Lineage Charts as save/load/new game

Lineages are mod material unless suddenly Stardock decides otherwise (campign and all that). But some doors opened to the implementation of lineage systems (because many people will see the topic in different ways) would be a very nive touch.

Out of topic, your threads and other few people threads are broken for me in IE (7 and 8 at least, and won't bother with IE 6) and force me to use use Firefox. It's a matter of font, of luck, the phase of the moon? I dislike to use the fox except for a few sites, of which this isn't one.

This would be a cool way to make each player's game more unique I think, although it probably should be something to be modded in by a player instead of by teh devs.

If Lineage has to be done right, it has to be done right (& quickly) by SD, because it will affect a lot of game design decision.  A MOD of this scale will take forever.

Beta has to make the right balance, sure; but I doubt if it is possible from the feature info we receive from them so far.  The game will then always evolve to hunt/defend the channeler every time; this is boring yet the most effective way to play the game.

IMHO, a combination of Victory Condition and allowing channeler’s role pass to other hero is the way to go (maybe there are some other better ways).   And at the same time, provide the carrot & stick to prolong the channeler’s longevity, e.g. Legendary artifact, Civilian Revolt or other punishment when a channeler dies.   The channeler is important, but gamer should still have a chance to win a game if the leader die exploring. 

Legendary artifacts (my version of wish)
Any artifacts wore by heroes will grow.  This ‘legendary bonus’ growth will be slow, in terms of +10% every 10 years (for example).  This bonus accumulates to an extremely powerful level after several hundred years. It is effective only when a descendent wears it; anyone else wearing them won’t receive the legendary bonus. 

The legendary bonus still grow by itself until the original hero dies of aging.  Most if not all artifact items will pass on to a descendent when the gamer choose to start a game using his descendent.   It does not meant the the descendent will wear them all at turn 1, some of them can be scatter somewhere in the map. The original hero can of course transfer any items to his child any time in an active game.

If the hero has no descendent,  most items will 'likely' be lost forever.  There are other ways that it can be permanently lost; e.g. the hero is killed, items robbed by other players, or destroyed by magical means.

Thereby Legendary artifact provides incentive for gamer preserve a long bloodline, marry etc, because these powerful artifact can only be used effectively by a descendent.  And it takes many years (hundreds of turns or a few games) to wait for a descendent to grow up.

When a bloodline completely ends, legendary artifact has some small chance of re-appearing in gamer's future games.  The first ever hero (& his  descendents) who picks it up can enjoy the legendary bonus once again.

For a fantasy TBS game, Lineage is fitting and can add a lot to gamers’ enjoyment; if done right.

There can be many fun stuff coming from Lineage, maybe I'll talk about that later.

I don't have the beta.  Does beta has anything like what I've mentioned in OP.  OR if Elemental is still using the traditional Load/Save?

"5.    Heroes die via aging, disease"

Be careful with the aging bit.  I HATED that in RomeTotalWar and both Medieval TWs.

Well, I don't think victory should be able to be acheived without the Sovereign. Sure, you could set up a system where you get a new "ruler" unit (without essense of course) ... and maybe he could go on some epic quest to gather sacred magical artifacts to allow his "potential" for channeling, and if he ever defeated a channeler in combat he would absorb their essence. But all that aside, I don't think victory should be enabled after your channeler dies. Except for maybe conquest, and then you get a "Peasant Victory" trophy or something (which you would have gotten with conquest victory if you hid your sovereign most/100% of the time anyways.

Not considering the possibility for Peasant Victory, all other victory conditions would be null and void. You could build all the towers, kill all the Sovereigns, whatever, and you wouldn't gain victory. The only way would be to control all humans and all fallen (or something) and just own everything (in the civilized world, dungeons don't count, neither do monster lairs)

Lord Cobol, pls tell me why that hate rgds to aging in TW.  I've never played them.

Tasunke, why victory cannot be acheived without the Sov? Afterall there are a lot of forumers that does not want "Sov Dying = Game over". 

If SD ≠ GO, what should the game do next?  To me a heir system is most fun/natural.  But what is the best option really?

That's narrow-minded. Neither you nor I nor even the devs really know how the game will turn out, let alone that it will always evolve to hunt/defend the channeler every time. If done well, channelers should be very adept at getting out of fairly sticky situations. It should also be possible to set up safety nets so that if your channeler is trapped and outmatched, you don't lose upon death. Whether the safety net is in the form of some passive spell that teleports the channeler away at the last instant, resurrects him, whatever - and whether it's achieved through a spell, a magical item, a building - whatever.

