Like it or not, traditionally it has been the eldest male.  Rarely if there are no male children the guuuurls can inherit... but whether they like it or not, history is what history has always been.  And girls are, in general, weaker than men with regards to combat.  THey don't have the upper body strength, even if they are 'stronger' than males in other areas.

Face it; there are almost no examples at all of societies where women where prefered as heirs. That kind of political correct thinking will do nothing to improve the game. It's a fantasy game, but I want it bit realistic in political and economical terms. Warfare is also a strong argument for the male heirs of course.

The only reason women became queens was when it was the last oppurtunity to keep the bloodline in power.

Magic and fantasy creatures are something completely different of course......

Its accurate according to 'fantasy' as a genre, as opposed to 'fantasy' as reality with the addition of magic. For example, both the authors cited as influences use prominent female heiresses.

Also, if you want to look at it from a 'realistic' perspective, I think you underestimate the influence that fantastic elements (eg. magic) would have on traditional political and economic structures.

Honestly, I cannot wait for this game. I was rather hoping I could be distracted with other games, but instead I find myself coming back here again and again.

It's nice to know about the dynasties. That adds a depth to diplomacy I hadn't even hoped for. If we can set our own rules of succession, that would be awesome.

-Female rulers are just as viable. Sure, they may not have the physical strength of their male counterparts, but physical strength is nothing compared to a chaneller's magic, and who's to say they're any worse at that? Also, while fantasy humans are roughly the same as real-world humans, the Fallen are unknown.

-I'm wondering how much the family system will resemble the one found in Rome: Total War. In that game, Family members inherited traits from their parents, and also gained traits from their actions and situations (If you order your general to exterminate multiple towns, he may become "bloodthirsty" or if you made him the governor of some backwater town for a long time, he may become "disgruntled". These traits, in turn, had a chance of being passed on to the children)

-That building screenshot looks an awful lot like the Ship editor from GalCiv2. Does this mean we can design our own buildings in-game?

On the inheritance question, I'd prefer to see the default mechanics map to the back story and I'd hope that the back story has enough variety among the canon factions to suit the tastes of both 'traditional patriarchal' types and folks who expect different gender ideas in a world where magic is more important than upper body strength.

But mainly, I'm really hoping that the lineage stuff will be in the first beta because I'm dying to see what that means for the timeframe of the game (how long is a turn, etc.). Maybe we really will be able to have the game calendar cover centuries for long games on large maps, and if not, I'd like to get my mild disappointment out of the way early. I'm pretty sure that the fun associated with dynastic politics will be a sufficient distraction from anything odd like having a child born 4 'days' after a wedding and whatnot.

More likely each turn will represent one year of game time. At the very least a month, but who wants to wait 200 turns before their heir becomes a usable entity?

While I still hold true to the maxim that gameplay trumps graphics, I have to admit I was one of those who was less than impressed by some of the earlier screenshots.  However, that is no longer the case, I'm happy to say; those new screenies look frickin' cool.   

Even more interesting to me is the diplomacy system and how royal families and dynastic marriages will come into play.  This could add a whole new element (no pun intended); I can't wait to see how it works out! 

I'm all for choosing a lineage model as part of designing a custom faction, but I'm more interested in seeing the canon factions present a decent variety of models as their unalterable defaults.

I believe (hope?) that would be better in terms of keeping the AI development properly 'aware and agile,' at least as regards the dynastic aspects of the game. By RTM, I'd hope that the AIs able to deal with the idea that some factions favor eldest daughters, while others favor eldest sons, eldest children regardless of gender, or only formally-named heirs.

I'm not at all asking for anything like 200 turns to produce a "usable entity" by way of dynastic breeding. But the general topic definitely reminds me of just how grateful I was to see GC2 gain the option to show a turn counter instead of the game 'calendar.' GC2 population growth has never made sense to me in terms of its game calendar, with the possible exception of Terra itself, and I've never liked playing as Terrans.

The heritage system could be interesting, although having it as an isolated "great thing" could easily lead to an overemphasis on it. I'm not saying it's not great, just that I hope that things surrounding it is equally innovative and engrossing.

That said, it opens up the issues of what I'm going to do with my God-Childs. This doesn't lend itself well to my idea of the Theocratic Magocracy at all. How will I claim godhood with children running all willy-nilly over the land?

Anyway, I'd like to shine some spotlight on another thing in the interview. It's been touched upon before, but now the system seems firmly in place with a solid idea of how it's going to work, instead of "we're thinking about doing this" or "that's a good idea".

As a man who is picky about his mods into the fanatical extremes, I must say that I'm positively thrilled. For me to use a mod, it has to fit into the universe from top to bottom. I don't care how well-crafted those modded Altarian spaceships are and how cool they look on the cloth map - I don't want them.

that sounds amazing.

I am now firmly in the camp of "If I give you essence, I can take it away! >=o". I need a leash..

Frogboy made this post silly.