I Hate Food

[Anaris]

Chenier, the calculation was done for cities, doesn't matter which continent it's on, cities have similar stats.

Sure, you can argue all you want that additional gold generated by additional population must go somewhere else. When it comes down to it, you're expecting to do everything with a city when it is in an area with a low access to supplies of surplus food as when it is in an area with tons of surplus food.

I dunno, Foundation. Your argument that some cities can't expect to be able to afford all the food they need to feed themselves seems to rest on two assumptions, both of which are false and which seem somewhat incompatible:

1) That food prices are primarily or wholly set by the seller, and buyers basically just have to take what they can get.
2) That food is fundamentally a free market everywhere.

The simple fact that disproves both of these is that some realms mandate certain price ceilings for food distribution in general, or in order to ensure that a particular city is properly fed.

Have Cherry try telling Hrok that if Giask can't afford to feed itself at 50g/100 bushels, it can just go starve, and see how far she gets.

[Foundation]

True. Note that my point was in response to Chenier saying that his city cannot feed itself at 40-50 gold / 100 bushels. Something is wrong with the management of a city if it cannot do so. Either it has too much militia or too much gold is diverted elsewhere or tax rates are ridiculously low, etc. In that case, it's not surprising that a city cannot feed itself with such high prices and do everything else at the same time.

I don't mean to say that in general cities must feed themselves at 40-50 gold / 100 bushels or expect to starve.

[Anaris]

True. Note that my point was in response to Chenier saying that his city cannot feed itself at 40-50 gold / 100 bushels. Something is wrong with the management of a city if it cannot do so. Either it has too much militia or too much gold is diverted elsewhere or tax rates are ridiculously low, etc. In that case, it's not surprising that a city cannot feed itself with such high prices and do everything else at the same time.

I don't mean to say that in general cities must feed themselves at 40-50 gold / 100 bushels or expect to starve.

I also don't think it's unreasonable for a city to ask that it not spend 90-100% of its (otherwise-)disposable income on food.

Cities need a great deal more gold for infrastructure than other regions, and their lords are also most often the sponsors of armies. They also tend to be the people the realm comes to when nobles need extra gold handed out for their units.

I have no problem with rural Lords making a fair price for their food, but if that fair price leads to most of the rural Lords just hoarding extra gold or sending it to their families, while the city Lords end up with less net income than the rural Lords do, I don't think that's a particularly helpful result overall.

[Foundation]

I believe that is a false assumption. A decentralized gold system encourages participation. Assuming lords guilty until proven innocent is an incorrect attitude.

What is wrong with margraves asking for funding? Too proud? Dukes can get enough with taxes.

[vonGenf]

Cities need a great deal more gold for infrastructure than other regions,

This is indeed structural in the way the game is designed.

and their lords are also most often the sponsors of armies. They also tend to be the people the realm comes to when nobles need extra gold handed out for their units.

These, however, are cultural remnants from the time when Dukes were the City Lords and food was basically free with the ox cart system. The system has changed and the people can change too.

[Penchant]

This is a real concern. If it were possible to keep a city at a lower population without regularly going into starvation and degrading your infrastructure, then food would not be so much of a problem.

+1

[Anaris]

I believe that is a false assumption. A decentralized gold system encourages participation. Assuming lords guilty until proven innocent is an incorrect attitude.

What is wrong with margraves asking for funding? Too proud? Dukes can get enough with taxes.

I don't think we're ever going to get to a point with changing culture in BattleMaster where people do not assume that being the Lord of a city will grant them—and, indeed, entitles them to—a higher income than they would get in a rural region.

[Indirik]

Being lord of a rich city *does* entitle you to make more gold than being the lord of a rural region. That's the way it's *supposed* to be. If the system results in the Margrave of a rich city and the Count of a rural making the same net amount in tax income, then the system is *broken*.

