.....

Well, if his very life is in danger, and most of his army is already dead, I see no reason for even sauron or Gandalf to run and flee in the presence of an approaching enemy. Think, for instance, if the party had decided to stay and fight the balrog. If all the other characters were killed by the balrog, killed completely dead ... do you think Gandalf would still fight on or would he turn to flee? wether or not he could escape at such time sucessfully is another matter

Still, I don't mind taking the embarassment from a route, and working it into a story, rather than simply dying and game over. Incidentally, the current ideas from Stardock on attack and defense of sovereigns seems like it will inspire more interesting decisions than the previous ideas. (attack you die, defense you flee)

Of course, if he is fleeing from a defeat, this is essentially a route

Or you could think of it as a non-linear advance towards the next battlefield.

Fair enough ... someone mentioned a static "escape meter" or something, which was a non-random integer influenced by logical steps and decisions. Could be affected by friendly and enemy spells. As long as the number on this meter wasn't negative (zero or positive) at the start of every turn (like if you paused it) you could choose to escape. I would assume you will still fight out the battle without the sovereign, and an extreme morale loss to troops.

Do we have something like "morale" in the game at all? [I hope so of course...] Either way, if we have a morale system, the Sovereign shouldn't have morale? Because this is what you are saying basically...

In my opinion, the Sovereign should have a "morale stat" as well, and if it goes down below a specific level, even the Sovereign should route/flee.

I've just been catching up on the forum discussion over the last couple of days, so I'm sure there's a lot I've missed. But that said, I still want to put in my two cents.

Having Sovereign Death mean Game Over makes perfect sense to me, from a design perspective. I don't know if this is the same train of thought you followed, but it seems simple enough: No matter what you do, there's always only going to be two options. Either Sovereign Death ends the game, or it doesn't. No matter what you try to do, it's going to practically work out to be one of those two options. Your Sovereign dies, and you lose a bunch of permanent resources? Well, now you're possibly crippled by the loss, it creates a death spiral where your force gets weaker and weaker. Since they killed you once already, now it's just a matter of doing it over and over until you stay dead. Boring and drawn out. But if that death wasn't such a serious blow, if you resurrect or take over a heir, then practically speaking you can die over and over and not really suffer - which takes Sovereign Death off the table as a practical loss condition.

So a quick Game Over is the most painless way of handling that while stilll letting death mean, well. Death.

But I take issue with the idea of an Escape Skill, at least if it works described. It would take effect when you've lost a battle, when the character would otherwise die. But isn't that in effect the same as having a skill called 'Resurrection' where, if your character dies, they have a chance to come back? As far as I can see , it's just a semantic difference.

I tend to agree with the school of thought here that, rather than giving the players tools they can use to make Sovereign Death less painful, you should be giving them tools that let them avoid death in the first place. Once you're dead, you're dead, but until then you can at least try to avoid it somehow.

I can imagine something similar - an Escape skill, a Stealth skill, what have you - that would take effect before the start of a battle, rather than kicking in after you lose. A retreat option during the battle itself. The option to Hide your Sovereign is already in, which lets the player decide whether or not they're going to commit to the fight. Letting the player escape after you've lost the battle strikes me as wanting to have your cake and eat it too - you're using your Sovereign to fight a battle or defend the city, but getting out of the consequences if they lose.

As long as they're alive, you should have options for escape. Once that fatal blow has been struck, it should just be over.

Agreed.

- I'm fine with the evade skill to escape a lost/losing battle

- I'd like to see the dynasty system promote a heir to sovereign

- I'd like a life spell to resurrect my sovereign (cast by hero)

- I'd like a death spell to reanimate my sovereign, to come back as a lich (cast by hero)

- Ultimately game ending isn't that big of deal, in MOM how often would you wait to complete Spell of Return versus just reloading a save game.

It makes perfect sense.

The entire UI is the Sovereign.  Most of it is the Sovereign as ruler of a large (or otherwise) empire, directing the use of resources.  This one small part - the Sovereign unit - is the Sovereign as a guy with super-magic powers who goes around and does heroic (or otherwise) fantasy stuff.  In all cases, though, the UI is the Sovereign, and the Sovereign is the UI.  Unlike the rest of the units in the game, the Sovereign is not a simulated independent actor - he is the player.  What the player wants is what he wants.  And if the player wants him to stay and die pointlessly. . . well, nobody said the Sovereign was sane.

It as nonsensical to suggest that the Sovereign might spontaneously decide to flee against my orders as it is to suggest that the UI might spontaneously decide to disband one of my settlements against my orders.  The Sovereign unit is no more an independent actor than the mouse cursor or one of the menus in the UI.

Edit: removed inflammatory language.

I currently have no strong opinion on this point, but I would like to point out some statistics.

If I fight a lot of battles with my sovereign and I only engage when I have a 99% chance of victory, then there are odds of 50/50 that I will lose the game by the time I have fought 70 battles.  The odds of losing the game are already 1 in 4 by the time I fight 30 battles, and I'll lose 1 in 10 games at about the 10-battle mark.

If I don't have a way to hedge against unlikely occurrances, I'll probably never use my sovereign in battle except once or twice for the novelty.  Whether that's good depends on what you prefer and/or what the developers are aiming for.

What fear based spells? The ones that you have made up in your head? Even if there are fear based spells, I think it would be consistent for the sovereign to be immune to them. I can see why you want rez spells etc for the sovereign you are seeing the sovereign TOO MUCH as "just another (albeit powerful) unit. Could you imagine Sauron or Gandalf piddling themselves and running away under the influence of a fear spell? If they ever did retreat it would be a rational, decison, not one based on fear or low morale. Do you want the sovereign to do his own thinking now and just be run by an AI?

I honestly am trying to see things from your perspective, and I cannot even grasp how anyone could WANT the sovereign to be able to rout.

Yes, and lets add a non-zero probability that the sovereign dies of some random event, like real bad food poisoning, getting run over by a cart or maybe just falling off his horse. I mean, if he is just a (very powerfull) regular unit he should have the same probabilities of suffering a random death as male/female from his subjects. Losing control of the game ending element is bad design for a strategy game.

"First, let me say that the sovereign dying is a non-negotiable thing to us."

First of all, where do you all read, in that sentence, that sovereign death = game over? Brad just says that sovereigns will die, and not flee, be teleported or whatever. He does not mention that it will be "game over" at all.

That said, a little fun idea (just an idea, maybe totally unbalanced or "undoable") :

At the end of a battle involving a losing sovereign, the winner can choose a few options :

- taking the sovereign prisoner (the sovereign's owner must pay A LOT to get him back)

- executing the enemy sovereign (and a heir would have to get on the throne)

- torturing the enemy sovereign (getting map informations, spell informations, technology infomations but lowering reputation, + the sovereign would lose stats due to torture damage - be crippled, one eyed, one handed, a la dominions).

That would be cool !

The Sovereign does have morale.  That morale just happens to be you.  You see the Sovereign in a pointless battle against forces that can likely kill him, you'll want to get him out of there.  Or maybe your Sovereign is a crazy berserker and he'll charge heedlessly into hopeless odds, whatever floats your boat.  Regardless, when your Sovereign dies, the link between you the player and the empire you're ruling is gone.  Every single thing you do as a player touches the game only through the actions of the Sovereign.  Your empire may survive, but you're not ruling it any more.  And given how important a channeler is in the game world, the survival of your empire as an independent entity is problematic at best anyway.