The one thing I personally don't want to see being able to continue to play if I lose my sovereign without having created any sort of safety net. And I am opposed to any kind of heir system, as well. In Elemental you take on the role of the sovereign, and as such deal with matters of state, logistics, combat, magic, and so on. But you are the Sovereign (not the state itself), and if you the Sovereign die for keeps, you should lose. I don't like the idea of hopping over and inhabiting another character just for the sake of being able to keep playing.

But back to my original point, there are many things that can prevent the game from degenerating into a game of chicken, all else falling to the wayside. Quite frankly I think SD = GO would add quite a bit of strategy. There's the question about whether or not to create a safety net, and if so what kind? When do you send your sovereign out into the world? Do you send him covertly, or as part of a massive army? When invading (or defending) do you risk taking massive losses in a bid to knock out the enemy channeler early? Or do you try to whittle down your opponent's forces until you can catch the channeler relatively poorly defended? Even then, would the losses incurred by taking out that channeler be worthwhile when instead you might be able to negotiate very favorable cease-fire conditions?

Sure, if the channeler is some pansy unit that can't defend itself, sovereign hunting will be a sizable part of the game, even though most people would just park their sovereigns in a city somewhere. If sovereigns are so weak it would be pretty easy to mobilize a small but sufficient strike force to overrun and kill them. But in Elemental, channelers are supposed to be beasts capable of single-handedly crushing small armies (at least as one route). If you want to successfully ambush a sovereign, you had best bring a quality army, and expect heavy losses. As a result, going after sovereigns will be slightly less appealing, and it will be easier for sovereigns to escape. Big armies tend to move slower than small strike forces, and mobilizing such an army at a moment's notice isn't so easy.

Somewhat related, I want there to be an ability/spell/option for sovereigns to 'blend in.' It would be neat if, for a cost (perhaps the city gains a smaller bonus from your sovereign's presence, etc), enemies can't tell whether or not your sovereign is in a city, unless they have intel (whether traditional or magical). 

 

Edit: With regards to aging: it can be a pain in the ass for your heroes/generals/whatever that you have slaved over for days to just keel over and die on turn. At first that really bothered me, but then I learned to not mind; I realized it just requires a different manner of play. I'm used to leveling up my heroes indefinitely, making them stronger and stronger ad infinitum. New heroes get pushed to the wayside because they will likely never catch up to my veterans. Aging (and age-related death) encourages you to be more well-rounded. It's tempting to always use your veterans for everything (because they will do the job better!) but if you do that, then when that generation dies you're left significantly weakened. So instead, it's better to use your veterans for the truly important (and close) battles, and use your rookies for more minor battles, so that when one of your old veterans dies there is someone to replace him.

On the other hand, a big problem with age-related death is randomness. Your 60 year old general might die next turn, or he might die 50 turns from now. While unexpected death does happen, it is more common for someone's mental and/or physical health to decline to a point where they either retire or are made to retire, well before they actually kick the bucket. Basically, I think for age-related death to really work, there would have to be a way to monitor hero 'health,' and for that to actually affect their performance. That way, you are basically nearly always induced to retire aged heroes before running into the gambling issue above. And I'm not sure age-related death is worth all that.

Pigeon, I disagree with the 1st part of your post.  "SD = GO" itself is a limit of available choices, regardless if the safety net is designed & implemented well.   "SD = GO" should be ONE of the ways we play EWOM.  Ideally, I'll like the game win/loss on the achievement of the game goals being setup at the start of the game.  Those game goals maybe defend City X for 100 turns, rescue the princess, or any worthy goals. 

Ideally, instead of just having the victory condition of "Quest Victory, Diplomatic Victory, or Spell of Making" as we see it in beta now, Victory condition should be way more flexible.  It should be done in the form of "If XXXX condition is meet, player X win", where XXX is extremely flexible, probably defined by some kind of script as in AOWSM.

Then, there should also be an game-start option to decide if all participating gamer wants to do "SD ≠ GO" or "SD = GO".  

It'll be hard to make the right balance to make Sov dying too easily or become 1 man army of doom.  It'll be hard to ensure the safety net will not be abused by gamer, so the game become frustrating.  You hunt the Sov, he escape by the safety net, then you hunt, he escape again, again and again and again.  

How to make the safety net perfectly, so that it will not abused by the hunted NOR make it too safe?  It can be tricky.  I am not saying Stardock cannot find the right balance, but if 20% of the gamer think that they screw up the 2 balances mentioned above, there will 20% unhappy customer.   The only suggestion I've with a future safety net is make sure the penalty of using one is huge, e.g. lost half of your essence or your empire etc.

Do not force the gamer to have "SD = GO" in every game. 

Rgds to the 2nd part of Aging hero, I agree in large.  However, in my OP, I intend the hero have a long life of 2 or 3 complete games considered 1 year = 26 turns. Assume an average game L map sized game lasts 20 years, the same hero will lasts a few games before he dies of old age.