How about this... (This is just one idea, not 5 separate ones.)

1. Sovereign death = Game over!

2. Some sort of hide feature as was originally suggested. This would allow you to keep your sovereign almost 100% safe. Minimum risk, minimum reward.

3. In order to prevent people simply hiding their sovereigns away for the entire game sovereigns would have to be immensely powerful. This would allow you to send your sovereign into battle without fear of him/her dying to some random enemy infantry. Only enemy sovereigns, the most powerful monsters, and groups of mighty heroes should be able to stand against a sovereign.

4. The "godslayer." A mighty artifact that greatly weakens enemy sovereigns. Mid/Late game a quest would open up allowing, at its end, access to the "godslayer" for one battle only. After that battle it disappears and you have to complete the quest again to regain it. Eventually kills any hero bearing it if not used in battle. Only one player can have it at a time. This is to balance out the awesome power of the sovereigns.

5. Absolutely no way to detect enemy sovereigns short of having troops near them. So no spells to find where the enemy sovereign is so that you can kill him. This would allow you to keep your sovereign relatively safe without hiding.

I believe that a system like this would ensure that killing an opponents sovereign is just as viable/interesting/challenging as any other strategy, while, at the same time, encouraging players to use their sovereigns in a variety of ways instead of just hiding them away.

For the beta, let's try something simple for sov death:

- if defeated outside your influence, game over

- if defeated inside your influence, lose 5 essence; if you don't have 5 essence, game over

Let's see if it really needs something more sophisticated from there.

The "but then people just won't use their sovereigns" objection is a good one, so the use of one's sovereign on the frontlines should be a VERY SIGNIFICANT advantage, so that aggressive-sovereign-using players are very likely to beat the sovereign-hiders.

or we could leave the non-negotiables alone until we understand why they are non-negotiable.

First I though I should speculate on why the sovereign should be so important.  The sovereign has some insanely amazing powers.  He has the ability to know exactly what is going on in all your cities and know where all your troops are and give them all orders at will.  In other words he's the in-game justification for all the things that we as players can do.  To put it a bit freakishly, the sov dying represents you having a heart attack at the keyboard.  Furthermore your civilization is generally accustomed to being in frequent contact with you and does more or less fall apart when you die (although having some cities or units turn themselves over to close allies might be VERY interesting).  This makes the abilities of vassal states problematic though since they shouldn't have this ability--assuming vassals are still around and working the same.

I like making it generally difficult to lose your sovereign if your not being risky, but like many I think a simple defending=safe assumption is problematic.  I really like tying it to territory.  If you're in your own territory than you have invested part of yourself in the land and it is a small part of you and conspires to keep you safe and even on attack you can escape with ease.  It shouldn't be entirely free, but it shouldn't be a big deal.  Simply losing some mana and being at 1 health is more than adequate.  If you are in enemy territory it should be the opposite.  The land is a part of your enemy then and will fight you all the way.  If you die in enemy territory than it's game over.  There should probably be an escape spell of moderate price, but using it should heavily demoralize any of your remaining units.  I'd say it should put them at the lowest level of morale the game has and virtually guarantee an easy victory. 

Neutral territory is the toughest part.  I think for neutral territory the attacking or defending mechanic might work adequately.  I would suggest an attack spell that initially prevents auto-escape of the defender, but if cast a second time even prevents the escape spell from working, forcing the player to fight it out or abandon his troops.  It might be possible to abstract that into spells that temporarily change the terrain/territory type of the battle and just tie the result to the territory rules, that should probably temporarily reduce Essence though.  The more I think about it the more I like that last idea.

I do somewhat like the idea of a building in cities that you have to build in order to return to, but I don't think it's really necessary given the view I'm proposing of territory.  It could be made to work for escaping from neutral or enemy territory though.  If it was included I would actually make it pretty cheap to build.  Keep in mind that we are limited by space on how many buildings we can build in a city.  Unlike most other 4X games of this type you can't just build every building in every city.  Each building consumes space that can't be used for other buildings.  I actually think this is going to turn into a powerful mechanic in this game.  If you made the Wizard Tower or Reliquary a large tile building it would be a tough decision to build it even if it cost next to nothing.  I don't think it's a good idea for the base game, but it should be possible in a mod.  I would make the mana crystals automatically have that ability if it was included. 

@Denryu, yes, I was suggesting something closer to the previous non-negotiable position than Brad's OP, or at least that was my intent.

edit: for some reason the forums really want the text of this post to be a link of some sort...

I love the borders idea.

