Holy !@#$ Chénier! I almost didn't respond to this because it's so damn long, but you caught me in a good mood so here I go.
You say lords have no incentives to set up estates as they only lose gold, and yet you recognize that knights have no trouble finding vacant estates.
No, I said that lords have no incentive to attract knights to their region and to keep them there. I’ll say it again: As a lord, there is NO benefit to having knights residing in your region. As for the creation of estates, it might be that vacant estates yield more tax gold than wild lands, but most of the estates were probably set up when it was still the “new” estate system and players had higher expectations.
Why do you want to incite people to do things they clearly need no incentive to do and are already doing anyways?
You've probably noticed that several regions are being surgically removed from play on account of noble density being too low. I haven’t heard anyone disagreeing with the premise, although the remedy is certainly controversial and IMO wrong. Most people seem to agree that increasing density would be good for the overall community. Unfortunately the common good is at odds with self-interest, so if you want to increase noble density, the first step should be to calibrate the dynamics of the game to make increased density beneficial to more individuals.
You oppose what I say without contradicting it. I said "more nobles means more power". I did not talk about density in that sentence. I don't have access to the stats, but Riombara has a lot of nobles, hence they have a lot of power. They also have a ton of wealthy regions, far superior to average. As for Morek, it has the second-highest noble count, and is pretty much tied with a bunch of other realms which, a few months ago, could easily have been said to be comparable in strength. But again, all of these top realms in strength are the top realms in noble count.
They have the most nobles and the fewest knights because knights, in the current reality, are parasitic. It’s not a coincidence that the most powerful realms have the fewest knights.
More nobles means more resources, be it by being able to manage a greater number of regions or by having a superior tax tolerance and tax efficiency. Density changes little to this, it's all about raw noble count.
What resources are there besides food and gold? Knights do nothing to produce either one. The only other resource is “human resources,” i.e. nobles. You can theoretically have as many regions as you have nobles without any problems. Is that what we should be aspiring to, a 1:1 density rate?
It's true enough that the realms you've stated as super powers are the realms with high noble counts. The three realms with the most nobles on Dwilight are the three realms with the strongest militaries. I'm pretty sure similar statements can be said about the rest of the continents.
The problem with that is those “super power” realms are currently models of success. We’re all trying to climb to the top of the heap, but the ones who get there are invariably the ones with the lowest density rates. That proves the point I’ve been trying to make, that there is no advantage to having knights.
It also doesn't promote teamwork, it promotes internal competition.
It might promote competition between lords and between dukes, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it places greater importance on the relationship between knight and lord. Currently it’s a parasitic relationship.
It doesn't really assign any additional value, because clearly knights are already valued given that vacant estates are abundant and many lords try to attract knights, and because I've not seen any suggestion as to what this new stat should do, and vanity stats don't create value.
If you scroll up you can see a few suggestions about what it should do, but the possibilities of what it could do are only limited by the imagination. You’re a smart enough guy, I’m sure you could think of some additional ones if you shifted your energy away from criticizing toward being constructive.
The increments are flawed by design because, depending on how you calculate them, they either reward large realms that need no additional rewarding just for being big, or they incite large realms to micro-manage estate distribution which is most unlikely to generate any fun.
I’m afraid you’re wrong again. It wouldn’t reward Morek or Riombara because they don’t have enough knights. It would reward D’Hara, Barca and Luria Nova because they currently have the most knights.
Nor is simply adding a new stat likely to change anything about density, because density will only change if the number of nobles on a continent increases or the number of regions on it decreases, and this stat has no apparent power over either.
Personally I’m in favour of increasing the number of nobles.
As for background, we can already look up H/P and the titles are all displayed.
H/P is not a good metric for the reasons stated here:
http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5655.0.htmlAnd titles give you limited incite. For example, the president of the US may be equal in rank to the president of the DRC, however one of them has more power than the other.
People don't really pay attention to the other game-given stats (H/P and fame, namely), why would they care for this one? There are downsides. I already mentioned them. Others expressed concerns as well. This feature would only have downsides, and no advantage.
They don’t pay attention to them because they’re too arbitrary to have any practical use. A high honour score should indicate that someone is extremely honourable, but it doesn’t, so people ignore it because it’s not rooted in reality. In contrast, a high political power score indicates that many people are bound to you by a figurative oath of fealty.
