Heros own will / agenda

Well, it would be nice for Heroes to have their own loyalty score, and perhaps their own initiative score.

Loyalty woud effect their chances to get Bribed by the enemy, defect, or Withdraw from combat without orders. The higher the loyalty score the less likely these things will happen. Usually these things would never happen under normal circumstances anyways, unless the Opponent tries to use Money to bribe them, or Domination/mind magic to make them defect, as well as Diplomacy to try and make them defect, or Fear magic or Diplomatic threads to make them WIthdraw from engagements.

non-commital withdrawal (as in, not ordered by the Channeler, and just a spur of the moment thing NOT planned for) should probably cause the loss of the turn, the army would retreat towards the nearest city at a pace slightly faster than it normally can go, and probably a 5-10% loss of units that are dissilusioned as well as a slight penalty for loyalty scores of all Champions in the army.

If a hero's loyalty drops to 0, then they can either fade back into one of your cities, perhaps to return after re-gaining a sense of patriotism (you are fighting a losing war against a nation of opposing alignment) or to even become an NPC freelancer, that may or may not be able to be hired as a Merc to either fight (again, but with more money) or complete Quests for you.

Initiative is how individualistic the Champion is. Each hero would have a (somewhat) randomly generated peronality towards each faction including your own, while your nation is the one greatest favored by that hero (usually-sometimes its because you are the only nation able to do something about fighting Nation X who the Champion hates).The hero's personality could also effect how Honorable they are. Whether they go through the motions, or are true Mercenary.

True Mercenaries are only paid in Gold, while your Champions are paid in both gold and prestige (less of each). If a hero has high initiative and high Honor, then he will want much more prestige than pay, and not that much pay. He will also never negotiate with an enemy, never accept a bribe, and never defect or even withdraw. Well, he might withdraw if he thinks the battle is unwinnable if he does not also have High loyalty.

If your hero is low in Loyalty and High in Initiative (and low in Honor) then he will more easily accept bribes or be pursuaded to defect through diplomatic means. Loyalty protects against both magical and mundane attempts at conversion, while Honor protects against mundane injury (bribe, diplomacy, threats). Someone with High initiative will have the effects of their character "Amplified". High Initiative, Low Honor, and Low Loyalty will switch many sides and often. High Initiative High Honor and low Loyalty will never switch sides unless its by magical means. High Loyalty, Low Honor, and High Initiative will accept a bribe if its good enough (to outway his loyalty) but will never be defected/routed through magical means. A Champion with low initiative will always fall somewhere in the middle, only slightly effected by the type of Bribe tactic. High loyalty and Low honor would lead to a little more magical defense and a little less bribery defense, however the amount of difference would be small. In essence, the Low initiative hero's land in the middle of the Grid and are rather boring, although they have the advantage of being reliable *on average* ... probably not the best person to dedicate a super-stack to, but in general your basic uninsteresting hero ... as far as a bland personality. He kind of cares which nation you declare war on, but not enough to significantly matter.

High initiative Champions, other than having strong personalities and being very Peculiar (having widely diverse abilities, having a widely diverse and Quirky personality) are also better leaders of men ... better organized, farther forced marches, stronger troops. Also, even if they do Withdraw, retaining champions will take less of a loyalty hit (if at all) and less troops will disband (if at all). Also, if we still have an "evade" stat, if your army is defeated/routed, a Champion of high initiative will have a higher chance of getting out of combat alive, with more returning troops (a route will result in a more organized fighting retreat, and thus a larger portion of your army will survive the route as opposed to getting routinely slaughtered by the opposition).

Would be nice to have hero loyalty. Would add quite a bit of flavor to them, as well as allowing things like treachery. I like the ideas.

I would love to have heroes/family members rebelling and creating new factions, unfortunately thanks to the "Channeler only" nation-control this game has it is impossible. So, the second best option is to have heroes making your life a little hell by doing what you just cited: being egocentric a-holes. Let them steal money from your treasury, run away with your daughters, be awfully corrupt when in charge of government, make deals without your permission, attacking without your permission and/or engage in chronic absenteeism. By having a personality and actions following it that actually matter, you can add infinite flavor to the world, along with depth - after all, you will have to manage all those stars working for you and damn it be if you are unlucky enough to pick the worst personalities of all.

