As far as succession goes, I do not care for the eldest male. You just have to be unlucky and get an idiot as a first son and you are screwed.
I prefer to have the ability to name my successor. The heir apparent. If I die without one well there you go instant civil war!!! I love that!
Seriously how could you have female channelers and not have female heirs? I do not think sex should matter at this point.
We definatelty need some options on this.
Agreed, options are good. However, I feel like we need to have a limitation on who we can pick. If we can pick every one in the royal family, we can then just choose the best one and be done with it. I feel like we should get more interesting options that this.
Maybe family members can be governors. These people can be either loved or hated - or the population can be indifferent to them of course. Now if the throne is claimed by one who is hated, these towns may split from your empire, declare independance and amass an army to defy your claim to these towns. Alternatively, when the throne is claimed by one the people love, they may get a slight bonus to productiveness.
I have not thought out the system of who should be able to claim the throne, but I think there needs to be limits on who you can choose. If you do not like the options presented to you of who claims the throne, maybe you can assasinate your own family members in order to let a family member that was excluded from succession open up as an option so that you can choose that family member instead of the one who was assasinated. the way I see it there should be a chance that this betrayel is found out so that the towns who love the assasinated family member become disloyal because you assasinated their beloved governor.
These options - picking who you want from a limited group, taking into consideration these people's popularity, being able to assasinate family members if they block your first choice succesor from being available - should become very interesting in some games. Careful planning may avoid civil war, or maybe even cause one if you feel the need. It is in any case far more interesting that just accepting that Eldest Son A claims the throne while being powerless to stop it.
Edit: an example to clarify. Suppose you have 5 family members who could claim the throne. Only two of them electable however, so you can choose from A or B. A is always electable because of the rules, C is blocked out because B is in still alive, and D is electable only if C and A are out of the picture and E is only as a last resort electable.
Now suppose you actually want D on the throne. You need to eliminate A, B and C to accomplish this. There should be ways of doing this, both honorable - like ending them out to die in battle or wedding them away - or dishonorable - like assasinating them.
Suppose the neighboring country is friendly with you, and you both stand united against another evil nation. the time for your rules is drawing neigh... You must get D on the throne lest your kingdom should fall apart. Do you resort to violence to accomplish this, even if it means the alliance with the neighbors should fall apart? Do you take your chances and find another option?
Choices like these could make this game truly deep and epic.