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BattleMaster => Helpline => Topic started by: Tom on September 08, 2011, 07:31:41 PM

Title: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 08, 2011, 07:31:41 PM
BattleMaster is getting a New Estate System (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/New_Estate_System). Also read the page described changes to the tax system (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/New_Taxes) (with a nice flowchart).

Ask any questions not answered on the wiki page linked above here:
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Velax on September 09, 2011, 09:15:01 PM
Any hints on what the soft incentive will be to stop lords having maximum size estates?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bael on September 09, 2011, 09:16:39 PM
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How are newly acquired regions (TO, exchange, revolt, etc.) handled, i.e. which duchy will they be assigned to?
How will current imperial regions be assigned to duchies?

(from the wiki)

I recommend they be assigned on geographical proximity.

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 09, 2011, 09:43:25 PM
What will this do to the secession system, either to form a new realm or defect to a neighboring realm?   Or even regions switching from one duchy to another?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 09, 2011, 10:13:52 PM
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Lords can change their region to another duchy and dukes can change their entire duchy to another realm as before. Regardless of diplomatic settings, this is a violation of the oath of fealty and will result in an automatic ban.

ban when flipping region to duchy outside of realm only, right?

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tax report.
um... should a knight be able to see all other knight's bits? too much transparency? then again.. i suppose you want it to create tension?

what's the difference between (vacant) and wildlands?

what is there to do in estates? do they still influence region stats? why would a lord want an estate if he can give it all away and just tax knights by equivalent amount?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Solari on September 09, 2011, 10:17:30 PM
I love how this makes knights "shoppers" on an estate market.  This is a great victory for the BM middle class.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 09, 2011, 10:39:51 PM
What will this do to the secession system, either to form a new realm or defect to a neighboring realm? Or even regions switching from one duchy to another?
No changes, really. Duchies will be able to secede and switch allegiance as always, with pretty much the same restrictions as before. Though I believe Tom mentioned the probability that a duchy must have a city/stronghold/townsland region in order to secede.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 09, 2011, 10:53:00 PM
what's the difference between (vacant) and wildlands?
Vacant estates are available for any random noble wandering by to claim as their personal estate.

Wild lands are lands that are not assigned to any estate, and thus are not available for nobles to claim.

So if a lord does not want additional knights, they can either assign all land to occupied estates, or leave all excess land as wild. Since estates can be arbitrarily created, destroyed, and re-sized at the lord's whim, this is easily done.

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what is there to do in estates?
Nothing at this time. There are future plans to add things for knights to do.

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do they still influence region stats?
No. Estates only affect the collection of gold.

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why would a lord want an estate if he can give it all away and just tax knights by equivalent amount?
Perhaps he can't get enough knights to fill all the available land? Perhaps he just wants one? Also, there will be some additional incentives added that may make estates more desirable to have. These are not yet implemented, and may not be implemented for a while.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bael on September 09, 2011, 11:02:37 PM
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No. Estates only affect the collection of gold.

So what will influence control then? Just the normal active factors? (high taxes, starvation, looting, courts, courtiers).

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Revan on September 09, 2011, 11:05:15 PM
New Estate System (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/New_Estate_System)

Mouthwatering. Glorious. Bring it to stable soon please!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 09, 2011, 11:05:56 PM
Now we just need to wait until the new system gets implemented  :D
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 09, 2011, 11:06:22 PM
So what will influence control then? Just the normal active factors? (high taxes, starvation, looting, courts, courtiers).
Yes. Basically you take the things that affect regions now, and remove all the bonuses/penalties caused by estates.

That's the way it is right now. There are future, long-range plans to add additional enhancements to estates that will allow estate holders to do things to change the way their estates affect the regions. But that won't come along any time soon.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 09, 2011, 11:11:24 PM
Vacant estates are available for any random noble wandering by to claim as their personal estate.

Wild lands are lands that are not assigned to any estate, and thus are not available for nobles to claim.

So if a lord does not want additional knights, they can either assign all land to occupied estates, or leave all excess land as wild. Since estates can be arbitrarily created, destroyed, and re-sized at the lord's whim, this is easily done.
eh... they claim it.. and then you boot them out the same turn/next turn? it doesn't cost a thing to mess around with estates, does it?


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tax rate... you can't collect more tax from a region with higher tax rates any more?

sounds as if a region has X peasants and produces Y.. then that's it. you can divy it up how you want.. but won't get more out of it (until estates do something?)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nathan on September 10, 2011, 12:16:12 AM
This seems a pretty nice system. Madina already has something like this in roleplay terms (in terms of power flow), so this just seems a natural way to do things to us.

I'm interested to know if there's going to be a way of hiding things from those higher up. So for example, if my Lord wanted to hide some of his/her gold and keep it for themselves, could they do that?

Also, what about trade income? Is it split the same way as it is now? Or will estates play some hand in how that income gets split up?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: cjnodell on September 10, 2011, 12:28:10 AM
Region: Happyplace
Gold: 200
Food: 150
Max Estate size: 50%
Min Estate Size: 10%
Tax Rate: 10%
Lords Share: 10%

So, lets say I start off as Lord of Happyplace. I give myself a large estate of 50% (I am greedy). I give each of my two knights an estate of 25% I have full coverage and the region will generate 140 gold per week. 70 goes directly to me (%50). 35 goes to each of my knights (%25) and 3 of that  goes to me (32g per knight and 76g for me in total now). All expenses then come from my 76 gold (militia, buildings). Then I pay my dukes share of 25% (determined by the Duke). Is that 25% of my lords share (6g) or 25% of all my earnings (76g)?

Now one of my knights dies in glorious battle. His estate become vacant. Next taxes come along and instead of getting my 6g lords share I get 17g (%50 of the 35 gold it can produce). I get more gold but 18 gold has been lost in all.

Also, assuming I want a new knight I can reduce my estate to 30% and create a vacant estate of 20%. Any noble that comes to my region can claim this vacant estate (therefore being bound to me by oath) as long as this does not mess with the hierarchy. I then have a new knight. If tax day is coming and no one has claimed the estate I can take that 20% back to my estate and suffer no loss in gold?

Does all this similarly affect food production? If not, why? It would make sense to me that vacant estates and wild lands only produce 50% food...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 12:43:33 AM
i think you add all your income up (your estate + your lord share) then deduct all your expenses, then you divide what's left between you and your duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: cjnodell on September 10, 2011, 01:05:01 AM
That would make the most sense...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Jens Namtrah on September 10, 2011, 01:40:07 AM
"Duchies are their own entities now, meaning the duke does not have to be the lord of the duchy capital. In fact, there is no such thing as a duchy capital. The duke does not even have to be a lord. In addition, duchies can be created and dissolved, with some limitations. "

I take it to mean the Ruler can basically create a title of Duke, and let him convince lords to swear to him?

Very nice! This plays into an idea I had only thought I would be able to RP before.  I hope this breaks up our Duke staleness issues.

---

also, Lord of a City/stronghold is not necessarily a Duke? Just a very powerful lord
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 01:56:51 AM
If duchies aren't tied to cities anymore...

What creates a duke?

Or are they still tied, you just don't need to be lord of the namesake city to be the duke anymore?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:01:11 AM
eh... they claim it.. and then you boot them out the same turn/next turn? it doesn't cost a thing to mess around with estates, does it?
Cost as in money? No. I am not sure if Tom will eventually add an hours cost for the lord resizing/creating/deleting estates. As far as claiming/abandoning estates, you can only do one action per turn. It doesn't "cost" anything.