Surely, having personalities does not mean having only bad ones. Good ones can also emerge from this mess, with your luck being measured by the good/bar ratio in your heroes. Like Rome, your own actions could also favor the creation of a favorable trait or an unfavorable one in the rabble you control. This way, you make sure your most valuable units will not be merely pawns moving at your every chess master command - unless your ruler has a talent like that.

Perhaps the might of your empire should also be a factor in the heroes' decision of whether to stay loyal or to defect. Also, your alignment or play-style might play a part. For example, if you never offer quarter, if you are more likely to raze a city rather than take it over, if you are quick to declare war but very slow to agree to a peace, then the hero might think many times before double-crossing you for fear of retribution. At the same time, if you show your self to be fair-minded, lenient and merciful, the hero might be encouraged about the long-term prospects of their employment under your rule. The ratio of battles won:lost could affect morale, as well as the ratio of units surviving:dying per battle, whereby a clever strategest would garner more loyalty through higher morale.

It could also be that loyalty begets loyalty, in that if most of your heroes are loyal, this becomes a social trend that either encourages new recruits to be more loyal, or just has them conform to the status-quo. The same with disloyalty.

Using the above mentioned factors would virtually eliminate any further micro-management that might have been added by a loyalty system with salary increase options, hero promotion or repositioning, a specific action towards the heroes' personal cause or other hero appeasement options. Instead, loyalty is automatically calculated according to how you play the game in general.

That being said, I don't think this aspect should be over-implemented, as it could just as likely end up detracting from the game. In other words, there should be some degree of reliability, and it shouldn't be too easy to cause your heroes to have doubts about you. Most importantly, it should not be significantly increasing micro-management. As a General, your main focus is the overall strategy, and while some attention must be paid to the sub-details (which can be quite fun if done right), some aspects need to function like a black-box, where they just do their things as expected without you having to check on them or issue detailed orders.

Channelers may be necessary for a full nation, but i imagine there will be many smaller, neutral, groups that will be controlled by non-channelers.

Fair enough, it makes sense that after regenerating the land small groups or individuals might be able to take pieces of land and start their own countries.

TBH, i was thinking there might be small bands living the wastes, or in small spots that were, by some crazy chance, shielded from Armageddon. After all, if all you want to do is eek out a enough food to keep a dozen people alive, all you need is a cave and some shit to grow mushrooms. Plus the sheltered spots would fill up fast.

I mean, there are rabbits not just surviving but thriving near Chernobyl,  i figure humans could manage to get a couple small bands through Armageddon.

Not only rabbits, according to this article nature is thriving in the Chernobyl exclusion zone...

In addition to stand-issue loyalty, it could be cool if you're heroes would occasionally go do their own thing. For example, someone from their past could suddenly approach them and ask for help, and they'd need to take a leave of absence to deal with the problem.

Perhaps units could have an upkeep beyond the standard food/gold/mana. Example, if you have a hero who is a vampire lord, he could have a 15% chance each turn of eating a friendly alive soldier in the stack with him, and each turn it increases by a 5% chance till he eats someone, then it resets to 15%.

Interesting upkeeps like that, and if you station him totally alone so he can't feed and he can't feed when he wants to, he gets pissed at you. Too many missed feedings and he leaves you. Just a little something to make the evil monsters seem evil and monstrous. Plus he creates a very real burden for having those top tier dangerous units.

think ill go make a thread on this.

I read this as a sort of 'personal quest time' thing for champions, and it seems like an interesting idea.

Especially if it is meant to be a sort of cost-benefit trait where you recruit a champion with a known set of unpredictable obligations who might leave you at a really inconvenient moment but return later, sporting a serious new magic item, new champion to join your retinue, or a new-made relationship with an independent power like Geoff the Slug.