Precisely.  For me, the game is the story that unfolds as you play - far from encouraging me to reload a saved game, I would feel much more iclined to let the game continue through all circumstances.  I feel this would truly set the game apart from any other of its ilk.  And it would give me a far greater connection with each line of descendents, rather than them being mere pawns in a chess game where the King can never die.

As Elemental was being developed, many comparisons were made to Master of Magic (MoM) and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (AoW:SM). I never played Mom, so I imagined Elemental to be a AoW:SM clone built in the modern era of games with better graphics, UI, and with additional distinguishing features. These distinguishing features include

• the best AI
• extensive modability
• dynasties
• a world similar to the book series A Song of Ice and Fire, with massive armies of men and rare instances of magic and magical creatures
• epic game lengths in which one game could take months to complete
• quests
• uncommon and rare resources to fight over

In the release version, I did not care about the bugs or AI, because those are things I was confident that Stardock would fix over time. My disappointment arose from the watered down gameplay elements that were either so dull that they added nothing, or were implemented better in other games.

Bland Distinguishing Features

1. Dynasties was a great idea, but it's only purpose in the game was to act as a factory for making baby Channelers. Succession wars and diplomatic opportunities could have provided much depth to dynasties.
2. The only quests I have come across so far are "go to that location and pick up your reward" after usually fighting a battle. Dull and unimaginative, but I suppose in the end all quests are like that. But what is frustrating me the most is that quest rewards are not as beneficial as I would like them to be.

Features Done Better in Other Games

1. Champion Development: In AoW:SM and Heroes of Might and Magic V (HOMM5), champions were fun to level up and as they did so they became powerful unique individuals that bolstered my army and I cared very much about them. They could also be equipped with powerful magical equipment that made them potent in battle. In Elemental, there are merchants and researchers, useful only for their +1 in guildar and research, adventurers whom I never hire, and my children who are adventurers with magic. The way that combat worked on release, all champions were too fragile to engage anything in melee combat, even when well equipped. And equipment is too expensive to buy equipment.
2. Tactical Combat: Quite simply that was not tested enough. and the afore-mentioned games offer more interesting battles.
3. Magic: Too many threads about this already.

One other disappointment was diplomacy. I hoped for an upgrade over Galactic Civilizations 2 (GC2) and Civilizations IV (Civ 4), offering more complex options, but it turned out to be more of the same GC2.

Sorry, I think I'm misunderstood. I want to see dynasty succession, but I'd like it to be practical, to be viable, to be a good choice. I want my heir to take over if I die, but I don't want to feel like I'm making a bad choice, deliberately making the game harder for myself, whenever I accept dynasty succession rather than simply loading an autosave. Unfortunately in any save/load game, that's what dynasty succession will be, a less-than-optimal choice that you'd only take as a sort of hard mode. The word "pointless" was perhaps poorly chosen - what I mean is "fun.. but impractical, unviable, not the best choice."

Essentially, in a save/continue game dynasty succession would be an important and meaningful feature that changes game balance. In a save/load game it lacks that same meaning - it's cool and fun, but has little effect on game balance as you can just reload if winning is important to you. It's a cool feature I'd like to see eventually, but recognizing it as not important to game balance, I'd rather see other things fixed/implemented first.

From your last post it appears our differences on this are more a matter of degree than kind.  That's normal and a good thing (differing views politely expressed make the game and life more interesting!).  We're still a long, long ways apart, but I now understand that we're in the same ballpark.

The above applies to b0rsuk too if I've misunderstood him as well.

If you want Master Of Magic, you know where to find it. Graphics were never the main draw of the game - I remember I considered them ugly back in the day. You could certainly improve the interface, the AI and balance.

Yet most players reload when they lose a tactical battle. Or should we run a poll ?

I don't claim every single person would reload any time anything bad happens. But I dare say the majority would. My personal preference is not to reload, by the way. So in a world where most players reload without a second thought, implementing a feature which would affect only the minority doesn't seem sensible. Iron Man mode (which I would like to see, they should just call it 'Hard Difficulty') is simple to implement by comparison. If they introduce Iron Man mode, then dynastic succession has a chance.

