Mod Idea "Immortal Empires"

I've suggested something similar a long time ago. [IE. The "successor system". - When the Sov dies, one of his children will become the next Sov.]

I guess this won't be easy to implement. Hardcore coding. I also plan to make a serious mod for Elemental, and if it will be possible to "merge" mods somehow, I will surely add a mod like this into my mod, IF someone can create a mod like this at least.... [I don't know any coding languages sadly. :|]

I think this should be done in the normal (unmodded) game. Why make a complicated dynastic system without implementing the kingdom inheritance?

A lot of people thought that when we had the debate on it. It was decided internally though that Sov Death = Game Over is a necessary and needed core mechanic. As a player, while playing Elemental you are playing the "role" of the Sovereign. Once he/she dies, your role is over. Your Nation may go on and fight the good fight but you aren't alive to see it. Then again it's going to so hard to really kill a Sovereign in game you most likely won't have any towns left when you finally "die" so there wouldn't be much left to go on without you anyway.

Notice the mechanics are being set up so that your Sovereign gets away from a lost battle using his or magic to escape the death blow. You get sent back to your nearest city. This will go on and on and on until all your cities have been destroyed or you are killed in battle by another Sovereign.

Yep, we've talked a lot about this when Froggie informed us about the Sov mechanics. In short: Sov dies = Game Over is a core part of the Sovereign system in the vanilla game. It's not a big problem, IF the AI will be intelligent enough. However I fear that the players can&will exploit this rule.

Hmm, if your Sovereign dies when you have no cities left, what's the purpose of this mod? I think it should also remove the "escape to nearest city" mechanism. Or is it meant to be used only when you get killed by another Sovereign?

Also, what about the AI players? What happens when one of their Sovs is killed by another Sov? Does his/her nation have a chance to "fight the good fight"?

In the vanilla game the faction will be exterminated if their Sov dies. I suppose their remaining cities will turn to neutrals or something, but we don't know anything yet, only that Sov dies = Game over. [If you've asked that about the vanilla game..:)]

If your Sov dies and you have no cities left it's game over, at least that's how it works in the game Now. As it stands Sovereigns are Immortal and don't die except under specific conditions.

If we do a Mod like this I'd have to say it apply to the AI players as well, but honestly it's too soon to tell at this point. It may be one of those things that can only be implemented for the player and not the AI without re-writing half the game. I know languages "similar" to Python but I don't have any experience with Python its-self so anything I can't edit with XML will take me a little while. I'm not saying I "can't" do it, just that it would take me a while to learn the differences between Python and C++.

The purpose of the Mod overall would be to take advantage of the Dynasty system for something other then making Champions out of your children.

There have been a few other game-play decisions that I'm sure some people would want to see reversed so maybe we can incorporate them all into the same Mod. No Sov Death = Game Over, change the economy away from global back to local, maybe a few other tweaks depending on what the community wants to see.

I'm one of those who'd like to make use of succession by being able to choose one offspring to continue on if my Sov dies.  I wouldn't mind having to fight any sibling that decides to challenge the offspring I chose, or having the original empire split up amongst offspring, or the like.  Having additional, new foes (siblings who challenge succession) and having my original empire diminished (split up amongst challengers) would be sufficient 'punishment' for allowing my original Sov to die.

So, I'd also be interested in your mod idea.

Maybe to make this mod more interesting you should add a possibility for the Sovereign to die of old age and be replaced by one of the children?

I was actually already planning to incorporate something similar to this in my Lord of the Elements mod for Gondor. It wouldn't be Gondor with immortal Kings/Stewards. Since I intend to do it anyway, I could just make a mini-mod that does this for the regular game, and then after it's finished incorperate it into LotE.

That would be really awesome Kyogre. I'll fully support your efforts my friend, just say the word and you got back-up. Speaking of, could I perhaps draw on your Python knowledge for the Dragonlance Mod? (assuming you know Python that is)

Alright, sounds good!

As for Python knowledge, haha, I have (almost) none at the moment. I have some experience with Java, but that's it. A while ago I started reading some of the references other users posted (http://openbookproject.net//thinkCSpy/ is a pretty good site) but then I got busy with other stuff and it fell by the wayside. But starting in June I'll finally have some more free time and I'll pick it up again. Also, I expect to teach myself a bit from looking at the Elemental code, but we'll see.

But all that aside, I'd be willing to help you out as I can.

that sounds awesome, it'd be cool if there was a war for the crown.