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tax rate... you can't collect more tax from a region with higher tax rates any more?
Lords still set the tax rate for the region. This has not changed. But taxes collected from vacant estates or wild lands only give half the normal amount.

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ounds as if a region has X peasants and produces Y.. then that's it. you can divy it up how you want.. but won't get more out of it (until estates do something?)
No, the income equation is still the same as always: GoldRating X TaxRate X %Production X #ofDays

But if 25% of the region is vacant/wild, then that 25% will generate half revenue, or 12.5%. Instead of 100% of the gold generated, you get the 75% from the occupied land, plus the 12.5% from the vacant/wild land, for a total of 87.5 %.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:04:03 AM
I'm interested to know if there's going to be a way of hiding things from those higher up. So for example, if my Lord wanted to hide some of his/her gold and keep it for themselves, could they do that?
There is currently no "Hide your income" function. But if you don't want to pay realm share, then just make sure there is no Duchy Share. Since the realm share comes out of the Duke's incomes, then make sure the Duke's income is 0. :)

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Also, what about trade income? Is it split the same way as it is now? Or will estates play some hand in how that income gets split up?
For now, I think it is dumped into the general region tax pool.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:11:53 AM
"Duchies are their own entities now, meaning the duke does not have to be the lord of the duchy capital. In fact, there is no such thing as a duchy capital. The duke does not even have to be a lord. In addition, duchies can be created and dissolved, with some limitations. "

I take it to mean the Ruler can basically create a title of Duke, and let him convince lords to swear to him?
Rulers can create a new duchy from any city or townsland who's lord is not already a duke. The ruler waves his magic wand and *poof* that lord is the duke of a new duchy. The ruler cannot make new duchies out of thin air. There has to be a reasonably wealthy/powerful region from which to create the duchy. To make this easy at the start of the new system, it will be limited to cities/strongholds/townslands. That requirement may change later.

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also, Lord of a City/stronghold is not necessarily a Duke?
Correct.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:15:09 AM
If duchies aren't tied to cities anymore...

What creates a duke?
The ruler selects a city/stronghold/townsland who's lord is not already a duke and promotes them to the rank of Duke. This removes that region from its prior duchy, and makes it a new, one-region duchy.

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Or are they still tied, you just don't need to be lord of the namesake city to be the duke anymore?
There is not tie. There is no such thing as a "duchy capital" or "duchy center". If the duke is not the lord of the city, then the city can change to be part of a different duchy. Or the ruler could make the lord of that city the duke of a new duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 03:13:24 AM
So... what are rulers making into duchies/dukes? If dukes don't need to be lords, and there are no duchy centre, doesn't that allow for infinite duchies?

Edit: not infinite duchies, but still more duchies then there are cities+strongholds+townslands.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 10, 2011, 03:21:28 AM
I think the duke has to be initially a lord of a townsland or stronghold or city.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 10, 2011, 03:23:24 AM
I think the duke has to be initially a lord of a townsland or stronghold or city.

I dont think so :S A Duchy just needs to contain one of those? Or is that only for succession?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Solari on September 10, 2011, 04:17:42 AM
I dont think so :S A Duchy just needs to contain one of those? Or is that only for succession?

Duchies can only be created from cities, strongholds, and towns.  The duke can be any lord from a region in the duchy, but that opens up the Duke (the one with the city) to leave the duchy useless by joining another.  I don't believe the question of townlands seceding has been covered, but unless we're allowing recruiting in towns now it would seem to be a non-starter. 

This change seems less about making millions of dukes (sorry folks) and more about giving the rulers some control over dukes, who can ruin realms through incompetence or intransigence.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on September 10, 2011, 05:45:09 AM
If tax day is coming and no one has claimed the estate I can take that 20% back to my estate and suffer no loss in gold?

Does all this similarly affect food production? If not, why? It would make sense to me that vacant estates and wild lands only produce 50% food...

Tax gold is collected daily currently, as such I expect it will be the same with the new system.   Thus you'd lose 50% gold from the days it was NOT part of your estate, but get 100% gold production from when it was.   

I would hope the rationale is that regions are always farmed / maintained by peasants - but it's only the tax collectors from the Estate who half ass it when they don't have a noble man breathing down their necks to get the job done.   The peasants don't really care if there is a lord - they need to farm to feed themselves and their families.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 07:09:29 AM
Lords still set the tax rate for the region. This has not changed. But taxes collected from vacant estates or wild lands only give half the normal amount.
No, the income equation is still the same as always: GoldRating X TaxRate X %Production X #ofDays

But if 25% of the region is vacant/wild, then that 25% will generate half revenue, or 12.5%. Instead of 100% of the gold generated, you get the 75% from the occupied land, plus the 12.5% from the vacant/wild land, for a total of 87.5 %.

wait... region tax rate and a lord's cut are different things? now that you mention is... i can see it in the pic..  doh!


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The ruler selects a city/stronghold/townsland who's lord is not already a duke and promotes them to the rank of Duke. This removes that region from its prior duchy, and makes it a new, one-region duchy.

what happens if a duchy does not have a city/town any more? let's say a duke+lord+knight of a city in a duchy of 1 city + 1 rural gives up title of lord of city and the new lord flips to different duchy of same realm.
the duke becomes duke of 1 rural region, lord of nothing and knight of nothing?

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 10, 2011, 08:08:40 AM
what happens if a duchy does not have a city/town any more? let's say a duke+lord+knight of a city in a duchy of 1 city + 1 rural gives up title of lord of city and the new lord flips to different duchy of same realm.
the duke becomes duke of 1 rural region, lord of nothing and knight of nothing?
I'm actually very curious with this as well.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Keithson on September 10, 2011, 08:36:29 AM
what happens if a duchy does not have a city/town any more? let's say a duke+lord+knight of a city in a duchy of 1 city + 1 rural gives up title of lord of city and the new lord flips to different duchy of same realm.
the duke becomes duke of 1 rural region, lord of nothing and knight of nothing?

I believe Tom mentioned that Duchies can be dissolved:

"Duchies are their own entities now, meaning the duke does not have to be the lord of the duchy capital. In fact, there is no such thing as a duchy capital. The duke does not even have to be a lord. In addition, duchies can be created and dissolved, with some limitations. " From the New Estate System page

If Rulers can create Duchies, it would (hopefully) follow that they can dissolve them as well.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 08:47:40 AM
but if the ruler doesn't dissolve them? do they dissolve themselves when it's just a rural region? if not what's to stop every single region becoming a 1 region duchy (after a lot of tinkering)? presumably they can't secede unless it's a city because you can't recruit otherwise? (or is recruitment linked to capital region, rather than any city?) or there'll be lots of 1 region realms?


duchies can have multiple cities?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 10, 2011, 08:50:57 AM
Which doesn't actually answer the question.  You're implying the ruler would *want* to remove the title from the (theoretically) loyal Duke in that circumstance.  What if the ruler doesn't want to?

Would game mechanics allow it?  Would the ruler be able to make another Duke through that townsland/city/stronghold?

