What I've noticed after the implementation of the current estate system is that not many lords seem to care about having knights anymore.
As everyone starts as a knight, I think it is important for lords and knights to be close to each other. Is there anyway to encourage lords to care more about their knights?
I agree, but it's hard to do. Especially since most Knights are either new people who are quiet, or don't stick around very long because they move on up the ranks.
Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.
Quote from: Tom on October 06, 2012, 12:51:37 PM
Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.
No, you don't. You get a perfectly efficient estate for yourself, plus 50% of the unoccupied estates and wild lands. If a knight takes that estate, then that 50% goes to them (minus taxes).
That being said, I have yet to see new players unable to secure an estate. The main reason there are many regions without knights is that estates from cities often provide more gold, and since covering a region is no longer needed to keep control, then people do not feel the need to sacrifice gold for the sake of having at least one knight per region.
Quote from: Tom on October 06, 2012, 12:51:37 PM
Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.
There's a difference between total income and personal income. Knights decrease personal income, sometimes enormously.
unless you whack the lord's share up enough to make no difference. but would knights take it up.... if resulting income is too low?
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there are other reasons to have knights... some elections favour lords with lots of knights.
equally.. you might choose to have a couple of rich as opposed to having a ton of poor knights.
This is a problem we talked about while fine-tuning the new estates, Tom.
Basically, there's no personal incentive for a Lord to add knights to his region. There's an incentive to the realm—greater total realm income—but the Lord will get less money with knights than he will without in almost all cases.
Earlier versions of the new estate design had efficiency for the whole region increasing as the number of knights went up, so that a region could support many knights and for each knight, the amount of money each % of the region produced would increase—to the point where it would be possible to push the region's total income well over the nominal value with the right estate setup. I believe this was deemed too complicated to balance easily.
As another already stated, I don't think the issue is so much lack of need for knights, but lack of available knights. Most any size estate you can create in a rural is almost never going to be as lucrative as a good sized city or town estate; very true and felt in smaller realms.
I do see plenty incentives for lords to still want knights though. Political power( given referendum styles), military leverage in armies, stewards, being more efficient at civil work, and the benefits of them looting foreign food, to name a few.
The difference in gold production is intentional and realistic. The only perks I could maybe see as a viable incentive to WANT to pay more to knights would be to make civil work more powerful in certain region types- which to me is pointless on a normal situation other than raising the sustainable tax rate.
Or, wait for the long ago discussed buildings for estates that offered much potential. This potentially new feature is as cool as the new estate system itself, but likely to get next to no fussing other than bugs and people wishing for more buildings.
Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.
Quote from: Tom on October 06, 2012, 05:52:34 PM
Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.
Hmm. Maybe once a more complex economic system gets implemented, things may change.
Like once regions start to produce iron wood stone and other stuff, maybe reduce the amount of resources you get?
For example:
A region lord of X mine with 40% estate without knights will only produce 40% of whatever metals while another region lord of Y mine with 40% estate and two knights with 30% estate each will produce 100% of metals. Something like that.
But we will first need more players before implementing anything too big.
Quote from: Tom on October 06, 2012, 05:52:34 PM
Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.
Could the gold from food sales be put into a general region pot, and have it be distributed by the estate percentages?
Quote from: Tom on October 06, 2012, 05:52:34 PM
Well, the thing is that the "currency" of rural regions - food - only benefits the lord. And the problem of cities - food - is only a problem for the lord. We have an imbalance there, but one we can not easily address.
This is one reason why my duke character refuses to pay above a certain price for food. Since it all goes to the lord what's the point in lining his pockets? If it went to the region as a whole he might be willing to pay more since it would benefit the knights as well.
Quote from: Bedwyr on October 06, 2012, 11:04:59 PM
Could the gold from food sales be put into a general region pot, and have it be distributed by the estate percentages?
This might not be a bad idea. It will encourage knights to demand more gold for food as well. It is going be interesting to see how it will work out if things do change like that.
I'd never pass up knights for the sake of inefficient wild lands.
The only reason I've ever lacked for knights is because there are so few knights to go around.
Yeah, the whole thing is that we need to have a balance between it being good to have knights and it being a disaster to not having any because sometimes there just aren't any around.
Quote from: Tom on October 07, 2012, 10:32:49 AM
Yeah, the whole thing is that we need to have a balance between it being good to have knights and it being a disaster to not having any because sometimes there just aren't any around.
The current setting is a good balance in my opinion. I have yet to see knights having problems finding good estates. Does that occur somewhere?
I like the current system. It does provide a balance; the fact that lords must, by definition, be generous to their knights means that a relationship of some sort has to form.
