Profit/cost sharing between lords and knights

[Buffalkill]

Summary: Profit/cost sharing between lords and knights

Details: I get the impression that people dislike the food system. It’s seen as an inconvenience instead of the essential part of medieval society that it should be. Rather than scrapping the system altogether, I’m proposing the following feature request with two options.

Option 1
1.       Knights get paid a pro rata share whenever their lord sells food at the market. The knight’s share is based on the size and efficiency of their estate, i.e. how much food they contribute to the Lord’s granary. E.g.:

• Sir Galahad and Sir Lancelot’s estates are each 25% of the region with 100% productivity. They contribute 250 bushels each to the region’s output.
• Lord Byron’s estate is 50% with 100% productivity, and contributes 500 bushels to the region’s output.
• Lord Byron sells 500 bushels at the market for 200 gold

The profit is divided thusly:
            Lord Byron: 100 gold = 0.5 * 200
            Sir Galahad: 50 gold = 0.25 * 200
            Sir Lancelot: 50 gold = 0.25 * 1,000
2.       The Banker receives an administration fee for executing trades on behalf of lords. The banker’s fee can either be fixed across the board, or set by the banker.

Option 2:
1.       Make granaries belong to a specific estate within the region. Knights are responsible for managing their upkeep and supply. Lords can manage granaries in vacant estates.
2.       Knights transfer food to the Lord’s granary and get paid a set rate. There are a number of possible ways to determine the rate:
    a.   Lord’s prerogative
    b.   Banker’s edict
    c.   Establish a built-in across-the-board rate for all regions
    d.   Floating rates that adjust according to seasons and other supply-and-demand factors

3.       The Banker receives administration fee for executing trades on behalf of lords. The banker’s fee can either be fixed across the board, or set by the banker.
Likewise, the lords and knights in the purchasing region would share the cost of buying food, according to their estate size, by deducting it from their tax revenue.

Benefits:
·         Provides an incentive for knights to take an estate in a rural region.
·         Ensures that the rural regions don’t get shafted when the banker sells their food.
      Might increase interactions between lords and knights.
 

Possible Downside: Some may argue that this kind of system can be implemented by players without a feature request. The problem is that it’s not that easy to transfer gold. It would require copious record-keeping and frequent trips to the capital, making it too onerous to work. In the case of Option 2, there’s the question of what happens if a knight withholds food from the Lord’s granary. My answer is: Let them sort it out. They can argue, barter, threaten, etc. but if they can’t resolve it amicably, the lord can always have the last word by kicking the knight out and seizing control of the vacant estate.

[Dishman]

I like the spirit of giving knights' estates a bit of umph, but for gold distribution, couldn't you just tax them less? You know, take less of their gold every tax day? Maybe give them bigger estates and let the lord live off of the food transactions and taxes?

[Anaris]

I've got some general ideas along these lines—some more limited in scope, others much broader.

I doubt that I'll end up implementing either of these options exactly as you propose, but they're definitely more good ideas to feed into the mix as far as estates, taxes, food, and production go. Either way, though, this is probably something I'll be trying to work on after the WIP and one or two other things higher on my list get done.

[Indirik]

I do support the idea of the lord being able to share the profit of food sales with their knights in an automated manner. This is an important factor that can help level the playing field between cities and the larger rurals. (It won't have much effect on smaller rurals, badlands, townslands, etc.)

There are some things that need to be considered, though.

First: Situations where the lord is a trader, or a broker, and not the consumer of the food. I can foresee several situation where the lord is a temporary custodian of food moving to a final destination. (Brokering, trading, routine storage/movement, etc.) There would have to be some mechanism that only counts the food grown in the region for purposes of profit sharing. This brings up other complexities and potential for bugs. Also, the same thing for stewards who use the regional warehouses as a stocking location for their trading activities. I've done it myself, and funneled thousands and thousands of bushels of food through a rural region's warehouses, while the region itself was producing a few hundred bushels of food surplus all by itself. You simply cannot have the profit from that transient food being split among all the knights of a region.

Second: Anything that creates new mandatory involvement in the repetitive, boring, drudge work of administering to estates/regions/food is going to have to promise one huge return in Fun. (As opposed to !!FUN!!.) Players have long treated administering to regions, estates, and food as one of the least desirable aspects of the entire game. There was a significant rebellion against enforced food management when food control was decentralized and mandated as the lord's responsibility. Any system would have to be set up with as much automation as possible, to the point where it is a "set it and forget it" system. Everyone wants to be the lord. Very few people actually want to have to do what a lord is really supposed to do.

