I mostly agree here.  A Guilds 2 kind of succession might make for some amusing subquests though: marry well, make a heir, and raise them (to help differentiate their traits).  Plausible as a special game mode, maybe titled 'Dynasties'.

I think that death is death, and to bring yourself back would be impossible. however why does this have to be the end of your game? I like the successor idea as well but I think your successor should be one of the heroes you have hired and imbued with whatever power you gave them, not a random character that just generates and the game says "your son has taken over the throne since your death, and has all the abilities and essences and mana you had." While you sit up in heaven and say "I had a son?! Guinevere why didn't you tell me?" I mean that just doesn't make sense to me, I think a channeler is going to be a more background fighter anyways, not on the front lines. He will be casting spells from afar, blocking himself with enchantments and such so it will be hard for him to get killed unless youve just imbued too many heroes with too much power which is your fault anyways. I think that once you lose your channler you lose them, but your civilization should not fall immediately and neither should your enemie's civilization if you should manage to kill their channeler. But losing your channeler would be devastating as no more essence could be given to heroes and I believe that from then on out dragons would be impossible to convince to join your side probably, so in effect, it might be a game over to lose your channeler, but not an immediate game over and also not a definite game over.

I thought in AoW your wizard respawned?   I only played the second one which seemed to respawn.

EXACTLY!!!

Not really. Makes it more intereting and makes it more important to use your wizard wisely, otherwise i could imagine safeguards, though they would require a lot of work, stuff like phylacteries akin to D&D liches i suppose, i mean this is a fantasy setting, so might as well use it to it's fullest.

I think that's part of what Brad expects to get from our responses to the beta--do we like how hard (or easy) it is to kill a channeler? In imagination-land, I'm leaning to dead player channeler = game over. At the moment, I think that the real trick there will be those decisions about how much power to imbue in the land and your heroes vs. keep to yourself. If the game ends when your channeler dies, then those decisions are *much* more important than they'd be if you could cast a Spell of Return or something.

I definitely agree with you 100% here Swicord! You know what this game is all about and that would be strategy

"Oh well, looks like it's time to reload that save 10 turns ago and not let that come-out-of-nowhere gank squad take out my channeler." (probably just running away until your frontline troops can be brought in to take out the assassins)

Rather than taking your death lumps and keep on fighting, because you know you can make a comeback. 'Course lots of people will still the reload option, but I'd still like an option in between "ironman" and "reload at the first sign of trouble".

LoL, if you had spread you essence out enough you might be ok, but then again that might be why you died in the first place!

I actually liked the system in Populous quite well.  When your shaman died, you'd respawn (not immediately) at your holy ground/"shrine".  I think it was something like 30-60 seconds before you actually respawned, so you couldn't do anything with your avatar during that time, but you could still order units around, etc.  Additionally, during the time where you're "dead", your opponents (actually I think it's just the one who kills you) gets a mana regeneration bonus for the duration.  I really liked this, but I also have to admit to abusing it-if memory serves it was something like 4 or 5x the normal rate.  I could kill off an enemy shaman, charge up my dragon spell, rinse and repeat.

However, if you lost all your followers, you couldn't respawn anymore, and although it's been a while, I think you may have instadied as well (unsure).

EDIT: Remembering now that there was one level where you had no followers to speak of, so the instadeath must be a no.  That level was...interesting to say the least.  I enjoyed it, but it'd suck immensely if all of them were like that.

Which isn't to say that modification wouldn't be necessary and although I must admit to being too concerned about the actual current mechanics to have read all the ideas and conjecture in this thread, I will do so at some point in time and I do think there are good ideas here.

Not that my opinion is worth anything. 

Right-o.  Guess I need to hurry up and preorder then.

I looked in the other topic linked but didn't see a dev's word on it so I'm replying to this one-it's also more current.  It seems to me kind of like losing in GCII when your civ capital falls-while I'm aware that analogy is a bit stretched to say the least, I believe it makes the point I'm attempting to make.  (As a note-at least initially, in Star Chamber, if you lose your homeworld, you lose the game-regardless of how many other worlds you have, or ships, etc, etc.  I don't know if it still is that way, but that's the one thing I hated the most about it, and this idea of death being the end of your character seems to be similar to that, albeit on a different scale.)

Indeed.  My bad.

Populous: The Beginning.

Better?

Maybe its just me but what I have the frustration with is the fact that if i kill the enemy's channler (which, yes, won't be an easy feat, but...) their nation just disappears off the face of the planet! so what about this:

I am nation A and I am at war with nation B. During a heated battle, I managed to kill Channeler B. When channler B dies, all the land that he/she imbued from the start begins to die as there is no one maintaining it with their essence anymore. Heroes also begin to lose the strength they were imbued with by B. The process could be slow or fast but either way, during this time, Nation B's people would starve, including his/her troops. Cities would become deserted wastelands. This way we see "a fall" instead of sudden disappearance. Also it would prevent "mop-up" because their nation would be slowly killing itself off by way of attrition anyways.

However, if during the course of the game Nation B had managed to take any of my cities (thus, those on lands that I imbued in the start) those cities would continue to function, and he /she can attempt to make a comeback, and marshall all their troops to these cities before they succumb to the ravages of their former land. The only hope they have is to strike fast and hope to kill my channler to level the playing field... Or they could always surrender their troops and cities to me, and become my vassals.

This would also create later "colonization phases" in the game i suppose, as Nation B's land would once again need to be imbued and colonized. tell me what you think

Hmm I suppose, but you would just have to imbue the land again, no biggy for a almighty channeler!

But yes, I suppose that would be annoying. Oh well, I still think it would work out just fine. As long as the nation just doesn't disappear in the blink of an eye