that would be interesting.  Curses on the enemies is a classic for when a powerful wizard or something dies.  That would make multiplayer games really tense, because nobody would want to finish each other off unless there was a way to prevent it.

Would there be a way to remove the curse?   What are the catches?   Because I wouldn't want to be the guy who happened to be foolish enough to wipe out the life-channeler just to find that he cursed all my units unto undead that I must now fight AFTER I killed him.

that is still a really cool idea.  And of course, I think we should come up any similar ideas for other elements (because we wouldn't want to give life all the credit)

I know earth could easily cause famine.  Crops would fail when the channeler but a great curse on the land in his dying breath.

wind could slow or stop sailing ships (well not stop, I guess you can always row)

Nothing wrong with this as a concept. You are basically turning youself into a trap for revenge purposes.

This is magic power that you store in yourself and so can't use for anything else so you would have to give it a lot of thought beforehand.

I like this idea, AND the corrolary, that such curses can be countered/removed.  I recommend by quest or 'civilization goal'.  Consider the Quest for the Holy Grail.  The king is cursed, which curses the land.  All the knights go a-questing.

I look at Death Curse as a trust fund, mana AND essence invested.  So you're less awesome before your end in order to be awesome AT your end.  Besides, who ISN'T planning on going down in MP laying land-wasting devastation upon your enemy?  This is just another way of doing it.

Also, I think it helps to BALANCE the way I've seen most multiplayer games go.  One player gets an edge, and slowly builds on that edge, wiping out a player.  He now has 2X resourcea, and the next player falls that much faster.  He now has 3X resources, and so on. 

Further, it encourages MP games NOT to last for 18-26 hours of 'footsie', ending in massive armies with maxed-out tech.  You want to wipe out those enemy channelers BEFORE they can set up their death-curse.

I just want to reiterate my hopes that SD doesn't implement anything in order to force defense-oriented players to play differently than they want to. If they want to play defensively then they should be able to just as easily as they could play offensively.

I like this idea although balance might be a little hard. I think the easiest way to handle this would be to put the curse on some kind of timer 3 – 5 minutes would suffice I think that is long enough were you would definitely feel the effects of the curse but not so long that you would be crippled for the rest of the game. 

Opps that’s my inner real time strategist coming out lol. Well scratch the 3 -5 minutes and make that 10 – 15 turns. The only turn based games I ever really played were galciv II and M.A.X I consider them the exception rather than the rule. 

That really depends on the details of a specific curse, and we don't even know yet if we'll have in-game spell customizations, much less anything about a generic/universal spell list. There could be no Death Curse at all, one per Element but only for 1-element (pure) channelers, or one per player with a wide range of possible effects. IMO, only the most onerous sort of curse (e.g. blocking access/connection to shards of a given Element) would really need a duration as balance. If you take over the world by crushing everyone else, why shouldn't you expect some battle scars? (Keep in mind I'm thinking of some Death Curses as sort of instant-local versions of the world-wrecking magic we should see in late games--you don't really carry a new volcano with you into every battle.)

I also think that quests, and perhaps spell research projects, might be as good or better as Death Curse countermeasure. Carrying a Curse of Eternal Tears? You need a drink from the Chalice of Solace, long lost in the deep caverns of Yon Scary Mountains.

That sounds like a swell alternative (complement?) to any Death Curse options. It makes sense that anyone should be cautious about killing a channeler. Even if curses aren't in the picture, we are talking about ending a semi-demi-godly entity's existence. I can also imagine a neat range of possible 'exploding channeler' effects based on elemental affinities--volcanos, insanely tall mountains, new great bodies of water, permanent storms, etc.

I also agree that if killing a channeler weakens you too significantly, whether by casting a really strong curse on you or by devastating the army that killed said channeler, then people won't go after channelers until they have no choice or have already pretty much won.

We already know that channelers are planned to be extremely powerful combat units, at least if you don't spread out your essence too much. So killing a channeler will likely result in large casualties anyways - to add on a massive mana explosion or whatnot might be going too far. I love the idea that a channeler's death permanently alter the terrain or cause some other lasting effects, but the damage done to the victor has to be balanced so that killing other channelers isn't always something to avoid at all costs...

Not sure for single player but for multiplayer i'd figure a dying channeler would use his last breath to either practice "scrorched earth tactics" as in: ruining the domain over which he still holds sway or perhaps use his dying breath to give his people one last defense (this would make parts of his domain temporary neutral parties with heavy defense added in one way or another that would either decay over time or agressors would have to whittle down.)

doing it that way would also satisfy the roleplaying elements: you may choose by the nature of the channeler you wish to be how to say your farewell.

Both could function as a multiplayer balance feature. Players not close enough to the vanguished channelers lands would have time to adapt to the new power balance because those that are close enough wouldnt experience a sudden easily-gotten power boost because of weakly defended lands (either because a new "lord" would have to dedicate resources to rebuild (scorched earth option) or whittle down (last stand option).

This way its just just the one that was strong or lucky enough to off an enemy channeler that gets the pie. All of a sudden everybody needs to shift focus to get his piece of the pie

just an idea

MN

Some of the channeler death effects talk has been interesting, but I started out asking about a specific spell (or spells) to research and 'load up' via a long, expensive ritual. It seems to me that if Death Curses were decently-designed spells in the "late-game, world-wrecking" class, there should be no complaints about balance and no expectation that every channeler would always have one 'loaded.'

That's only accurate for a zero-sum, play-to-win perspective. This game supposedly aims to bring a strong RPG aspect to the traditional TBS experience, and some fans of TBS games have always been more interested in playing than they are in 'winning.'

Plus, even if you want to win, to keep a 4/5X game interesting as you play more and more maps, you really need to have more 'character' options for both the players and the AIs. If there's no way to express your Profoundly Vengeful nature other than simple military dominance, how are you any different from someone who is Extremely Authoritarian or the other neighbor who is Addicted to Battlefield Glory?

Argh. I'm doing a terrible job of trying to 'maintain the integrity' of my own OP. Note the title prefixe: 'Megamagic' for Multiplayer. My idea began when I was thinking about both "deliberately unbalancing" magic for the late game and trying to imagine aspects of a multiplayer game that might make me want to play that mode.

The digression into how (and how much) to integrate some RPG aspects into the base TBS got me distracted. But, yes, I'm the kind of "You mean you can win this game?" sort of player who would very merrily do all manner of 'inefficient' things if they made the game more fun for me. Efficiency is overrated in many real-world contexts and over-emphasized in too many computer games, IMO. Truly sweet games like GalCiv2 can keep 'RPG-thinkers' entertained while also making room for folks who want to keep stats as if the game were baseball or something. I expect no less of Elemental.