That sounds awesome, man. You make it sound like it got shot down though. This "I had actually always planned on having a per-unit loyalty system" , in particularly the words "planned on" makes it sound past tense. That sucks if so. It would have been nice playing a evil Sov and bribing champions away from other Sovs with promises of riches and powerful items.

Well, not shot down, but I know time is slowly getting tight for 'wouln't it be cool!' features ...though this would actually just plug into existing systems, so perhaps it WOULD be an easy one to get in.

Any time we can tie game features together in interesting ways I'll be all for it, and this would be a great way to link item use, spell use, and event driven actions to humanize the NPC's without too much effort. Actually, the more I talk about it the more I'm selling myself on it's necessity. 

I don't think you are.  I do think that the system should have a method to allow each settlement to make its own decision about who it follows.  The likelihood of a whole empire going moving as whole to the same ruler seems pretty slim to me.

Well then quit talking about it and get to work, it's almost 7:30 in the morning. Damn slackers

hehe j/k brother. It does sound awesome and as you pointed out "a great way to link item use, spell use, and event driven actions to humanize the NPC's without too much effort". That makes a lot of sense when you think about how these systems interact with each other.

Since they are presenting this dynasty system as a path to victory, a marriage strategy would have to have elements that you can count on, or else it's a bad strategy. In that sense it could end up as a mechanic that sacrifices a bit of realism. Is that a terrible thing? I'm not sure.

What happens when the rules say that you inherit a territory that you don't want? Do you have to take it even if it's isolated and likely to cause a war with someone you aren't ready to take on? If they can't stand independantly without a sovereign, then the most obvious choice in most cases is to surrender to the enemy who killed their sovereign. He's likely to be very strong in the local area, and there might be nobody else who would be willing to take on their cause if they are just an isolated, hanging remnant of a destroyed empire that has little to offer besides strategic liability. 

Yay!  It really does sound awesome!

and this sounds very reassuring, thank you for taking time to explain your ideas on this, cuz i think it's important too! Boogie, you rock man!

I hope there's time for this, as it'd add a lot to the game -- consequences for one's actions.

In most RPGs you can wander into someone's house, loot it, and they still respond to you as if you didn't rob them blind.  Consequence-free actions make a game one dimensional (or less dimensional).  Games that have consequences for actions are multi-dimensional.

It's also a good feature as it opens up a new strategy in the diplomacy/espionage arena.  Subverting a foe's heirs/heroes/units thru one's actions/behaviors, using espionage to frame or smear an enemy sov., etc.  Sacrificing an immediate gain (don't loot the peasants) for a long term gain (win over the 'goody' faction) is a choice, and meaningful choices are good. 

It'd also be a way for a small empire to hold their own against a bigger one (besides magic).

I understand there's too many "wouldn't it be cool!" features to put em all in and still see the game in this decade, but knowing you folks they'll be added eventually.  We'll be patient, I promise 

'Moral Backlash' is actually a slider in the item editor, so the feature is around 2% done

sweetness!  i can, like, go to bed happy now!

I vote to keep this in, at least as an optional attribute on items.  Maybe certain spells should have it too.   Nobody likes it when you cast Corrupt Livestock X.

Thank you. Then I was misinterpreting; I had imagined that we were supposed to be noticing "fun" here, which I have not. I will wait for then end of Beta 3 before looking for inconsistencies! ;-) 

That's because the games point is not about some story unfolding, it's about functioning gameplay....

You're looking for an RPG and this isn't it.

The devs have stated that it's going to be a mixture of both a strategy and a RPG game. I don't argue the fact that whatever the devs choose will be "functional" or not, because I know it will. However, to say a game like this cannot at the same time be a story unfolding is imo selling it short. The "dynasty system" as is, seems like an excuse to mop up the end game. And i'm not saying that's a bad thing, but cephalo has a point when he says that this "dynasty system" isn't really functioning like one. So I'm sorry, but I have to disagree, because every game of Master of Magic I ever played was a story unfolding, and I can't say that about every game. A game doesn't have to just be a game, it can have enough immersion to be like a book, if you want it to. That's my point.

Keep in mind that one of the inspirations for Elemental is Middle Earth, and that at least in the endgame it's supposed to depict massively powerful beings and their armies clashing for the fate of the world.  While I'm not an expert on Middle Earth, at least some of the real world mythologies do involve immortal beings siring mortal offspring who will never be on the same level of power as their parent.

That brings up something interesting - I'd actually like to see some quantitative measure of "divinity" in the stats of offspring (for lack of a better term, I know the sovereigns aren't necessarily divine).  It would affect how powerful the child is, as well as the child's lifespan.  Your sovereign will presumably be having children with a "normal" spouse, making that first generation 50% divine.  If those children then have their own children with a "normal" spouse then their offspring would be 25% divine (i.e. less powerful), and so on.  The divinity of a child would be the average of the divinities of its parents.

And who knows, maybe one of the treaty negotiations between two sovereigns/channelers would be for them to get together to have a terrifying 100% divine child?  That would have to be a rarely achievable negotiation though.

Even if you end up not having time to do a whole system on it. It can still be left in the code and then Modders can expand on it in the future or later down the line you can add it in to a expansion pack or patch/update.

I would really like to see such a feature and think it would add a lot of memorable moments to the game.  But if it is implemented it should also be possible to be able to significantly influence/corrupt the heroes. (Hallo paladin, come to the dark side, we have cookies!)

The idea of being able to counter-recruit champions sounds neat, but I'd expect strong alignment differences to make the process much more difficult than with champions who are closer to thinking like a 'normal' member of your faction. I don't know what the later AD&D editions might have done to paladins, but if there were such a thing as an Altar paladin and Kraxis successfully got her to switch sides, much of the unit's power should go away because it was based on devotion to the cause just abandoned.

In 4E Paladins can be of any aligment. They are mostly Good but there are no limitations now. So, for example, The Raven Queen, neutral Goddess of Death, Winter and Fate has her share of neutral Paladins.

Well that sounds like an improvement to someone like me, who hates levels and classes in my RPGs. Hope a paladin of any stripe still takes a major stack of penalties for abandoning the faith, though.

Pg 91 from players handbook

"Paladins are not granted their powers directly by their deity, but instead through carious rites performed when they first become paladins.  Most of these rights involve days of prayer, vigils, tests and trials, and ritual purification followed by a knighting ceremony, but each faith has its own methods.  This ceremony of investiture gives a paladin the power to wield divine powers.  Once initiated, the paladin is a paladin forevermore.  How justly, honorably or compassionately the paladin wields that power from that day forward is up to him, and paladins who stray too far from their faith are punished by other members of the faithful"

So I would say the penalties would be entirely DM dependent.  How exactly is he punished and by whom?  We do know he retains hi abilities, though.  Personally I like this better than the old method that proscribed exactly what to do with classes who has strayed.

Thanks for the info. It seemed DM-dependent in the old days to me, but that was because the DM had to decide when to invoke the blunt-force ugly mechanics. Being punished by the people who empowered you seems much more appropriate, if equally open to neglect by a DM.

Fantastic...the idea is awesome and deserves a run imo, personally I see alignment as the core of any speculative fiction.

As do I. I'm just glad to hear that boogie's thinking of incorporating loyalty based on individual alignment. That's awesome because I'd love to see a hero fight back because he doesn't agree with what his leader has started doing lately. Start a revolution, ya know? It's one of those things you see in movies and books but never really see in games like this and that really excites me to hear Elemental might just be the game to break that barrier.

Well, EU:Rome had it in pretty high detail, but the game as a whole was a bit of a disappointment.  Such a shame.