If the duchy dissolves because the townsland/city/stronghold leaves it, then there IS a ducal capital, at least in effect.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: GoldPanda on September 10, 2011, 08:58:53 AM
Question/concern: It seems to me that there are two ways for a lord to control the income of his knights. He can either tweak their estate sizes or adjust their tax rate. Why is the latter still needed? If I want my knights to receive more/less gold, why can't I just increase/decrease their estate sizes? Why go through the extra step of making my knights pay taxes, when I, as lord, pretty much decides what share they get anyway? Is there actually an interesting trade-off between adjusting the estate sizes and changing the regional tax rates?

It seems to me that the regional level tax is just a needless complication, and another feature that needs to be maintained by the devs, and might break (or become buggy) later.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: GoldPanda on September 10, 2011, 09:01:43 AM
Another question: What about us Judges/Generals/Bankers? Can we still be regular knights? Do we still get some of that sweet, sweet bonus money for being in a government position? :)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 09:40:00 AM
Question/concern: It seems to me that there are two ways for a lord to control the income of his knights. He can either tweak their estate sizes or adjust their tax rate. Why is the latter still needed? If I want my knights to receive more/less gold, why can't I just increase/decrease their estate sizes? Why go through the extra step of making my knights pay taxes, when I, as lord, pretty much decides what share they get anyway? Is there actually an interesting trade-off between adjusting the estate sizes and changing the regional tax rates?

It seems to me that the regional level tax is just a needless complication, and another feature that needs to be maintained by the devs, and might break (or become buggy) later.

something to do with size of lord's estate. ie.. it'll presumably be best to give away majority of region to knight.. yet if the lord is to get majority of tax income without having majority of region under his own estate, then he has to tax the knights.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 10, 2011, 10:26:47 AM
Question/concern: It seems to me that there are two ways for a lord to control the income of his knights. He can either tweak their estate sizes or adjust their tax rate. Why is the latter still needed? If I want my knights to receive more/less gold, why can't I just increase/decrease their estate sizes? Why go through the extra step of making my knights pay taxes, when I, as lord, pretty much decides what share they get anyway? Is there actually an interesting trade-off between adjusting the estate sizes and changing the regional tax rates?

The Tax Rate is how much taxes the peasants pay. Adjusting it, you can raise or lower the total gold your region produces, at the risk of making the peasants unhappy.

The Lords Share is how much of the tax collected the knights have to pass on to you. The peasants don't care who takes their gold, and changing this value doesn't change how much gold is collected in the region, only who gets to keep it.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 10, 2011, 10:54:23 AM
Is there still an overall production stat to region? Are all estate revenues normalized by the overall production percentage?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 10:57:46 AM
what happens when the last region leave a duchy? what happens when the last duchy leave realm?

TO allegiance - need to factor in RTO that happens away from the realm
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 10, 2011, 11:27:51 AM
Also, how does food fit in this system? Do wild lands also produce 50% food?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Stue (DC) on September 10, 2011, 12:27:43 PM
There is currently no "Hide your income" function. But if you don't want to pay realm share, then just make sure there is no Duchy Share. Since the realm share comes out of the Duke's incomes, then make sure the Duke's income is 0. :)
For now, I think it is dumped into the general region tax pool.

Are you certain about this?

From what I could understand from Wiki, taxation applies to all incomes of lords/dukes, not only from their share, which makes much sense, otherwise all would be easily obstructed in the way you describe (the way it is currently on).
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Peri on September 10, 2011, 12:49:45 PM
Also, how does food fit in this system? Do wild lands also produce 50% food?
Food depends only on how high production is. Estates and knights have nothing to do with it.

(that was answered in q&a session, I hope I'm not wrong)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Telrunya on September 10, 2011, 12:55:01 PM
what happens if a duchy does not have a city/town any more? let's say a duke+lord+knight of a city in a duchy of 1 city + 1 rural gives up title of lord of city and the new lord flips to different duchy of same realm.
the duke becomes duke of 1 rural region, lord of nothing and knight of nothing?

I'm not sure if you can create a new Duchy out of a Duchy with only one Townsland/City/Stronghold. However if for example such a region is taken by a TO or switches allegiances, the Duchy would just exist with one rural region or no regions at all (He cannot secede now). If the Duchy has no regions, the Ruler can dissolve it, but it doesn't dissolve automatically. If you want to keep a landless Duke around as a Court Pet (I believe that's how Tom called it ;)), you are free to do so.

Food depends only on how high production is. Estates and knights have nothing to do with it.

(that was answered in q&a session, I hope I'm not wrong)

Yeah, Estates is solely for Tax Collection. The rest is removed, for now.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: GoldPanda on September 10, 2011, 01:28:01 PM
The Tax Rate is how much taxes the peasants pay. Adjusting it, you can raise or lower the total gold your region produces, at the risk of making the peasants unhappy.

The Lords Share is how much of the tax collected the knights have to pass on to you. The peasants don't care who takes their gold, and changing this value doesn't change how much gold is collected in the region, only who gets to keep it.

Suppose that I am a knight. Is my income different if I have a 25% estate with no lord's share, rather than a 50% estate with a 50% lord's share? Does it affect the income of my liege?

In other words, if I'm a lord, and I want this vassal of mine to have 25% of my region's total tax income, does it matter whether I give him a 25% estate and set the lord's share to 0, or give him a 50% estate and set the lord's share to 50%?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Peri on September 10, 2011, 01:38:59 PM
Suppose that I am a knight. Is my income different if I have a 25% estate with no lord's share, rather than a 50% estate with a 50% lord's share? Does it affect the income of my liege?

In other words, if I'm a lord, and I want this vassal of mine to have 25% of my region's total tax income, does it matter whether I give him a 25% estate and set the lord's share to 0, or give him a 50% estate and set the lord's share to 50%?

Lord's share applies also to all the other estates, so I guess you need to keep in consideration that as well.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 01:52:41 PM
I'm not sure if you can create a new Duchy out of a Duchy with only one Townsland/City/Stronghold. However if for example such a region is taken by a TO or switches allegiances, the Duchy would just exist with one rural region or no regions at all (He cannot secede now). If the Duchy has no regions, the Ruler can dissolve it, but it doesn't dissolve automatically. If you want to keep a landless Duke around as a Court Pet (I believe that's how Tom called it ;)), you are free to do so.

so what's the criteria for seceding? duchy that include a (or more) city only?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:04:06 PM
So... what are rulers making into duchies/dukes? If dukes don't need to be lords, and there are no duchy centre, doesn't that allow for infinite duchies?
I answered that in the post immediately before yours.

The ruler picks a city/stronghold/townsland who's lord is not already a duke and promotes them to duke. That region is removed from its prior duchy and becomes a new one-region duchy.


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Edit: not infinite duchies, but still more duchies then there are cities+strongholds+townslands.
Given enough time, and the creation of enough duchies, you could have everyone in the realm as a duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:05:52 PM
I dont think so :S A Duchy just needs to contain one of those? Or is that only for succession?
The duchy is created from a city/stronghold/townsland. (I'm going to start abbreviating that as C/S/T.... ) Once the duchy is formed any region can leave it, and it has no effect on the duchy, other than it has less regions. Possibly even ending as a duchy with no regions at all.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:07:09 PM
Duchies can only be created from cities, strongholds, and towns.  The duke can be any lord from a region in the duchy,
Initially, the Duke will be the lord of the C/S/T. The duke can then step down as lord of that region, and then take any region within his duchy, if he wants.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:07:59 PM
what happens if a duchy does not have a city/town any more?
Nothing.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:09:11 PM
If Rulers can create Duchies, it would (hopefully) follow that they can dissolve them as well.
Duchies with no regions can be dissolved by the ruler.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:11:01 PM
but if the ruler doesn't dissolve them? do they dissolve themselves when it's just a rural region?
No. Duchies never dissolve on their own. Even if they have no regions.