Some ideas:
1) Have the income of wild lands and untaken estates go to the /ruler/ directly. Possibly even reduce the income of those parts from 50% to 33%. This way, a regionlord does have an interest to gain knights - it gives him additional gold via the lord share /and/ he has indirect command of the income of the knight. In addition, this also encourages the dukes to pressure their lords to gain knights....as the unclaimed income would otherwise leave their duchy.
2) Strengthen feudal oaths. I would love to see that, but have no clearcut idea on how that might be achieved. Basically it should be in the interest of a lod to have knights, hopefully not only via gaining more income but by increasing his /power/. One idea would be to base voting power (somehow...) on (controlled) land, giving each knights vote the weight depending on his controlled land, each lord the weight for himself and his knights and the dukes the weight of their combined lords. Some kind of balance between gold (cities/townslands) and rurals (food) would need to be found.
Representative Referendums are already there for Lords and Dukes, but it disallows the rest of Nobility to vote directly. Still, that can be used more. Or perhaps we need some system where all of Nobility gets to vote, but Lord and Dukes get more votes dependent on the amount of Knights in their region.
I do believe perhaps open estates or wild lands should give no tax income (Or go to the Ruler with a hefty penalty, though that might make Rulers very very rich), so a Knight actually benefits the Lord. Though, that may introduce balance issues, I don't know.
Quote from: Tan_Serrai on October 07, 2012, 11:28:52 AM
Some ideas:
1) Have the income of wild lands and untaken estates go to the /ruler/ directly. Possibly even reduce the income of those parts from 50% to 33%. This way, a regionlord does have an interest to gain knights - it gives him additional gold via the lord share /and/ he has indirect command of the income of the knight. In addition, this also encourages the dukes to pressure their lords to gain knights....as the unclaimed income would otherwise leave their duchy.
2) Strengthen feudal oaths. I would love to see that, but have no clearcut idea on how that might be achieved. Basically it should be in the interest of a lod to have knights, hopefully not only via gaining more income but by increasing his /power/. One idea would be to base voting power (somehow...) on (controlled) land, giving each knights vote the weight depending on his controlled land, each lord the weight for himself and his knights and the dukes the weight of their combined lords. Some kind of balance between gold (cities/townslands) and rurals (food) would need to be found.
Basically, you want to throw out the new estates and go back to the old estates.
Uhm... I don't see how that's going back to the old estates... well, not entirely anyways.
Quote from: Telrunya on October 07, 2012, 01:23:10 PM
Representative Referendums are already there for Lords and Dukes, but it disallows the rest of Nobility to vote directly. Still, that can be used more. Or perhaps we need some system where all of Nobility gets to vote, but Lord and Dukes get more votes dependent on the amount of Knights in their region.
thought the whole point of representative election is that the knights are supposed to make their own views known to the lord. (which they of course never do). and lords their duke. heck... the old madina electoral system was basically that.. done manually!
i don't think taxes going to ruler make any sense at all, nor 0 tax. seeing as all those other ideas about buildings in estates and what not are not in... it's hard to say if their addition won't make knights more attractive to a lord.
at the end of the day, i don't think any realms i play in are actually flooding in knights. in my relatively rich region in bt, a knight vacated the estate after being made a lord. i offered to either leave that estate as it is for someone to take up or split into 2 (will still have income that's a lot more than most of the other low pop regions) no one took up either offer, so estate is gone. of course, people still like to ask treasury for gold instead.
so why should a lord get penalised if people like to get little income elsewhere and then ask for gold? (that said... my region doesn't have wild lands or empty estates)
Decrease efficiency of lord's estate, so that instead of it being 100% efficient at 20%, it's 100% efficient at 10% and 70% efficient at 20%. Lords really shouldn't have estates, they should just have knights and tax them instead.
Quote from: egamma on October 07, 2012, 11:28:00 PM
Decrease efficiency of lord's estate, so that instead of it being 100% efficient at 20%, it's 100% efficient at 10% and 70% efficient at 20%. Lords really shouldn't have estates, they should just have knights and tax them instead.
Wrong. Lords should have estates.
Quote from: egamma on October 07, 2012, 11:28:00 PM
Decrease efficiency of lord's estate, so that instead of it being 100% efficient at 20%, it's 100% efficient at 10% and 70% efficient at 20%. Lords really shouldn't have estates, they should just have knights and tax them instead.
What possible logic could exist for a powerful land owner NOT to have an estate? I've got all this land, but bugger owning a Manor House I would much rather sleep on the streets?
