Quick quiz, how many elite athletes do you know that are between 35-40? Take if from someone that has served in the military, even by 30 your body starts to tell you that your best days for combat are past.
our chars are not athletes. they command troops rather than being ordinary "expendable" soldiers in the army.
if we would insist on background in that respect, that is ok.
if we say character peak years are 23-25, that is also ok. but than, game mechanics should allow that we are able to reach max skills at that age, which is far from being the case. moreover, hours reduction should begin, for instance, dropping to 7 hours per turn after age of 20, dropping to 6 hours after age of 35. than reference to realistic background should be established.
even more, most of heroes should die at 25-30.
if all that would be done, we would be consequent and say - whoever runs his char with over 40 has to accept that such char is extremely unhealthy man.
curently, one of my chars reached bright peaks of leadership skills at his 40. due to some ic circumstance, he lead archer troop most of his life, was commanding army much, and his skil is exceptional. however, he is seriously wounded in say 4 of 5 battles, always staying out of thing for 2 or 3 days, most of time being only wounded in the army, always him. apparently the same experience which allowed him to reach very high skill, "gifted" him very bad health, so tha way he is actually discouraged to be ambitious at all - being unskilled is still much less boring than laying wounded all the time.
do we want players to be discouraged to have any ambition as they will learn - the more ambitious they are, the more they will suffer, so it is better that they are passive and silent.
even more, if we want to announce that 25 is character's peak, should the whole game be designed so that people have opportunity to reach their actual peak in reputation, recognition among other nobles, titles and positions by that age? i feel that would need incredibly comprehensive rebalancing.
i believe that i was able to express some points - that health should simply be balanced with other opportunities characters have during their career. having health peak unrelated with other character peaks creates some awkward situation rather than balance - people in power and position are constantly laying wounded around.
it is likely the most visible on ec, warring continent - i frequently see that, after big battle, rulers, generals and marshals of both sided are the ones who most frequently stay wounded.
at the end, what is purpose of skill than? if someone has high sword skill, commanding infantry troop, should that skill help him to avoid wounds? Wounding on battlefield should logically be more related to skill than to age.
poisioning, getting sickness would be another story, but we do not have such concepts. if we would put plague out of middle age statistics, average age would be dramatically changed, and that is not related to warring.