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if not what's to stop every single region becoming a 1 region duchy (after a lot of tinkering)?
Nothing.

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duchies can have multiple cities?
Yes. Cities no longer occupy any special place in the realm hierarchy. They are just a region with a few more features.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:14:32 PM
Which doesn't actually answer the question.  You're implying the ruler would *want* to remove the title from the (theoretically) loyal Duke in that circumstance.  What if the ruler doesn't want to?
Then he doesn't.

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Would the ruler be able to make another Duke through that townsland/city/stronghold?
The ruler can make a duchy out of *any* C/S/T who's lord is not already a duke. That region's lord becomes the new duke.

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If the duchy dissolves because the townsland/city/stronghold leaves it...
It does not. Duchies do not automatically disappear, ever.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:16:10 PM
Is there still an overall production stat to region?
Yes. The way gold is produced by the region does not change. Your estate size is the percentage of the region's gold production that you get.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:22:44 PM
Are you certain about this?

From what I could understand from Wiki, taxation applies to all incomes of lords/dukes, not only from their share, which makes much sense, otherwise all would be easily obstructed in the way you describe (the way it is currently on).
The region tax is split among all the knights of the region. The lord sets a Lord's Share that comes out of each knight's income.

The Duke sets a Duke's Share that comes out of each lord's total income. (This comes off the *total* of what a lord gets, which includes the lord's income from his own estate, if he has it.)

The realm sets a Realm Share that comes out of each Duke's income, which includes any income he gets from his estate (if he has one), his Lord's Share (if he is a lord) and from the Duke's Share taken from each of his lords.

If the duke has no estate, is not a lord, and sets the Duke's Share to 0, then there is nothing for the realm to take as a Realm Share. Of course the duke won't get any income.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:26:02 PM
I'm not sure if you can create a new Duchy out of a Duchy with only one Townsland/City/Stronghold.
You do not create a "duchy out of a duchy". The ruler promotes a non-duke lord of a C/S/T to the rank of Duke. His region becomes a new one-region duchy.

If a duchy consists of a single city, and the duke is not the lord, then the ruler can create a new duchy by promoting the lord of that city to be a duke. The old duke now commands a regionless duchy, which the ruler can then disband.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 02:27:37 PM
Yes. Cities no longer occupy any special place in the realm hierarchy. They are just a region with a few more features.

no such thing as realm capital? where to recruit?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 02:27:43 PM
so what's the criteria for seceding? duchy that include a (or more) city only?
That is not yet determined, but that is the most likely criteria. I *think* Tom said he was considering letting townslands secede, which would make the townsland the capital.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Solari on September 10, 2011, 02:53:38 PM
That is not yet determined, but that is the most likely criteria. I *think* Tom said he was considering letting townslands secede, which would make the townsland the capital.

That will be awesome for the lulz it shall provide.  You uppity townsfolk, thinking you can govern yourselves!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Kain on September 10, 2011, 02:59:53 PM
That will be awesome for the lulz it shall provide.  You uppity townsfolk, thinking you can govern yourselves!

And the townsfolk of a wealthy townsland will laugh right back and point to the city that is left behind which happens to be even poorer than the seceeding townland :p

I.e Bescanon on EC is wealthier than Slimbar city and almost as wealthy as Krimml city. Not to mention that it produces a lot more food, so they can be more than self-sufficient.

Do not underestimate townslands ;)

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Stue (DC) on September 10, 2011, 03:15:02 PM
so, in the beginning, knights will be able to pick whatever estate they want but lords cannot kick them out of region, right?

can lord change estate size once it is already taken by knight?

though i can imagine this is designed so that knights will not need to beg for estates any more, i fear that will not help in developing relationship lord-knight and knight's loyalty to his region, to the extent that regions will mean nothing to knights... not to mention constant bargain that would take place at any turn, when knights approaches some other region...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 04:32:39 PM
so, in the beginning, knights will be able to pick whatever estate they want but lords cannot kick them out of region, right?
Any noble can claim any vacant estate in any region, and become a knight of that region. They will probably need to be in the region to do it. For startup, the location restriction maybe relaxed, or nobles may be assigned estates in their existing regions, in order to jumpstart the system.

A lord can kick any noble out of his estate, at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Quote
can lord change estate size once it is already taken by knight?
Yes. Lords can freely resize any estate, at any time, whether it is occupied or not.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 04:38:34 PM
I.e Bescanon on EC is wealthier than Slimbar city and almost as wealthy as Krimml city. Not to mention that it produces a lot more food, so they can be more than self-sufficient.
The major advantage of a townsland is that it can feed itself.

The major disadvantage of a townsland is the lack of fortifications. And no siege workshops. And no bank. :P Though I suppose you'd have to give them a bank...

Yes, there are some very rich townslands in the game. Being able to secede a townsland make a realm out of it would be interesting.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 04:39:33 PM
no such thing as realm capital? where to recruit?
Yes, realms will still have a capital, which is where you will recruit. This has not changed.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 05:00:12 PM
Yes, realms will still have a capital, which is where you will recruit. This has not changed.
what's the criteria for a capital? still city only?

what happens to a realm with lots of rural but no city?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 10, 2011, 05:08:15 PM
Yes. The way gold is produced by the region does not change. Your estate size is the percentage of the region's gold production that you get.

So production can be destroyed by looting, can be improved by civil work, but is not affected at all by estates? Similarly for control?
 
Or is there still an idle/authority/production setting to estate which is not mentioned in the new estate page?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 05:31:17 PM
Given enough time, and the creation of enough duchies, you could have everyone in the realm as a duke.

Is this desirable?

How would secession work? Hell, since there's no duchy centre at all, how do you determine what becomes the capital when you secede if you have multiple C/S/T?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 05:33:32 PM
That is not yet determined, but that is the most likely criteria. I *think* Tom said he was considering letting townslands secede, which would make the townsland the capital.

Would this mean that CTOs of townslands would once again be possible?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 10, 2011, 05:56:44 PM
Nothing.

Not automatically, at least. But once a duchy has no regions left, the ruler can dissolve it at any time.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 06:00:50 PM
And how are duchies going to be called? Right now, the name of the duchy is its city or stronghold. But since duchies will be tied to people instead of regions, what will determine the name?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 10, 2011, 06:02:41 PM
yeah I was wondering that too. We don't have a duchy capital anymore. Maybe they will be named after the last name of a duke?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 06:04:44 PM
yeah I was wondering that too. We don't have a duchy capital anymore. Maybe they will be named after the last name of a duke?

Could be problematic if two family members are dukes in the same realm. And considering dukes don't need to be lords of cities anymore, then that's likely to be more common.

Which brings me to another question: how will lords of cities be called? What will their titles be?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 06:17:38 PM
what's the criteria for a capital? still city only?

what happens to a realm with lots of rural but no city?
There is no change in either of these areas.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 06:19:08 PM
So production can be destroyed by looting, can be improved by civil work, but is not affected at all by estates? Similarly for control?
 
