In another thread, I suggested having offspring rebel against you or do quirky things outside your control. This suggestion is for a system of how that might work (or maybe a less extreme version of it).
You know how some games gives you a "personality test" as part of character creation? Ogre Battle asks you a series of questions about what you value and morality. Other games might have a sort of choose-your-own adventure feel to character creation. Child development could go something like that.
In the first 100 turns after a child is born, the player could receive pop-up messages informing him/her of the child's development and offering choices. If you're harsh on a child and force him to endure strict military training, he might get a stat bonus; but there's a small chance he'll resent you for it and run away or join a rival faction upon reaching adulthood. Other choices might have a mini-quest feel to them, say your child catches fever and requires a rare herb to recover. The choices the player makes would all figure into calculating the child's stats, abilities, and profession.
I like it, just depends on how its Implemented I guess.
Another thing would be to have each child born with a "pre-set" personality that prefers X, Y, and Z ... and once the child is born you can choose "I want the child to be raised in X fashion" or some such.
Then you can either have a simplistic relationship between the child's personality and the way you choose to raise him ... or you could make things more complex/subtle and less gamey.
For instance, simplistic would be that a child is born with loving combat, indifferent to magic, and abhorrent to diplomacy. Then if you choose Combat he gets a larger stat boost and increased loyalty, while if you choose diplomacy he would have a chance for stat penalties and reduced loyalty.
Having a more complicated system could be.... having Child Rearing Choises of Strict, Moderate, and Laid back ... over the choices of Martial, Magical, and Diplomatic*.
Then, the child would have hidden and preset affinities for either Martial, Magical, or Diplomatic. If you choose the right one, your child will get stat bonuses. As for Strict, Moderate, or Laid back ... if you choose correct you get stat bonus and loyalty bonus, if you choose 1-off you still get a smaller Loyalty bonus ... yet if you choose 2-off you get a loyalty penalty. And lets suppose that choosing Moderate never gains a stat boost* even if its the "correct choice" for the Child's personality.
*makes things more interesting.
** Diplomatic children could add to your ability to making deals, or make better deals for you, increase prestige in a city, and be able to be married off (or arranged marriage in general) more easily.
Sounds like a really good addition.. this really worked really well in the game Crusader Kings, where having various buildings can affect the options available during upbringing (Church Education, Court Education, Military Upbringing), also in the Total War series where characters can gain various traits or personality features over time depending on your choices during various events.
It would make characters a lot more memorable to allow them to have some kind of personal traits or abilities that made them feel more like individuals (eg Merciful, Arrogant, Bloodthirsty, Shrewd, Diplomatic, etc), even if these just had a fairly minor effect. Right now the heroes/children seem too much like an interchangeable list of stats. Expanding on the current basic hero abilities could also really add a lot to the game - a flat +2 to gold or research per turn makes them effectively into a walking building, anything like a HoMM skill tree or traits/skills enabling more individual differences would be huge plus.
Here is an additional 2 cents on Sovereign Traits/abilities and perhaps possible Traits/Abilities for Family Members/ Descendants https://forums.elementalgame.com/387469
If doable it would make it a lot more fun. I liked the medieval 2 growth which is like this but without choices.
I think this idea has merit.
Right now, it's kind of just waiting for your kid to show up in the city unit list, which seems pretty detached.It would be nice to have a couple "choices" with either explicitly spelled out results, or something hidden under the covers, but either way, it ends up in the Bio/description for the unit.
If the final choice could be when the child is mature enough to take part in the adventuring with some kind of notification that they have "matured", all the better.
Couple other thoughts along those lines.
At say age 7 or so the ability to let your child go be a squire to one of your champions or via diplomacy let your child become a squire of an allied Champion. Give the champion some kind of bonus (preparedness, freshly sharpened weaponry) or something. Then as the Champion does stuff the child gains attributes until the age of 16 or so. Of course the diplomatic repercussions of having one of your heroes die and an allied Soverign's offspring get killed would be severe.
If we have a Squire system ... if just the champion dies, the kid runs back to Nanny (Capital), however if the entire ARMY dies, then the kid dies.
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