We’re starting work on Dynasties in Elemental.
Here’s a basic outline:
Sovereigns will get the opportunity to get married. Once married, they will, for a period of time, be able to have children.
The sex of the child will result in very different game options.
Males stay part of your family line. Females are married off to other families. However, should the sovereign of a particular kingdom die, then his kingdom is inherited by the player whose daughter is married highest up into their family.
Hence, if I marry my daughter off to the first born son of the sovereign of Kraxis and that sovereign is killed, then his kingdom becomes my kingdom.
Speaking of sovereign “killin’” we do plan to have an option where your sovereign cannot actually die in battle for those players concerned about sovereign assassination. However, AI sovereigns will “abdicate” if they think their situation is hopeless and rather than abdication being random, it will be based on the aforementioned succession rule.
We will have quite a bit of time to play around with this come January when the dynasty beta goes out. But this hopefully gives you some insights on how we’re currently looking at implementing this.