I also suspect the same! Nonetheless, as we are not professionals of ideation speculation runs dry after page three without the sacred water of recognition.

I believe the Devs left this particular subject in storage for maturation. Soon, we might heard of it again.

Yeah keep them guessing, and that element of mystery maintains interest.

So what if the sovereign dies... and doesn't stay dead? 

Is necromancy an option?

Imagine the possibilities.

Hah, I believe the Devs already secretly considered some Lich King - one of his perks is the ability of reconstructing himself forever until you destroy his phylactery.

Actually FaultyLogic, your idea is fantastic in many overpowering ways. The death of a King or Emperor is akin to the death of a mythological creature: it throughly affects the world equilibrium. And being powerful individuals, they will hardly go away without leaving a mark. Perhaps a powerful Emperor that dealt with demons and devils all his life after his death his essence transmutes his body into a immensely powerful devil, causing havoc in the region. Or a benevolent King, once dead, in his burial site a huge tree of life emerges giving magic fruits or allowing new and strange spells. I don't know, I'm just throwing some wild ideas!

Hell yes! But impotent.

I was going to make a very, very crude joke right now, but I believe you can guess what it was

Why can't i marry males to other families and keep females? IMHO female rulers should be allowed, like it was in MoM.

He cannot cast spells?

Unless the devs change their plan, the game will include female sovereign-channelers. You can see early art for a female sovereign in an info pop-up. You might be confused by the talk about dynastic marriage mechanics, which currently look like they might force even a female sovereign to send her daughters away for diplomatic marriages rather than drawing new sons-in-law into her realm.

I kinda like the idea of having some sort of succession in a tbs game.  Roger Zelazny had a series of books that modeled a family who controlled a kingdom through succession and magical powers.  The family had both powerful males and females.  Their were alliances with different family members opposing each other for the "throne".  The alliances sometimes fell apart or someone would commit some treacherous change of sides.  Also, the board strategy game War of the Roses has a succession model might be worth looking into.  That had the Plantangents(?) vs. the insert family cause I forget but it was based off Medieval English dynasties and succession for the throne.  I think this would make a nice addition however you work it out Frogboy.

I like the idea of succession.

Now you got me thinking...What if you have offspring and that offspring had 4 or 5 different possibilities so option 1 Offspring is of a power akin to "Channeler"(or whatever you end up calling player character avatar) after a certain time period.  A:  AI could either revert to player character control(so essential having multile avatars)this would be the good son or daughter.  B:  AI could attempt to take control of your country through having a certain % of the lands, territories etc become a different faction-this would be the evil/neutral son or daughter political allies who would become seperate AI avatar with enimosity or neutrality towards your faction.  This would be a way of interjecting a whole and fully powerful "channelers" in mid and endgame with their own attendant territories and powers.  C:  your heir is "married" off to an outside faction which results in either new territories gained, magical item of moderate to strong power gifted to player or anynumber of other beneficial results.  D:  it was all for naught!  Heir becomes incurably ill, dies w no resurrection and/or is lazy good "fer nothin" and is a drain to the coffers. I think you need to enegject a little bit of randomness in what happens as a "result" of having heirs.  E:  Heir(s) have "no effect" in gameplay but have story attached, and/or seperate data page pointed towards heir.  Offshoot stories to the overall game background.  F:....

As far as succession goes, I do not care for the eldest male. You just have to be unlucky and get an idiot as a first son and you are screwed.

I prefer to have the ability to name my successor. The heir apparent. If I die without one well there you go instant civil war!!!  I love that!

Seriously how could you have female channelers and not have female heirs? I do not think sex should matter at this point.

We definatelty need some options on this.

Maybe family members can be governors. These people can be either loved or hated - or the population can be indifferent to them of course. Now if the throne is claimed by one who is hated, these towns may split from your empire, declare independance and amass an army to defy your claim to these towns. Alternatively, when the throne is claimed by one the people love, they may get a slight bonus to productiveness.

I have not thought out the system of who should be able to claim the throne, but I think there needs to be limits on who you can choose. If you do not like the options presented to you of who claims the throne, maybe you can assasinate your own family members in order to let a family member that was excluded from succession open up as an option so that you can choose that family member instead of the one who was assasinated. the way I see it there should be a chance that this betrayel is found out so that the towns who love the assasinated family member become disloyal because you assasinated their beloved governor.

These options - picking who you want from a limited group, taking into consideration these people's popularity, being able to assasinate family members if they block your first choice succesor from being available - should become very interesting in some games. Careful planning may avoid civil war, or maybe even cause one if you feel the need. It is in any case far more interesting that just accepting that Eldest Son A claims the throne while being powerless to stop it.

Edit: an example to clarify. Suppose you have 5 family members who could claim the throne. Only two of them electable however, so you can choose from A or B. A is always electable because of the rules, C is blocked out because B is in still alive, and D is electable only if C and A are out of the picture and E is only as a last resort electable.

Now suppose you actually want D on the throne. You need to eliminate A, B and C to accomplish this. There should be ways of doing this, both honorable - like ending them out to die in battle or wedding them away - or dishonorable - like assasinating them.

Suppose the neighboring country is friendly with you, and you both stand united against another evil nation. the time for your rules is drawing neigh... You must get D on the throne lest your kingdom should fall apart. Do you resort to violence to accomplish this, even if it means the alliance with the neighbors should fall apart? Do you take your chances and find another option?