How about increasing the tax rate cap? Each knight you have, you can tax your region higher by 1 more percent?
Quote from: Zakilevo on October 08, 2012, 12:19:45 AM
How about increasing the tax rate cap? Each knight you have, you can tax your region higher by 1 more percent?
We have things like that partially implemented, partially planned, partially in the idea stage. But there is a LOT of work still left on ongoing code changes, so everything takes a while.
If I understand things right, if a region makes 100 gold, and a night has a 50% estate, he gets 50 gold initially. Then comes the lords tax. Perhaps something similar can happen with food?
1 - If a region generates 100 food, and a night has a 50% estate, the region lord has to pay the night for 50% of the food. The night sets the price in his estate settings or some such. Earnings are taxed by the lord.
2 - If a knight has a 50% estate he receives 50% of the gold made from food sales. The resulting sum is subject to lords tax.
Both ideas are admittedly rough. I think the second idea might be better due to simplicity and it seems fairly automatic.
um.. food gets complicated... because if a knight gets food to sell, does that mean he'll have to feed his own peasant?
ie.. in townslands/cities/etc... they'll have to pay for food to feed their peasants.
I think it would be better if the knight simply somehow received a proportional share of the money earned from food sales. Not sure how though...
... it just doesn't work that way.
the lord or steward pays out of his own pocket if he buys food. therefore it's only reasonable they get all the dole if they sell.
now, if you go back to something akin to the old system or a regional treasury type thing where profits and costs is done via taxes, then it's another matter. but you'll end up having to figure out how to not end up with phantom money. ie.. you buy food with money that will never be produced. the seller gets the money and you lose all your infrastructure as you have no money to pay for it, if you have any infrastructure. if you don't.. you don't lose anything.
The system as it is allows for a great deal of flexibility.
For example, the lord of a rural region could decide to tax his knights very little because his personal main source of income is food sales. Or he could promote one knight with a small estate to steward with an understanding that he can profit from food sales.
The lord of a city, on the other hand, can tax his knights high, with the understanding that these taxes also pay for the food he needs to buy.
But how exactly these deals work is left to everyone to figure out for themselves, and that's a cool thing because it allows different solutions to co-exist.
Quote from: Tom on October 06, 2012, 12:51:37 PM
Hm, I'm surprised. Why don't they care about knights? Without them, you get maybe half the region income.
Without, they get half, sure. But with them, they get even less.
Unless, of course, he taxes the hell out of them. :P
Quote from: Tom on October 08, 2012, 05:13:36 PM
The system as it is allows for a great deal of flexibility.
For example, the lord of a rural region could decide to tax his knights very little because his personal main source of income is food sales. Or he could promote one knight with a small estate to steward with an understanding that he can profit from food sales.
The lord of a city, on the other hand, can tax his knights high, with the understanding that these taxes also pay for the food he needs to buy.
But how exactly these deals work is left to everyone to figure out for themselves, and that's a cool thing because it allows different solutions to co-exist.
Thank you Tom. This puts things in perspective for me and is so very cool.
Well Tom the problem is if you give your knight a big estate, you get less gold since your knight won't have 100% efficiency. If you give your knight a 40% estate, your knight's estate will have about 72% efficiency. tax 50% of that you will only get about 36% while wild lands actually give you 14% more.
If you want to promote people from having more knights, I think knights shouldn't suffer from less efficient estates.
Quote from: Rolly on October 09, 2012, 05:55:50 AM
Well Tom the problem is if you give your knight
The missing "s" at the end there is your conceptual issue. You are supposed to have more than one knight.
Quote from: Rolly on October 09, 2012, 05:55:50 AM
Well Tom the problem is if you give your knight a big estate, you get less gold since your knight won't have 100% efficiency. If you give your knight a 40% estate, your knight's estate will have about 72% efficiency. tax 50% of that you will only get about 36% while wild lands actually give you 14% more.
If you want to promote people from having more knights, I think knights shouldn't suffer from less efficient estates.
Then don't give the knight a larger estate?
Quote from: Tom on October 09, 2012, 10:32:07 AM
The missing "s" at the end there is your conceptual issue. You are supposed to have more than one knight.
Except that's not realistic with the income of some regions.
Quote from: Anaris on October 09, 2012, 01:17:09 PM
Except that's not realistic with the income of some regions.
It's not only that. On Dwilight, there are on average 2.16 characters per region only. That's a great result of the new estate system: realms are not constrained to remain small because of lack of nobles, they are constrained only by their ability to wage war.
Low efficiency is not bad when a reasonable income is desired for a knight not in a city or townsland.
