Large flaws in estate and tax system

[Chenier]

This is not true. What you have is confirmation bias. You expected it to happen, so it appears that it did.

I have gone through the region tax code and checked. This does not work the way you think it does. The large realm penalties are nowhere near big enough, nor do they change fast enough, to cause the effect you are describing. In fact they don't work anywhere near the way you are describing. I don't know what you saw, or think you saw, but it had absolutely nothing to do with a large-realm tax penalty.

Enweil was reduced to Iato. I could run max tax, and we had a good tax efficiency. Then we took about four or five rural regions. Iato didn't have any knights anymore, tax efficiency was atrocious all-around, and Iato couldn't hold tax levels anywhere near what it used to have without maintenance issues. We became considerably poorer.

[vonGenf]

I absolutely agree with this. If you don't have enough knights, then you shouldn't be able to control the regions. We have discussed some ways to implement this, without adding in the overhead and frustration caused by the old estate point system.

I agree with reducing the gold/food production of wild lands and empty estates, it would make a lot of sense and would not lead to an overall loss for gaining an extra region (at worst the Lord gains nothing more than the Lord's estate, and that is still something).

Loss of control however is what makes regions go rogue and leads to realm refraining from war because they don't have the nobles to occupy the lands they may gain. That's the main issue.

We do have realms with a noble/land ratio below 1:1. They can be penalized, but we should never remove a good reason to go to war for these realms, otherwise they won't.

[Indirik]

A one-region realm consisting of nothing more than a city is never something that i am going take as an example of almost anything. This is not normal for the game, and shouldn't be used to make policy of any kind.

Also, being able to run a 25% rate should never be considered normal.

Having said that, going from one region up to five wouldn't have affected tax rates by more than two or maybe three percent. (Unless every other realm on the island consisted of two underpopulated regions.) If you had more than that, there was something else involved.

[Buffalkill]

Food and gold production should be depend on how many nobles live in the region. Make it so that regions need a full complement of nobles to reach their full potential. Let's say 1 lord and 2 knights for most regions, 3-4 knights for larger regions and cities, and for badlands 1 knight, or maybe none. If they have less than a full complement, they can still hold onto the region but it won't yield as much food and gold because there are fewer "managers" running the business. In the real world a one-man operation doesn't normally produce as much as a 3-man operation if all other things are equal. Realms will then have to make strategic decisions about whether it's better to hold as many regions as possible, or to consolidate their manpower into fewer regions in order to maximise productivity. Every time they consider taking a new region, they'll have to weigh the cost and benefits.

[dustole]

Enweil was reduced to Iato. I could run max tax, and we had a good tax efficiency. Then we took about four or five rural regions. Iato didn't have any knights anymore, tax efficiency was atrocious all-around, and Iato couldn't hold tax levels anywhere near what it used to have without maintenance issues. We became considerably poorer.

Tax rates in neighboring regions seem to have more effect than the other factors.     Ideally you should have your capitol highest and then distance to the capitol gets 1% lower the further you go out. 

[Zakilevo]

Why not just reduce wildlands efficiency to 10% instead of current 50%? Or make estates produce food as well. That would cripple any realms not investing knights into rural regions since all their cities will starve in few weeks muwhahha

[Stue (DC)]

As estate coverage is no more, region almost never falls into trouble

This is by design. We don't want region maintenance to be the focus of a player's game experience.

Also, the estate coverage system was one of the things the players disliked most. Almost no one ever liked it. And many of the players that claimed they did like it were basing their opinions on a complete misunderstanding of how the system actually worked.

I am probably among the last ones who would like too much micromanagement, but I feel "focus of game experience" has become straightforward, mono-dimensional "recruit troop as large as possible, go to region A as quickly as possible, and be ready to strictly follow attack order"

courtiership game is removed, trade game is removed, religion game is completely castrated. things have become narrow and simple. did that improve gaming experience?

every realm had players who have just time to do courtier work, and as long as courtier work was needed, they were part of game, dimension of game. statistics means very little here, let's say 5% of the realm were courtiers, and that was completely sufficient to cover realm needs, while giving gaming diversity. the same applies for traders, even very few traders could bring lot of benefit to the realm, and there were always enough people to be traders as long as it was giving sensible outcome. that is were statistical polls will not give right answers.

how gaming experience is improved if nobles only recruit troops and travel while most of other things is resolved automatically or very easily? i personally feel it as a degradation of game, but i understand that i possibly don't fit into statistics...

[Stue (DC)]

Also, the estate coverage system was one of the things the players disliked most. Almost no one ever liked it. And many of the players that claimed they did like it were basing their opinions on a complete misunderstanding of how the system actually worked.

... than something is likely needed at the same moment when coverage system is removed to:
- give some incentive to interaction between lords and knights
- give knights something to play with, at least some influence on the estate they run

something, anything... but not nothing. i retained habit to welcome any knight in my region, but i rarely if ever hear any response currently, and it's almost impossible that some knight will feel courteous obligation to say goodbye when leaving the estate. for new players estate is nothing but one simple click, and they cannot be blamed for that in current estate system, but it is some step in large degradation of game interaction. if oath itself means nothing, almost everything in medieval-based game world becomes tasteless.

