From a practical, gameplay mechanic POV, you would either have to be able to choose the sex of your child in advance, or have women be largely identical to men in the job capabilities area: a 50% chance of getting a far less useful descendant is waaay too much of a TBRWITS situation for my liking.

Another issue that needs addressing: assuming that the player has a choice of male and female channelers, how do we balance out the production of heirs? What prevents a male channeler from zerg rushing, while the female channeler has heir production limited by biology? Even if she's suffering from swollen ankle syndrome every moment of her life, she can't keep up reproductively.

I don't expect this one aspect of diplomacy to become the entire game.  This discussion leads me to believe others think it will.

I don't know that anyone is saying this is going to "become" the entire game, whatever that statement actual means. But it is an interesting idea. No reason to throw it in incomplete. Besides that, a lot of fantasy worlds aren't nearly as biased as our own was/is when it comes to female heirs.

I tend to agree, but it is an exciting new feature and I think it is great for everyone to put all their ideas out there.

I see it working more along the lines of when you marry as you have children, when you go into diplomacy your kids and the guy you are speaking withs kid's show up as tradeable resource. If you offer one of your descendants in a trade, the other side gets to see the attribute's of that descendant. If the trade is made, they are part of the other player's kingdom and any offspring would be theirs. Technically your descendant is now a member of their tribe, although not as a tradeable commodity, but as a means of producing more descendants (for the other player) Now whether you traded this desendant in order to gain a peace treaty, improve relations, or in exchange for one of their descendants (or anything else) that would be between the two of you to hammer out.

What I really like about the idea of them having specific attributes, particularly magical relate abilities, is you could create an ad hoc Bene Gesserit breeding program trying to create your own "Kwizatz Haderach" (sp?) There could be levels of attributes such as low being high intelligence, strength, charisma - medium varying abilities in different schools of magic, and possibly the ultimate would be to produce a born channeler descendant! (Possible victory condition?). And of course as a channeler you could take ANY of these and make them powerful heroes by imbuing them with some of your essence (it seems they are already talking in that direction.)

Of course I could be totally wrong. Those are just my thoughts of an interesting possible direction.

By the WAY, when can we expect to see the results of this survey, NT?

It's kind of funny, until I read Kellendunk's post I had not really given the family thing much thought - now I am thinking of all kinds of possibilities...

I plan to reveal the results on Saturday afternoon.

EDIT:  Arizona Time

Survey already down and it's only Friday...

That's because most others on this forum think one diminsional in every catagory of thought. Just overlook it it of course won't be the entire game of course.

Hint: thinking with your head up your butt does not count as thinking in the 5th dimension.

Also... sorry for anyone who didn't have a chance to vote.   I wasn't aware these polls only allow for 100 votes.  

Hopefully future polls can be provided at another location which has no voting limit or even better if these forums provided the option for hosting polls.

I wasn't either.  That explains a bit.

Well, I really do think that the succession system will become too complicated if it begins to involve a tug-of-war between the player and the (often) arbitrary moods of an AI player represented by the other parent. If you want a specific child to be the heir, I really think that it'll cause a lot of frustration to have that decision contended by someone else.

Again Scoripiana. you raise a good point, when you point out, that the micro-manage problem only becomes an issue, if there are a lot of children to handle (which I really really hope there will be!).

And yes, it would be a cool option to have a matriachal instead of a patriachal society. And I certainly do also agree, that females (if we settle for the patriarch-society) should be able to have more roles than just diplomats/gifts of marriage. Females could just a easily be governors, scholars, generals as males could, and in fact: it would probably follow in a post-cataclysmic setting, that females wouldn't just be sitting around. There would be a need for the skills of everybody in a society to where resources, both natural, magical and populaic (I don't know if that's a word), are scarce. So females wouldn't just be sitting around waiting to get married.

I hope they have traits that can be passed on to descendants. That will make it a real choice of whether to use the unit as a hero (and risk losing the genetic material for future generations) or not.

Inheritable traits could be fun, although I had a thought.

If there are guys like Geoff the Slug, could we send our daughters to marry him or his children and curry favor with the swamp faction?  

Or maybe more malicious character could expect us to sacrifice our children to him.

Or sacrifice your virgin daughter to Vermithrax?!? +dragon faction ftw!

My dearest daughter,

don't mean to be rude,

but I'm sending you off

to be dragon food.

The reason is simple

if you ask me what for?

cuz marrying you off

would be an act of war.

I think the sacrificing of a virgin daughter is a wonderful idea.

Of course, it leads to the idea of having to fight off random suitors in order to keep her suitably virgin... But this may be getting a little too complex. (Maybe we can mod something in later )

How about this, the game allows the sacrifice of a virgin daughter, let's allow the castration of just about any male character in the game for some sort of magical bonus. I am not picky.

For me the absolute best system SD could come up with would be one based on the Crusader Kings system developed by Paradox. It was pretty much a heraldry simulation with a strategy game built on top. It is one of my most cherished gaming experiences. I only wish PI would have invested more into it and fix some of its short comings. I also hope a CKII is in the works for the future.

I highly recommend for any posting to this thread to get the game and experience it for yourselves. It is truly a classic but one that never quite caught on in the US due to its "focus" so to speak.

I would say it never caught on real well in the US due to lack of marketing and buggy as hell years later status. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game but a pristine product CK is not. The marriage system, despite its severe limitations, was awesome though, totally made the game. I updated version with more control, better potraits and more flexibility would be awesome.