The bad part is that wildlands and empty estates give the lord strictly more, and a lot more than if a knight takes a non-completely efficient estate.
A simple solution is to lower wildlands default taxes to 25% and empty estate max efficiency to 75%. This way, lords have an incentive to create empty estates and fill them if they can, and knights are not left with pitiful allowances in average regions.
... honestly, I'm not seeing why this is an issue.
the questions you should ask is
1) are there tons of nobles with no estates because no one is offering them, as opposed to them not bothering to get one... whilst the absence of some sort of "at a glance" nearby estate tracker doesn't make life easy, it's not all that hard to look up every region in your own realm to see if there are estates
2) does it matter whether a rural/wildlands/whatever lord doesn't offer estates... if the richer city/stronghold/townsland lords take a huge cut out of their own region and don't give their knights much. ie.. no point forcing the poorer regions to have knights and lower individual income, if the rich region lords don't take more knights and don't give their knights much.
Quote from: Foundation on October 09, 2012, 02:33:32 PM
Low efficiency is not bad when a reasonable income is desired for a knight not in a city or townsland.
The bad part is that wildlands and empty estates give the lord strictly more, and a lot more than if a knight takes a non-completely efficient estate.
A simple solution is to lower wildlands default taxes to 25% and empty estate max efficiency to 75%. This way, lords have an incentive to create empty estates and fill them if they can, and knights are not left with pitiful allowances in average regions.
You would then have to put in place something to prevent lords from kicking knights out of an estate that they want to leave empty.
Quote from: egamma on October 09, 2012, 07:00:56 PM
You would then have to put in place something to prevent lords from kicking knights out of an estate that they want to leave empty.
Why? Some knights are unfavourable. It is up to lords to decide who get which estates.
Quote from: Rolly on October 09, 2012, 07:02:23 PM
Why? Some knights are unfavourable. It is up to lords to decide who get which estates.
As long as both empty estates and wild lands yield the same, there is no reason not to, but if they were changed then some people would just make empty estates and kick everyone who takes it rather than assigning the land as wild.
Quote from: vonGenf on October 09, 2012, 07:37:32 PM
As long as both empty estates and wild lands yield the same, there is no reason not to, but if they were changed then some people would just make empty estates and kick everyone who takes it rather than assigning the land as wild.
That's the kind of behaviour that gets not only the realm, but the game as a whole seen as newbie-unfriendly.
Lords like that should be banned as a menace to everyone.
Quote from: Anaris on October 09, 2012, 07:39:12 PM
That's the kind of behaviour that gets not only the realm, but the game as a whole seen as newbie-unfriendly.
Lords like that should be banned as a menace to everyone.
I agree, but in the current system you don't gain anything by doing that, so it's not even an issue.
Quote from: egamma on October 09, 2012, 07:00:56 PM
You would then have to put in place something to prevent lords from kicking knights out of an estate that they want to leave empty.
Why? If efficiency goes above the 75% max when a knight takes an estate, the lord actually gets
more when a knight takes the estate.
The 75% efficiency max is
before lord share is counted. Even in empty estates the lord should only get at most 50% of the total taxes (max lord share). Thus, if right now, making a 100% efficient empty estate produces 100 gold, and the lord gets 50 gold, after the 75% max is added, the lord would only get 38 gold, and when a knight takes the estate, the lord, provided lord share is 50%, would then get 50 gold once again. Beneficial to both parties.
... how much income does the lord's estate give him in that hypothetical region? because chances are... there's just no point taking up that kind of estate, making the whole thing moot.
Quote from: egamma on October 09, 2012, 07:00:56 PM
You would then have to put in place something to prevent lords from kicking knights out of an estate that they want to leave empty.
accidentally.
I have had my mouse slip and kicked one of my knights. Some kind of double check would be nice. I suppose that it should be placed in a feature request.
Quote from: Charles on October 10, 2012, 04:23:30 AM
accidentally.
I have had my mouse slip and kicked one of my knights. Some kind of double check would be nice. I suppose that it should be placed in a feature request.
Sorry, we do very minimal confirmation, only for extreme cases like deleting your account. You'll have to live with misclicks like that. It's not hard to RP it off and have him take the estate again either. ;)
Quote from: Foundation on October 10, 2012, 04:27:52 AM
Sorry, we do very minimal confirmation, only for extreme cases like deleting your account. You'll have to live with misclicks like that. It's not hard to RP it off and have him take the estate again either. ;)
"Sorry dear sir, but I felt it necessary to give you a better estate in another neighborhood. Please stop by to take a look at it".
That was more or less my responce. Thanks anyway.