After playing a couple 400+ games, I think I wanted to mention some problems that I see with Dynasties and offer some possible solutions. Under the current setup, once your Sovereign marries you can have up to 4 children that will be magic users and can be married off to other fractions for political alliance. Here is some problems I see with the current system.
1. First, if you have a son and allow your son to get married to the daughter of another fraction, YOUR fraction gains another magic Channeller but if you marry off your daughter to the son of another fraction you lose one. There does not seem to be any incentive other than some closeness of partnership that you gain through this union. It's obvious in this sitution it's better to marry off your sons and keep your daughters. A fraction that has 4 sons ends up with 8 extra channellers, however the fraction that ends up with 4 daughters ultimately ends up with nothing. The solution is for the fraction that is offerring up the daughter receive something in return, either gildar, materials, units, Champions or Diplomatic capital or something that makes the two fractions partners instead of traders.
2. We should be able to see the stat card of potential matches to determine what sibling is the best match. Stats should matter and increased stats should require a higher dowery.
3. The level of the Son/Daughter match should be taken into account. In my games, as soon as my sons and daughters become of age, I send them out to gain experience. A 4th level daughter should be worth more dowery than a 1st level daughter. This also encourages the fractions to use their most important assets in order to make stronger alliances. For example, once you get your daughter to say, 4th level, offers for her hand could come from multiple AI fractions that wish to have a powerful asset added to their kingdom or empire.
4. Son's and daughters should NOT inhereit their parents spell books. Either give them one randomly or perhaps one randomly selected from each parent. Then allow them a method to gain additional spell books (perhaps through quests). It would probably be a nightmare to have each son/daughter learn their own subset of spells, but at least granting them only one or two spell book types and all their fractions researched spells for that book should be fine for the game.
5. Why note 'in line for the throne' for each child without using it? Either eliminate this because it has no meaning within the game OR use it. My idea is that if your Sovereign dies then your next in line heir within your fraction takes his place (again, this encourages players and AI alike to use and increase the levels of their heirs). If your sovereign dies and you have no living heirs within your own fraction, then the kingdom passes to the player or AI that has the highest married heir within their fraction. If AI sovereign dies with no heirs, then the kingdom/empire is conquered and vanishes.
Those are my thoughts.
If we were to keep the Sovereign as only possible ruler (RPG theme there), all the dynasty with "1st in the line ot the Throne" and such, makes not much sense. It has been like that from day 1. Being able to "fragment" your Kingdom/Empire so some of your heirs take control of the cities you give them (creating loyal vassal states while lowering your Kingdom's expenses, for example), would improve it. Being able to gain political control of territories using arranged marriages, would be anotehr improvement. There are many things that can be done about Dynasties and altough I think that right now it's one of the weakests parts of the game (imho), I've confidence in Stardock's ability (and users' suggestions) to improve it.
Do factions still surrender according to lines of succession? Is faction surrender even in for the AI? I haven't seen it happen.
Demiansky, it's great to have the dynasty system in place for the modders though.
I can follow this logic. But a dynasty system is a really cool thing onto itself in a fantasy civ-building game like this. So Frogboy could either have scratched it off his list and kept the "sovereign dies= game over" concept; or, he could have included a well-developed dynasty system with inheritance and let your offspring get a chance on the throne when your founding sovereign dies (scrapping any Lore to the contrary). I've never played a fantasy strategy game with a full-blown such system included so for me it would have been novel and cool. It would have helped making the game unique. On the other hand, "you die=game over" is not exactly something you will print on the Elemental Box in the hope it will attract more customers.
Exactly. You can't have it both ways.
Main issue I see is that the other factions dont offer their sons or daughters to YOU especially if you either have a good relationship, or in a bid to achieve peace from an inpending defeat...
Other than that I dont have many issues with it, infact its good if your channel;er cannot die, but if he gets killed you dont automatiocally lose the game because your child inherits everything, that can save someones butt if they channeler fall due to a mishap.
Yes, but in the real world rulers didn't have magical powers they could pass down through their bloodline. Being able to potentially get four spell casting heroes without expending any essence isn't exactly a minor advantage.
let me add my voice to the choir of people asking for succession of heirs. you can't have endless input without output: it makes no sense. yes, you should be attached to your sovereign like in an rpg, but even in an rpg your character's story is eventually over and retired so you can start a new adventure. if people really don't like this then let them turn it off, but you can't have one without the other imho.
having said this, i would quite like a "lichdom" spell (or a good aligned equivalent) that immortalised your sovereign and reverted the game to the sovereign-is-the-game status, but this would have the tradeoff of infertility: you exchange a large pool of evolving characters for one obscenely powerful leader (ie, sauron vs gondor).
I am not a fan of my channeler dying or quitting due to age, eternal youth and vitality for the win! Though I am fine with a kid replacing him if he dies in battle.
We need to allow daughters to marry male champions of our kingdoms. I don't like that the only way for daughters to reproduce is to marry them off and lose them and their children to another faction. More options (marry champion or marry into another faction for other benefits) is always better in my opinion.
+1 The Lich versus the daddy FTW. There also needs to be a trait system to give champions and sov a glimmer of life, which atm they lack.
I also concur with the call for a succession system, at least as an option.
Yeah, that's a good idea. I also think, periodically Jannusk should pop up with "a suitable bride/groom has been found for the sovereign, do wish to arrange this marriage?" In case your sov doesn't meet the appropriate gender after a reasonable time. I played one game where my king roamed for 150+ turns before running into a female champion.
They should just make an option for those that want dynasty succession (if your sovereign dies, heir inherits). If you want it on, you can turn it on, if you want it off, leave it off. If it's on I would at least 1/2 the rate in which you have children, and your character can die from old age. Therefore, each and every one of your offspring is vital, since it's basically a chance to continue playing. If they should die, you lose that chance, and your not just losing just another champion. It's somewhat a light version of Crusader Kings, at least in the aspect of inheritance and the importance of keeping your dynasty going.
That!Plus, it would be a nice thing to have opportunity to have your successor(s) manage some of your cities as your vasal AI (if you choose so). I realize that wouldn't be very smart in the game-terms but it would be nice for RPG-ing.
Actually, they do. I had another Kingdom in my game tonight open a dialog with me about our kids marrying.
Yes a marriage between your kids, NOT a marriage between YOU (the player) and the other factions fully grown offspring. If I cant marry the other faction leader at leat let me get married in some other way to the faction After all their "offspring" are the same age as you since they start full grown at the begining of the game...
100% agree with the TC.
Also, a succesion system would be cool because I'm getting fed up of whole Kingdom's dissapearing when the AI's Sov's do something silly such as enter my territory to attack my caravans with absolutely -no- support. It was a rather anti-climatic end to an epic game I was having.
The lichdom spell is a great idea. There should also be a good variant for the Kingdoms ("Blessed / True Immortal"?).
I like flavour, dinasties give flavour.
I may be taking this wrong, but isn't that how most games work? You die = game over. It's not a hard concept and doesn't need to be in the box. Brad has always said the difference with this game is that you create your character. YOU roam the country side and rebuild your kingdom/empire. While irritating at times, it makes perfect sense. However, you DO get a problem of balance here and there. For instance, I was playing a game last night where I was getting attacked by the AI...I had researched adventure and civics alot, so my army was kind of small and fairly weak. However, his sov came charging into one of my cities, I played the tac battle and won. His empire was much larger than mine, and now his whole civilaztion was wiped out. As much as I'd love to brag about that, it felt wrong. I should have been slaughtered. Oh well, everything will be smoothed out over time.
I like the idea of everyone copulating everywhere ! But i wont give my daughters for that
I really like this idea.
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