fled to Ireland. He asked that the merchant fleet be converted into a Military Navy to invade.

Eventually the request was granted, and Vladimir arrived of-shore of Ireland's capital at the time. Vladimir found himself largely out-numbered. Everywhere he turned there was only more troops to meet him, and counting on supplies was a joke. He soon learned that the best center was no center, and that flanks were everything against a larger opponent. Over the course of the battles on immense scale, the general rule was that un-mounted units rarely survived the encounter, and were used primarily for decoys. It wasn't long until he had only Knights, light cavalry, and some especially crafty archers/longbowmen in his services. He was never able to/ never attempted to seige and take a large city (except for the initial seige where three armies twice his size showed up to stop him, and most of his seige equipment was destroyed).

Even if no large cities were taken, many smaller villages were sacked and taken from time to time, to be used as a temporary camp or outpost. The villages rarely survived the encounter. Any that were fool enough to become prisoner of Vladimir were executed after the conclusion of the battle, heads placed upon makeshift pikes scattered across the battlefield.

Vladimir's campaign slogan to the Irish people was "flee and you have a 50/50 chance to live, fight and you have a 100% chance to die." It was surprisingly effective. The more malevolent Vladimir's guerilla force became, the more fearful the large irish armies grew. The character of the war changed on the day Dublin "fell." For weeks Vladimir had been spreading the rumors that the english invasion force (guerilla army) was planning on sacking and burning Dublin.

Vladimir made a good show of marching to the gates of Dublin .... although something seemed off, there were no archer garrisons on the walls, nothing. However the mayor of Dublin came out through the gates, and bowed, handing out a letter. Basically, it was Dublin's capitulation to the English crown, in the return that the New Ireland hold Dublin as the center of commerce and government, and that the people's of Dublin become a free citizenry.

To great injury to most Irish critics of defecting ... Vladimir did something most did not think possible. He welcomed Dublin with open arms, and named the Dublin the capital of the Irish province. With limited naval capacity and fresh supplies, as well as a fairly large city, Vladimir had all the resources his men had done without for almost a full year of warfare.

However, they only stayed in the city for a day. After sending a runner vessel back to mother england, asking for reinforcements, he went into the town hall of dublin, looking through the vast library of public records. This entailed detailed description of roadways, supply lines, average garrisons, and the like. Most of these items had been at least half-way noted by his men whom have battled from one side of ireland to the other at least 20 times by now. However, one article did strike his attention greatly. It was entitled "fueding lords" and mentioned the past and current struggles for power within Ireland.

Vladimir and his men once again went into mostly hiding + scavenging and alot of fighting, leaving Dublin to be a proud beacon of English trustworthiness. Slowly his agents met with the power-hungry traitorous lords, and later devised for most of the Irish forces to face him (sent a decree he could hold dublin against any invasion). Since Vladimir had never taken a defensive position in his life, it kept everyone on their toes. However, royal pride unable to resist such a temptation, the largest Irish armies were sent to take Dublin ... which to any tactitian given troop deployment would be easy victory, 95+ % odds.

However, at the critical moment, the tratouros lords attacked the royals in power, and Vladimir was never in the city in the first place, Vladimir attacked the royalists from the flank, from hidden positions in the trees. Not wishing to bring about compications, his agents simply made sure all the defeated kings and generals were to die in battle.

Things did not go as plan, and half of the kings escaped to their respective provinces, although the remaining army of both sides ended up siding with the Irish traitors. (those who did not wish brutal torture, including witnessing the torture of their families) those that pledged this oath helped Vladimir and allies to track down and capture the families of those that dared to disobey. It was a tightly woven knitting of fear and intrigue. They marched to western Ireland to demand surrender of the Royalists, and the locatoin of Wilbur. While uncooperation abound, at the least they were able to glean the location of Wilbur. Apparantly he had fled to france, to spread stories of the tyranny and villainy of Vladimir, and was apparantly demanding a united invasion of England, to take the despots out of power.