We feel that having your leader as a playable unit will set Elemental apart as something different, and hopefully better,  than what's come before it (in both gameplay decisions and in more immersive storytelling).

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The problems you describe were present only in competitive multiplayer.  As stated by Brad previously, Elemental has a multiplayer component but it is being designed from a single player viewpoint.

I agree with Black-Knight.  I think the the dev team will see very quickly in mid-beta that having a soverign as a strong hero unit will present many, many difficult balance issues--- especially if dying means an abrupt game over.  I think they already have numerous ideas where-by sovereigns will have some failsafes to afford them some protection and possibly even (as I would like to see) the channeler's essence being passed to offspring.

One of the things I mentioned in earlier posts on this discussion was that a sovereign super unit that makes a player lose when they die creates a situation where "cheat loading" gives the player a massive advantage over the AI.  After all, the AI has to be cautious with their sovereign, where as the player can take every risk and never suffer any consequences.  Even if the player doesn't use their sovereign haphazardly, the human player obviously isn't going to throw in the hat just because their sovereign was killed in the middle of a 10 hour game--- they will naturally load their game, otherwise most of their games will more than likely end in anti-clamactic, and often pointless, deaths.  As a result, a subconcious "moral hazard" is created whereby they are inclined to take greater risks than they normally would because they know they have a safety net.

I like the idea of the sovereign being able to pass his essence down to his children, but with a catch: he must do it before he actually dies, or it is lost. That way, you can gamble: do I put the entire essence in the sovereign, split it 50/50 with a chosen heir just in case, or put 1/3 in the heir, etc.?

I quite like the sov as a unit, makes the game different, and as said above not like you HAVE to move him around...although it's smart in early game.

Also, worrying about cheat load is silly. People will do it with or without sovereign so to use it as reason is (partially) invalid. I agree that for sandbox it would be nice to have some extra mechanics about "succession" and/or "reincarnation" but I really really like the idea of losing the game if I manage to lose my sovereign (or if extra mechanics are in place, if I manage to fail in creating failsafes for my avatar's demise).

I think the point a lot of people are missing is he's supposed to be over powered and uber powerful to everything else in the game. He's a channeler. He can use magic and 95% of his enemies Can't. He can throw lightning bolts to kill you and raise a Volcano in your city to kill everyone in it including all the units stationed there. He's Always going to seem Over-powered. When the game gets into higher stages of Beta and we start seeing what the Sovereign can really do I'm already afraid too many people won't understand this and they'll start screaming to "Nerf the Sovereign!!!" and the whole mechanic will change.

I truly, Truly hope that doesn't happen.

The decision to make the sovereign a unit is a great decision.

• Another layer of strategy and choices
• Having your character actually on the map and killable is a welcome change from most other similar games
• Actual risk and consequences
• Adds lots of fun RPG character building to those who enjoy it.
• Gives underdogs a chance to seriously damage super empires by taking out the sovereign in some clever/sneaky way.

This is a good point--- developers shouldn't be forced to accomodate a certain playstyle.  But in my post before the one you quote, I made the point that the vast majority of players will inadvertanly load cheat regardless of whether they make it a habit--- the game being promptly over if the sovereign dies too easily forces them to, otherwise they face an often anti-climactic ending (the AI on the other hand, will never reload regardless of how lamely their sovereign might die.)  If most people play a certain way, it's very relevant how that game is designed.

The bottom line is that everyone is drunk on this idea of an autonomous and roaming sovereign unit and very few people are concerned about how to balance it.  I think a lot of us are making decisions about what we want to be in the game solely on a 30 second snap shot of a kick-ass sovereign wading through the battle field with impunity, vanquishing scores of foes beneath his spellblade.  Like, I said, I love the idea but having a sovereign unit coupled with "sovereign death = game over" produces a lot of unique problems.   If it comes down to having a flagrantly unbalanced strategy game because everyone wanted a cool and crazy-powerful of a sovereign unit, then that is a pity.

Scroll up to the top of the topic and put both sides of the debate in two separate columns.  On the pro-sovereign unit side you'll see a lot of "it would be 'cool' to..." and on the skeptics side you'll see, "but balance issues!..."  An idea can be very cool, but not necessarily workable. 

But dominion had an strong influence implementation. There won't be any thing like faith in elemental that would let you win/lose, even if you're military stronger/weaker.

The cheat load, again, has nothing to do with sovereign and the AI. Those who cheat load will do it anyways for ANY reason. "So that war I started turned bad so I'll load a save game of before the war 20 turns ago.". How can the AI cope with that? The same way as with sovereign death: no way. So as I said, cheat load worries are silly. Worries about a proper balanced and fun mechanic about sovereign (life&death) that we and the AI can properly use (cheat loads ignored) is a different beast tough.

I like the idea of Sovereign = Unit that if dies means game over. But obviously I only want it if it's properly balanced. Altough we all know that "balance"'s meaning changes a lot depending of who you ask. Having the sovereign overpowered hasn't to be unbalanced per se, it depends on context.

Failsafes are a must (if he an raise volcanos at high level, some kind of relics or even dormant clones could be an option too) and if possible varied in ways and levels of efficiency (so you could create a low level failsafe just in case altough it wouldn't be so effective as one of high level, be it losing essence or exp). Essence costs, city vs essence hoarding, unit developments, economy model... all those things must be considering when talking about sovereign balance (the whole game as unity). If as the betas go and we get to shape more mechanics we see that the idea is just to difficult to set right and/or bad and/or whatever, Frogboy already said they will be listening and adjust.

Firstly, the term cheat-load is not good one, IMO. The "cheating" invlolved is trying not to lose the hours put into the game. Also, this is especially true of TBS games, which tend to be very long. I very very rarely reloaded an AOK game, but have reloaded AoW2 games several times, especially during campaigns. It also has something to do with the RPG element, perhaps. Losing a level 30 hero decimating enemies by the dozens is simply too much for many people, including me.

The only reason I mentioned reloading was that in the 'lose your Sovereign, lose the game" scenario, there's no other choice. The game has ended! As to your general observation about not considering reloading for game-balance, I agree. I have to, don't I? You can't design the game balance for a human reloading 20-30 turns back.

So, this is my wish-list:

-I want the Sovereign to be a unit in the game. A powerful unit.

-If the Sovereign is defeated in combat, the game should NOT end. There should be fail-safes for that.

-The penalty for having the Sovereign defeated in combat should be heavy, but not too heavy.

-The benefit of not using your sovereign for exploring and killing should be significant, but still less than using him for exploring etc, as it is risk free. Like massive benefits to the city he is in, as mentioned in the first reply to this post.

That's all I can think of right now. BTW, I am not in favour of his children being replaced by him. It somehow just doesn't fit into my mind with the story that his game has.