Sounds good .  Definitely want to see a hereditary mod or mode where your offspring inherits when you pass on..This would extend out your play time for days, weeks, months, maybe even years.  Family squables resulting in seperate factions might also be interesting.   

Hehe...I think that changing core gameplay elements -like the Sov dies = game over rule- via Python requires uber coding skills...but good luck. Sadly I cannot help, because I know nothing about coding.

Raven - If you've been reading the Dev Forums over at E:EE, this is very similar to one of the items we are hoping to include with the mod. Optional mortal sovereigns, with children taking over. Once this code is done, it's only a hop, skip, and a jump to making a system similar to the one you described.

That's excellent my friend. Sadly I haven't had time lately to catch up on the other sites I read and am involved in lately. This week has been busy for me and the weekend is even busier. I have a concert to go to tomorrow that will take all day and half the night and two of my friends are having birthday's this weekend which means even more running around. Plus I just went and had a tooth pulled and had another doctor's visit the same day.

It's good to know you're planning on it already though. We'll collaborate our efforts over on the E:EE forums. This little Mod idea here might be irrelevant if all the same features will be in E:EE. I need to catch up on a few of your posts and see exactly what your plans are for E:EE. We also need to draft a few more people with technical knowledge and the ability to help us on E:EE and the Dragonlance Mod.

I have a question: On this screenshot: https://www.elementalgame.com/images/Screenshots/ele_dynasty.jpg the following information is written on the info card: 4th in line for the throne of Darkwood. If the "vanilla" game has no inheritance, what's the point of such text? Was this feature planned earlier and dropped?

I think it would be interesting to see an expansion on the dynasty system as well. Ever since the early days with the early Civ games I always thought it a bit odd how you are a leader that lives thousands of years and despite having changes in governmental bodies, such as going from dictatorship to a republic, you still remain in complete control. That's not really a change in government that's just a change in what people focus working on (aka bonus/penalties).

So instead I've always preferred to consider your role in such as the shadow government that lots of conspiracy theorist believe exist and have been the ones "really" running things for hundreds if not thousands of years. If you pretend that your that group then playing games like Civ makes much more sense. hehe

Anyhow more to the point I always thought it would be interesting to have some kind of dynasty system where you did have children and you could then appoint those children to take over once you passed on. The game would still remain in your control obviously but those children may have personality differences which translate into different bonuses like they do in Civ currently.

This could potential add a whole new slew of options such as assassinations. Thus if your leader is killed with no heir to the throne then one of the siblings become ruler. But more interesting is the potential for strife and in fighting which was common in medieval times. For example if when you do pass away and unhappiness is High you will still get to pick which ruler you want to take over but some of the other children being less then thrilled at getting nothing will seize the chance to stage a rebellion in which some cities will fall under their sway. Thus breaking off and forming new nation which you will then need to deal with. And of course the marriage thing can be used to help "merge" nations together in the same regard.

This would add a whole new depth to the game as whole sections of land and cities can change hands without any military action. There was a Civ4 mod that did kind of do this called RevolutionDCM as I recall. It's added the concept of "instability" to the game which was the larger your empire got the higher the instability became until cities would revolt and form new Civs. I thought it was a great mechanic as it really helped keep Civ size in line early game so some lucky guy in an open area by themselves didn't expand real quick and get like 2x the cities as everyone else. Or overly aggressive Civs don't steam roll a few small civs near them at the start and end up with 2x the forces then go on to steam roll everyone else. It really made it hard to maintain a large empire much more then the whole increased maintenance thing ever did. But at the same time I've actually had really small civs near me ask to merge with mine and I got all their cities and units. Though that was rare and the cities wanting to break away is more common.

But the fact that your children might fight over who gets what when you die does add a whole new dynamic. Especially since the concept of revolts is handled rather loosely in most strategy games. The threat and consequences of a revolt should potential be as bad as invasion from another empire. After all governments often fell or lost control of large sections of land they use to control during revolutions. They were as costly and deadly as many war. Yet most games treat them as modern day protesters on strike. Instead of how they were originally often by execution to put down the instigators unless it was a full blow uprising which gave rise to military action. 

Well I don't know what's coming down the road for the dynasty system but right now it just seems like a hero breeding tool. I think it would be much more interesting if you did assign your children to rule over different sections of the empire and thus they gave bonuses/penalties to the cities they over saw. This would really open the odd for some interesting stuff especially on larger maps. Cause on of the things with larger maps is you almost need some element undermining the growth size of an empire. Maintenance penalties rarely do it and ultimately do little to slow a true economic focused player such as myself. They just tend to cripple players who aren't good at maximizing their economy.

I doubt it.