Or is there still an idle/authority/production setting to estate which is not mentioned in the new estate page?
Estates have no settings. The only thing you can do with an estate right now is to claim it or abandon it.

Estates have no effects on any region stats in any way.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 06:20:13 PM
Is this desirable?
That's up to the realm.

Quote
How would secession work? Hell, since there's no duchy centre at all, how do you determine what becomes the capital when you secede if you have multiple C/S/T?

Would this mean that CTOs of townslands would once again be possible?

As far as I know, that has not yet been determined.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 06:23:06 PM
And how are duchies going to be called? Right now, the name of the duchy is its city or stronghold. But since duchies will be tied to people instead of regions, what will determine the name?
The ruler enters the duchy name when it is created. It should be something that goes nicely with "duchy of ... ", as that is how it is referred in-game. Once the duhy is created, the name cannot be changed. (Although I think it would be nice if they could, perhaps within some restrictions.)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Telrunya on September 10, 2011, 06:24:49 PM
Quote
Which brings me to another question: how will lords of cities be called? What will their titles be?

Wasn't yet decided.

And how are duchies going to be called? Right now, the name of the duchy is its city or stronghold. But since duchies will be tied to people instead of regions, what will determine the name?

When the Duchy is created, the Ruler can name it.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 10, 2011, 06:25:02 PM
Which brings me to another question: how will lords of cities be called? What will their titles be?
Not yet determined. I suggested that lords of strongholds be called "Commander", like all dukes used to be called. When the system goes live on Testing, they may still be called Dukes.

If you have any suggestions, let us know.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Revan on September 10, 2011, 06:34:04 PM
Estates have no settings. The only thing you can do with an estate right now is to claim it or abandon it.

Estates have no effects on any region stats in any way.

I'm in heaven.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 10, 2011, 06:39:38 PM
I don't have to deal with lazy people anymore!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 06:40:04 PM
I'm in heaven.

it also means you can't use it to bump taxes...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nathan on September 10, 2011, 06:48:25 PM
Which brings me to another question: how will lords of cities be called? What will their titles be?
If you have any suggestions, let us know.

Let the realm name them? Default to Commander if a name isn't chosen.

Madina uses Governor, which we think fits nicely.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Revan on September 10, 2011, 06:53:43 PM
it also means you can't use it to bump taxes...

Hahaha, your serious? It's fairly hard to miss something you've never, ever been able to do. The only tears I'll shed for the current estate system will be tears of joy when it's finally deactivated on stable! >.<
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 06:56:59 PM
i used it just fine to bump taxes. ymmv :)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 07:12:11 PM
If you have any suggestions, let us know.


Let the realm name them? Default to Commander if a name isn't chosen.

Madina uses Governor, which we think fits nicely.

Would be interesting to let the realm name them. Many cultures had different titles for people who ruled cities, and various realms attempt to emulate various cultures.

I'm guessing Madina will soon have a "Duchy of Cearwyn". And that many realms will soon have many less dukes. Could prove interesting, to see realms where almost everyone are dukes and other large realms where one duke lords over many cities. We'll have to see how it plays out, though.

If duchies are tied to people, what happens if that person leaves? Can someone else be made the duke? Does that mean you could end up with duchies that have neither regions nor nobles in them?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 10, 2011, 07:30:22 PM
will duchies (or their names) be shown on some of the maps? at least the current system is anchored... you can just about imagine the duchy of grehk, for example, eventually migrate all the way off to the north west corner of bt.

granted it'll still listed in realm details

------------
will tax still be received in gold when inside duchy?

will huge duchies get some sort of inefficiency penalties?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shizzle on September 10, 2011, 08:31:16 PM
If I get it right, the Ruler will only get money by taxing the Dukes. This would encourage having as many duchies as possible?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 10, 2011, 08:53:01 PM
And how are duchies going to be called? Right now, the name of the duchy is its city or stronghold. But since duchies will be tied to people instead of regions, what will determine the name?

The ruler can choose a name when he creates a new duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 10, 2011, 09:29:32 PM
If I get it right, the Ruler will only get money by taxing the Dukes. This would encourage having as many duchies as possible?

No. If the Ruler has 10 dukes, that means that 10 people will click the protest link when he raises the realm tax. If the ruler has 2 dukes, that means that only 2 people will click the protest link. (Yes, I know, the dukes could get those under them to protest...)

Let me provide an example:

Duchy1 200 gold Duke 160 gold Ruler 40 gold
Duchy2 200 gold Duke 160 gold Ruler 40 gold
Total    400 gold Dukes 320 gold Ruler 80 gold

Or, let's say the duchies get split in half:

Duchy1 100 gold Duke 80 gold Ruler 20 gold
Duchy2 100 gold Duke 80 gold Ruler 20 gold
Duchy3 100 gold Duke 80 gold Ruler 20 gold
Duchy4 100 gold Duke 80 gold Ruler 20 gold
Total    400 gold Dukes 320 gold Ruler 80 gold

See? It's the same either way. It all depends on the realm share and duchy share.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 09:31:50 PM
Just wondering, but if it's possible to have duchies composed of basically anything, why have a restriction that they can only be created in C/S/T? Wouldn't a better alternative limit be that you can't create more duchies than you have C/S/Ts? If there is a limit to be had, that is. Otherwise it's just asking people to do a lot of tinkering to get what they want. I can see this new system being used for cases where realms are absorbed by others, or when new realms are being prepared.

But as others asked, where do the other council positions fit in all of this?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bael on September 10, 2011, 09:52:41 PM
will duchies (or their names) be shown on some of the maps?

The current map system is very limited in what it can show. They are hand-drawn, and everything, except for the banners (I believe) is fixed. This is why Tom has been tinkering, encouraging others to tinker with new map creations (as I have witnessed on this forum).

So under the current system, you will likely not see duchies marked on the map. However, under a new modular map system, I know that lots of tasty ideas have already been thought about ;) And the new estates system could very well not only see realms and duchies changing borders, but if a new modular map system is implemented, then regions could also start changing borders also...but this is obviously quite a ways in the future. I have not seen any updates on new map systems recently. And this is getting a bit off-topic :)

will huge duchies get some sort of inefficiency penalties?

Bigger duchies mean more power for the duke. Which the ruler may want to avoid. But I believe this is still a gray area  (undecided/not filled in yet).



Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 10, 2011, 10:11:01 PM
Bigger duchies mean more power for the duke. Which the ruler may want to avoid. But I believe this is still a gray area  (undecided/not filled in yet).

Unless said ruler is the duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Stue (DC) on September 10, 2011, 10:39:08 PM
in some looking over Wikipedia I found that marquis is often considered a tittle lower than duke but higher than other lord titles, so that could possibly be solution for C/S (not T) commanders who are not dukes.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Telrunya on September 10, 2011, 10:44:13 PM
Marquis is already in use though.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Perth on September 10, 2011, 10:47:36 PM
I like the idea of custom titles.

Or at least a drop box with a bunch of different options.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 10, 2011, 11:26:41 PM
Possible Abuse Worry: Couldn't this system be very heavily abused by a ruler to prevent any regions from being in a duchy of his choice?

