How the number of knights affects gold earned in a region

[Lorgan]

Of course anyone can do that. That's not the point. The point is people shouldn't have to do that to be able to have a chance in the game, because not everyone has hours and hours to waste with that trial and error.

It's maybe 15 minutes of tinkering with stuff a day...

All else being equal, a realm with fewer nobles should lose to a realm with more.

That's the thing though, all else being equal. Right now, a poor realm with 40 nobles beats the rich realm with 20 nobles.

[Anaris]

That's the thing though, all else being equal. Right now, a poor realm with 40 nobles beats the rich realm with 20 nobles.

I admit that I haven't been paying attention to various things lately, but that sounds like it might be a little off-kilter. Is there an actual case with numbers like this that you can point to, so I can see what the specific details are?

[Lorgan]

Well, those numbers I got from the first Thalmarkin versus Melhed war, which is already quite a while ago but did strike me as too easy for the Thalmarkin (40 nobles) side. It was from before the region rebalance iirc so I'm not sure how helpful that actually is. If you've still got those data, Thalmarkin had the same regions, about 30% less population, relatively weak RCs and Melhed had everything east of the mountains, south of the river, north of Marpii and uber RCs.

I have been taking that experience into account ever since and it's pretty much the reason we decided not to just attack one realm anymore but design a way to even out the odds.
There's also Luria on Dwilight, there may be other factors but I believe it's mostly the noble amount that is winning this war for us.

The thing is, everyone has enough gold nowadays, so every extra noble you have is pretty much an extra 1000 CS to add to your army. Only if you lose do you then run into gold problems.

[Chenier]

Well, those numbers I got from the first Thalmarkin versus Melhed war, which is already quite a while ago but did strike me as too easy for the Thalmarkin (40 nobles) side. It was from before the region rebalance iirc so I'm not sure how helpful that actually is. If you've still got those data, Thalmarkin had the same regions, about 30% less population, relatively weak RCs and Melhed had everything east of the mountains, south of the river, north of Marpii and uber RCs.

I have been taking that experience into account ever since and it's pretty much the reason we decided not to just attack one realm anymore but design a way to even out the odds.
There's also Luria on Dwilight, there may be other factors but I believe it's mostly the noble amount that is winning this war for us.

The thing is, everyone has enough gold nowadays, so every extra noble you have is pretty much an extra 1000 CS to add to your army. Only if you lose do you then run into gold problems.

I think Melhed had  poor density, which influences the outcome significantly. For example, D'Hara's odds against a realm with 40 nobles would not drastically increase by adding nobles there, because they already have 26 nobles crammed into 9 regions. Though it isn't so, most of these estates should be pretty much optimizable. Melhed would have gained a lot more strength with more nobles, however, as the land could have held many more knights, thus giving the edge to Thalmarkin. The regions Melhed had might have had good base stats, but could not be optimized due to low density, thus providing a mean income per knight that probably wasn't all that much better than Thalmarkin's.

[Lorgan]

Poor density is a side-effect of having a small amount of nobles though.

[Anaris]

Poor density is a side-effect of having a small amount of nobles though.

It fails the "all else being equal" qualifier, though.

[Lorgan]

Well, ok. I'll come back to you when it's just Thal vs Rio then.

[Eldargard]

While I have chosen to bust out the calculator now and then I almost arrive at the same conclusion at the end: it might have been fun and satisfied my inner germ, it's never really worth the effort in the long run. The things you really get the most value from don't need calculators. Interactions, battles, and the like. Still, give me a wiki page full of formulas and I just can't help myself!

[De-Legro]

While I have chosen to bust out the calculator now and then I almost arrive at the same conclusion at the end: it might have been fun and satisfied my inner germ, it's never really worth the effort in the long run. The things you really get the most value from don't need calculators. Interactions, battles, and the like. Still, give me a wiki page full of formulas and I just can't help myself!

Which is probably why Tom used to be against revealing much of the inner workings of the game.

[Chenier]

Poor density is a side-effect of having a small amount of nobles though.

Just saying that when comparing noble count of various realms and trying to translate it into might, one must consider what is the critical saturation value for each. Getting more nobles considerably increases a realm's total gold production, until it doesn't. Noble counts, like most things in BM, come with diminishing returns.

[Chenier]

While I have chosen to bust out the calculator now and then I almost arrive at the same conclusion at the end: it might have been fun and satisfied my inner germ, it's never really worth the effort in the long run. The things you really get the most value from don't need calculators. Interactions, battles, and the like. Still, give me a wiki page full of formulas and I just can't help myself!

I managed D'Hara's food with spread sheets, back in the days.

I didn't mind it, found the challenge to be fun. For that specific realm at that specific time, though, it was a necessity.

[Kai]

Isn't it obvious that smaller estates always give more overall gold? Otherwise no lords would ever have knights.

I think having some SF abilities and combat mechanics exposed might have retained some people who are playing for battles.

[Indirik]

I still use spreadsheets for food management.

Back in the day Perdan used to manage its armies with spreadsheets. I learned a lot of excel by being second in command of an army in Perdan.

[Kai]

How do you manage armies with spreadsheets?

[Indirik]

Position, strength, composition, etc. When your army is 60+ nobles, and you're not using the games built in tools (that was back when armies were duchy based, and no one really used the built in ones), you built the army status report by hand from scout reports.