Voting for Your Favorite Feature

[DamnTaffer]

That much is obvious, any realm thinks like that.  My point was the logic behind "use your family wealth" to buy Unique Items is flawed.

Please elaborate why? It is your own personal and family wealth it should be spent either enriching the land or faming the family though purchases of art?

[Indirik]

So then Aurvandil wouldn't mind if nobles send their tax gold home to enrich their families?

[Anaris]

being given gold to recruit troops

If you're just handing out gold manually, you can make that argument.

If your nobles are getting gold through their estates, then it's not "being given gold to recruit troops." That gold is theirs, to do with as they wish.

The realm may prefer for them to use it to recruit troops, but there's absolutely no problem with them spending it on statues, sending it to their families, or just frittering it away on drinks at tournaments (the ultimate in throwing money away in BM! ;D ).

[Lanyon]

Where does it say that that gold is theirs to do whatever they want with it?

[Zakilevo]

Where does it say that that gold is theirs to do whatever they want with it?

Uh... I thought it was common sense? Lords are paying their knights for their loyalty and service. You can't order your knights to use their money as you see fit. It is theirs as they rightfully own it.

[Penchant]

Where does it say that that gold is theirs to do whatever they want with it?

The lord of Bolgar has assigned Marka (12 % of the region) to your estate, making you the master of 1152 peasants.

leaving you with 41 gold of personal income

Thats just from the estate page but I can likely find more if needed. Important parts to prove my point were highlighted. Also, the numbers themselves are not important.

Edit: just to note, it was mentioned on the pro-control side about spending gold on vanity and then requesting gold for troops, I don't think anyone is trying to argue that's ok.

[Indirik]

The gold a knight is the knight's gold to do with as they will. That should be blatantly obvious. If it was intended that the realm would determine what the gold is spent on, then the gold would be given to the realm.

Having said that, the knight does need to meet his obligations to his lord. If that includes fielding troops, then he better field some troops. If he's spending lots of gold at the academy, or buying items, and not fielding troops, then he has some explaining to do. But if he is fielding the required troops, and meeting all his obligations, then I don't see why he can't use his extra gold to buy some other stuff, too.

[Gustav Kuriga]

You can't force a knight to use his gold as you wish. However, you can kick him off his estate if he does not do what you want, since you're lord of that region.

[Anaris]

Lords are paying their knights for their loyalty and service.

This is true.

It is theirs as they rightfully own it.

This is also true.

You can't order your knights to use their money as you see fit.

This is not.

There is no inalienable right to be able to do what you want with your gold. If the realm as a whole desires, it's absolutely within the rules and the spirit of the game for them to be able to order nobles to use their gold only for the good of the realm, however they choose to define that. They may banish people who refuse, and the Titans and Magistrates cannot punish them for it.

However, this type of play is discouraged. It's good to have the realm be a team, but it's bad to have the individual noble's desires and interests not matter at all. BattleMaster is not StarCraft; the people in charge of the realm are not supposed to just be directing the movements of everyone in their realm absolutely and without question. The Titans and Magistrates may not be able to punish the leaders of the realm for enforcing this sort of "the realm is everything; worship the realm" play style, but the players in the realm absolutely can. That is exactly what the protest and rebellion mechanics are for. And if there aren't enough players in the realm to pull off a protest campaign or a rebellion, then most likely, there are enough players in the realm who at least accept the absolute-team style for it to be acceptable to us.

While I haven't done a poll, I believe I can say with reasonable confidence that the overall opinion of the dev team is that a solid balance of these two extremes (absolute team play vs absolute individual freedom), perhaps with just a little more of the team than the individual being emphasized, is where the maximum fun for the maximum number lies.

[Lanyon]

But Anaris..what about SMA? Wouldn't it be blatanlty obvious that during war time things like monuments and other superficial items would be frowned upon. Now this isn't an excuse for peace time granted, but well aurvandil won't be seeing peace for a while probably.

[Perth]

Good Lord, Aurvandil is freaking weird.

It's like a completely different game down there.

They're all playing the WoW Team PvP version of Battlemaster while we're all just sitting around playing Battlemaster Lite on our phones on the bus ride home to kill time.

[Lanyon]

Well you sure got the team part right. Weird? I don't think so. Every interaction I've had has been kind. We're well informed about the state of things. I think a big part of the strictness of the military is we don't feel like getting bullied by SA like the rest of dwilight can/is.

[Bedwyr]

But Anaris..what about SMA? Wouldn't it be blatanlty obvious that during war time things like monuments and other superficial items would be frowned upon.

Depends on the war.  If, for instance, you were a lord, and didn't like the war, and wanted to show that you didn't like it in some public way, spending a whole lot of gold on non-war related things would be a good way of doing that.  As a for instance, when Arcaea was getting hammered on a defensive war, the Council and such tried to see that every piece of gold was going to a war effort.  If we were attacking someone else, or were in a reasonable position otherwise, then so long as people were fielding reasonable forces or supplying gold in lieu of troops, then if they wanted to (as a for-instance) found guilds for historical societies, that was fine.

[Anaris]

But Anaris..what about SMA? Wouldn't it be blatanlty obvious that during war time things like monuments and other superficial items would be frowned upon. Now this isn't an excuse for peace time granted, but well aurvandil won't be seeing peace for a while probably.

Ah...no. No, no, no. Very no.

You've got to remember, in the real medieval period, the idea of a "realm" as a true unified nation just didn't exist. There were so many more personal agendas and conflicting loyalties, and so much more politicking that had to be done just to convince any given Lord to bring his knights to the war, that it barely resembles even the most rigorous roleplaying of it today.

If you want to get picky about SMA, a knight's right to build a monument to who or whatever he pleased would probably be just about as strong as his duty to provide troops to his liege-lord when called upon in time of war. He'd almost be expected to be trying to either promote himself, or curry favour with whoever he was building the monument to.

No, Lanyon; sorry to break it to you, but the kind of unity that Aurvandil displays is, at best, just barely within the bounds of what could be considered "acceptable" under SMA, and at times I would say it definitely strays over them. It's definitely not the kind of behaviour that one would expect under SMA.

[Perth]

I think a big part of the strictness of the military is we don't feel like getting bullied by SA like the rest of dwilight can/is.

Errm... yeah. Gotta watch out for those SA Theocracies like Barca and Terran, man! Don't let them bully you!