As small battles aren't enough to ward off TMP, small starvation doesn't need to be either. If thousands of peasants die and production is crushed back down to zero, then you are getting hit worse by the starvation code than you were by the TMP code. It'd be like cutting your hand off to remove a splinter on your finger.
And it doesn't need to have anything to do with training. The two current effects could be handled separately. A realm without any problems could get "There is too much peace, and the soldiers are getting out of shape while the peasants are wondering what on earth their taxes are being used for", while a realm with food problems only would only get the first part of this.
First off, my city actually had the time to build up to make enough income to actually feed itself via imports (barely). The realm's two other cities, with !@#$ production, are the ones constantly starving.
Secondly, I don't know what the knights are doing. I'm a priest, and have limited access to military data. Furthermore, I have made it very clear that I fully delegate all of the military concerns to the general, which last I heard was all the fad. As long as we aren't being occupied and obviously utterly failing, it's not my job to intervene and dictate what the military job, that is other people's jobs. As far as I know, some are trading, others are doing maintenance work to keep everything running smooth, and the rest are patrolling the borders to make sure no monster comes to eat all our food reserves we desperatly need and that are mostly produced on our frontiers.
You are missing the very clear point I did that *not a single person, in the history of the realm, has ever asked to go to war*. Stop assuming people are bored out of their minds, and that I am actively thwarting their attempts to have something happen. Things were slightly different under the monarchy, but even then we weren't really a repressive regime. Now, there's absolutely nothing to even suggest repression, there simply isn't any conflict or discontent showing up. And of all our "new nobles" (say, less than 250 days in realm, because the rest are mostly at 600 days or 900 days, oldest being myself at 992 days), only 1 of the four joined after 2008, he joined in January 2011, with his first character being in D'Hara. Most of these 4 "new nobles" never really spoke much, though, so the one who did get himself a lordship. And seriously, I wouldn't consider any of them as being "new nobles", you are just making yourself a vision of what the realm is without any knowledge of it.
How can you even say that? Starvation drops your production to 0% extremely fast (as soon as people start dying, I believe), and one that beginds revolt is not too far away. I honestly can't picture a lord *not* saying this, because without his serfs, he's nothing. Feudalism isn't slavery, it's reciprocal rights and obligations, one of them being the protection of those you tax.
Clearly you don't understand starvation. When you face starvation, you have no choice but to *lower* taxes, otherwise your region will revolt. Starvation can easily put you in a vicious cycle where you no longer produce the gold/food you need to feed yourself, therefore being stuck at 0% production until you die (or someone from outside helps).
Also, you seem to overestimate the number of knights we have. In my huge city, I only have 2, meaning no support for production. Most of our regions don't have any. We have just as many lords as non-lords, so I think we have more people with titles than people without.
The border regions are either civilized, or far away. These sea routes between ports are rather long, and as soon as they pass Nebel they are left without walls. The roaming monsters are often huge, and more than any scouting party can handle without walls. Going far out is simply suicide, and nobody enjoys just suiciding their troops. Also, though one of our traders just got promoted to lordship, the both of em used to just be knights. And without them, especially without the one who just got promoted, D'Hara would be in really crappy shape right now. Automatic caravans have limited range, and you can only import so much from the realms within range. We heavily rely on eastern realms with big surpluses to keep ourselves fed, and for that we need traders.
Don't forget that in D'Hara, the "majority of nobles" are actually lords. And such a lord-heavy population considerably reduces our ability to go fight far-away, especially since not all of these non-lords are pure warriors or warrior/heroes either.
Keep in mind that my request has somewhat changed since I first wrote. I'm not asking for freebies, here, and really I don't care that our troops lose training, it's only fair. I just want the tax tolerance to take starvations into consideration, whether it be by the damages caused by it recently or simply by checking what the food supply ratio is (peasants will know if 80% of their food supply is imported).
Actually back in the days of the Dragon Queen I asked to go to war, quite a bit. Since for some unfathomable reason we were all scared that SA was going to attack, I suggested and was prepared to strike pre-emptively. Sure we probably would have lost, but better that then to have a bunch of "nobles" living in fear of a possible enemy. There was also a considerable period of time were we pushing for a war against Terran.