To add to the never-ending debate regarding sovereign death, I offer the idea:

Assuming that the sovereign is so powerful that he is practically immortal, then if he is ever defeated in a battle, the enemy can only take the sovereign prisoner. The sovereign is either held prisoner in a town, or in an isolated structure, which he must be escorted to. In this situation, the sovereign can either be freed through duress or "reasonable" negotiations.

Regarding reasonable negotiations, many would assume that the captor could demand all lands, resources, money, techs, etc. But that would be euivalent to terrorists kidnapping the president and demanding billions or trillions of dollars: it won't happen. I heard, for example, that ransom is typically 1-2 million$. So, if the captor is more powerful, they can demand a town/some resources/weapons/money, and if the captor is weaker, he can ask for a bit less and a "please don't hurt me" clause.

This way, sovereign cannot die, and player will be penalized for time without soverign and cost to free him.

I really like this. And I like Frogboy's idea of offense vs. defense. How about a merger?

In your territory, whether the sovereign attacks or not it is considered as "defense". In other words in either case the sovereign escapes if his army is defeated. (but possible still with an essence cost)

In neutral territory, it works exactly as Frogboy outlined. If you are the attacker and lose your sovereign dies. If you are attacked and lose the sovereign escapes. (essence cost?)

And in enemy territory, defeat should mean sovereign death regardless of whether they "attacked" or not - they are invading forces. Possibly if defeated the sovereign escapes but it should be at a VERY high cost, IF AT ALL.

The not dieing during defense/in territory thing should come at a combat disadvantage. It would be bad for the game if the attacking empire has to lose a massive army to the enemy soveriegn every time, since they can't use their soveirgn risk free. One way to get around that is to have a choice when using your soverign in a situation is allowed to escape from. One would enable escape but cause a combat penalty and the other would allow 100% combat strength but 0% flee chance.

On a tangent I think it would be awesome to allow you to pass the throne to an heir (voluntarily) allowing you to redesign your sovereign at a cost, e.g. a few turns of anarchy (and a gamewide announcement).

I'd like to endorse the territory idea.

I think one of the important things about killing the sovereign is that I can plan and plot for it. I don't want to automatically win the game if the other guy throws his sovereign on my sword (massive army, dragon, etc...).

The territories idea seems like a good compromise for the defender-types, especially the way that Denryu outlined it a couple posts ago.

I also like the idea that having the ability to escape costs combat effectiveness that Hyrim^^ proposed, though maybe not quite to that extent (100% and 0% may be extreme).

And why not making it a choice while in combat ? Each turn you have the choice to let your sovereign escape thanks to a spell of recall, or an item or whatever you want. So you can gamble it, or play safe and evade if things are getting bad.

But if you get caught by a dragon and you aren't prepared ... you should lose.

First: Sovereign cities should not be disbanded on death

Second: Perhaps rather straight dying in a conflict the sovereign can escape at 1 hp/1 mana, thereby severely weakened, if the sovereign dies at 1 hp/1 mana they are R.I.P.

Sounds good, but it should be combined with Froggie's Attack/Defense idea imo.

Yes, that's an annoying thing in hte beta but I hope it's temporary. Cities are disbanded, but units are not, but they become 'neutral' and are impossible to interact with (fight).

The loss of all cities would more or less force one to conquer the cities before killing the enemy sovereign, and if the sovereign actually scarificed some of his power when founding a city, the city shouldn't just disappear. Probably each city becomes an independent state on sovereign death.

On the other hand though, If you can't use an assassination strategy, that means you have to mop up every enemy AI city as their sovereign pops up in every one, watching his death animation ten times or so as you mouth his final words that you have long since memorized. There's nothing wrong with a decisive battle in my opinion. Killing a leader or a general has decided the fate of nations throughout history and fiction.

I really don't see why the AI couldn't handle that concept. Fight when the odds are high and the sovereign is unexpected(random), retreat when there is doubt. Let's not give up on the AI before it's even written, eh Brad?

Another thing that is really not clear, are we playing an individual or a nation? If the plot is centered around these channelers, that would strongly imply you are playing an individual, even if he is immortal.

It is not too far fetched for a wizard to come back to life, but if it happens, I would really like to see a VERY good fictional reason for that to happen involving careful preparation on the wizards part. Not some gamey set of rules regarding offense and defense. "Now, since I'm on defense you have to let me go home... That's the rulz."

My concern here is that if the sovereign is too pampered and protected, the game flow will lack drama.

Sovereign Handling

I like the idea of the "all of your eggs" when you attack (maybe add a + morale sovereign bonus to all armies attacking with him?)

