This is a great idea.

Complexity out of simple factors combining in interesting ways.

I was going to post something to this effect, along with a tl;dr apology if it'd already been posted.  Good thing I like your avatar and it caught my eye.  Anyway, what you're talking about is done elsewhere as "traits."  A talent is inherantly positive, a weakness inherantly negative, but a trait has no connotation--it's simply an aspect of someone.  Something like...

Lustful

Increases birthrate of sovereigns' children, decreases those children's stats (for not being too selective about your... er, partners), or perhaps decreases loyalty/happiness/whatever in the city your sovereign is currently located.  ("That's the bloke that bedded my wife!  I'm not liftin' a finger till he's gone!")

Regarding also the posts that have been made that the sovereign ought to apply bonuses where he is, and leave empire wide bonuses to the empire... I agree, with a caveat.  Certainly a sovereign with the ability to up research (since that's what I saw discussed above) can't directly assist that research if he's not present.  However, it's reasonable to assume that a sovereign with a strong interest in increased research would lay in place systems to better support it than a sovereign who's primary concern is warfare and well trained troops.  Perhaps empire wide bonuses from a sovereign should be almost neglible, but there, while direct, on the spot bonuses should be something spectacular, like a mobile world wonder in Civ.

baha! you legend...I will never understand how little anthropomorphic gets used in the world, considering it is the prima of so many belief structures. Thanks for the laugh!

Traits, abilities, personalities, mental disorders, allergies, favorite colors .... I want it all!! xD

Favorite Color

Gold-Better deals with Mercenaries/ Mercs like you

Purple- royalty are treated better, prestige bonus for Royal champions

Red- Warlike NPCs and AI treat you better/like you.

Green- Sovereign is more lucky

(more later)

"Tomorrow it will be a good day for the Libra Sovereigns in the First House under the influence of Venus. You'll get +20% mana and Ice Spells will cost you half. Good for romance, good chance of some especial moments with your loved one (bring protection). You'll have a bonus to diplomacy with everybody except with Aries Sovereigns..."

Talents

Cold Hearted- Receives a 10% discount on casting water and ice spells.

Hot Blooded- Fire spells do 8% more damage

Trustworthy – Sovereign receives a positive bonus to negotiations.

Omnifarious – All magical research takes less turns to research

Summoner – Summoning spells cost 7% less mana

Doppelganger - The Sovereign can create a mirror image of himself for 10 turns.

Eye of the King – The Sovereign can look at any location on the map for 3 turns.

Familiar – The Sovereign can call upon a faithful familiar during battle.

Weaknesses

Careless – Sovereign takes 5% more damage from physical attacks  

Insidious – Nations are more likely to attack Sovereign’s Nation

Death Trap – Sovereign is very unlikely to escape battles

Pale Omen – Rogue elements are more likely to attack Sovereign’s cities

Far Sighted – When targeting enemies at close range there is a 10% chance to miss.

Near Sighted When targeting enemies at long range there is a 10% chance to miss.

Megalomaniac - 6% of the Sovereign’s recruitable population is unavailable.

Inconsistent – The Sovereign randomly losses a turn every 15 turns.

Frogboy:

Glancing back on the suggestions made in this post, maybe half of them are Empire wide, half of them are Sovereign only.    For me, there is no question that empirewide bonuses are more important.    So what specific role should a Sov trait play to the game?  Where is the distinction that it is a Sov trait vs Fraction trait?

Yes, we *could* decide to only have empire-wide bonuses in the race, however I think Sov traits could at least allow *city wide* bonuses and *army wide* bonuses.

ArmyWide bonuses would only apply to units and soldiers on the same tile as the Sovereign (unless we implement the generals mod where the Sov could lead an entire division with his army bonuses)

CityWide bonuses are applied to the City (or cities) that is connected directly to the Sovereign (capital, or whichever city he decides to Govern) ... and such bonuses are doubled when he is present inside the city (but penalties are not doubled) .... this allows for the *usual* concept to be applied when the Sovereign is away, and when he actually gets to a city, none of his weaknesses will cause negative values, or extremely low values of X, so that a weakness is always present, and the bonus while a Sovereign takes his precious time to babysit the city is actually quite significant.