Third: Related to the above, forcing knights to administer things on a regular basis is a recipe for disaster. Options to allow knights to do things is good. Forcing knights to handle boring drudge work is really bad. Forcing knights to administer grain warehouses, and to manually transfer food around will not work. We tried making lords do it themselves, and it was a total disaster. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if we tried to make every player, and every character, have to deal with it. This point is critical! People play the game to have fun. Most of us don't consider having to log in to move food around to be fun.

Fourth: If you're going to have the knights accept part of the profit from net exporters, why not have them help shoulder the burden of paying for food in regions that are net importers? It's the same concept. If knights get to share the profit from goods produced on their estates, they should be required to pay for the expenses of those same estates.

Any feature request will have to deal with these realities. How does your proposal deal with this?

[Buffalkill]

I do support the idea of the lord being able to share the profit of food sales with their knights in an automated manner. This is an important factor that can help level the playing field between cities and the larger rurals. (It won't have much effect on smaller rurals, badlands, townslands, etc.)

There are some things that need to be considered, though.

[...]
Any feature request will have to deal with these realities. How does your proposal deal with this?

First: Situations where the lord is a trader, or a broker, and not the consumer of the food. I can foresee several situation where the lord is a temporary custodian of food moving to a final destination. (Brokering, trading, routine storage/movement, etc.) There would have to be some mechanism that only counts the food grown in the region for purposes of profit sharing. This brings up other complexities and potential for bugs. Also, the same thing for stewards who use the regional warehouses as a stocking location for their trading activities. I've done it myself, and funneled thousands and thousands of bushels of food through a rural region's warehouses, while the region itself was producing a few hundred bushels of food surplus all by itself. You simply cannot have the profit from that transient food being split among all the knights of a region.

I would defer these concerns to post-implementation improvements, to be looked at once players have had a chance to see how this plays out in practice, and then make any changes/improvements based on player feedback. There are so few traders I don't see this being a pervasive problem, but in the meantime, if it does come up, let the affected nobles settle with each other.

Second: Anything that creates new mandatory involvement in the repetitive, boring, drudge work of administering to estates/regions/food is going to have to promise one huge return in Fun. (As opposed to !!FUN!!.) Players have long treated administering to regions, estates, and food as one of the least desirable aspects of the entire game. There was a significant rebellion against enforced food management when food control was decentralized and mandated as the lord's responsibility. Any system would have to be set up with as much automation as possible, to the point where it is a "set it and forget it" system. Everyone wants to be the lord. Very few people actually want to have to do what a lord is really supposed to do.

I was thinking the cost/profit distribution mechanism should be automatic.


Slightly off-topic, you raise an interesting point, that is: "Everyone wants to be the lord. Very few people actually want to have to do what a lord is really supposed to do." I've said many times that lords have it too easy, and knights don't have enough to do. Generally I think it could be good for the game if steps are taken to make the knight game more engrossing and the lord game less of a "sinecure". Being a lord should imply some duties. Currently lords don't really have to do anything.

Third: Related to the above, forcing knights to administer things on a regular basis is a recipe for disaster. Options to allow knights to do things is good. Forcing knights to handle boring drudge work is really bad. Forcing knights to administer grain warehouses, and to manually transfer food around will not work. We tried making lords do it themselves, and it was a total disaster. I can't imagine how much worse it would be if we tried to make every player, and every character, have to deal with it. This point is critical! People play the game to have fun. Most of us don't consider having to log in to move food around to be fun.

Under option 1, the knights aren't required to do anything. Option 2 could lend itself to the same type of automation as is in place under the current system, i.e. automatic market orders and delegation of authority. That lets the player choose whether they want to be more "hands-on" or "hands-off".

Fourth: If you're going to have the knights accept part of the profit from net exporters, why not have them help shoulder the burden of paying for food in regions that are net importers? It's the same concept. If knights get to share the profit from goods produced on their estates, they should be required to pay for the expenses of those same estates.

Indeed. I make that very point in the last line of the "Details" section: "Likewise, the lords and knights in the purchasing region would share the cost of buying food, according to their estate size, by deducting it from their tax revenue."