Ex: Say the Ruler dislikes Duke A, and Duke A has lords B, C, and D who are all very loyal to Duke A, more so than they are to the Ruler. The ruler decides to ruin Duke A's duchy and does so by appointing Lords B, C, and D as Dukes of their own right. This would destroy Duke A's duchy and reduce it to a single region (assuming Duke A is also a lord).

1. Would this prevent Lords B,C, and D from leaving their new duchies and once again joining Duke A's duchy since they now have the title of "Duke?"

2. If 1 is NOT true, then couldn't this lead to just a dumb see-saw where the lords choose to rejoin Duchy A, only to have the Ruler immeadiately kick them out of the duchy?

This seems like a horrible situation to be in, and I think has a lot of balance issues with regards to what Rulers will now be capable of. Perhaps a capability to choose: "refuse to become Duke" option could be available for lords to be secure in their current duchies without interference from the ruler? (I know there is a similar system currently in place, but I didn't know if this would have some problems since the meaning of duke is changing completely)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 11, 2011, 12:00:39 AM
Just wondering, but if it's possible to have duchies composed of basically anything, why have a restriction that they can only be created in C/S/T? [...]
But as others asked, where do the other council positions fit in all of this?

Yes, there will be restrictions that prevent realms with 100 empty duchies.

The other council positions have not yet been fitted into this, but they will.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 11, 2011, 12:03:30 AM
The ruler decides to ruin Duke A's duchy and does so by appointing Lords B, C, and D as Dukes of their own right. This would destroy Duke A's duchy and reduce it to a single region (assuming Duke A is also a lord).

Not quite, as he can only create duchies out of cities, strongholds and townslands. But he could take all of those away from a duchy by promotion, yes. That is not an abuse, that's a power-struggle. And I want to encourage power-struggles.

There are a lot of ways in this new system in which the various parties can hurt each other and claim they didn't mean it (as in "sorry, I knew this would hurt your duchy, but the purpose was to give this great man his long-deserved promotion...").
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 11, 2011, 01:31:30 AM
If duchies are tied to people, what happens if that person leaves? Can someone else be made the duke? Does that mean you could end up with duchies that have neither regions nor nobles in them?
Duchies are not "tied to people". It is a realm office. If the office holder leaves then he loses the position. (Assuming he hasn't left by taking his duchy to another realm. Let's assume he leaves via emigration.) In that case the office is empty, and the ruler can appoint a new Duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 11, 2011, 01:33:15 AM
will duchies (or their names) be shown on some of the maps? at least the current system is anchored... you can just about imagine the duchy of grehk, for example, eventually migrate all the way off to the north west corner of bt.
Not on the current maps. Perhaps if the map is ever replaced by a new system, we can do more with various overlays.

Quote
will tax still be received in gold when inside duchy?
Probably.

Quote
will huge duchies get some sort of inefficiency penalties?
Maybe, maybe not.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 11, 2011, 02:42:00 AM
Duchies are not "tied to people". It is a realm office. If the office holder leaves then he loses the position. (Assuming he hasn't left by taking his duchy to another realm. Let's assume he leaves via emigration.) In that case the office is empty, and the ruler can appoint a new Duke.

If I had understood things right, there will be no more Claims, but only Knights of a given Region will be able to be promoted to Lord of it, after the Lord position is vacant, same for Lords of a Duchy to be promoted to Duke.

This will cause that a Duchy with no regions and just a single noble (the Duke), after the Duke's resigns gets no electable candidates. Thus, automatic Duchy death. Right?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 11, 2011, 05:38:11 AM
This will cause that a Duchy with no regions and just a single noble (the Duke), after the Duke's resigns gets no electable candidates. Thus, automatic Duchy death. Right?

Duchies are not "tied to people". It is a realm office. If the office holder leaves then he loses the position. (Assuming he hasn't left by taking his duchy to another realm. Let's assume he leaves via emigration.) In that case the office is empty, and the ruler can appoint a new Duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 11, 2011, 06:43:30 AM
So, that invalidates the idea that only people from the same Region/Duchy can be promoted to Lord/Duke, right?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Velax on September 11, 2011, 07:16:02 AM
Possible Abuse Worry: Couldn't this system be very heavily abused by a ruler to prevent any regions from being in a duchy of his choice?

Ex: Say the Ruler dislikes Duke A, and Duke A has lords B, C, and D who are all very loyal to Duke A, more so than they are to the Ruler. The ruler decides to ruin Duke A's duchy and does so by appointing Lords B, C, and D as Dukes of their own right. This would destroy Duke A's duchy and reduce it to a single region (assuming Duke A is also a lord).

1. Would this prevent Lords B,C, and D from leaving their new duchies and once again joining Duke A's duchy since they now have the title of "Duke?"

2. If 1 is NOT true, then couldn't this lead to just a dumb see-saw where the lords choose to rejoin Duchy A, only to have the Ruler immeadiately kick them out of the duchy?

This seems like a horrible situation to be in, and I think has a lot of balance issues with regards to what Rulers will now be capable of. Perhaps a capability to choose: "refuse to become Duke" option could be available for lords to be secure in their current duchies without interference from the ruler? (I know there is a similar system currently in place, but I didn't know if this would have some problems since the meaning of duke is changing completely)

Honestly? What sort of idiot rulers are getting appointed in this game where this would even be a possibility?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 11, 2011, 09:12:12 AM
Not quite, as he can only create duchies out of cities, strongholds and townslands. But he could take all of those away from a duchy by promotion, yes. That is not an abuse, that's a power-struggle. And I want to encourage power-struggles.

Could you please illustrate this? A power struggle implies there is actually a struggle, not just the duke taking a gigantic penis to the face with no option for retribution. What options can a duke pursue to fight against something like this.

What if the scenario Silverfire mentioned were to come true and the duke was left with one region. What could he about it?

Honestly? What sort of idiot rulers are getting appointed in this game where this would even be a possibility?

How is stupid? I think it's a very good idea if you know the duke is going to secede.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 11, 2011, 09:13:10 AM
Honestly? What sort of idiot rulers are getting appointed in this game where this would even be a possibility?

Well we usually don't intend to elect rulers that would do such a thing. Most rulers are elected when they are doing good for the realm or seem convincing or have a large following. However, as the saying goes: Power Corrupts, and absolute power....well you know the rest.

Anyway, I could definitely see where this may have been done against me in my personal past if it were an option. If a Ruler dislikes a Duke enough they'll go to any means possible to get them out of their office or to lose their support.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 11, 2011, 09:14:20 AM
Could you please illustrate this? A power struggle implies there is actually a struggle, not just the duke taking a gigantic penis to the face with no option for retribution. What options can a duke pursue to fight against something like this.

What if the scenario Silverfire mentioned were to come true and the duke was left with one region. What could he about it?

Lords should be able to check a little box stating they don't want to be dukes, imo, as they can check about not wanting to be marshals.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Velax on September 11, 2011, 10:52:13 AM
Well we usually don't intend to elect rulers that would do such a thing. Most rulers are elected when they are doing good for the realm or seem convincing or have a large following. However, as the saying goes: Power Corrupts, and absolute power....well you know the rest.

Anyway, I could definitely see where this may have been done against me in my personal past if it were an option. If a Ruler dislikes a Duke enough they'll go to any means possible to get them out of their office or to lose their support.

