Maybe the Sovreign could resurrect himself using some essense (a reasonable amount otherwise dying wouldn't be so bad a thing).  It would take a certain number of turns as well.  If you can't afford it, then you do die (which kind of makes sense if you don't have enough magic left to bring life back into your body).

Yes, I also wouldn't want the game to just end when the Sovereign is defeated. On the other hand, there must be a reasonable cost to having your Sovereign defeated (unlike AoW2) and also finally killing the Sovereign shouldn't be too tedious or just a mop-up operation.

Ok, haven't played the game yet, (downloading now at 93% ) so forgive me if this is totally counter to everything the game is based on. 

What if when the Sovereign dies, all your cities and units start working to bring him/her back.  The player would have no control over this.  Maybe they have to collect enough money and gather enough power to build some kind of temple.  This should be pretty expensive and require the scraping of buildings and other developments and should leave the entire civilization weaker after the resurrection. 

I've not decided if a revivable sovereign is a good thing or not yet (it's a much more intense game when you know that your sovereign _might_ die).

How about the possibility to research a shrine or chamber where your sovereign could be revived? This building should be unique and should take a long time to research and build. Only one of these buildings can be built in one city. If it is destroyed you can no longer be revived and death = death. Rebuilding it should take as long time as it did the first time (this thing can't be rushed and will take LONG time to build. Two game years or more?).

If you have the building and lose a fight with your sovereign you should be able to be revived in that city after some turns.

The revival should cost 90% of your essence (it's regenerating, right?), your life is down to 1 and some medium losses to your stats.

This way you can plan your attack on an enemy to destroy his shrine before you attack the sovereign himself to avoid the mop up scene, or you can do the mop up thing until his kingdom is crushed.

I think I would prefer this to be an option anyway, so people can choose what type of game they want (i.e. "normal" vs "ironman").

For those interested in 'historical' debates, the sovereign death = game over thing spawned this huge thread back when the boards first launched and had a few recent entries earlier this month.

I don't think that the early betas will be much to go by in terms of assessing whether it is too easy to kill sovereigns. When we can run larger maps, build real militaries, recruit champions, and go on quests it should be a lot clearer whether soverigns are too easy to lose to make their deaths = game over.

This is exactly what happens in AoW2 as well - as long as you have a city with a wizard tower left, your "wizard" simply shifted to a new wizard tower upon being defeated - BTW, wizards were REALLY weak in combat in AoW2 which is not the case here, so if the Sovereign becomes very powerful like Sauron, this can become game-breaking. I mean, how many times can you count on defeating Sauron?

Maybe the Sovereign loses some of his powers (not just essence) upond being defeated as well?

The golbal spell doesn't really appear to be a good alternative to me because:

1. If you are strong in magic, just casting one more spell wouldn't be all that much of a trouble. It will just add one step to the original process.

2. If the above doesn't apply because the spell is very very expensive/difficult to obtain, then there will be big problems for those whose primary focus is not magic.

As for mopping up, I am just saying that it shouldn't be too much - no mopping up is simply not possible IMO. Hmm...this thing is more difficult than I originally thought it would be

Perhaps this should be an option that is chosen prior to the game, whether a resurrection spell is possible or not.  another option might b e a resurrection is possible but a death results in a loss of prestige and also a level or more, something that is sufficient to make dying a real penalty.  If death matters then there is a LOT more intensity to the game, more drama because it matters.  If it doesn't matter then it is boring.

Another related option might be like the one in Mount and Blade where one 'realistically' can not save the game prior to a battle.  In other words, you cannot refight battles to get the desired result and then save the game. 

My personal preference would be that death = game over. 

It is always a matter of balance. If death is too expensive, then you will never use your sovereign to fight. On the other hand if it is too cheap, then you might not care how dangerous the situation is for your sovereign and using a fighting sovereign is too powerful.

And as far as I know, you are supposed to have the choice to use your sovereign as a powerful unit.

No offense taken, GW Swicord, no worries. It's just a idea brother. I figure if enough people like one of the ideas then Stardock will take a serious look at it. Also to the contrary, if enough people say "Hey, no, I don't like that." I'm cool with that too. In the end the Game itself will benefit from having what the players want in it.

It's a Win/Win situation

That's one of our jobs as beta testers. To better the game and game experience. Not to whine and cry and moan like 12 year olds because our idea was shot down on the forums.

I like the MOM approach.  For those who haven't played it, if you have sufficient magic capability, a spell is cast which eventually brings you back (possibly to a dinky little village if that all he had left -- a tower would be created there automagically).  There is PLENTY of death-penalty because it takes a lot of mana, and you are without your spell caster for a long time.

There's a bit of mis-understanding above, thinking MOM & AOW:SM were the same.  In AOW:SM the wizard moved to another tower right away, if he had one.  So the only death-penaties were loss of a big city, and the advance requirement to have another city with an expensive tower.

Dev said that they want to let the player choose between a sovereign like sauron (big and powerfull) or like a simple human but multiple towns, a lot of servants etc.

So it would be hard to lose someone like Sauron, you would need to properly defend a "simple human" sovereign.

So the sov die = end game is a good idea. You have to make choices.

There should be only one way to prevent dieing : putting essence in an item (like Sauron ) then if you die, you have to succeed a quest where your heroes need to place your saved essence in a place where you can come back with only the essence saved (remember sauron's ring ?)

I wonder if there's something drugging the already-dopey AI in the FamilyTree workaround context. I've never been attacked by a troll and I don't think by another sovereign either. (I've seen them cruising around lots inside my lines-of-sight, but they never seem to do anything except collect the occasional random item.)

Do you mean auto-survey or the multi-turn move thing? I've never used auto-survey for my sovereigns and never had trouble getting dumped on a monster when I did a multi-turn move.