Knight and Lord Relationship

[Zakilevo]

What I've noticed after the implementation of the current estate system is that not many lords seem to care about having knights anymore.

As everyone starts as a knight, I think it is important for lords and knights to be close to each other. Is there anyway to encourage lords to care more about their knights?

[Perth]

I agree, but it's hard to do. Especially since most Knights are either new people who are quiet, or don't stick around very long because they move on up the ranks.

[Tom]

Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.

[vonGenf]

Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.

No, you don't. You get a perfectly efficient estate for yourself, plus 50% of the unoccupied estates and wild lands. If a knight takes that estate, then that 50% goes to them (minus taxes).

That being said, I have yet to see new players unable to secure an estate. The main reason there are many regions without knights is that estates from cities often provide more gold, and since covering a region is no longer needed to keep control, then people do not feel the need to sacrifice gold for the sake of having at least one knight per region.

[Norrel]

Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.

There's a difference between total income and personal income. Knights decrease personal income, sometimes enormously.

[fodder]

unless you whack the lord's share up enough to make no difference. but would knights take it up.... if resulting income is too low?

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there are other reasons to have knights... some elections favour lords with lots of knights.

equally.. you might choose to have a couple of rich as opposed to having a ton of poor knights.

[Anaris]

This is a problem we talked about while fine-tuning the new estates, Tom.

Basically, there's no personal incentive for a Lord to add knights to his region. There's an incentive to the realm—greater total realm income—but the Lord will get less money with knights than he will without in almost all cases.

Earlier versions of the new estate design had efficiency for the whole region increasing as the number of knights went up, so that a region could support many knights and for each knight, the amount of money each % of the region produced would increase—to the point where it would be possible to push the region's total income well over the nominal value with the right estate setup. I believe this was deemed too complicated to balance easily.

[Psyche]

As another already stated, I don't think the issue is so much lack of need for knights, but lack of available knights.  Most any size estate you can create in a rural is almost never going to be as lucrative as a good sized city or town estate; very true and felt in smaller realms.

I do see plenty incentives for lords to still want knights though.  Political power( given referendum styles), military leverage in armies, stewards, being more efficient at civil work, and the benefits of them looting foreign food, to name a few.

The difference in gold production is intentional and realistic.   The only perks I could maybe see as a viable incentive to WANT to pay more to knights would be to make civil work more powerful in certain region types- which to me is pointless on a normal situation other than raising the sustainable tax rate.
Or, wait for the long ago discussed buildings for estates that offered much potential.   This potentially new feature is as cool as the new estate system itself, but likely to get next to no fussing other than bugs and people wishing for more buildings.

[Tom]

Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.

[Zakilevo]

Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.

Hmm. Maybe once a more complex economic system gets implemented, things may change.

Like once regions start to produce iron wood stone and other stuff, maybe reduce the amount of resources you get?

For example:

A region lord of X mine with 40% estate without knights will only produce 40% of whatever metals while another region lord of Y mine with 40% estate and two knights with 30% estate each will produce 100% of metals. Something like that.

But we will first need more players before implementing anything too big.

[Bedwyr]

Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.

Could the gold from food sales be put into a general region pot, and have it be distributed by the estate percentages?

[LilWolf]

Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.

This is one reason why my duke character refuses to pay above a certain price for food. Since it all goes to the lord what's the point in lining his pockets? If it went to the region as a whole he might be willing to pay more since it would benefit the knights as well.

[Zakilevo]

Could the gold from food sales be put into a general region pot, and have it be distributed by the estate percentages?

This might not be a bad idea. It will encourage knights to demand more gold for food as well. It is going be interesting to see how it will work out if things do change like that.

[Kwanstein]

I'd never pass up knights for the sake of inefficient wild lands.

The only reason I've ever lacked for knights is because there are so few knights to go around.

[Tom]

Yeah, the whole thing is that we need to have a balance between it being good to have knights and it being a disaster to not having any because sometimes there just aren't any around.