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.
I disagree that sons and daughters shouldn't inherit their parents spell books. That what inheirantacy is. I like some of your other ideas about selling off daughters one should get something out of the deal instead of just a friendship pact. Higher leveled children should bring in more loot agreed. The in line for the throne doesn't always mean the oldest child. In Medieval times there were several ways someone could take the throne instead of just the oldest. I always preferred the strongest in Crusader Kings or the one with the most land/power. To get the game(s) over faster if you die with no heirs it's game over that's the way it should be. But, if they wanted to implement an option with your as long as you have a living heir somewhere that'd be ok by me.
Excellent ideas! I especially like points 4 and 5. Point 1 is imo not such a big issue in the long run since you'll get more offspring from your son(s) but some dowry would be nice .
Ok, I realize English isn't everyone's first language, but this has been bothering me. They are FACTIONS....they are NOT fractions. They are not numbers! 1/4...2/19....69/145....THOSE are fractions...
Awesome ideas, I actually like the ideas about succession. It would give the game a much more immersive feel if your sovereign got old and died at some point and one of his kids had to lead. There could even be a civil war event if two heirs are particularly similar in there credence to rule, You take command of one faction and your rival (AI or newcomer human player in MP) the other. Obviously you'd have to disable this sort of thing if you want a balanced game, but it would be awesome from an immersive point of view.
Also, about the game being over when the sovereign dies. Why is that? well, he's the only one with the power to revitalise the world, isnt he? Not if has kids apparently .
I too, like the idea of succession... However, as far as your Sov getting old and dying...well...the Sovereign is immortal. It's part of the story. That SHOULDN'T happen. Although Immortal doesn't mean you can't be killed. It would be cool to have succession available...even go so far as to have the kids fight each other, or even try to kill you to take your throne!
I fully support this.
About the spellbooks, I guess they'll get some love in a future patch. If you ask me, they should be items, which you can trade and copy, though copying would cost lot's of gildar or time. Then you could have quests that give you rare books, like necormancy and such.
Point 5 is my favorite, though it should be an option when starting a new game.
heh, i missed the part about him being immortal. I gotta read that novel. Perhaps if espionage becomes a reality an enemy faction could bribe/blackmail/coerce one of your kids to assassinate you.
@Tofi007 i like that idea, i'm sure stardock will be doing stuff with the spellbooks in future, it makes sense and they have the mechanics there already.
The sucession idea has been discussed at length on the forum months ago already, but SD didn't like it, unfortunately. There were a lot of good ideas on the forum they didn't like we know for sure now, after playing v.1.5 ... I would have loved a well developed dynasty system, but think a well developed MAGIC system is even more important in a game called War of Magic ...
It says it in one of the opening movies, can't remember where. (About immortality). However, I REALLY love the idea of having espionage in this game. I hope it's something they add later down the road.
The sucession idea was only thrown out there because SD mentions in the birth announcement that your child is 1st, 2nd, etc in the line of sucession for the throne but doesn't do a thing with it.
Use it or lose it. As it is, it's more confusing to someone that doesn't realize that it has no value in the game.
JMO.
i like all ideas except 5 i rule or no other
AFAIK succession does play a role. If your sovereign dies, the successor takes over
Im pretty sure that succession does matter just not for the player faction. If you kill an NPC sovereign than their next in line will become king or Queen.
No, once the sovereign dies it is game over for you but as I said above, it does matter for the AI factions.
THANK YOU
Hmmm, I'm sure I read somewhere (but I can't find it now) that you're supposed to be succeeded by your successor. Myabe it's a feature that has not been implemented yet.
Yep. Which makes me wonder what happens when you off an opposing sovereign and the next in line for succession happens to be a child of yours.
I want my children to be born with their own traits, strengths, and weaknesses. Cowardly sons, Ugly daughters, etc etc. Now that would be a lot of fun for me, :3
You won't have heard that from Stardock, that's for sure. I think that eventually changes to the dinasty system and the marrigae will be done. Succession though? I don't think so.
When an opposing sovereign dies, their faction is destroyed too. It entirely does not matter. Anyone ever arranging a daughter to get married is asinine with the current rules.
A note on spellbooks, i found one in a quest from an "odd hut" (lvl 2 quest loc). Sends you to a village then a tomb and now i can research unthinkably powerful magic, woot. Only problem is i've only researched as far as level 6 lol, so no cool spells yet, but it looks like spellbooks from quests are in there already .
LMAO Wintersong that is the thread winner there.
Also just a note as long as you have 1 city available you're Sovereign will not die as the final blow will not be struck and your sovereign will wisk away to the safety of that city. So you pretty much have to destroy the entire population of your enemy to kill the sovereign. Take away all his/her cities at least.
not really ross. if a sovereign goes down in enemy territory. he's dead, and the faction is dissolved.
Dynasties were a silly thing to add to the game to begin with. Why? I'll say the same thing that I did when I first heard the idea to begin with. If the sovereign can't die of old age nor can his offspring inherit his kingdom, you've already removed 95 percent of the point of dynasties!
The point of a dynasty is to secure one's rule over a kingdom after one dies. Remove the death part and what does the dynasty system leave us with in Elemental? A round about and distracting way to recruit new champions. What... a... waste. This is a glaring example of why Elemental, from a game mechanics standpoint, is struggling right now and why we're seeing problems with balance. We have a littany of game features and mechanics that are dangling out in the void with no consilience with the rest of the game. Dynasties, Essence, champions, unit design... to name a few.
When Frog first thought up dynasties, he should have asked himself, "How snuggly does this feature fit in with the rest of Elemental's concepts?" Well, seeing as how sovereign's can't die or allow their offspring to inheiret their rule, it doesn't. To the contrary, it clashes with game features. In other words, dynasties should have been scratched off the list and a more meaningful feature added instead. As of now, I really, really wouldn't miss it.
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