For defense and losing, if the Sov gets ported to the nearest city either

a) Sov looses x% essence that regenerates at y% per turn

or

Once Sov gets ported he is "sprit locked" for x turns, where if he dies again from combat, either 

1) Game over

or

2) He gets ported to another town with a MASSIVE loss to essence. (no regen)

The idea being if an army attacks the Sov, he's free to take out as many stacks as possible before a brief locational displacement. 

This also solves the MoM annoyance of scouting for plains for every enemy town to actually banish the defeated wizard.

I like emmagines idea, and am influenced by them. These are my ideas.

In the creating of your sovereign, you should have the options to make it completely killable or not as a permanent strategical  choice via the sovereign selection screen.

 Basically the sovereign selection screen allows not just favoured physical characteristics, but the choice of multiple variables that add some spice and individuality to each player's Sovereign. These could be the differing personalitiy traits/etc that you could vary in regards to AI personalities too.

But in regards to sovereign death you could have multiple options, of which two popular options spring to mind.

Players who decide to have 1 sovereign death = game over have a much higher corresponding attack/defence/morale/something bonus that corresponds with their vulnerability. They face the  possibility of gameover if their sovereign gets caught out and destroyed, but is much more effective when spearheading military action.

Players who don't choose such a concept don't get as much as an impressive bonus, but have the ability to be resurrected if killed whilst attacking. Albeit, with the human body dead, there is a significant time/material/morale cost to the resurrection of the soverign./other reasonable way to not die.

^ The question is: Who would choose to play with +att/def/whatever settings over being able to be resurrected?

(Lucky) skillful players?

Nay, it would be a foolish thing to play without the "being able to be ressed" setting imo.

It all depends on the tradeoffs. If they coded an "I win" button that was available on turn one and all you had to do to win was click it, would you be foolish to play without that "option"?

Thinking about drobb's post. I like the idea of losing something that would knock you out of action for a while how about losing 5 essence permenantly, and the rest drained to 0, regenerating at 1 a turn. Higher costs with high level sov, no spell casting (no mana)

I think you would be surprised at how many people would gladly ruin the game for themselves, and then talk about how bad the game is. I think it does help to protect these gamers from themselves. In the end, when forced to deal with difficult circumstances, they will have more fun.

I strongly agree with this statement. One reason I have avoided commenting much at this stage in the beta is because so many core game play mechanics are not in place yet. Magic is a central aspect of the game, it is a key component of a sovereigns power, so without it in place it is very hard for me to comment on the risk/reward of allowing some kind ofsovereign escape.

The entire point of a beta is to try out game play and see what works. Can we see the original version of sovereign death in action first before we go tweaking things? Theorycraft is never a match for real experience. Once we have played a few dozen games with our sovereign at risk it will be a lot easier to comment on if the risk is too great.

In preparation for this I hope you are putting in place some auto stat gathering in the code. Something like how many turns your sovereign spends outside of your cities, or outside of your boarders, will be a nice value to know across lots of different games and different players. Such data will help inform the discussion.

UI

As many others have said I like the general change ideas. If I could propose one small addition though I would love LOVE to see a "pin' option on the info card. In Sins one of my pet peves is how hard it is to compare stats on two units. I want to open one units info card, pin it, and open a second card to pin next to it so I can compare the two. Also allowing the window to be movable/resizeable would be nice.

Mopping Up

This is a key aspect of the game I would like to see more detail on and I am highly anticipating. I almost never finish a game of civ/GalCiv/sins/MoM/FFH because it is easy to tell when you have gotten to the point where your economy or tech level overwhelms the enemy yet you still have many turns to go before you win. That said it is a difficult balance because it is also fun to play a game where you come from behind to win.

Well, I don't want the sovereign to be resurrected or watch him come back. I have no problem with him dying. I would have preferred if he just staid dead and I could keep playing the nation. Mopping up cities after an opponent's death is definitely something I want to do. I want to take the territory. Decisive battles will still exist. If you destroy all of an empire armies, they are toast, 1 unit doesn't and shouldn't change the deal because it's not fun imo.

As for the ai, Brad said so:

As for the retreat option, I hate retreat options in this kind of games. Let the ai do it to you ten times in a game and tell me if you like it. Most implementations I've seen of  retreat haven't been fair, i.e. only the player could or did retreat, and unfairness in a game is a gamee-killer to me (although I can live with unbalanced games, I don't' like mechanisms that only work or only work well for humans).

As for the plot, I'm definitely in favor of playing a nation over an individual but I think that's not the way the game is headed.