I can see it happening once, yes, as a tactic to weaken a duke. But for it to become a "see saw" with the lords continually realigning their regions to the original duke and the ruler continually reappointing them dukes of their own duchies seems highly ridiculous. That ruler should be protested off the damn continent.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 11, 2011, 12:58:40 PM
The topic of massively-large duchies (spanning an entire realm) has been brought up many times. I don't share the fear that this is a real danger, but let me say this much: I would not suggest anyone try that for gameplay advantages, because changes I have in mind for a little further down the line would put you at a big disadvantage then.

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 11, 2011, 02:20:59 PM
Could you please illustrate this? A power struggle implies there is actually a struggle, not just the duke taking a gigantic penis to the face with no option for retribution. What options can a duke pursue to fight against something like this.

What if the scenario Silverfire mentioned were to come true and the duke was left with one region. What could he about it?

How is stupid? I think it's a very good idea if you know the duke is going to secede.

The Duke and the Ruler are not in a vacum here. So he might not PERSONALLY be able to do something, the game is all about connections and oaths, so the Duke if he has been setting things up properly should be able to call on support against the ruler in this case. If he can't manage that, then he probably doesn't deserve the privileges he just lost. This is pretty much how things worked, rulers would run all over week Barons Dukes and Lords, while taking a much more measured approach against powerful figures or coalitions of nobles.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 11, 2011, 02:31:39 PM
The Duke and the Ruler are not in a vacum here. So he might not PERSONALLY be able to do something, the game is all about connections and oaths, so the Duke if he has been setting things up properly should be able to call on support against the ruler in this case. If he can't manage that, then he probably doesn't deserve the privileges he just lost. This is pretty much how things worked, rulers would run all over week Barons Dukes and Lords, while taking a much more measured approach against powerful figures or coalitions of nobles.

I don't buy this. While what you say could be true... I think it's also pretty likely that people will pretty much accept what changes the ruler makes since he has the mechanic to do so. As Tom said, the ruler can just pretend it's for a reason other than castrating the said duke....

I think there should be some kind of mechanic to officialize the realms support for the creation for a new duchy. For example when a new duchy is created, at least one new region must join it (within 3 days?) for it to be considered legitimate. Thoughts?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 11, 2011, 02:32:08 PM
If I had understood things right, there will be no more Claims,
Correct.

Quote
but only Knights of a given Region will be able to be promoted to Lord of it, after the Lord position is vacant, same for Lords of a Duchy to be promoted to Duke.
Not correct.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 11, 2011, 02:34:11 PM
I think it's also pretty likely that people will pretty much accept what changes the ruler makes since he has the mechanic to do so.
Then they deserve what they get.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 11, 2011, 02:40:34 PM
Then they deserve what they get.

Such a Rob thing to say.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 11, 2011, 02:47:57 PM
You can only do so much to protect people. There comes a point when people need to stand up for themselves. If they are not willing to do that, then too bad.

And in this case, where the ruler has created a duchy, what's the big problem here? The ruler has created a new duchy that people in the realm don't like? Big deal. It's not like that's going to kill the realm. (And even if it did, it wouldn't be the first time a ruler killed their own realm.) And maybe it will cause some inner conflict in the realm, and make something happen. Because the last thing we need in the game is a system where people can just ignore their problems and they will go away all on their own. Which is what you proposed.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 11, 2011, 03:15:29 PM
You can only do so much to protect people. There comes a point when people need to stand up for themselves. If they are not willing to do that, then too bad.

And in this case, where the ruler has created a duchy, what's the big problem here? The ruler has created a new duchy that people in the realm don't like? Big deal. It's not like that's going to kill the realm. (And even if it did, it wouldn't be the first time a ruler killed their own realm.) And maybe it will cause some inner conflict in the realm, and make something happen. Because the last thing we need in the game is a system where people can just ignore their problems and they will go away all on their own. Which is what you proposed.

What I proposed was that the ruler can't just wank all over the control panel. Having just one region as a prerequisite for a duchy won't meant too much. It would simply be a way for confirming that the ruler knows what he is doing. If King Kepler makes a duchy that can't even attract one lord why should the time be wasted and the mess be created. Sure it would piss people off, but in my opinion not in a good way. It would be kind of like "now why did you !@#$ing go and do that?" rather than "I am gravely offended, lets have a bunch of duels and referenfums etc etc": which I think is the preferable kind and I think is mainly generated spontaneously through players vying for power on a fair battleground.

I'm all for the internal strife, but not when nobles are forced to explain away dodgy game mechanics: that !@#$ just gets confusing since nobody has even ground to stand on as different people will interpret the game differently.

Also. Another thing to consider is that we need to be careful about the balance between causing debilitating internal strife vs. fun internal strife. Depending on the realm situation this can vary I understand. I think we would definitely need more opinions on the matter, but I can at least say that I can imagine (using my bm experience) an instance where a ruler would use this feature semi-abusively and the realm would not be able to stop him as according to game mechanics he has technically made a legitimate action.

Perhaps, and I assume you do, you have a different experience to mine and you think the nobles should be responsible for the ousting the ruler themselves. Maybe it has something to do with your success in Dwilight. As I have said in the past, not many people have had this success and we absoloutely should not be expected to rise to it.

I will re-iterate what I say quite a lot these days. BM should be a lightweight game. To this end the game mechanics must be set to appropriate parameters for people to play without too much stress. Greating a game mechanical mess for the players to sort out is not really doing this.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 11, 2011, 04:01:44 PM
If King Kepler makes a duchy that can't even attract one lord why should the time be wasted and the mess be created.
Because he's the King, and it is his right to do so.

Don't like it? Then get a coalition of nobles together to force the king to submit to restrictions on the use of his powers.

Quote
but I can at least say that I can imagine (using my bm experience) an instance where a ruler would use this feature semi-abusively and the realm would not be able to stop him as according to game mechanics he has technically made a legitimate action.
If the player is abusing the game, then report him, and let the Magistrates/Titans take care of it. If it is not an abusive issue, then deal with it IC.

Quote
I will re-iterate what I say quite a lot these days. BM should be a lightweight game. To this end the game mechanics must be set to appropriate parameters for people to play without too much stress. Greating a game mechanical mess for the players to sort out is not really doing this.
Nobody is stopping anyone from playing BattleMaster as Lightweight. These changes to estates will definitely help out a lot. Especially lords who have been struggling to find knights for their regions. It will reduce the maintenance and buro load significantly.

But just because you can play the game lightweight doesn't mean that you can get just as much out of it as someone who devotes much more time. If that were the case, you'd end up with something that is extremely shallow. And no, you probably won't be able to engage in in-depth political power struggles on 5 minutes a day.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 11, 2011, 04:33:57 PM
I really fail to see the problem with duchies with little to no regions. At worst, you could have a bunch of people running around with the title of Duke, but little power in terms of money and land. What's the big deal?

It's already the case that when a noble who was previously a Duke but loses his city retain the title of Duke until he swears a new oath. Now, instead of signing "Kepler (Duke)", he wil sign "Kepler (Duke of West Keplerstan)" with West Keplerstan not actually controlling any region. So what? That's fine for me.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 11, 2011, 05:25:45 PM
I think there should be some kind of mechanic to officialize the realms support for the creation for a new duchy. For example when a new duchy is created, at least one new region must join it (within 3 days?) for it to be considered legitimate. Thoughts?

