What an interesting question!

*Geoff the slug lives in a swamp and recently had a bunch of sluglings.  You need to take his sluglings into some sort of magically protected cave where they can grow in relative safety. But when you get there you find that a colony of slime monsters has made a home inside, so to make it safe for the geofflings you have to clear out the slimes.

*The silver surfer dropped the infinity gauntlet somewhere on your continent. FIND IT!

Anything but kill 10 random mobs quests. Or, collect a dozen daffodil quests.

I've come up with:

Defend a neutral town from the army of Black Death.

Defend a shrine from the army of Random Pillagers.

Resurrect the town of Ancienty which was destroyed a thousand years ago.

darkodin is good at counting! 1 1 1 1.  *poo he fixed it*

A prince is doing poorly in his studies, help him get his grades up.

There can be a lot of ways to do this one. You could go the adventuring route and seek a sage from a mountain to tutor him.  You could build a lot of educational buildings and have the prince move into that town.  You could use your economic might to bribe the school officials.  use your military to intimidate the school officials.

An ancient evil is terrorizing the city!

Do you:

Collect the pieces to an artifact to seal away the ancient evil?

Fight and defeat the ancient evil?

Negotiate with the ancient evil, and send it to rampage in the enemy's kingdom?

That picture is deserving of another dialogue option!  
"Come back with a new face and maybe I'll help you"

also I like the idea of both being able to take quests ourselves and to give quests to adventurers who are wrecking our kingdoms.

Wait a minute, is the player going to do the quests, or is he going to be the quest-giver?

The second possibility could be interesting, if coupled with random events.

Example :

Event : You got rats in your basement -> -10 prestige every turn while they are there

Solution 1 : Send your army to clean up -> lower army morale

Solution 2 : Create a "kill rats in the channeler basement" quest, which any hero could decide on taking up or not.

Sadly, this possibility would turn the game too much into Majesty, which is probably not the goal...

The cost having to post quests to npc adventurers?  prestige. and an adequate reward for it.

I see quests as being fairly complex, but made up of different amounts and combinations of a limited number of "bricks" and "limitations":

Some examples of "bricks":

• Go to point X on the map.
• Kill thing X on the map.
• Make sure person X does not die for Y number of turns.
• Get relations/treaty X with person Y.
• Stay alive for X number of turns.
• Cast spell X.
• Accumulate X number of item Y.
• and so on

Limitations would be thing like timers, avoid this type of terrein, don't be seen by these units, and so on. You would then make a questout of these pieces like so:

Rescue the alchemist

1. Timer of one week.
2. Find scroll of dungeonyness in Some Lost Tower.
3. Visit the Wheel Of Wye in cave Y.
4. Go collect three Fish Heads Of Faint Disgust.
5. Return to the Wheel Of Wye In Cave Y with the three FHsOFD before they spoil in one day.
6. Go to the Dungeon Of Imrunningoutofnames.
7. Pay the gaurd there 5 bajillion gold.
8. Fight the Big Butt-Kicking Butt-Kicker.
9. Make sure the Alchemist doesn't die as he moves back across the map to Castle Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

This one seems pretty obvious, but no one has suggested it yet, so I guess I will:

"An evil dragon is terrorizing one of your towns, go stop it!"

Alternatives on this would be "An evil dragon is terrorizing someone else's town, save the town and you get a relations bonus with them!"

Or, "An evil dragon kidnapped your daughter, save her before she is eaten!"

And one more, "An evil dragon kidnapped the daughter of nation X, save her and you get a relations bonus with nation X/can marry her/can have her marry your son, etc"

I have yet to see this, but I would love quests that effect the map, relations, and other such things.

For example there could be a bunch pillaging orges and you could choose to fight them, if you don't then they might set up camp and start raiding random villiages.


The second thing I would love to see is that quests unlock truly unique content, instead of just +150 gold. Think along the lines of unlocking the ability to research new and unique technologies, spells, and the such. For example if you kill a horde of rampaging slugs, you might gain the abilitiy to research Summon Slugs.

I definitely think rewards are important.  Maybe some rinky-dink quests have mundane rewards, but I think rewards should stretch across all the game mechanics.  Rewards should also be signficant for signficant quests, balance is not as important as the coolness factor of rewards (difficulty level can be the balancing force, not altering the rewards, but just in giving the ai so many advantages anyway).  There is nothing lamer than doing something significant in a game for a trivial reward.

1. The quest results in a suped up hero character for hire. (Possibly he was imprisoned in a dungeon, or bound to a demon that has to be slain to release him).

2. The quest results in a book which gives a skill to the sovereign (ex. one of the powerful bonuses that can be chosen at startup.

3. The quest results in an advanced spell for the sovereign.

4. The quest results in an artifact that has kingdom-wide bonuses (ex.  increased production, morale, wealth)

5.  You resolve a quest originating from another kingdom, thus there are kingdom-wide penalties for that kingdom because you successfully completed it.  For instance, certain towns can have issues and if another kingdom solves them, that causes problems for the home kingdom (potentially flipping the city).

6. Solving a quest has an unexpected effect, like one of the random events in Gal Civ 2, possibly good and possibly bad.

7. A special unit becomes availble to the sovereign (like the dragon or something else).

8. A neutral town joins your kingdom.

9. A fountain imbues one hero character with several levels worth of attribute enhancements.

10. Solving a menacing creature invasion results in gifts and positive diplomatic effects from other kingdoms.

That too

I'd also like some quests to recruit Adventurers:

Quest: "The Necromancer of Aberdeen"

Triggering Event: Random event at appropriate levels for a sovereign with few Heros.

Effect: Local Tower becomes a quest dungeon

Life Magic users:

The Necromancer of Aberdeen has imprisoned a Hero who almost managed to defeat him and his army. Someone who was able to almost defeat the Necromancer and his army would certainly be of great service to you. Perhaps we could personally put the Necromancer in his place and liberate his prisoner to become a loyal Hero of our army.

Death Magic users:

The Necromancer of Aberdeen is a prisoner of his own Castle after a band of Self-Righteous "Heroes" laid waste to the ritual defenses which gave him control of his undead army. If you could personally fight your way past his rogue minions and defeat those adventuring Crusaders then the Necromancer would certainly appreciate a chance to lead a new army in the service of your powerful Empire.

Dungeon:

The local dungeon is a combat for the sovereign. If he wins then an advanced  hero (Righteous Warrior or Foul Necromancer) becomes available for recruitment at no cost to the Sovereign. There is also a chance to discover random artifacts or other useful items from the dungeon.