Unnaturally Long Reign

[dragoon9105]

Ugh, This bothers me. Old people arent scared of technology, they are scared of social progress, not technological.

 

[Audoucet]

Ugh, This bothers me. Old people arent scared of technology, they are scared of social progress, not technological.

I'm not talking about old people being scared, I'm referring to immortal people having a hard time adapting to modernity. And nobody is scared of "social progress".

 

[Widowmaker94]

My immortal character died and I lost my game because I got careless with inheritance once I no longer needed to keep track of it.

But even my immortal character's reign was not the longest of any character I played. One character whose name is lost to the mists of time that I played lived to be 89. (Before Way of Life, and with no positive health traits; not strong, not a military education.) He inherited at the age of 1 from his maimed father and ruled for 87 years. The long reign penalty was absurd, but I think well-deserved. I don't see the need to cap a long-reign penalty as long as your character could still feasibly be alive. (Say, up to age 120, which the Bible states is the longest any human being can live.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_(ancestor_of_Noah)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salah_(biblical_figure)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peleg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac

You could claim to have the antediluvian lifespans back. And if you're a prestigious, just, and successful crusading ruler? You could probably pull it off. Blessed by God.

Or with Jews just get the Messiah trait, and be proclaimed blessed by Adonai.

 

[marko river]

Now I remember: I read a novel from Heinlein called Methuselah's Children and it's about group of people who simply live long but hide scared of how people may react. So in future when mankind is ready to leave Sol system, they think people might be opened minded enough to accept this simple difference and naturally it backfires. So they escape Earth and come back after a while to find that their case started people into serious longevity research with success, so now they are able to accept it. In general people might accept given time, but short-term reaction is envy and hate, violence included.

Oh, and what I liked the most about his idea of longevity is that 150 years old but still young people are not ultra smart people, full of knowledge and experience. They just live long, but long gone memories mostly fade and skills can't be improved without limits, so they are more or less same as normal people, some are smart and some are not. I liked that approach very much, you would always assume immortals would be something special.

 

[NakedBeast]

Regardless of how religions theoretically consider immortality, I am willing to bet that the first, and most likely only, thing that would come to a religious head's mind should they actually discover an immortal is "This one is a threat".
At best, it's a potential, very concrete new god that is messing with the existing pantheon.
At worst, it's an unnatural demonic creature and the personification of all evil.

Hence, all religious institutions would go nuts as a consequence of knee-jerk defensive reactions by their heads. In slightly different ways maybe, but they all go nuts at least initially. This is valid nowadays the same as 700DC, I don't imagine any difference except a bit more actual skepticism in the first case.

Unreformed pagans might be the only ones among which your discovered immortal is not immediately touted as something bad, just because there's no head of religion that can do that. There it would likely be a matter of whether the immortal is a foreigner or not, and her previous reputation as a human.

Yes, yes, but what when YOU, the immortal is a head of religion?

 

[Metal_Izanagi]

I just think people should quit trying to justify nerfing everything under the sun. It stopped being amusing a few expansions ago.

 

[General Karthos]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_(ancestor_of_Noah)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salah_(biblical_figure)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eber
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peleg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac

You could claim to have the antediluvian lifespans back. And if you're a prestigious, just, and successful crusading ruler? You could probably pull it off. Blessed by God.

Or with Jews just get the Messiah trait, and be proclaimed blessed by Adonai.

I should really have checked the translation. My bible Genesis 6:3 has God declaring that nobody shall live longer than 120 years. Turns out that is a mistranslation. God isn't declaring that nobody shall live longer than 120 years. He's declaring that in 120 years he will take vengeance on the world. (The flood.)

 

[Duuk]

I like the idea of being declared an enemy of (the) God(s). Allowing Holy Wars against a God-King seems like something that would naturally occur.

 

[Caspoi]

I like the idea of being declared an enemy of (the) God(s). Allowing Holy Wars against a God-King seems like something that would naturally occur.

That sounds like heresy to me, they also allow holy wars between themselves and the main religion.

 

[General Karthos]

What I would really like to see is the possibility of a "grail quest" for characters who are crusaders in Jersualem AND True Christian Knights. Who could perhaps recover the grail and gain eternal life in a truly Christian fashion.

I am ALMOST CERTAIN that some knights of my Kingdom once recovered the Holy Grail and it gave a HUGE piety boon to my ruler and his descendants (though no immortality), but I can't swear to that fact.... This was after Sons of Abraham came out, I think.

 

[Zingzing Jr.]

An opinion modifier would be too mild and dry of a consequence for immortality.

We need quest chains where the rest of the world eventually picks up on your being "unnatural" and reacts accordingly...most if not all religious institution should go nuts, and nobles and commoners alike should become very very wary beyond opinion. Not to mention jealous.

We'd also get options to avoid or forestall this, of course. Disguising to appear old while still viable, then eventually faking our own death and letting our heir inherit, only to murder and disguise as her to keep ruling...while we keep pulling it off, the world goes on as normal, but if we are discovered, all hell breaks loose.
Or maybe we might want to skip this entirely, publicly proclaiming ourselves gods by virtue of immortality and fighting anyone who says otherwise.

So many possibilities...

This. This would be amazing.

 

[Zingzing Jr.]

Rework the way the long reign bonus works by having it count up individually on a per-vassal basis, representing the working relationship the vassal and liege have developed over the years. This would make it reset on the death/overthrow/whatever of either the liege OR the vassal, and thus immortality stops being a problem (Unless your vassals also become immortal somehow). As an added bonus, it would make the game harder for all the people whining that the game has become too easy. Now even 50 years into your reign, you'll have to deal with new upstart dukes who don/t respect you, rather than the current system where some 16 year old kid gives you +opinion for things happening before his birth.

In my opinion, some of the bonus should carry over as a "everybody respects this person therefore I should too"