If this were a typical 4x, I'd say yes. But given the apparent plan to make it a real RPG-TBS fusion, I'd say no.

Well, "no" unless you can come up with a good succession mechanism that is a reasonable code task and fits the story line the devs are building. Maybe just the choice between having a possibility of succession or not could be a major part of game setup. If you can transfer your power at the time of your death, you probably need to have dedicated a share of your total power to being prepared to do that. More power given to the succession mechanism makes it easier to use, but you are weaker when you start the game.

I really like having an in-game representation of my leader, especially if he is completely customizable.

I'm not so sure I like having the game end if he is defeated though.  I've heard a lot of people say this game is supposed to make you feel like you are in a world like "Middle Earth".  If so, why not use the same idea here with your leader?  Sauron was defeated, but his "essence" was still alive through the One Ring and he was still able to control his minions.  Why not do something like this here?

Just make an on/off switch for this feature and everyone will be happy.

In MoM, if you "died" you could cast the spell of return to get back into the game. It had a couple of caveats though:

1. you needed to have enough magic available to cast it.

2. You couldn't do any other magic while you are "away".

3. Casting the spell could take quite a number of turns during which your troops had to fend off the enemy without support.

Made it impossible to kill off a dominating opponent by simply taking out his capital (your capital being where you're mage tower was, that being your only representation on the game field) , while still making said manouvre give you an advantage. Also, you still didn't have to hunt down every last unit/city, as the enemy would usually run out of juice pretty quickly if he'd effectively lost already. (so no spell of return)

Seems like a fine way of doing things. Being able to cheat death through your magic also works nicely in making you feel superior to the grunts.

Isn't that a whole point of the game? To decide between having power to your Channeler or to use it to ipgrade the kingdom? Its the whole point. If you be greedy and use it a lot for the kingdom progress, your Channeler will be weaker and you may die.

I think we are the Channeler just like in Demi God (but i can be wrong). I think it needed to finish if he dies because that will make the gamaplay more intense and people be more careful about it. I don't have much knowledge about its systems tough. If there is many mistakes you can get into easily with the Channeler or if he can die easily for exemple. But I'm sure Stardock will do it good and functional.

Hear, hear! I always liked succession concepts in such games. I makes you care for your successors and invest in them as well as your own channeler. You then have to decide if you want your successor to go into battle as your general, or to go yourself.

I would really like this!

just imagine: you could even add another victory option to create the ultimate line of succession by merging with dragons or giants or whatever until you reach some form of ascension. Nice.

That kind of system has always fascinated me, especially for turn based games that were hundreds of hours long and spanned hundreds of years. There could be genetic, social, political, faction, magic, and military to name a few.

Back in the day when I worked on mods for TW I spent a couple hundred hours working out a T&T & V&V system called the CVP for RTW that became the core system for nearly all other major mod project developed for the game. I would love to have something like that for this title; only without all the bugs that we had to find and fix from the original system.

With their planned system a quicker timescale could come naturally:

So it's not RTS-like more like players give direction, the units do their thing and then the players hit the spacebar and give more orders. The reason for this is to allow for more realistic battles and more granularity in the length of turns. It'll be easier to explain when we can do some video demos of the battles.

I just always hated it in any game (AOW, MOM, ) that when you killed the enemy leader a whole enemy empire suddenly vanishes!

Some sort of successor would be great!!!

Is there experience in the game? Maybe a balance to using, risking, and losing a powerful leader is that the successor would be much weaker and would have to start the experience growth process all over again....

 ...which would make the kingdom weaker, struggling etc...

AoW did it the right way I think : If you have at least one mage tower in a city then you resurect there. And if you die with no Mage Tower then you die definitely.

To me this did not solve the problem because if the AI did not build towers or it was still early game the AI died very quickly and I do not want a similiar system!

A successor system sounds like the best way to resolve these issues to me!

I think I might actually like having my channeler's death being one way to end the game. Being able to do something like a Spell of Return might by another (Immortality instead of Ascension).

But I think auboy105 might be onto something re the other civs, at least in single-player mode. What a vanquished channler built shouldn't necessarily disappear instantly when that channeler dies. Perhaps the other channlers would have to choose whether to rush in and attempt to take the vitalized territories before the mana fades. Sudden expansion can be risky, but can pay off big also.