I believe you should mean what the game mechanics say.
When you are at war, you mean to battle as enemies.
When you conduct takeovers, you mean to take over a region under your own flag.
When you appoint a lord, you mean to grant the lord the land under oath.
This is what I believe to be true and a result of "Game mechanics trump RP". Whether it is enforcible or even should be strictly enforced is beside my point.
The problem with game mechanics trumping RP is that game mechanics are too limiting. There is no function to install an interim lord, establish a line of succession, commit an occupation, depose lords, effectively punish nobles, run an empire the way the lurias want to roleplay themselves, family estates are indestructable, torturing nobles doesn't injure them (and its somehow powergaming to rp that they should be), advys whom leave there home nations become outlaws where as migrant peasants do not, assassinations don't kill, the combat AI is poor and so forth but all this is to be EXPECTED from a RP based game because its not viable for Tom to code for every action a noble would want to take so as a RPing character you should use the most mechanically accurate option available to you to ascertain the desired roleplay results otherwise your just working the system and not your character.
Think of it this way when a lawman in 12 century England wants to arrest someone do they:
A) Arrest them
B) Request the realms judge ban them, then after giving them 3 days to hide or flee the country attempt to arrest them
Once they have arrested there victim and they've been decided guilty do they:
A) Punish them by the relevant officials choice of execution, exile, jail time, removal of limb, witch hunt where the defendants estate, belongings, staff and family can all be purged or anything else the judge thinks of
B) Nothing but fine or ban them
The battlemaster answers are both B, where as real life and accurate roleplay as would be expected in an SMA atmosphere is most certainly A, where as you might play by the mechanics I'd like my characters life to make actual sense. IF you roleplayed burning my family home to the ground, I'd most certainly not complain, even though the mechanics are not available, I would also not complain if you roleplayed torturing my character and leaving him mutilated.
Yeah, but I didn't trash his house and commandeer a wing of it for myself.
That metaphor is wrong, its more like holding him in a painful armlock and giving him oportunity to surrender
