Retention Revisited

[Fleugs]

Well, we have wealth taxes--why not have reverse taxes (aka welfare) for poor knights?

Give the banker an option that says "if a knight receives less than x gold, give them gold from the realm share to make up for it".

And the realm should be able to levy effective taxes against the duchies to make up for it.

Come to Riombara.

[egamma]

Come to Riombara.

I left once you sold out to the monsters, sorry.

[Fleugs]

I left once you sold out to the monsters, sorry.

But we sold out to communism now! Everybody's equal.  8)

[bluexmas]

I truly appreciate the discussion around this topic. I'm not sure that some kind of welfare system would be helpful IC, as that just reinforces the crappy lot of the new knight. I'd also like to second the comment made above that truly new players have no idea that 10% is a crappy oath - you have to dig pretty deep (for a new character especially) to figure out how much that will actually make you. And, if all of the offers you receive are low-balls, you would naturally assume that that's the way things are.

One suggestion might be to let ruler's set an oath % floor for their realm. Obviously, it should probably be done in a way so that the different types of regions can each be adjusted to have a different floor, otherwise the gold-rich cities would make it unwise for even the most benevolent rulers to get involved if it was a blanket adjust. Done properly though, this could be an effective way to advertise for realms, and let rulers make a statement about their realm's treatment of knights. Any thoughts?

[Chenier]

Regarding gold...

That is highly realm and situation dependent.  I've had precisely three characters who at any point in their life really had "surplus" gold.  One of them was expressly created as an attempt to fill the coffers of House Bedwyr, and made a lot of money as a spy.  One of them made it to a lordship in a completely peaceful realm with nothing going on, and the last is the Duke of a large city on Dwilight who only occasionally has surplus funds and those tend to get plowed into his religion or infrastructure improvements.

That's mostly because I've ended up playing in realms that are constantly fighting important wars where every piece of gold counted or on frontiers where there was jack-all gold to go around  :)  Consequently, House Bedwyr has the highest fame/family gold ratio that I'm aware of.

So, gold is one of those things that can depend on the place and time.  It only annoys me when I see (for instance) the handful of people at the top of the realm leading 100 man units while most of the army is fielding fifteen or twenty.  IC, I love seeing that in my enemies as it means I have a good shot at finding disaffected elements and it's incredibly inefficient. OOC, it bugs me, because that's the kind of thing that drives people away.  Fifty vs thirty men is one thing, being a Duke has its perks.  But 100 vs 15 is just silliness.

I can't speak for everywhere, but in Enweil I've often led 100+ men units while others had tiny units. But hey, the dukes were giving me gold to spread out to my army, and when I made offers for gold to the army hardly anyone ever replied. So I just dumped most of it on my own unit. Sometimes, people are really to blame.

And really, some of these people were often directly given cash, and we never saw their units grow, and as far as I know everyone in Enweil has a good enough oath to recruit at least a respectful amount of men. So meh. Ducal handouts were really just a plus, mostly to help whoever wanted to lead a TO unit (anyone could, they just had to ask), or to replenish units decimated in battle. And while I didn't have the gold to recruit such huge units by myself, my income as lord of a rural was enough to pay for their salary without need for supplements. And those were highly-trained archers from the best available RCs.

Hm, hey, remember when Chenier said that bankers were useless? We could give them some sort of option that could assign a portion of realm income first to priority recipients.

Like, the banker could have the comprehensive list of all nobles in the realm (except, maybe, the council, dukes, and lords, to prevent abuse). The judge and ruler already have similar lists in bans for the former and ooc bans and exiles for the latter. This would just have different mechanics and intent.

Basically the banker is notified of who needs financial aid. The banker selects a % of real income to be sent to those people, before all other calculations for realm income (or after, this is just rough idea). This information is public and can be checked under some page in the Information page, both to make sure it's happening, and because, well, this stuff should be public since it is the realm's stuff.

Yeah, it's unrealistic. But you know, I think I'd rather play a slightly unrealistic game than one that I do not like due to mechanics conflicting with realism.

There is no option you could give the banker that you couldn't give someone else. I also deeply dislike the welfare tax idea, but would not oppose a capped class-based tax from coming back.

"Welfare" tax is just so damn abusable. It's one thing to cheat yourself out of the property tax to avoid giving your gold away, but to then grab the gold of other more needy nobles? It'd be cheap. Needy nobles would get ripped off by the malign.

[Vellos]

I was lord of a region that made 230 gold, and required three knights for full estate coverage. Not exactly a lavish income for any of them. Of course that assumes you can actually find three people to be your knight.

The Riombaran experience is valuable here.

Riombara has an ongoing IC feud between advocates of redistribution via high realm/duchy taxes (25% of all income of regions is now pooled realm-wide) and advocates of redistribution via food sales.

I'm an economist by training. I've run equilibrium models many, many times on many realms trying to determine what price of food could promote equality of incomes between typically poor rural regions and typically wealthy urban (or, often even wealthier due to food self-sufficiency and lower estate needs, townsland) regions.

I have never found a realm where the "equilibrium" (or, rather, the "nearest to equilibrium") price that would even income was less than 50 gold per 100 bushels. And yet most realms (D'Hara excluded perhaps) pay 20-40 for their food in internal trades.

This means that gold is redistributed through realm-wide tax shares or through donations, neither of which show up in oath-share estimations for knights. Moreover, this systematically impoverishes the (majority?) of players who hold rural oaths and positions.

