SavageBananaMan34

Join Date 04/2006

So What in the World is Going On With Dynasties?

Hi Stardock and testers,

I am super confused about where the dynasty system in Elemental is going. I've asked questions in multiple threads to no response so I'm making a new one.

1. What happened to assigning family members to govern parts of your empire as vassals?

As far as I know this was a planned feature at some point. Maintenance costs would get greater and greater as your empire grew, forcing you to assign a family member to govern a certain part of your empire as your subordinate.

2. Will you be able to educate and model your heirs?

I think it would be great if you could send your first born to your capital city's university to study economics and politics so they could be effective administrators or merchants. Or if you're warlike, send them to military school for many years and watch them emerge powerful generals.

3. Will your heirs and champions have to be appeased and kept loyal?

One of Total War's cool features is character loyalty. Because each character has a personality, he is more disposed to doing certain things - say if your son is a great warrior, you should put him at the head of a great army to keep him in good temper. Should you fail to placate your heirs, they could revolt, splitting a part of your empire that is loyal to them.

If I recall, the first and possibly second bullet points were suggested by Stardock staff members themselves and the third is just something I have added.

So what's the official response, are dynasties just going to be about succession (which is far less interesting because your character is immortal), or are there going to be more dimensions?

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

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I'm afraid not.

The primary purpose of your Dynasty in Elemental is to forge alliances with other players and gain champions who already are imbued with essence.

This is a system we can look at expanding in the future but what you mention isn't within the scope we envisioned.

Feel free to suggest ideas though because I think the system has a lot of growth potential.

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Thanks for the answer, Frogboy. I would love to see you greatly expand this system in Elemental's first expansion. The Dynasty is the most interesting new feature in Elemental (imo), and I know I'm just one guy but it's what I would like to see developed the most.

Thanks again for reading.

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Hey Frogboy, can I suggest that the number of offspring is limited by a random number. say minimum 1 child, max 6 children with averages around 3? That way it would cause offspring to be more tactical and a precious resource, especially if you dont know how many kids youre going to get. I was playin a game today and it just felt like every few turns I was getting another kid. In addition, perhaps a variable number of turns between and before each child? say 4 turns minimum and 8 turns max, adding in some more variation to the gameplay and dynasties.

Also, perhaps a beauty modifier or inteligence modifier to the offspring, so that some would be more valuable than others, and perhaps the longer they stay in your reign the 'smarter' and more valuable they become, with a gradational cap on it ofc. Thus, waiting 5 to 10 turns is +1, 10 to 20 is +2 20 to 40 is +3, 40 - 100 is +4, with a max cap somewhere?

Honestly thats the only modifications I can think of, and the primary ones I'd like to see were the limited and variable number of offspring. Heh, you could even add in another perk to character creation that improves or increases offspring.

Just a though. Cheers,

Edit: I should have said the only modifications that fit within the general current frame that dynasties seem to have in elemental. Obvs I could expand more, but I like keeping my ideas simple.

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Quoting SavageBananaMan34,

reply 2

You are not the only one. I agree the dynasty system deserves attention and development, before release or later. And it suprises me that so few games explore this area. While there are many good magic systems I have yet to see a really good dynasty system in a game. It does not necessarily have to be very complex, just have enough impact on the game and some interesting features, making each relative count in different ways.

I've read that Elemental is partially inspired by works of Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. What would The Silmarillion or A Song of Ice and Fire be without the detailed dynasties? They would be completely uninteresting to read, if the main characters were just unrelated heroes. Actually the dynasties get more attention than magic does in these books.

I think including dynasties in Elemental was a great decision and has a lot of potential!

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 1

I'm afraid not.

The primary purpose of your Dynasty in Elemental is to forge alliances with other players and gain champions who already are imbued with essence.

This is a system we can look at expanding in the future but what you mention isn't within the scope we envisioned.

Feel free to suggest ideas though because I think the system has a lot of growth potential.

Erm then how come they aren't imbued with essence? Also can they transfer essence or spend it like sovereign does? because if they do, than it's a big rat right there...

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One thing that strikes me as Odd is that playing wasshername the female character, I marry the first NPC i see and we both wander off exploring the map in different directions.

Then a bit later, I pop out a kid.

That I can logic away with 'honeymoon' magic

however the next couple kids I pop out with the married couple at different ends of the map I have a harder time explaining.

Can it be made so that you can't have 2 characters procreating unless they're in the same unit for a turn? Ie you get married and your units merge instead of staying standing in seperate squares. Maybe give a 10% chance of conception per turn they spend together. Then 9 mo later theres a chance that you pop out a rugrat. If you want more you need to merge units again.?

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 1

Feel free to suggest ideas though because I think the system has a lot of growth potential.

I have some, but they are mixed with magic and essence system... it's a long story... and a long post... And it's there already so I'm not posting them again... You may want to look at them especially since you've recently been asking for magic feedback...

Quoting drakkheim,

reply 6

One thing that strikes me as Odd is that playing wasshername the female character, I marry the first NPC i see and we both wander off exploring the map in different directions.

Then a bit later, I pop out a kid.

That I can logic away with 'honeymoon' magic

however the next couple kids I pop out with the married couple at different ends of the map I have a harder time explaining.

Can it be made so that you can't have 2 characters procreating unless they're in the same unit for a turn? Ie you get married and your units merge instead of staying standing in seperate squares. Maybe give a 10% chance of conception per turn they spend together. Then 9 mo later theres a chance that you pop out a rugrat. If you want more you need to merge units again.?

I usually have my sovereign in party with my spouse. If I kept wondering how she manages to survive pregnancy in constant questing environment and send all those kids back to capital through enemy territory and monsters I'd probably get sick... No, not because of worrying too much...

Anyway realism isn't worth gameplay... You probably wouldn't want this to turn into "Sims - war of fertility"...

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