This isn't some hippy commune system we're trying to recreate, where everyone shares and shares alike. It's a system with inherent inequalities. These are fully intentional, and desired. You want to make more gold? Then move up the system to a better region.

[vonGenf]

You want to make more gold? Then move up the system to a better region.

I think what Foundation is saying is that the identification city=better is fundamentally flawed, and the the changes in production and population that occured last year were meant to reflect that.

If a rural is providing more gold than a city, then the rural is, by all accounts, better.

[Indirik]

No, it means the system is broken.

[Anaris]

Indirik is right.

The system is intended to have cities be more desirable Lordships—a place to move up to from a rural Lordship.

If we wanted everyone to be making the same amount of gold per tax, we'd just go back to the old tax system, and lock the distribution at equal shares for everyone in the realm.

We don't. We want there to be an income disparity, both as a vehicle for low-level conflict, and as a goal to work towards—something to aspire to.

Even the system as it is designed doesn't even begin to capture the social stratification that existed in the milieu—and, frankly, I think that trying to do so fully would be counterproductive to fun in the game—but I believe that it is important to at least hint in that direction.

[vonGenf]

If we wanted everyone to be making the same amount of gold per tax, we'd just go back to the old tax system, and lock the distribution at equal shares for everyone in the realm.

We don't. We want there to be an income disparity, both as a vehicle for low-level conflict, and as a goal to work towards—something to aspire to.

I'm all for income disparity. I want some regions to be entry-level regions, and others to be more aspirational.

But if a rural is easier to manage and yields more gold than a city, then that just makes the rural the aspirational one, does it not? Is that a problem?

[Kwanstein]

Oh yea, and militia too, let's not forget those.

It's NORMAL for a city to have militia...

I can see the necessity for one or two thousand CS of militia, but that by itself wouldn't eat up all of the free tax gold. Even a major city like Golden Farrow requires only one hundred food a day. It would cost three hundred-fifty gold per week to feed it's population. Meanwhile, it produces a gross two thousand gold per day. Even assuming a very modest tax rate of 15%, the city would yield 1,995 gold per week. Deduct the militia and infrastructure payments, which, given two thousand militia, should amount to no more than three hundred gold -- less than two hundred in most circumstances -- and you have 1,695 to be distributed amongst the Patron and his men. The Patron himself, through his estate and vessel taxes, could make away with at least 25%, if he was feeling generous, or upwards to 60% of it if he was not. Let's assume that he is neither generous nor greedy and so makes away with 40%, that gives him a personal salary of 678, of which three hundred-fifty would go towards food (assuming the food is premium price), giving him 328, after all is said and done with. This is a decent amount for a Lord who runs his region sub-optimally, for, as I explained in another thread, through truly exploitative measures you could wring far, far more gold out of a city than even this. Furthermore, this is discounting the duchy tax income. Still, even without it, even with the sub-optimal administration, the idea that food is costing city Lords their livelihood is exaggerated. If a city Lord is spending more than he makes then he can owe it entirely to his inefficient administration, because it is well within the realms of possibility for him to turn a profit, a much larger profit than even a rural Lord is capable of.

[Indirik]

But if a rural is easier to manage and yields more gold than a city, then that just makes the rural the aspirational one, does it not?

If that yield were actually due to talent, management skill, and ambition on the part of the rural lord, and incompetence of the city lord, then I could agree. But it's not. It's due entirely to the meta factors of region stats, over which the lord has no control.

(Note that there are always exceptions.  I'm not counting the ridiculously poor "cities" like Gaston and Chrysantalys.)

[Indirik]

giving him 328, after all is said and done with. This is a decent amount for a Lord who runs his region sub-optimally,

328 gold a week for the lord of Golden Farrow is ridiculously low. The lord of that city should be making nearly three times that much.

15% taxes is only slightly below what the region could run without constant attention. You shouldn't think that because a lord can babysit the region and run 20% or higher, that this should be considered normal. It simply is not.