I'm... honestly not sure what else to call this topic, but here we are.

So what is it that I want "adjusted" or added? I want a way to be able to remove a lioness from my territory slots before she's 14 years old but still keeping her in the pride, or my pride dynasty.

As it stands right now, kings can be retired for free at the age of 15, but they also can be retired at any time before that for a fee of 10 GB. Lionesses, on the other hand, must be at least 14 years old (and not on the cub nursing cooldown!) in order to retire early, for a fee of 10 SB.

Now, the simplest solution would be to just... lower the early retirement age of lionesses from 14 to... well, something lower, but... There's already been suggestions regarding that (albeit, from what I saw, older ones that didn't get much attention), so I don't know that I should talk too much about that.

So if the retirement age doesn't get changed, I'd like to propose an alternative: A different set of slots for lionesses. Think something like the Grandpaws, except, maybe leave it open to more than just "old" lions? To which I have two different ideas for this:

1) Retiring before 14 years ages the lioness to 14.1 and makes her a "Grandmaw"
This would be in addition to this topic here. The idea here being akin to retiring a king early which would force-age him when he becomes a Grandpaw, but instead a lioness version. Once made a Grandmaw, the lioness could then be retired, or you could wait for her to pass on her own.

2) Rather than having slots forcing or implying old age, perhaps instead simply have "Mentor" slots? (or some other name)
- "Mentors" could be any age, as long as they were adults (or alternatively, perhaps a 3-8 year minimum age limit?).
- They would still need to be fed, played with, and would still age and eventually die.
- They would have their own slots (at least 1 by default--but you could buy more).
- But on the other hand, they cannot hunt and cannot breed, to make it fair.
- Potentially have a feature exclusive to them? Maybe something daily like the submale sparring?
- Both ideas could potentially be combined, allowing Mentors to be Grandmaws when they're 14, but... that might make it too complicated.
- Having Mentors would be entirely optional.
To avoid potential abuse of this, I'd think that maybe once a lioness is made a "Mentor", she couldn't be removed from it, or you'd have an hour or until next rollover to remove it, should you make a mistake? Alternatively, there'd be some sort of cooldown between adding/removing them?

You might ask, "Well, why would we want this?" For me, this came up because I have too many lionesses. Many are older (8-13) and many, genetically, I don't value as much as some of my younger lionesses. But I want them in my pride dynasty when they eventually pass because I'm sentimentally attached to them, or just like how they look, but don't want to breed them anymore. I just don't see the point of a lioness taking up territory slots when I don't want to breed her or send her out on hunts anymore, and just want her in my dynasty.

But I also thought: "If the retirement age doesn't change, why not make a separate use out of these non-breeding, non-hunting lionesses?" Perhaps they could:
- Like sparring, the bonuses below would only count for one Mentor. Extra Mentors do not give extra bonuses?
- Give a small, daily/weekly/monthly (and temporary?) boost to a random stat for your king? Like the Shaman Pit smoke in November, but the boost is a random stat and in some way smaller or less frequent?
- Give a small, temporary boost for the success of your hunters taking down bigger prey?
- Give an extra 1-2% to cub training for a single cub per week/month? Something not too frequent. Or increase the chance of cub training succeeding.
- Daily "motivational speech" that raises the chance of a single submale patrol coming back with either stats or an item (but only the chance, it wouldn't guarantee it)?
- Some other idea I can't think of right now
- Or maybe they'd just be like Grandpaws: Sit there, look pretty, eat your food, and give flavor texts.

In the end, I fully acknowledge that early early retirement, or the Grandmaws would be much simpler and easier to implement. And I'd be okay with that. As long as it affects lionesses younger than 14, which was the whole point of this post.

Aaaand this wound up way longer than intended. Sorry for that. Any thoughts on this would be great, though. For or against it, I'd like to hear what other people think.

(editted a 14 to a 14.1 instead, as I forgot lionesses can still breed when they're 14 years, 0 months exact)