Choices like these could make this game truly deep and epic.

I think there can be a First Born bonus, so that if the first born is the leader he gets a certain bonus for being first born. But others can become the leader.

Will we be able to have several wives, thus siring several offsprings at any one time?

Edit: Sorry for double-post, but quoting is screwy as usual.

I must say I don't like the basic SD proposal at all. Much too simplistic. If your sovereign's power and empire cannot be inherited by your own children then I think there is a major mistake in the basic game construction and can only hope SD will rethink it all. That's really what the game is about, your own empire, and what happens with it. That you would only use your offspring to marry into other families is not enough IMHPOV. Why limit such a great potential as dynasties and inheritance in this way is beyond me. At its worst such a system could ruin the fun of the game at its later stages when the AIs will start "abdicating" and people inherit lands over here and there. Changes of such importance in game have to be treated very carefully. It would be much better with a more liberal and sophisticated system.   

Also, please don't come with the "girls can't inherit" thing - just about everyone on the forum seems to dislike it and I must agree (for a number of reasons, political correctness not being one of them).

Part of the mess here is that sovereign death=game over is still an open question, at least as far as I know. If the answer to that question ends up No, then I'm confident the dynasty system will naturally include some form of succession process for the player's faction.

That said, I fully expect to see at least reports of chaotic abdication patterns in late games at least during the beta, and possibly into early published versions. GalCiv2 had some promblem periods with AI surrenders that 'made no sense' to some of us players. They added an option to disable surrenders, but they also kept working the problem and I eventually re-enabled surrenders after a few updates (expansions?).

It might be more interesting if there was a chance your daughter's husband who just became Soverign could choose not to be absorbed into you kingdom.  At that point you would have the option to have him assassinated and if you succeed without the killer being linked to your kingdom then his kingdom is yours.  If the plot is discovered you daughter turns on you and becomes ruler of that kingdom and they declare war on you.  Lots of other options for intrigue with succession.

This is an absolutely fascinating discussion!  The Elemental community deserves a big pat on the back. 

I'm not (yet!) a beta participant, so I will keep my comment short: 

I just want to say that I believe the family dynamics in Elemental will prove pivotal.  While a lot of medieval games touch upon dynastic succession, few delve into it much beyond a very superficial level (I think Crusader Kings in the only one to really get into it, and that game is getting very long in the tooth).  I, for one, want a medieval Sopranos.  I want to be just as occupied with dynastic politics as I am with the standard 4X content.  In short, I want Elemental to be a medieval soap opera that I can influence!  More dynastic detail, SD, and not less!  I want to sit up in the middle of night worrying about whether or not my favored son will come back from that hunting trip safe and sound!  I want to ponder how to buy off a less competent son so he won't contest the throne (maybe a nice governorship?)!  I want to be able to play fathers off sons and mothers off their daughters (in neighobring kingdoms, of course)!  And, I want to be able to go the King Henry VIII route and play wives off mistresses!  In short, I want the first interactive version of The Lion in Winter (that movie should be the guiding cinematic light of Elemental's dynastic politics)! 

I am glad to see that a lot of others are thinking along the same lines.

Yes, another really cool thing with a dynasty system with heirs for all kingdoms (your own as well as the others) is that you would constantly be worrying about your offspring. That also means that the enemy would try to snipe them out ... And that you could get at the enemy by getting at his/her heirs ... This could be turned into a really important strategic factor actually.

Take a big kingdom already getting dangerously powerful and it seems it'll win in the end. But if you manage to (or maybe you already managed, before it got so powerful) to kill off all its good heirs, or even better all heirs, to that kingdom, in the end that player would be weakened and could lose ... And maybe you are the one to claim it.     

Would also automatically make heroes much more interesting and any battle including an important heir much more important and interesting. Instead of only reducing enemy soldiers you would really care what happens with each heir involved (on all sides).

I also think such a system would definately help Elemental stand out from earlier games like AOWSM.

Please, please ...   

So far, I believe the dynasty system will be only a way to milk the AI or allow the AI to milk itself - as originally intended. There is little evidence so far the Devs will develop any of the ideas brought forth here, as you can see by the recent reinstatement of Sovereign 'near-immortality' and by statements excluding all offspring of inheriting the throne. I'm really curious about what will Stardock do with this mortal rabble beyond merely establishing routes to steal unfortunate Kingdoms/Empires away.

I'm hoping SD's comments so far are just their starting point, be it for the design process or even just for the vanilla release. 

Let's face it: we virtual warriors have played countless strategy games.  If you killed off one kingdom, you've killed off a hundred.  Sure, the chrome Elemental is bringing to the 4X genre is very exciting, but we will still be dealing with a 4X game and all the implies.  I think Elemental could go way beyond the 4X arch-type by bringing something to the table that no other 4X game has yet to really achieve:  sociality.  If Elemental can capture some of the magic of The Sims (for example), it would truly be forging a distinctive path that might even expand the core base for 4X games to include the social gamer type.  So, if your thing is to form armies or manage economies, that type of gamer will be happy.  But if you like to create distinctive characters and manage their inter-personal relationships for a victory (again, a mix of RPG and social gaming), that will also be there.

One way or the other, I can't wait for the game. 

I really hope it is CScott, but so far we have little evidence for that. I'm not even sure how dynasties went through the beta, what kinds of new and exotic functionalities it has and it hasn't.