[Suggestion] Make sovereign marriages a decision, not an event (0.291)

The marriages are randomized because the real choosing system is not in the beta. As soon as the devs pull something up, you'll get your choice......

Sources, please, ye sop for educational tax dollars. I hope you're right, but you have far too great a love of typing things in certain terms without certain support.

Note the frequent use of the term "currently"... which I think pretty strongly implies that non-currently is different. From Elemental BETA 1G: READ ME FIRST

Have you seen The Meaning of Life? That scene about birth control with the catholic mother "letting fall a baby"? Something like that comes to my mind whenever one f my female Sovereigns gives birth while exploring far away from home and without more warning that "Hey, you got a child!".

And as long as spouses for the Sovereign are nothing but pinups, I'd only ask for a event window like the one when we start the game. With a dynamic pic as background (if you are in a city, then a city should be shown; if you are in a forest then... etc). And to be able to select the name of the spouse would be nice too. The most normal name I have gotten so far has been a male spouse named "Rolero", who made me laugh out loud because it means "(Male) Role player".

Thanks, Scoutdog (I just couldn't resist the teasing; apologies). I wish there was another "currently" in front of "you lose her as a unit," but Brad seems rather firm on that point. Guess the pre-cataclysm world was run by a bunch of hardcore patriarchal types even though the real power in the world was magic, not upper body strength.

Even though I never knew much dialog by heart the way I did for the Grail, that's probably my favorite Python film. Mr. Creosote belongs in the Book of Silly Mods--recruit him, send him into an enemy city to dine, and watch the people flee.

But I still seriously hope that the spouse functionality is a very rough draft and that we'll have some way of actually arranging our own marriage(s) as we can do for offspring. Royal couples will never be fully equals on account of the channeler thing, but I want the game to occasionally produce some real dynamic duos (sovs choosing spouse-champions who complement the sov's traits). Royal spouses as "nothing but pinups" will be dull at best, and more likely it will become annoying when the sov is surrounded by recruited champions and offspring champions.

The problem is that I only see spouses being special if they are Hero type. So if we are to get pop ups about heroes for hire and/or that want to join us, for possible spouses it should be something similar. And I'd not mind at all if you could marry one of your heroes...

That's exactly what I'm asking for: royal spouses should be champions just like every other marriagable unit in the game seems intended to be.

Royal marriage proposals could come from bold individuals, independent rulers offering a marriage, and even other full sovereigns offering a child's hand. Sovereigns who say no too often might start receiving fewer offers, and it might be fun to have a 'maybe' option that could lead to things like Penelope's horde of suitors hanging around Odysseus' house. Sovereigns who marry 'commoners' might reduce the 'market value' of offspring from that marriage in exchange for gaining a partner who plays a strong role in council or in the field.

I would tend to disagree with the idea of spouses only being useful if they are heroes, with little ability for things to work the other way around: seems to me that even a complete loser would gain some amount of epicness from being married to the most powerful mortals left alive. (And no, I am not talking about magic leakage here, more of a "first lady effect" where the position carries a massive amount of respect and its own portable bully pulpit).

So how would you put that into game mechanics? Would non-champion spouses be a special type of regular unit? Would they even have a map unit aspect at all?

Perhaps more importantly, I've always thought of champions as a very broad class of units, with some being quite humble and some being outragously powerful. And champions will grow during the course of a game via experiences--marrying a sovereign would certainly be like going on an extended chain of quests, except perhaps for a sovereign given to locking up spouses rather than pairing with them.

If the spouse becomes something relevant instead of baby factory or shirtless farmer, ok.  I really don't want to have to expend effort to marry off all my progeny though.  Getting into marrying off champions left and right sounds... annoying...

Perhaps the availability of a champion of the opposite gender to wed before a certain age, at which point said character gets married off to a local aristocrat or whatever to continue the bloodline.  Maybe with egalitarian sides having more options in that department.  There would have to be actual uses though, like them being combat units, or the spouse having a significant bearing on the results of the union.

If they don't actually matter, I really don't want to mess with them.

Sounds like we might want much the same thing despite differences in wording about it. I've always hoped that champions would come with both widely varied skills and widely varied starting strengths, and having the champion mechanics linked to the foundation of the dynasty mechanics just seems right to me (one of those interlocking-simple being more fun than global-complicated things).