Other than City Wide, and Army Wide, however, yes most traits should be more Sovereign specific, or ability based.

(Flight)-can fly

The distinction is that Sovereign traits are about what the Sovereign himself can do, and racial traits are about the people as a whole.

So a Sovereign trait would be things like generating research himself, personal combat ability, faster mana regen, ability to boost research in the town he's in, being a brilliant tactician that boosts the effeciveness of an army he's personally leading, etc.

Racial traits are empire wide bonuses, things that the Sovereign really can't personally influence very effectively. A global research bonus is better as a racial trait. It's also easier to balance, since its stacked up against the other global bonuses. I mean if you pick global racial bonuses, then have a choice of adding +2 attack power to your Sovereign *or* +10% empire wide research... well thats not a tough call, is it?

Along the lines of this idea.

Perhaps you can have some pre-set talents and weakness based on characters and leaders of the legends.  I am not sure of all the talents and weakness in the game.

King Arthur

Gengis Khan

Alexander the Great

just examples

Also a question.  If you take a talent, are you going to have to a weakness.  or if you take a weakness does it allow you to take another talent (sort of gives you some points back to get another talent).  if the second is true, I would make the weakness give only a few points back versus their negative effect.

Well, King Hobbit, I think it would kind of negate the purpose of having weaknesses if you don't get back "full points" as they say.

Talents which have inherent weaknesses included are stronger than normal talents because of the added weakness. However, if weaknesses are going to have "hidden recessive talents" which can combine with other weaknesses to created a full talent, then I suppose you have a point. However, I would like for these "recessive talents" when created to only be as strong as a half-talent, and primarily just for flavor and not too game-changing.

Now that that is out of the way, I will touch upon your previous leaders.

Alexander the Great -> Army with Sovereign is never negatively affected by Supply Lines. Army moves 10% faster, Sovereign gets +4 HP, and +4 Defense. (cant have children?)

Genghis Khan-> Army moves 50% faster, all mounted units get +20% range and +2 attack, Sovereign gets +2 attack speed and +2 attack.

King Arthur -> Soldiers in Arthur's army get +2 HP, +1 Defense. Sovereign gets +4 mana, and Double Prestige for event/objective based prestige. Diplomacy bonus for the kingdoms, loyalty bonus for Champions.

Merlin-> Sovereign gets +8 mana, +2 magical attack, +4 magical defense, +4 magical research per turn. Any caster's in Merlin's army have double mana (as long as they are within his army).

Right now, you start off with a bunch of points to spend on things. Taking a talent (or stats, or spellbooks) costs points. Taking a weakness gives you more points to spend. You don't have to take any weaknesses right now, and still have plenty of points to spend.

The funnest weakness/talent system I ever saw was in Fallout.  Every weakness could be utilized as a strength under specific conditions.  For example, the flower child would double the effects of all drugs but reduce the longevity by 50%.  The one hander slinger gives your hero a glory hand but any activity involving 2 hands is an epic fail.  You had to work around these and build accordingly to your stregnths so in the end your man would shine when played proper.  It was very unique.

Tasunke, I was mostly curious because I have played a couple games that if you take a couple weakness that are more cosmetic and don't effect play that much, you can get a talent that can effect play.  Its more of a balance issue for later.

Also, very nice job on the talents for my suggestions.  Merlin was also a great suggestion.

Another option would be if you a take a "Pre-set" there is a talent and weakness that is not avaialable in the regular pool.

Not to rain on anyone's parade or anything, but is it not wiser to suggest some talents and weaknesses that do not consist of multiple effects? This 'merlin' and king arthur' talents that are suggested are really nice, but it seems to me like these should be templates, or sums of talents rather than a single talent. As it is right now it is a whole package, so that if I take it I can hardly take anything else. Would it not be more interesting if we were able to take from the suggestions what we like and then mix them up? That would mean that no single trait as presented here that would be a sum of several effects should make it in the game. Rather split them up into two seperate effects. I do like the pre-set talents and weakness idea. Especially if it means that some cool unique talent would be bound to an annoying weakness, it really makes you think twice before accepting that.

