No, Chénier, these are not "new penalties": these are replacing the penalties for lack of estates.
Furthermore, there is no increase in the penalties for running higher tax rates if you have fewer knights. Tom just meant (unless he's changed something dramatic without telling us) that you'd need at least a lord and a knight to be able to run what you would consider an acceptable rate when averaged over the whole region.
So the only thing you lose by having just a lord in the region with his estate, rather than 2-4 knights with estates, is the extra income that they could generate from their estates.
As opposed to now, where having insufficient estate coverage means your region slides slowly (or, depending on just how insufficient it is, quickly) into ruin.
New penalties that replace the old ones. You are arguing that it won't be worse than what we currently have, that it will be basically equivalent,
I thought the consensus was that what we currently have is bad, because people already hold out on expansion. What's the difference if that's because of lowered income instead of increased unrest, if as you seem to say the end result is the same? We are currently hammering people with harsh TMP mechanics *because* we have taken away their incentives to go to war with the old estate system. The new estate system doesn't seem like it will change the fundamental problem the old one had. It'll be much more possible to expand now, but this changes little if its not any more desirable to do so.
Let's also not forget the (in my mind) most important difference.
Right now, if you want to do some serious expansion or a colony, you have to gather all the nobles first with promises of future benefits if you are successful, which is extraordinarily difficult.
Under the new system, you can seriously expand or colonize and then send word out that people who join will get benefits right away. Being able to expand and then fill your noble numbers will help a lot, I think.
While this is true, most wars aren't for the creation of colonies. And if you get all of the lords in place before the would-be colonists join, then you will have some troubles forming the colony, as the lords might want to remain in the realm, and many people would likely not want to see these regions taken from loyal lords to be given to whatever new opportunists show up. One of the advantages of having to recruit people before a colony is that you get to know them, and therefore get some assurances that the new realm will not backstab you on the next day.
And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that great promotion opportunities suddenly create a large flux of nobles. Noble mobility is relatively small, most are attached to their realm and/or continent. The only time you get significant mobility rates are when a realm dies, but if you are the one doing the killing, these nationless nobles aren't likely to be friendly to your cause.