Maybe the real problem/question is that champions are still in brutally rough-draft form in the beta 1G builds. I haven't gotten to play enough yet to be sure, but my few short games & some reading around here make it look like champions are just roving units on the map at the moment, nothing that we players can bring into our factions. So a royal spouse lost at sea sorta makes sense...

I am not really bothered that its an unnamed spouse. I can imagine a loving relationship between my avatar and his spouse instead of it being a recruitment of a champion like buying a horse in the market.

Although, marrying another channeler seems to be the most sensible idea of them all. unifying your side.

it would be really cool if it can be used for co-op.

that being said, it makes sense from a variety of game design reasons not to do that...

I think if you defeat a Champion/Sovereign in battle you should have the option of "capturing" them instead of killing them. With the option, of course, to torture or kill the champ/sov at any time during the turn, and torture should have maybe a 5% chance of death.

In this way, you can capture an enemy's son or daughter, and hold her hostage as a political/diplomatic tool.

Can i do brainwash with my tourture and then marry her? That would be awesome fun.

I don't often enjoy playing evil, but this general idea is interesting and seems like still another reason to ensure that royal spouses are proper units, not background abstractions. Romancing or forcibly transforming a conquered sovereign into a spouse seems like a swell idea to me. The romancing path could be mostly a Kingdoms thing, but could maybe even lead to the occasional Empire sovereign essentially converting to the Kingdoms.

I always play evil. Although i will admit, if there is a really awesome race, i will go out on a limb and actually try neutral every now and then. But good? lolnothx. I like my civilians well toasted, not well educated. Demons are for bargaining/commanding, not defeating. Your prefered terrain should be a overcast, ash covered hellscape, none of this 'rolling green hills' baloney.

I councour, mainly because "Evil" can mean so very many different things: I have the choice to play as a sleazy crime ring, a magic-less faction of steam and steel, a group of brining-light religious zealots...... whatever I want, basically. Good and neutrality are sooooooooooooo confining in comparison.....

I know I'm a horrible threadjacker on a regular basis, but I'd really rather not see this thread digress into how much fun it is to play a given 'alignment.'

Cerevox, playstyles aside, what do you think of my original suggesion to make sovereign marriages a decision, and by implication make royal spouses true units like the others in the dynasty system? Would it make the game more fun for you, less fun, or neither?

  I would think there would be a range or mix of possibilities.  I wouldn't consider most spouses to be fellow champion units, but I could see this happening occasionally.  Seems like having a spouse unit as a champion all the time would be boring.  I would like to see these possibilities for marriages/spouses-

Is fellow Soverign of neighboring Kingdom/marriage becomes alliance with some overlapping consolidation of Kingdoms>Kingdom=New name, bonuses, etc.

Spouse is champion or hero type unit; special unit with trade powers/powerful equipment

Spouse is in background; leaves all decision making to Soverign. 

Spouse is behind the scenes and makes many important decisions or gives good advise.  Bonuses.

Spouse is a liability and needs constant attention/more taxes/causes opposing faction(s) to slide towards being enemy combatants.  Thinking of the two opposing families in Romeo and Juliet; also War of the Roses in Kingmaker, where Yorks vs. Lancasters.

  I also see ways of ending marriage(s).

Beheadings.  For the truly bad ending.

Divorce.  Loss of some revenues.

Warfare.  Yea, its suxxors.

Disease.  Plague!  Afflicts your Kingdom and is unkind.

Missing or lost due to quest.  Could be kidnapping or spouse could be investigating a mystery. 

Ya, i support having spouses as real units. I made a thread about this a while ago that supported the idea of having spouses who actually matter and have powers and stuff. Not just some random accessory to drape over the side of your throne as eye candy. Not that eye candy spouses are bad, i just think they should be all dangerous and stuff too.

Magicke, I like the range of possibilities you suggest here but don't see any conflict with the idea that royal spouses should be a special class of units on the map. A champion system that did a good job of spanning the range of battelfield and civilian leadership roles should be able to provide royal spouses for all three categories you describe.

Re the divorce question, that all depends on whether the game canon includes some 'rules' about that sort of thing.

I can see FACTION rules about divorce and polygamy and who wears the pants and all that, but having something kingdom-wide (world-wide, I mean) would seem inordinately restrictive.

My sov wears the pants cause he has the doom spells. And there will be no divorce in my kingdom. There will instead be a public event called ex-wife and lion. It will be just like a divorce except i keep all my stuff, and i get to sell tickets.