How do you know when you will actually kill a Sov in 1.08???

I'm curious here too, I had a sovereign camping out in my territory in one game, so I attacked him, defeated him and apparently I wiped him off the face of the world (yay!). Then later I attacked another sovereign and he didn't die, he warped back to his capital. Then I was attacked and I lost and while i had cities, I lost the game (but I had lost my initial first city, so maybe it has something to do with not having possession of your capital?)

Can anyone else clarify this, it's hard to work out how this works.

The battle has to take place in domain belonging to another sovereign that is unfriendly with the one that you want to kill (or maybe it is just the domain of the group that kill them? regardless, in there land or neutral land they will not die).

You can only respawn if you:

1) Die in your own or neutral territory

2) Have at least 1 essence point remaining

3) Have a city (any city) under your control to respawn in

So in order to vanquish an enemy sovereign, you generally need to either kill him out away from his lands, or conquer him utterly.

There is one small exception to dying in enemy territory--if a sovereign dies while invading a city, but his troops manage to pull out a win and capture it, he will get to respawn there even though it was technically not his when he died.

There is also a small "exploit".

If you are on offensive, and take out enemy city, while enemy sovereign succeeds in escaping the battle, he becomes target of opportunity, since he is now in your own newly newly acquired territory. If you kill him while still there he will die for good.

That one and the luring trick, leave a city empty to draw him to attack (since he think he'll obviously win), then smack him. Empire gone. I've used both tactics to wipe AIs that are sometimes 3-4 times my power rating. Completely broken. The empire destruction mechanic needs to be looked over.

Oh wow, interesting, I have a feeling then that I destroyed the sovereign cause he was hanging in my territory but he was a easy to kill, it was just him and his little summoned pet thing, so I killed him, he was on my territory and so he was wiped off the world. The thing is, his empire was stronger than me and I lost, that seems kinda bad, but it is plausible, I guess I just got lucky and caught him outside his safety, so it's kind of a cool legit kill. It also explains how I died, I was also not in my own territory, thanks!

AI sovereigns really need to not enter enemy territory unless ludicrously well-protected.  I've seen way too many sovereigns go on the offensive all alone without any units at all.

The AI's handling of its sovereigns is the biggest reason the Dynasty system needs to allow inheritance.

I agree with the idea of inheritance for the AI, but I don't like the idea of my Sovereign dying and having my child rule the empire, simply because the Sovereign is supposed to be YOU, he/she is YOUR avatar in the world, and thus shouldn't be so easily shuffled aside upon death. However, if you were good, you wouldn't let your Sovereign die anyways. Still, the idea of a randomly-generated character taking the throne upon my personal avatar's death doesn't sit too well with me.

It could easily be an option when setting up the map and there could be an options for: no inheritance, AI only, everyone. And then multiplayer could have the option of the AI taking the place of human player who lost their sovereign.

This is one of few cases were it actually makes sense to have different ruleset for human players and AI. Keep player on his toes in regard of his sovereign, but have AI sovereigns either more difficult to kill or let dynasty system take its place in case of their death.

Or since the mechanic exists, make it optional for people that what it, but those that want the extra challange can do without.