On Sovereign handling :

Escaping when defending, and not when attacking, will eventually lead to a game that is not balanced.

I like the "heir solution" mentioned before. Your sovereign dies, his son/daughter/mutant weirdo baby takes over, with no experience.

Or, maybe you can use a system a la Dominions 3 :

1 - Your sovereign should always be necessary, be it for research reasons, resource reasons, or fighting reasons. You can't win a dominions game without your god carrying research, researching magic or fighting ; perhaps it should be the same in elemental. It gives a really strong emphasis on role play and allows the player to really care for his god/sovereign.

2 - When he dies, it takes many turns and resources to resurrect him, leaving you weaker and unable to attack or defend properly during the time he's getting resurrected ; or leaving you with a hole in your production or research, because, well, he's not there anymore to work.

I think this would be enough for players to care about their sovereign, and be strongly hurt when he dies ; but it wouldn't be "game over". A dead sovereign should never mean the end of the game, because this wont allow players to use them to their fullest potential. And i think most players want to use them a lot, actively, they want to be able to attempt dangerous strategies that would not automatically lead to "game over" if failed, but that would strongly penalize them.

Sovereign Losing -  How about linking it to city Prestige (a historical linkage)?  You lose a battle with your soveriegn and take a hit out of your territory influence.  Perhaps at a certain point of loss you start losing cities or they become neutral.  Conversely winning big battles should enhance your prestige.

I'd probably stay away from the Sovereign dying (it is a Hero game, and the Hero always gets away) and just punish you for losing the battle. 

As for endgame Sovereign killing (ie. you don't want them killed early on to prevent simple Sovereign Gank strategies), make a spell that allows you to destroy the Sov's mana based on destroying/corrupting his cities.  Or a corruption spell that is mitigated by how many cities you control.  So you have a way to finish off the lone wolf Sov's in the mid to late game without making them the sole goal of early game.

Ren

I think you might be onto something here.

I would like the escape counter to be calculated like this;

Sovereign defending (+1)

Sovereign is in a town with an escape tunnel (+1)

Sovereign is within his own borders (+1), enemy borders (-1)

Sovereign's Army is out numbered (-1) [With an additional -1 per order of magnitude]

Sovereign's Army is out classed (-1) [With an additional -1 per order of magnitude]

Sovereign currently has Camouflage or Speed cast on himself (+1 per)

Sovereign is currently affected by Slow, Enemy Sight, or Bind(-1 per)

Etc...

If the Escape counter is >= 0 (or if he knows a teleport spell) then at the start of the battle the Sovereign should have the option to flee. If he does he re-appears in the nearest friendly town in X turns (however long it would take him to get there using his best movement).

If the Sovereign should decide to fight, they would then have the option to Flee whenever it is his action (The Sovereign unit) if the current escape counter allows it.

I feel that this would allow for more flexibility and less 'suicide Sovereign defensive stands'.

Sammual

UI  - You are going to need a Unit Upkeep Cost, or some way of easily seeing how your finances are doing (+ and -) on the main screen. Maybe a projected next turn Gain/loss and then if you hover over it, a general breakdown of expenses and income.

Ren

On a couple of points...

I think that Frogboy has violated his own golden rule of sovereign death = game over.  What I mean is this: a sovereign entering battle, losing, and then escaping to safety is mechanically the exact same thing as a sovereign losing a battle, dying, and being ressurected successfully, which a lot of people have been shouting is "NON-NEGOTIABLE!!"  The difference is that it is thematically easier to ping penalties to a sovereign that is defeated and ressurrected than it is to a sovereign that manages to slink away from a battle in women's clothing, and that seems to be the major issue of contention now.   

I think perhaps Frogboy should repeal his decree that a sovereign's first death on the battlefield = game over, because it's getting in the way of some mechanics that would be far more useful and far more coherant in addressing the problem of the sovereign's role on the battlefield than evasion scores or guarenteed escapes.

I like that your sovereign's defeat shouldn't be a game over, on offence OR defence. I would prefer a system in which:

-An attacking soveriegn if defeated he is severely wounded, and out of action for a number of turns based on how badly he is defeated on the field of battle. This would put a severe hurt on your nation for as long as he is out of commision. Make the morale of the nation drop during this time, too.

-A defending soveriegn if defeated in battle, he should be possibly injured or possible he should have to pay some kind of high price in either mana or gold. I'm not sure. Something not as severe as losing while attacking.

