New Estate System

[Chenier]

Seriously?

If that's what you think I've been saying, then you have not been listening. At all. For months.

The new penalties should be massively less severe than the current ones.  They will not make it impossible to hold a region with insufficient estate support without legions of courtiers stationed in the region. 

And you aren't paying attention to what I am saying. I'm not saying it won't be any more possible to take on additional regions. That, I recognize, it will be. What I am saying is that it won't make it any more desirable.

No, they will not make a region with no knights equivalent to a region with 8.  That would be stupid.

Did I say that? I don't believe I said that.

You managed to fixate on the least important part of his post by far.

It's not about colonies, Dominic.  It's about all kinds of expansion.  Colonies are just one kind of expansion.

Let me illustrate this for you with a brief example, because you seem unable to grasp it:

Current system:

Your realm has exactly enough nobles to provide 100% estate support to all 10 of its regions.  You want to take five more regions, so you try to attract more nobles to be able to staff them.  By the time you get half of these nobles, however, two other realms have already taken all five of the regions you wanted.  Your realm is frustrated by the stagnation and inability to do anything, and half the new nobles leave.

OR

You take the five regions, and install a Lord in each one.  You now have ~60% estate support in 2/3 of your regions, and your region stats start to slip.  You try to attract more nobles to staff these regions, and get a few, but the rest are still in trouble.  A month and a half later, two of the regions you took have gone rogue, along with two that you held before, and you're only four nobles up from where you were before.  The new nobles are frustrated that they came here, to a realm that was just expanding, and they can't actually do anything but maintenance.  Two of them, and three of your longtime nobles, leave.

New system:

You take five regions, put a Lord on each one, and have no problem keeping all 15 of your regions under control.  Sure, you don't get full gold out of all of them, but you're still taking in some more gold than you were before you took them, plus the extra food.  Over the next few weeks, you attract a few more nobles.  When each of them joins, he gets to take an estate on one of the 10 short-staffed regions, which gives him an instant decent income, and increases the overall income of your realm.  The general upward trend in the realm makes the old and new nobles alike feel good about its future, and new players who join are more likely to stick around, thus increasing its population and income further.

Are these contrived examples, meant to prove my point? Sure.

But I think that the gist of them is pretty accurate.

"Two other realms have already taken the five regions you wanted"? Seriously? When the hell does this happen? The only cases where I can imagine such a thing happening is on BT following invasions or on Dwilight. Because if they aren't rogue (such large number or rogue regions just aren't seen on stable continents), then to have them adjacent to both your realm, and another realm that would both be able to take it and have the will to take it... The scenario is just incredibly unlikely, unless you mean that you go to war against a realm with an ally that also neighbors it, and then the ally takes all of the regions of the enemy instead of you. In which case, I'd say it's just as much your fault if you get ripped off by your own ally... And even on BT and Dwi, having the regions taken from under your nose is likely a result of bad diplomacy, either by claiming/wanting too many regions or being bad at defending your interests in them. And even in these cases, it's quite rare to have all avenues of expansion cut off. I just don't see it happening. Please give me examples of this actually happening.

So instead of insisting that everything is doomed, the dev team is a bunch of morons who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper sack, and the only way to save BattleMaster from total imminent destruction is to let every realm control all the regions they want with no effort at all, why don't you shut the hell up and try out the changes when they arrive, and make your judgement then?

I didn't say you were all morons, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with what you are saying. And I did say I was keeping some reserves, but I most definitely will not wait until it is released to voice my concerns. Modifying updates per-release is a lot easier than modifying them post-release. Did I go saying the new system sucked? Please quote me if I did. What I did say is that what you and Tom have written, it sounds doubtful that the new estate systems will create significantly more interesting wars.

You ignore the fact that a larger realms has to run a lower tax rate, which pretty much eats away the gold benefit.

This is what I have been voicing concerns about.

Even then, you get more gold in this system since estates aren't tied to efficiency any more, which means you can just sell the surplus food and you'll come out ahead regardless.

That's a pretty big assumption.  I wouldn't think that the tax rate decrease required by taking an additional region would come close to offsetting the amount of gold you gain from taking it.

In fact, I'm nearly positive (haven't run the numbers, but don't feel like it's necessary) that under either the old or the new system, it wouldn't come close at all.

You say I complain without having seen the new system, but honestly, you are arguing while admitting that you don't know it any better. You are assuming just as much as we are. Run the tests, and then you can rub it in my face if you were right for all I care. In addition to realm size penalties, you must also consider distance from capital penalties, which are on average proportional to realm size. This of course stacks with the knightless tax tolerance penalty, and the wildlands tax collection penalty. You have *not* taken all of these penalties into consideration when doing your example. These penalties are very significant. Most of the regions part of Fheuv'n used to have big troubles if they tried running a 10% tax rate. They now all run 19% tax rates without problem. Size penalties *are* significant.

Saying that a 50% region increase will only generate a 15% income increase, perhaps as little as 5%, without taking all of these penalties into consideration, is cause for concern.

Again, I'm not saying you are stupid, but some change have had unintended consequences in the past due to how they interact with other mechanics. Takeovers having become considerably more difficult since pre-estates system is one example, and measures to help ease that have only been taken quite recently. Oversights happen, everybody does them now and then. That doesn't make them stupid. Please stop saying I'm calling you all stupid when I express concern that new features might have unintended effects when combined to existing mechanics.

Will the system be worse than the current one? I seriously doubt it. But after all this time, and after all that was said about the new system prior to these last few days, I expected it to be considerably better. Estates have been a burden to gameplay for years, I was hoping the new system would solve the problems of the former, mainly that it killed motivation for most wars of expansion. And notably, that it fix this problem for the vast majority of realms, and not just for certain realm that for specific reasons while most would not.

