A radical solution to the food problem...

[Zakilevo]

In the long term, you can make each region desire different stuff to be happy.

Obviously food should always be there for all regions but making rural regions consume goods that cannot be produced in those regions. Also, maybe adding trade between goods wouldn't be too bad I think. 100 bushels of food for 20 widgets?

[Eldargard]

Brief Gripe:
Sure, if you take tax income away from rurals and expect the Margraves to pay enough for food to compensate you have a net loss. If, however, you take the gold away from the rurals and give it to the Margraves tthey will be able to pay the higher food prices without suffering a loss. A decrese, if desired, simply has to be matched by an increase. I am not saying that decreasing or removing rural taxes is the best option but I do not think that it is as horrible as some make it sound.

[vonGenf]

Brief Gripe:
Sure, if you take tax income away from rurals and expect the Margraves to pay enough for food to compensate you have a net loss. If, however, you take the gold away from the rurals and give it to the Margraves tthey will be able to pay the higher food prices without suffering a loss. A decrese, if desired, simply has to be matched by an increase. I am not saying that decreasing or removing rural taxes is the best option but I do not think that it is as horrible as some make it sound.

Dukes are already allowed to tax their Lord's income up to 50%. Nothing prevents them from taking half their Lord's money, funnel it to the Margrave (often themselves), and then require redistribution through high food prices.

[Eldargard]

Very True!

[Buffalkill]

In the long term, you can make each region desire different stuff to be happy.

Obviously food should always be there for all regions but making rural regions consume goods that cannot be produced in those regions. Also, maybe adding trade between goods wouldn't be too bad I think. 100 bushels of food for 20 widgets?

I'd be down with that, but it's not necessary for the purpose of increasing trade. At the moment we have 2 commodities (gold and food) which IMO would work swimmingly if there was a better balance in bargaining power between the cities (who have gold but need food to survive) and the rurals (who already have plenty of food and gold). In short, the rurals have something the cities need, but the rurals don't need anything from the cities because they have enough gold to survive already. Make it so that the rurals need to trade in order to survive and you will immediately see a spike in trading.

[Indirik]

TO be fair, the cities *do* have something the rurals need, but it's not simulated very well: protection. Protection against monsters, protection against undead, protection against foreign invaders...

The players don't really have the mindset to enforce this, though. What realm is really going to allow the enemy/monsters/undead to destroy the region because the lord wants to sell his food for 45/100 instead of 25/100? And besides, what's the consequence for the lord if the monsters do come after his region? He loses some food, loses some peasants, then the monsters wander off to go ravage someone else's region.

[Buffalkill]

TO be fair, the cities *do* have something the rurals need, but it's not simulated very well: protection. Protection against monsters, protection against undead, protection against foreign invaders...

The players don't really have the mindset to enforce this, though. What realm is really going to allow the enemy/monsters/undead to destroy the region because the lord wants to sell his food for 45/100 instead of 25/100? And besides, what's the consequence for the lord if the monsters do come after his region? He loses some food, loses some peasants, then the monsters wander off to go ravage someone else's region.

I like your idea too, Indirik. It would make things more interesting at the duke and lord level. If dukes could place protection units in other regions, but also be able to remove them whenever they choose, they could enter agreements such as 'the duke agrees to maintain a unit of 100 soldiers with at least 500 CS in the region for as long as the rural lord keeps selling the duke food for 30 gold per hundred.' It would add an interesting dynamic to the game because the rural lords could pit competing dukes against each other, but dukes could also pit the rural lords against each other, since if the duke is not happy, he can simply send his troops to a different rural region and get a more favourable deal. And if the rural lord is unhappy, he can enter an arrangement with a different duke.

[Jaden]

so you are asking for something like a button that dukes can push that will let them pay for the militia in the rural region of their duchies? Regardless, I dont see how paying for militia is any different from directly paying for food.

[Anaris]

...Which brings us back to the idea of Duchy Infrastructure :D

[Vita`]

I think what Indirik was trying to convey was that dukes/margraves are usually responsible for being army sponsors, financing realm treasuries, and generally supporting the military/realm with their superior wealth. Thus, they protect the weaker regions around them. Unfortunately, because people want to help the realm, they think in a modern nationalist sense of stopping all threats to the realm instead of a feudal 'screw the guy who has 2200 bushels of food rotting in his region while my city teeters on the brink of starvation; i'm going to make sure the army ignores those monsters/enemy looters in his region' sense. Usually if someone is pissed about something they'll plot to remove the lord himself, not harm the region.

[vonGenf]

Usually if someone is pissed about something they'll plot to remove the lord himself, not harm the region.

Historically these went hand-in-hand. The BM metaphor for this would be a Duke with a big unit looting a region until the Lord is kicked out, so that he can name a new Lord instead. Because you can't loot your own realm this is currently impossible.

[Indirik]

As Vita says, my point was more along the lines of the Dukes/Margraves control/sponsor the armies, and provide the financial backing the realm needs to survive. Your neighbors doesn't hold back from invading you because a few rural lords each have 1,000CS of militia. They hold back because your Margrave sponsors a 10,000 CS mobile army.

The modern nationalistic viewpoint (and I admit that I tend to think this way IG, too) promotes an all-for-one mentality. This is the realm-as-team viewpoint that I really think is necessary for the overall health of the game. But it does lead to the inability of a realm to, for the most part, withhold their protection as a method of dealing with a recalcitrant lord. How many nobles of Keplerstan would turn their back and pretend not to notice as Evilstani loots and burns Lord GreedyPocket's region to ground?

[Buffalkill]

We're over-thinking a simple problem that has a very simple solution.

   
• All regions need 2 countervailing things to survive: gold and food.
• For cities, acquiring food from rurals is an existential necessity, and there's also an element of urgency.
• There should be an opposite and equally powerful need for the rurals to acquire gold in order to survive.

It's that simple. You don't need anything more complicated than that to get regions trading. Yes, the rurals may get some non-quantifiable benefit from the cities' armies, but they don't have the same urgency compelling them to trade like the cities do. If all trading stops, the cities will suffer immediately, while the rurals can carry on indefinitely. Make it so that rurals don't have enough tax gold to survive, and you will see an immediate spike in sell offers and they'll be more competitively priced.

[Anaris]

   

• All regions need 2 countervailing things to survive: gold and food.

Nope. All regions need food to survive, period.

Gold just makes the Lord's life happier. A Lord who's determined to screw the realm over can survive quite well indefinitely without gold, as long as he doesn't keep a unit or anything else he needs to pay for on a regular basis.

Furthermore, removing all gold from rural regions would require both further increasing city gold—quite dramatically, I think—and jacking up food prices astronomically from what they've been. That's not something that players would readily accept.

And finally, the "problem" of lords withholding food from cities, or demanding prices higher than the city lord is willing to pay, is one that is so uncommon in practice that I really don't think it's worth expending any significant effort on.

[egamma]

And finally, the "problem" of lords withholding food from cities, or demanding prices higher than the city lord is willing to pay, is one that is so uncommon in practice that I really don't think it's worth expending any significant effort on.

On the other hand, convincing the rural lord of a realm other than your own that they should sell you their food, is hard to do.