I think smaller death chance for lords is good. People have been complaining about even the 10% death rate, and even at that rate lords were dropping like flies. Even with the now lowered death chance I've had 2 enemy lords die in one battle (out of 3 total lords in battle), so it can still happen. If anything, if you want to make this low death chance justifiable, then make armor tiers actually impact death chance. So heavy armor (which lords are wearing) is very low death chance and maybe lower clan tiers which will have less effective armor will have higher death chances. Same principle could apply to regular troops, companions, and the player.
For what is suggested here (very high lord death chance), It would be very easy for the player to just ignore the lord's surrender pleas and still go in battle and simply kill them. Kill all lords win the game. Unless you make children age super fast (which would really break immersion), there is no chance this would work.
Even in battles with equal fighting power (which are easily winnable) a LOT of lords would die. At this point no lord would go over age 20.
Promoting less battles in a game about fighting where battles are pretty much the best thing we have, is a bit anti-climatic, even if it would make sense in some cases. At most, they should increase the attempt of surrendering when severely outnumbered and when severely outmatched (the more you beat on the same lord the more he learns and the more he is likely to surrender to you. The same way, if a lord beats you a lot (which will never happen let's be honest) but you outnumber him then he will be less likely to want to surrender.
Personally I like the finally lower death chance in battle. As long as it will happen between lord vs lord without player interaction as well (and it will, still, will be a rare occurance), that's good. You have the choice to execute a lord if you really want to so it's not like we're stuck fighting the same lord forever with no options presented to us.
