[Discuss] duchy system rework

[jesseball at cox.net]

>We don't give nobles the option of not paying wealth taxes. Why should it be 
any different with region-to-duchy taxes? If they don't like the tax rate, they 
can join another duchy. 

RESPONSE: Why not? The option to not do what is required should always be there. It is not what a person should do but what they can get away with. Authority is held by force by punishment, not arbitrary and concrete restrictions.

>Yes, I suppose you *could* do it with a lord and two knights, but it's 
pointless. 
Why have a ruler, a general, a judge, a banker, and a marshal all to run a mini- 
realm with three nobles? I really don't see that it adds anything at all to the 
game. Just a bunch of needless complexity that makes it that much harder for 
someone to play the game on a casual level. 

RESPONSE: The very reason is simplicity. If every region has the 4 positions, there is no criteria for determining which ones deserve them.  The actual effectiveness of the position need not even be so. There are plenty of examples of meaningless titles that are only status symbols. The point is that in some cases, they are useful, likely in many cases.

>Actually, this is not true. The realm itself does not have any armies. The army 
sponsors have armies, run by the marshals they appoint.  If the army sponsor 
wants his army to do soemthing, all he needs to do is tell the marshal to do it.

RESPONSE: On the surface that is true. In reality they are realm armies. All of the game mechanics assume this. When an army(or TL in reality) TOs a region, it becomes the ruler's instead of the lord who's army TOed it. Whether an army engages in battle also relies upon realm diplomacy.  Sponcers only manage armies, and marshals only get red paper and line setting options; the army is still a national army.

>I really don't see the point or the necessity to have intra-realm fighting and 
conflict this far down. There's plenty of political infighting that can be done 
without the need to worry about which regoin you can or can't go in because 
Lord X hates Lord Z, and your lord is friendly to Lord Z, so Lord X has told his 
militia to attack your lord's forces... It's just a mess for a person to have to 
try 
and comprehend. 

RESPONSE: Indeed when in practice that is complicated. However such a state shows severe realm duress. I would not assume such a state would be common on a large level for any length of time, but when it is it would be interesting. This kind of system would alleviate the low turnover problem plaguing BM, as well as undermine the nationalistic loyalty that is so concrete in modern thinking, that does not fit BM.

War in the middle ages was very opportunistic and lords usually did not hesitate to take a fellow countryman's holdings, especially if they hated them. There is a quote of a lesser lord complaining of his plight. He said he could not travel a mile without his armor and was completely dependent on his 'prince' for protection that was fickle at best. 

>While this might make a good system for a game, I don't think BattleMaster is 
it. For it to work on anything other than a token level, you would really need a 
lot of nobles per region. If even the smallest regions had 10-12 nobles then 
this 
might work. With the average non-townsland/city region having 2-3 knights, the 
system doesn't seem scaled to the level of what we have. 

RESPONSE: I am not so concerned with region population. The scale of BM is often defined by army size. This system would certainly scale that down and meet it's own scale requirements that way. 

I agree it is a huge undertaking, possibly only fit for war 2.0(admitting, I have little knowledge of what war 2.0 is) I know this system can work, because it has in other games like Crusader Kings. I also know BM is not CS, in both spirit and functionality. I just know that BM has a lot of walls that it could do without.


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