[De-Legro]

You say I complain without having seen the new system, but honestly, you are arguing while admitting that you don't know it any better. You are assuming just as much as we are.

Actually no you are wrong there. The devs have been running the changes on the Dev server for quite some time now, so apart from also being involved in in coding the damn thing I'm pretty sure he knows the proposed system and its specific implementation better. The fact he hasn't run the numbers on a specific scenario doesn't mean he doesn't have enough info to be a pretty good educated guess, where as we players are left with only the most basic info to try and peace things together.

I can see a case were it would would be detrimental to take another region, but such cases involve realms that are already very large. As Tom has said, the game still aims to give incentives for large realms to split up into smaller ones, so I would guess it designed to work that way.

[egamma]

Takeovers having become considerably more difficult since pre-estates system is one example, and measures to help ease that have only been taken quite recently.

The new estate system should make takeovers even easier--you don't have to find a knight. I guess that's the main point we've been trying to make--takeovers now require your realm to cough up one noble instead of two.

[fodder]

seriously..

do you even need a lord? or does a lordless region descend into chaos? (nevermind the smarties going around claiming empty regions, that doesn't count)

[JPierreD]

seriously..

do you even need a lord? or does a lordless region descend into chaos? (nevermind the smarties going around claiming empty regions, that doesn't count)

Right now the regions descend into chaos. I suppose in the new system a lord would still be required, but knights not so much.

[fodder]

currently region descend into chaos due to lack of estates. has anyone seen a region which has full estates cover but no lord? and does that go into chaos all on its own despite full estates coverage?

in future they don't go into chaos from lack of estates. which is why i'm asking, do lordless regions go into chaos for being lordless.

in short, if it doesn't, there's no reason why you can't take a region, stick a lord up there to set some auto sell thing for food (that works when no lord is around?), then move on to another region whilst it goes lordless. banker gets (a bit of) gold? other regions get food.


or does the duke get income from lordless regions?

[Anaris]

Not really a big assumption. If the region forces a 1% drop in tax rate all around, that can easily add up to eating away any gain the region provides. Especially true if you have big cities(1% drop is easily 100 gold lost in such cases, add the other regions and you quickly eat away any gain from a normal rural region).

Do you see that happening now?

Because the tax penalties to large realms aren't getting changed.  So if you don't see that happening now, you're not likely to see it happening under the new estate system, either.

[Anaris]

Will the system be worse than the current one? I seriously doubt it. But after all this time, and after all that was said about the new system prior to these last few days, I expected it to be considerably better. Estates have been a burden to gameplay for years, I was hoping the new system would solve the problems of the former, mainly that it killed motivation for most wars of expansion. And notably, that it fix this problem for the vast majority of realms, and not just for certain realm that for specific reasons while most would not.

And, as I think I said before, one of the most important aspects of the new estate system is that it will provide us with much simpler and more powerful levers to lean on if things seem to be going poorly.

If it seems like people aren't getting enough gold from newly-taken regions due to large-realm tax penalties...increase the % of gold you get from wild lands!

If it seems like lords are hoarding estates all for themselves...increase inefficiency penalties!

If it seems like all the knights are clustering in cities...adjust the balance of estate requirements between cities and rurals!

We fully expect to be watching all these things over the months after the new system goes live, and making any tweaks that seem necessary.  But the new system should allow us to make those tweaks.

[LilWolf]

Do you see that happening now?

Because the tax penalties to large realms aren't getting changed.  So if you don't see that happening now, you're not likely to see it happening under the new estate system, either.

I do. Most recently in Thalmarkin, though the regions we took were so rich it didn't actually hurt overall, but had the regions been rural regions, the story might have been different all together. Certainly made the duke of Unger a bit unhappy since he lost hundreds of gold in income personally  :P

[Anaris]

I do. Most recently in Thalmarkin, though the regions we took were so rich it didn't actually hurt overall, but had the regions been rural regions, the story might have been different all together. Certainly made the duke of Unger a bit unhappy since he lost hundreds of gold in income personally  :P

You sure that didn't have anything to do with Dominic's secession?

[Lorgan]

I do. Most recently in Thalmarkin, though the regions we took were so rich it didn't actually hurt overall, but had the regions been rural regions, the story might have been different all together. Certainly made the duke of Unger a bit unhappy since he lost hundreds of gold in income personally  :P

Well, it was a combination of less estate coverage and realm growth but it did result in having to drop the tax rate 5%, which meant 500 gold less indeed. My personal income actually increased since I don't need to pay 15 knights anymore. But I was indeed quite surprised that it affected the tax tolerance that drastically.

My biggest fear for the new estate system is that it will reduce the benefits that having lots of estate coverage do for the tax rate you can run. I like me lots of knights and lots of gold. :)

[Lorgan]

You sure that didn't have anything to do with Dominic's secession?

I think we took Vore before Rio declared war and Chénier seceded. I might be wrong though.

[Indirik]

Well, it was a combination of less estate coverage and realm growth but it did result in having to drop the tax rate 5%, which meant 500 gold less indeed.

Gaining a region or two will not change your acceptable tax rate by 5%. Not by any means. If you had to drop your taxes by 5%, then something else caused. Probably a combination of effects. But it was not all from gaining a region or 2.

[Shenron]

So.... around when is this thing gonna be implemented?  :P :P

[Norrel]

So.... around when is this thing gonna be implemented?  :P :P

I believe they said in the 1-9 weeks range.. About 2 weeks ago, ish? So any day now, I'm guessing.