I'll tell you what would make rural regions able to offer sizable oaths. If the game prohibited sales of food for less than 30 gold per 100 bushels.

Indirik, I bet your 230-gold producing region produced a surplus of food. I'll bet it wasn't an insignificant surplus. I'll bet that, given your need for 4 estates, your region ran a surplus of at least 200-400 bushels on a regular basis (only very large rural regions need 4 estates). If you could have been bringing in 100-200 gold in food sales, that might have changed things.

I will, however, say that I think this issue of wealth distribution should be split into a different thread. It is tangentially connected to retention, but hardly what I was talking about initially. Unless someone can demonstrate that the higher-retaining continents are more generous in distribution to poor knights....?

[egamma]

I created a new character today, and I can confirm that the Colonies had the lowest average income, and I'm pretty sure Atamara had the highest.

[Chenier]

I have never found a realm where the "equilibrium" (or, rather, the "nearest to equilibrium") price that would even income was less than 50 gold per 100 bushels. And yet most realms (D'Hara excluded perhaps) pay 20-40 for their food in internal trades.

(...)

I'll tell you what would make rural regions able to offer sizable oaths. If the game prohibited sales of food for less than 30 gold per 100 bushels.

D'Hara does indeed sell internally to 50 gold per unit. I'd set a preferential rate too, if I could.

I don't like the idea of capping it at 30. It kinda destroys the potential to demand a regular shipment of food for dirt cheap as part of an armistice.

I think the fact that ox carts waste so much food is good enough incentive. I mean, I saw a transfer yesterday by ox carts, where 6 bushels made it and 94 were stolen by brigands. Kinda makes you want to use the caravans. Then since caravans cost gold, you want to ask a little at least in return. And since you are asking for gold, you don't feel as bad for asking for enough to make a profit.

It must be noted, though, that some regions are just crap. They neither produce enough gold nor enough food to cover the manpower they require for full estates. Most badlands are like this, but some rurals as well, my old region of Nemeno coming to mind. Selling food still wouldn't have been enough to sustain two nobles at decent income levels.

[Fleugs]

I disliked the situation in Riombara from a different point of view: there where the game says "this duchy tax is a punishment", the players just seemed to ignore it and felt quite comfortable with a modern day socialist system of taxation and redistribution.

That disgusted me.

[Chenier]

I disliked the situation in Riombara from a different point of view: there where the game says "this duchy tax is a punishment", the players just seemed to ignore it and felt quite comfortable with a modern day socialist system of taxation and redistribution.

That disgusted me.

Taxes were *normal*, though, as far as I know. Mind you, they were small and went directly to the superior's pockets, but still.

Also, the game says "*probably* a punishment".

[Fleugs]

Well, taxes were "normal" in the sense that the one being taxed would agree upon the amount of tax. Otherwise unrest would eventually grow. Taxes came with privileges.

Besides, I'm all for taxing and then putting it to use for the state, but what Riombara does is just re-distributing the gold automatically. A really, really socialist inspired idea. The main reason is "everyone an equal share". Mind you this is not a comment on socialism or whatnot, just that it has no place in Battlemaster.

[Chenier]

Well, taxes were "normal" in the sense that the one being taxed would agree upon the amount of tax. Otherwise unrest would eventually grow. Taxes came with privileges.

Besides, I'm all for taxing and then putting it to use for the state, but what Riombara does is just re-distributing the gold automatically. A really, really socialist inspired idea. The main reason is "everyone an equal share". Mind you this is not a comment on socialism or whatnot, just that it has no place in Battlemaster.

The values of shared realm taxes for gameplay purposes has been preached on these forums, though. Unmedieval, but not completely unfun. I like it being a possibility to debate within realms.

[Bedwyr]

The values of shared realm taxes for gameplay purposes has been preached on these forums, though. Unmedieval, but not completely unfun. I like it being a possibility to debate within realms.

It's also much closer to how the game used to work.  I have been and still am bitterly opposed to the current tax system because intrigue possibilities and reality aside, it makes it much much much more difficult to get gold to new people and keep everyone in the realm at a reasonable level of gold when your regions are taking any damage, which I have seen leading to people leaving the game and is frankly just not fun.

[Indirik]

I tend to agree with Bedwyr, but not entirely. I'd split the oath system and the taxes apart a bit. Keep the oaths, and even a bit of the tax incentive portion of the system. But also allow easy realm-wide collection and distribution of taxes.

It is kinda-sorta possible to do this now. Dukes can forcibly tax regions. But regions cannot forcibly tax duchies. The current mechanic for realms to tax duchies is a bit broken, as it does not allow the realm to directly tax the city. Bankers can only tax the duchy entity, which dukes can avoid by simply not sending any of their own city's income to the duchy. So this system would require the willing cooperation of the duke, who would be able to set all on his own how much tax he sends to the realm.

If realms could forcibly tax duchies in an effective manner, then realms could devise new tax policies that would involve both a meaningful realm share for the nobility, and the possibility of lords giving extra income to favored knights.

[Fleugs]

I like the idea of a possible "forced tax" on duchies (I believe that it should tax the entire duchy income, not the city itself), but I wouldn't mind if it were just an extra option. In essence this means that a ruler/banker could enforce taxes which would then be redistributed or whatnot throughout the entire realm, but doesn't have to. He might as well come to an agreement with a duke (which would be much more of a consensus then).