Message #98970

[Penchant]

Can you give an example of me, or anyone else, 'implying' that "it's not only acceptable, but normal, for the Lord to sit in his region holding court, doing police/civil work, and surveying the administration constantly." or that "they assume that everyone can run tax rates like this, and claim that anyone who's running "only" 18% is a wimp who's obviously just wasting money, because 25% is the tax rate you're "supposed" to be running."

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.

I can look for a post that implies it better if you would like.