Also I feel like traits as 'spells of book X cost 10% less mana, other schools cost 10% more' is a waaay to powerful thing. If my playstyle turns out to be needing only one spellbook, then getting a discount on those spells while getting a penalty on others is major because I rarely se e the penalty in action. Instead we would need a major penalty rather than just a 10 %in order to even things out. So any efect that would bring a penalty to the table, the penalty should be more severe than the bonus. That is at least how it would seem to me, because the player can play in such a way that the penaly would be circumvented as much as possible anyway. So if the player should run into the penalty, better make it really hurt in exchange for the benefit.

Did the devs say already what they liked and did not like? I have no time to read every suggestion, but what I do read seems to involve stat changes for the sovereign or the cities but it adds very little in terms of role-playing or non-statrelated issues. What I would like to see - and like I suggested earlier - would be things that add nothing in terms of stats, but rather influence the course of the game. I suggested a sovereign that was bound to a crystal already, and the family heirloom amulet of unknown origin. Stuff like that makes for more diversity, and you do never know how it will turn out to affect the game. There should be at least some of those traits in the game imo, or they should be backgrounds.

Shurdus, its not raining.  I just assumed Tasunke was listing the Talents.  There would obviously have to be some weaknesses hooked to the idea of a pre set.  Perhaps, King Arthur has a limit on the number of Champions he can have representing the round table.  Merlin has a limitation on life spells showing his connection with nature.  Genghis Khan has a limitation on city size.  etc.  In several games the presets are just as fun as creating your own.

The Khan empire had some of the largest cities ever recorded.

On that note it might actually be interesting to have a "sterile" weakness--no kids means you can't inherit anything from defeated players, but I'm not sure we'd want something like that that disables an entire gameplay element.

I'd tend to agree that while some of these presets are neat, they're not really "traits" per se. Something like Alexander the Great is actually a collection of traits. So that is a bit of a different subject, building some presets is interesting but you need the underlying traits first in order to do so.

I was thinking that being sterile/not having to have children, ect ... could come with the option of adopting NPC sovereigns ... which would be a rather expensive process, cost some prestige, ect ... but would at least give you a chance to start your royal line, and could even use multiple bloodlines at once (since NPC champions would probably be recruited in late early game, or early mid game)

Some additional weaknesses could be a limit on the # of Champions ... in the field of battle?? Or perhaps decreased loyalty for recruited NPC champions. Actually "Mercenary" would probably be a good trait to have INCREASED loyalty for recruited NPC champs and DECREASED loyalty for royal champs .... or even, the physically stronger a Champion is, the greater his loyalty, and the weaker a CHampion is, the less his loyalty.

A more magic-oriented trait could have the opposite effect -> weaker CHampions are more Loyal, Stronger ones less loyal.

That somewhat compliments the Free-WIll NPC personalities idea, while at the same time running parrallel and Separate from the Idea.

Ignorant-> slower spell reasearch

Traditions -> cities give more prestige but less science

Traits below are Probably better suited as RACIAL WEAKNESSES

Another weakness could involve increased Upkeep for armies based upon Army Numbers (a good weakness for Adventurer Kings/Elitists) -call it Aristocracy?? Professionalism?? Elitism??

Another weakness could have increased Upkeep for units based upon their level (higher leveled units cost alot more) ... this could be good for a Kingdom/Empire that uses alot of cannon fodder soldiers, and less skilled Champions. -call it Corruption?? Bribery?? Favoritism??

Another weakness could be that each Citizen eats 20% more food - Voracious/Slovenly/Gluttonous

Another weakness could be that Housing holds 20% less people -> Exclusive Society

Wasteful-> all buildings and roads cost more resources

Greedy-> gold mines and trade routes could result in reduced profits (keeping them for yourself)

Unclean-> health/high society oriented prestige improvements give less prestige.

Small Minded-> citizens give less science

Arrogance-> science buildings give less science, trade routes give less trade

Austere-> commerce buildings give less gold, trade routes give less trade

Pocket Pinchers -> Citizens give less taxes (proportionally)

Weakness - Glutton

-1 food production(it could be higher or lower since I have no idea how much that is relative to the game world, as I have not yet played the beta) and makes your channeler fat, because where do you think that food is going?