Someone still has to adress the one point I made - that for AI succession likely won't be a big help, because of the nature of most 4X games. Once AI loses one sovereign, it is likely already in the process of being mopped up and it can't do anything against player's overwhelming army.

It would still be better than "your whole kingdom disappears", at least in my opinion. If I manage to kill an enemy sov, yes you could point out that only mop-work remain, but mop-work requires troops and logistics, maybe you're mopping while other factions keep attacking you?

How about a super-faction, strategically strong, with lot of cities and troops. Imagine you ambush their sov in the fields, as it stands now the death of a single unit (glorified, powerful, magical, but still a single unit) makes a 10+ cities faction just DISAPPEAR. Call it mop-work

I do not want to say that succession would solve everything, but really the current situation is a bit lame, don't you think?

I agree with borsuk. If someone really wants to avoid save scumming, they can do it by themselves. If they need that extra enforcement, they have Ironman mode. If they want to save scumm, they're free to do so. Everybody is happy, everyone gets to play the way they want.

As for the mopping up aspect...

One, war (and the politics in general) needs a system to make it more complex, at least if one wants to avoid a pure game-y situation and solutions. GalCiv2 had the AI surrender planets to other players but that's not really answering the issue and it's somewhat unsatisfying. Right now, war is binary. You're either in total peace or total war. There's no way to have skirmishes or border conflicts or minor wars intended on grabbing a single city. Once you declare war, that's it. Even if you end the war early, it's usually because you want to rather than because you have to; there's usually no reason to -not- just use your advantage to keep steamrolling. Victoria 2 has an interesting system to handle these sorts of shades of war; it's a system of war goals, infamy, spheres of influence, and casus belli as well as other mechanics surrounding how combat and units work as well as how such things relate to each other.

On the non-war front, I think part of it is that opponents are static; the dynasty system highlights this. That is, every player that's in the game at the start are the only players in the game you'll ever meet (Civ has this problem too). So when you take out 1 of 7 opponents, that's a huge chunk. Having more opponents would mean that the loss of any one opponent is less impactful power wise but more impactful politically. If you have 16 opponents with 8 minors, taking one of them out won't get you as much but due to the greater number of relationships, it's harder to avoid pissing people off. Also, having more natural and dynamic ways for new opponents to appear (and disappear!), for factions to combine and split, for war to affect the conquered and the conquerer would ensure that conquering the world isn't just a matter of making the best army and steamrolling over things.

By having more dynamic politics, it also makes the game world feel more natural and interesting. Minor nobles of Tarth and Kraxas joining together to form a new faction along side the original two ... -thats- some weird and interesting story telling. It makes the game less game-y and the player feels like the AI is actually doing something beyond asking them for favors or insults.

While this probably would make conquering the world harder, it would hopefully make it more interesting as well. Plus, if we veer away from such a heavy emphasize on military might, we can focus on more interesting and compelling ways to balance out victory conditions and small versus large empires. If conquering the world was one of say... 16 different possible ways to victory, it wouldn't matter all that much if you had a strong military because a military would be but only one factor in how successful you are. Right now currently, most of the victory conditions are based around research and military might... so that's all ones interactions can really be about.

Perhaps by also de-emphasizing the role of Sovereign as -you- and more just the leader of a linage. Instead of designing a specific individual, we design, basically, a bloodline. We intentionally make it less about that specific Sovereign and more about trying to keep your bloodline in power.

sagittary, you make a lot of good points in your Reply #63.

Fatbil, I think properly balanced random events could add a lot to the game.

Best regards,
Steven. 

Hmm, does the game have the Iron Man mode already ? I honestly can't tell. I don't have the game, the wiki is mostly empty too. The game is not a huge success so not many people are talking about it.

And the multiplayer point still stands, of course. It would be quite interesting to have dynasties in MP. Stardock may promote the "sovereign is YOU" position, but my understanding is that sovereigns are currently quite bland (much blander than wizards in Master Of Magic). Perhaps this is why people are exploring the alternatives.

