Thanks Denryu, although, I just now noticed I'd forgotten a word right before vein

nice idea about having to have the heroes join you before you could get the sword. The only thing that worries me about that, is that it becomes more complex, and perhaps harder to make magic items, if you can set conditions like that, but yes, would make for great adventures as well!!

Yes this is what I had in mind.

The hero could also make retreiving his sword a condition for joining you, or alternatively you could get a quest to find an item, not knowing what the reward was, and after retrieving the item the person you were doing the quest for turns out to be a hero...

In addition to great back story and special quests, it would be great if Heros would offer join you empire depending on your relative strength/weakness, magical affinity, etc.

For instance, a specific Hero would offer to join only underdog kingdoms/empires, because (s)he loves helping the weak. As said kingdom/empire grows it would cost more to keep this hero happy and eventually the hero may leave, because their services are no longer needed.

In a magical instance, a Hero could love a Channeler who uses Fire magic. If your know Fire spells stayed in a high enough ratio to your other magic the hero would remain (and perhaps give you a bonus to fire spell research).

With creatures this could be much the same. Maybe a red dragon has a higher chance of being tamed by a Sovereign with high fire magic abilities.

Personally I think that heroes (and characters) should grow their own history.  One of the few things I liked about EU:Rome's character system (at least compared to Crusader King's system) was that as each character went through life their history was chronicled so you could see when they were granted titles, won or lost battles, acquired land, had kids, ect.  And if characters are doing things on their own (like adventuring, running businesses, managing fiefdoms, ect) then this could be instructive as to the workings of your nobility as described in the preview.

Have you ever played Crusader Kings?  If you love character development in the context of a strategy game you would love that game, and I think a system that incorporates elements from Crusader Kings and Majesty (for autonomous character actions like adventuring and business development) would add an incredible amount of depth and a great deal of fun to the process.

Unfortunately I am unlikely to be around for the beta process ( leave for Iraq in a week), but I hope this character system really gets fleshed out to its full potential.

Another thing that paradox did masterfully that should be incorporated was in EU3 they generated a history of all your nations rulers when you resigned (u saw it every time before leaving the game, even if you weren't done with the campaign).

It would say things such as "Ruler X fought the long and bloody 3rd swedish war with mixed results" thus giving personality to your actions. It would also throw in things like "Ruler X was known for his love of fine wine" (I don't remember the exact quote there) and that had nothing to do with your action but showed that the king had a life outside of the player-manipulated politics. I always loved that screen, add that to elemental (for heros AND soverigns) and ill buy it twice.

It sounds as if you can utilize potions to enhance stats of your children. I wonder if the same is true for other heroes. If so, and the affects are permanent, I wonder if you then can pass on those traits through some kind of weighted genetic percentage. (....RANT>>>> Yes, I know, then what is to stop you from saving and reloading? I say, can't you just play a game without cheating? Winning is <10% of the fun anyway. The playing, win or lose, without cheating is much more satisfying.)

Also, could my children marry a merc.? Would this keep the merc. permanently in my employ? Would they produce children that I could use to marry into other kingdoms? Would this grant me less favor with the new kingdom than marrying one of my pure blood children?

Good point. However. It is moot because you are an IMMORTAL MAGIC CHANNELING MOFO who will at a minumum outlive the Merc and his/her decentants. If you don't like the minimum, you could always atomize your wayward Mercenary for fun.

Point taken.

Maybe I would just burn you and your army (my former army) to ash by raising a volcano under you.

However, you might posion me (getting into assasinations and that can of worms).....

I guess we'll have to see how they implement these ideas.

Well, we will have an item generator..that much is for sure. We'll have to wait until Beta to see how easy it is to use. I really do hope they can incorporate the item generator into the gameplay so we can have a "Create an Artifiact" spell.