Quote Originally Posted by gapinglotus
This is incorrect. In my last XL game as the English I regularly had generals dying of old age.
This is correct. (I suspect Phil may have been thinking of vanilla MTW, in which generals always live forever -- it wasn't until Viking Invasion came out that generals were finally made mortal.)

Still, generals dying in MTW/VI doesn't matter a whole lot, as their "successor" will have the same abilities (command, dread, etc.) and vices/virtues as the guy who just died. You can, however, change this if you play with the "green generals" code.