[De-Legro]

... than something is likely needed at the same moment when coverage system is removed to:
- give some incentive to interaction between lords and knights
- give knights something to play with, at least some influence on the estate they run

something, anything... but not nothing. i retained habit to welcome any knight in my region, but i rarely if ever hear any response currently, and it's almost impossible that some knight will feel courteous obligation to say goodbye when leaving the estate. for new players estate is nothing but one simple click, and they cannot be blamed for that in current estate system, but it is some step in large degradation of game interaction. if oath itself means nothing, almost everything in medieval-based game world becomes tasteless.

Yes, there was a plan to do this. Things like Estate buildings were meant to both give knights something to do, and give them a way to help their region. Unfortunately they have never been implemented.

Why not just reduce wildlands efficiency to 10% instead of current 50%? Or make estates produce food as well. That would cripple any realms not investing knights into rural regions since all their cities will starve in few weeks muwhahha

I like the general concept here. Can we agree that the goal would be to make it so that in "typical" cases taking on a knight should provide the Lord with a real boost to their own income to reflect the fact the estate is now well managed? I would personally like to see it balances as far as is possible so that any change doesn't cripple existing structures, but does provide a real incentive to make the most out of regions.

I also like the idea of tying food back into the system. You could have it work two way, in a rural or overall food producer have it increase the food production, in something like a city that is a net food consumer have it lower the overall food consumption perhaps, to reflect that good management reduces waste and spoilage. Or perhaps just have the warehouse rotting levels decreased.

In general I would say since the system already has a tax modifier built in, change that and then review what other changes might be necessary.

[Velax]

Perhaps having a knight in an estate should increase the efficiency stat of that estate? Wild lands and vacant estates would be relatively poorly run, with no one in charge to run things, but an estate with a knight has someone to run things properly.

This would increase the income of the estate and, in turn, the lord's.

[McManus_Clan]

I agree, in principle, with what you say. Knights only make lords poorer, lords only make dukes poorer, and none of the feudal titles can be held accountable for being greedy. There used to be incentives to having knights, now it's the opposite.

Actually, this explains a lot of what was happening in Swordfell. At one point some 25% of the regions had no Lords, even though there were plenty of Nobles who could be appointed. The Dukes hold all the power and have no reason to appoint Lords. This created an elitist, entitled attitude which completely ruined the vibe for me. New players aren't going to stick around if there is no incentive to give them and opportunity for advancement.

Players shouldn't be rewarded for antisocial behavior. I'm fairly new to this game, but it seems pretty clear that this is an inherent problem.

[De-Legro]

Perhaps having a knight in an estate should increase the efficiency stat of that estate? Wild lands and vacant estates would be relatively poorly run, with no one in charge to run things, but an estate with a knight has someone to run things properly.

This would increase the income of the estate and, in turn, the lord's.

That is how it currently works. The problem in general is that a knight may increase the regions total gold income, but mostly also reduces the Lords income from that region, they don't generate enough extra income to offset the loss that the knights personal income represents. The argument is that to create an incentive to have knights, knights need to increase region income to the point where they also increase the Lords income.

[Jens Namtrah]

Why not just reduce wildlands efficiency to 10% instead of current 50%? Or make estates produce food as well. That would cripple any realms not investing knights into rural regions since all their cities will starve in few weeks muwhahha

There seems to be a flaw or bug in the way wildlands & empty estates are calculated, making that moot. I was confused about this too with an earlier conversation with Buffalkill - I thought "wildlands" and "empty estate" were synonymous. The aren't.

Wildlands is at 50% - but there's no reason to have wildlands. You can just make that area an empty estate and it has normal - up to 100% - efficiency.

So trying to penalize via wildlands is pointless. Lords can set up a good estate for themselves, chop the rest into 20-25% chunks and let them run at 100%, and collect as much as if they had knights.

EDIT: to add to that, there are no penalties if a region is left lordless, as long as estates were set up as above by the previous lord.

[Zakilevo]

Or we can just add one modifier called 'corruption'. Longer a lord stays without a knight, more corrupted the region becomes.

A simple example:

Lord without knights:
Region Income = 1000 gold
30% Lord Estate = which will get the lord 300 gold
70% WildLand/Empty estates = 50% efficiency and on top of that corruption will slowly kick in. Maybe 5% corruption per week and cap it out at 100%? So in 15 weeks, the lord will get nothing out of his wildland/empty estate. You can have different wordings for both I guess. For wildlands, something like without the constant care of the lord, the nature has reclaimed the land, overrunning fields. For empty estates, maybe without anyone to keep the order, outlaws have settled in to claim what rightfully belongs to you.

[Jens Namtrah]

this would take us back to a variation of the old system problem:

a Lord could just rotate through his estates, resetting them.

although, IMHO - if he's that lame let him have his extra gold.