You should totally try Solium Infernum. It's a multiplayer-centric game where you, as one of Hell nobility, fight to become the ultimate ruler after the disappearance of Lucifer.

Unsurprisingly, Hell is full of beaurocracy and treachery. You usually win by having the most prestige at the end. It wouldn't do to declare a war. You need an excuse. You can issue demands and throw insults. Accepting a demand or insult in from of the Conclave costs a lot of prestige. If the other side doesn't cooperate, the offended side (in case of a demand - the initiator) can declare a vendetta. Depending on a few factors you can claim to accomplish a number of goals under specified number of turns, such as defeating X legions, capturing Y hexes, or Z places of power. If you do - good for you. But if you fail to back up your claims with iron fist, you lose prestige. As the demands or insults go they become more and more serious until finally you can declare a Blood Feud on someone from that point anything goes. But in general the game's mechanics are designed to discourage open warfare and it's rare to eliminate all (or any) player(s) completely.

One of more curious parts of the game are the goals. There are public goals, such as Gluttony, Envy, Greed, Wrath, Lust, Pride, and Sloth. (eating X souls, not bothering issuing a demand, defeating another player...). Accomplishing your set goal by the end of the game gives you a big boost in Prestige. There are also secret goals, which are only revealed at the end of the game, and you can opt to have as many as you wish. These will be familiar to boardgame players. However, failing to accomplish a secret goal will cost you prestige.

You can perform a coup and hold Pandemonium for a few turns, but doing so permanently excommunicates you from The Conclave and the others are allowed to do anything to you.

The game has an awkward interface and is bad on technical side, but it does have certain charm to it:

This is actually usually not the case at all. In fact, it is usually the opposite. Let me give an example (directly from my last game vs ridiculous AI). I held back a lot in the beginning intentionally to give the AI a chance to grow and become a serious threat (rushing is too easy atm), and also avoided using all the cheap strategies for more of a challenge. Around mid game, the wars started and AIs started dying left and right (some by my hand), at the end of the game, there was only 2 faction left, me and another AI that was probably twice my size (I had 8 cities, he had nearly 20). At this point, our armies was pretty massive. In fact, we had so many units, we had fielded several standing armies (each army is restricted to 12 or so units). Since he had a bigger empire and massive bonuses from the difficulty setting, it's no surprise that he also had a much larger army. At this point, you might say it doesn't look good for me, but that wasn't the case at all.

What I did was sent all except one of my armies against the AI Sovereign army, the one exception hit the nearest city and took his influence. Then my other armies ram into his (admittedly very powerful army) one at a time. I used auto resolve to prevent any cheap tactical strategies, and ended up losing a lot of my units in the process, but at the end of the day, his 1 super army just wasn't enough to fight 3 of mine. Poof is empire disappears and I ended up winning the game with 1/4 or so of his remaining forces. Now I probably wouldn't have used such a strategy if AI sovereign succession was in place, but I would have been in serious trouble. It certainly wasn't a mopping up process at all.

-some cities of the defeated sov would go over to other sov's.

-some cities might be 'claimed' by champions (unaligned) to form a neutral faction (much as we have 1 city neutral factions in release)

-some cities of the defeated sov would go over to us

-some cities of the defeated sov would be claimed by the defeated sov's kids and/or champions and continue on with new versions of that empire/kingdom.

Obviously none of this is in release, unfortunately.  I haven't seen any mention of why.

On Dynasties:

I agree that the idea to pass your empire/kingdom along to the next in line makes sense intuitively.  To avoid the Save & Load "problem", perhaps the Sov himself/herself should be deemphasized slightly.  What I mean is this: have your Sov age, and as they age, they start to lose their potency.  At some point in time, it simply makes sense to hand over the throne to your offspring (whom you still have control over) as their power would exceed yours.

A natural aging out of Sovs would help progress the idea of dynasties.  Also, if you were going to lose your Sov anyway, it may not be a total loss.  That would also add some for those that want to RP.  A dying Sov's last wish to die in glorious battle before he/she passes the torch.