[Discuss] duchy system rework

[Robert Croson, Jr]

On 30 Mar 2008 at 15:05, jesseball at cox.net wrote:

> >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.

The "why not" is that you 've taken something that should be automatic and 
made it a manual process. Yet more pointless exercises for the user: "Uh oh, I 
have to log onto BattleMaster today and pay my taxes!" It's a rather 
meaningless manual exercise that automation can handle much better. As far as 
I can tell, there's no benefit whatsoever to making it a manual process.

We shouldn't be doing things just because we can, we should only be doing 
things that add to the game.

> >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.

You've lost me with this explanation. We're splitting each region up into mini-
realms and making a whole slew of new positions which we acknowledge will be 
completely ineffectual, just we can make a bunch of meaningless titles?

> >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.

Only to the point that the army sponsors let them be the realm's armies. If the 
sponsor staffs the army with people loyal to him, then it *is* his army. 

> 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.

All the marshal needs is the ability to give the army orders. He's the only one 
that can do so. So long as the army members are willing to follow his orders, it 
is the sponsor's army.

The question of who divides the spoils is a separate question, that really can't 
be addressed by just giving the spoilt to the person that sponsored the army. 
What if the sponsor is someone who can't hold a position, such as an infiltrator? 
Or if the sponsor is a region lord in a duchy that has no connection to that 
region?

> >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 think I've seen situations in almost all realms I am in where things could have 
easily gotten to this level, and probably would have, had the settings been 
available. It's not that the realm is falling apart, but that a couple lords are at 
odds with each other.

> 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.

Again, I'm not following you. I don't see how your statements lead to the 
conclusion that we'll have higher turnover. Other than perhaps you'll see people 
resigning in disgust over the idiocy of other people, and their complete lack of 
power to fix the situation. But that's really a *bad* thing, not a good thing. We 
don't want to alienate players, and make them feel powerless.

> >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. 

Under your system of each region having it's own army, your typical army size 
would scale down to 2, maybe three knights, max, with the exception of cities 
and rich townslands. You'd have a score of marshals each taking command of 
an army of one knight. "You line up on the left, I'll take the right, and we'll 
pretend to be in Delay and Wound formation!"

Your system of "one region/one army" completely breaks down. You simply 
cannot have a functional army of two knights. It just doesn't scale at all.

> 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.

I don't see that your system really offers that much to BattleMaster. It adds a 
lot of complexity, for a return of very little.


-- 
Rob

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a
humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner
of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
-- Carl Sagan




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