I think the sovereign falling should be serious, but I also don't think him dying should be an instant game over. Maybe a research option that ties your soveriegn's life to a plylactery, so he can't really die unless it's destroyed.

One idea that is a relatively simple combining of some of the previously suggested ideas is this:

1) If you are within your own borders, use Brad's suggested mechanic (if you attack with your sovereign and lose, the sovereign dies, but if your sovereign is attacked and you lose, he escapes to the nearest city).

2) If you are outside of your own borders, your sovereign always dies in a lost combat (whether you are the attacker or defender).

With such a system, a defensive player can keep the sovereign within his kingdom, provide city bonuses, etc. without having to worry about the sovereign being picked off.  However, the moment you decide to use your sovereign aggressively (either to make an attack or to move him outside your borders), then you face the risk of your sovereign's death.

One of the early ideas behind the game is that the sovereign can be managed differently to match different play styles. As I recall, there were playstyle examples a la Lord of the Rings. For example, you could build a powerful warrior sovereign like Sauron, or you could chose to go the Morgoth route and spend essence giving yourself more powerful minions.

Clearly, the nature and severity of the Sovereign Death penalty will dramatically impact which style dominates. For example, if any death means game over, then most sovereigns will cower at home. That seems like a major loss in strategic diversity.

In my view, all systems that allow tweaking have a big advantage here. It allows Stardock (or modders, or whatnot) to adjust the penalty to balance gameplay.

To expand upon the idea I posted on this thread this morning;

Ideas on Sovereign vulnerability –

IMO the Sovereign should be like a cross between the King & Queen in chess e.g. the most powerful piece you have at least potentially, but a piece that needs to be guarded because lose it and the game is over.

With this in mind here are my suggestions;-

In the early game the monarch should be more than a match for a reasonable size group of staring units and should get a big bonus when in one of his own cities. This will stop quick raids in the early game

At an essence cost the sovereign should be able to build reliquarys in their cities to which their soul will flee if they are every killed. While in a reliquary a sovereign cannot cast most spells or move around if the reliquary is destroyed while they are in it and there is no other available to jump to game over.

There should be various ways to escape  a reliquary and get properly back into play;

1.)    Spend 5 essence to create a new body for your Soverign from scratch (if you have enough essence).

2.)    Posses a member of their family, this takes that family member out of play but brings the Sovereign back in having taken over their body.

3.)    Ravage the land. The Sovereign without 5 essence can reform his body without possessing a relative or if he has none left by ripping the life from the land killing the city the Reliquary is in but restoring them to life.

Maybe the sovereign should have to research these options as tech or as spell as well, since how early to research them could become part of strategy.

I agree but would add I would prefer that the behavior be consistent on attack or defense.  If there is a stiff penalty why should it be different if I attack or defend?  I think you are doing this to stop the player from abusing the sovereign but a stiff penalty accomplishes the same thing.  The best penalty in my opinion is to lose access to your sovereign and therefor spell research for a time.  Maybe make it a long time but be able to speed it up by spending mana, something like that.  Having different rules on attack and defense just doesn't make logical sense to me and is the main reason I don't like it.  Also it might be confusing to new players.

As for sovereign death it should be possible but pretty hard to do in my opinion.  Something like he would have to be killed in his capital (or whereever he escapes to after fleeing) or have no wizard towers or something similar as others have suggested.

One other suggestion, how about you're allowed 1 free life only. Not free, you become weakened...(different art) and the game carries on. Requiring a lengthy spell to restore yourself (taking your character out of action for say 20 turns?

On the sovereign issue:

The idea of soveriegn death = game over seems a bit harsh to me. It should definetly be a disadvantage to lose your soveriegn, but losing the game over 1 battle doesn't seem like much fun. What if when your soveriegn dies, his heirs split the kingdom and you resume the game as on of the heirs? As an heir you would have to fight to reunite the kingdom while trying to fend off enemies of the empire at the same time. The heir could also still wield a limited number of spells to begin with, and would have to complete a quest line just to catch up to the power the original soveriegn wielded.

On Caravans:

The only way I can justify that these are units on the map is if they are actually carrying resources that can be raided. If they cannot be captured, or if their only resource is gold, that's cheap and they might as well just make it what an earlier poster said about hiding the caravans into the road and any enemy army on the road would be "raiding" the supply route.

I would like to see some ideas from the RTS genre cross over as well with the resource model (e.g. have us secure a source of wood to build with in addition to just a gold cost for buildings and units) A trade route management system would be vital to the success of your empire.