You have missed the entire point of this change. I want to enable people to do things without support, and face the music afterwards.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 11, 2011, 05:29:27 PM
What I proposed was that the ruler can't just wank all over the control panel.

But that's the whole point of being a ruler!

BM is not fair, it does not do level playgrounds. It has all kinds of unfair, evil options. Not so many as to make things not fun, but definitely more than enough to cause some strife - and that's what we're all here for. It's BATTLEmaster, not CuddleMaster. Though that could be a cool name for a furry social-media game...


Quote
It would simply be a way for confirming that the ruler knows what he is doing. If King Kepler makes a duchy that can't even attract one lord why should the time be wasted and the mess be created.

But it may not be a mess. And attracting a second region is not a good indicator of "making sense". There will always be a case where a single-region duchy does, indeed, make sense. In that particular circumstances of that particular realm.

What I am doing is moving the judging out of code and unto the players. I don't want a piece of code to evaluate if what the ruler did was the right thing to do or not - I want the players to decide upon that.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 11, 2011, 06:43:30 PM
... just protest the king out?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 11, 2011, 08:33:12 PM
... just protest the king out?

No, that would be too risky! I want to play cuddlemaster!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Perth on September 11, 2011, 09:22:12 PM
I think there should be some kind of mechanic to officialize the realms support for the creation for a new duchy. For example when a new duchy is created, at least one new region must join it (within 3 days?) for it to be considered legitimate. Thoughts?

This is silly. There are already many single region duchies in the game.

Especially on the Far East, where there are so many cities, a lot of duchies only have one or two regions. I'm the Duke of a Stronghold with no other regions sworn to my Duchy, big deal?

With the New Estate System I can see even more reasons for there to be single region duchies. What better way to quiet down an unruly region lord than by giving him his own little Duchy Title (but no real power) out in the boonies? What better way to earn a little loyalty from someone than by appointing them Duke of their own region?

No, I definitely think these changes will be for the better and will be really cool.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Stue (DC) on September 11, 2011, 11:23:56 PM
like said, noone is playing in vacuum, especially not those on highest positions, and presented flexibility looks only good for now.

i cannot imagine why ruler would like to have too many duchies. too many dukes would mean inflation of ducal power and rank, and indirectly inflation of ruler as well (if he has to deal with too many subordinates, he is becoming kind of sergeant).

the same way, too few dukes in overly large realm would mean having too strong dukes who could eventually challenge ruler power.

the best thing is that, having no limitations, those in power will need to find themselves what is best of them, instead of being asleep in fixed game mechanics, and their searches should create in game fun.

what is also important, there is enough background for this, so medieval flavor will not be degraded.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 12, 2011, 12:00:14 AM
Finally, someone who got it.

Exactly. The question of how many duchies a realm should have is not a game-mechanical one. While there will be some limits and incentives to prevent the utterly silly (like making every character the duke of a no-regions duchy, or putting 50 regions into one huge duchy), there is a lot of freedom here, and there isn't one perfect solution. For pure game-mechanics, I will try to balance benefits and problems so that many styles are equally optimal.

But roleplaying, politics, power and personal relations will play a very big role in how a realm is going to be set up.

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 12, 2011, 12:15:16 AM
since duchies no longer has to be a continual patch of land. (someone in the region that connects 2 blobs of the duchy might become duke, etc)

does that mean lords would have more flexibility to switch duchy? as in more targets than just neighbouring duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 12, 2011, 12:54:26 AM
since duchies no longer has to be a continual patch of land.

Where did you see that?

I mean, once always could have a discontinuous duchy, but that'S with regions switching out of the duchy for another. I didn't see anything anywhere saying you could join a duchy in the next update without being adjacent to it.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 12, 2011, 09:38:38 AM
Duchies never had to be continuous. But you could not join a duchy unless adjacent. And that's how it is going to stay.

Explanation for the first part: Regions connecting two parts of a duchy could always leave it, leaving behind a duchy in two pieces.

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Peri on September 12, 2011, 11:34:46 AM
I have two questions:

since there are going to be no more oaths, will be tournaments still be a good place where to snatch foreign knights with promise of gold? Certainly Lords will still be able to advertise but 1) potential knights won't be able to see if he's lying 2) maybe they will no longer be able to join him directly at the tournament.

Also, right now one can swear an oath to a Lord of a foreign realm when in the same region, but there are no informations on how much you would earn from it to prevent (I guess) nosing into enemy's finance too much. Would this be still the case, or can knights claim an estate even in foreign realm without any limitation to the informations they can access while evaluating whether or not to do the claim?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 12, 2011, 06:53:37 PM
Suggestion:

I heard Tom say there will be custom names for duchies, i believe it would be interesting to be able to have custom titles for dukes as well.

Example:
Kepler Nosferatus
Duke of Kepler City(region lord title), Governor(duke title)  of the Duchy of Keplery(duchy name)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 12, 2011, 07:14:38 PM
I have two questions:

since there are going to be no more oaths, will be tournaments still be a good place where to snatch foreign knights with promise of gold? Certainly Lords will still be able to advertise but 1) potential knights won't be able to see if he's lying 2) maybe they will no longer be able to join him directly at the tournament.

Also, right now one can swear an oath to a Lord of a foreign realm when in the same region, but there are no informations on how much you would earn from it to prevent (I guess) nosing into enemy's finance too much. Would this be still the case, or can knights claim an estate even in foreign realm without any limitation to the informations they can access while evaluating whether or not to do the claim?

I think the answer to both of these is the % of region number. If a lord offers you 30% of the region, you can then go to Information>Region List>Gold and run some quick numbers to determine how much you might get from that. The amount of taxation he can change later anyway.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 12, 2011, 07:15:56 PM
Suggestion:

I heard Tom say there will be custom titles for duchies, i believe it would be interesting to be able to have custom titles for dukes as well.

Example:
Kepler Nosferatus
Duke of Kepler City(region lord title), Governor(duke title)  of the Duchy of Keplery(duchy name)

You have it backwards. It should be:

Kepler Nosferatus
Duke of Keplery, Governor of Kepler City
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 12, 2011, 07:49:37 PM
he would have meant Land Owner of blah city, governor of duchy of blah (governor = duke in madina)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 12, 2011, 08:11:52 PM
I heard Tom say there will be custom titles for duchies, i believe it would be interesting to be able to have custom titles for dukes as well.

You mis-heard. I said there will be custom names for duchies. Dukes will still be called dukes. But since the lord of a city is not automatically a duke anymore, he will get a different title for his lordship. Of course, if he also is the duke, he still is the duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 12, 2011, 08:32:38 PM
You mis-heard. I said there will be custom names for duchies. Dukes will still be called dukes. But since the lord of a city is not automatically a duke anymore, he will get a different title for his lordship. Of course, if he also is the duke, he still is the duke.

I actually mispelled that, i fixed it now.
Still it awnsers my quistion.
A shame though, i'd like to see the duke title customized as realms might vary in how they would deal with this (new) position.
In Madina we allready have a strong and meaningful concept of Duke, the governor, who is responsible for various things in his or her duchy.
We have roleplayed the title these last years, but this could be a great oportunity to finally implement the title game mechanics wise.
I can imagine other creative realms to have similiar ambitions.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 12, 2011, 09:15:30 PM
he would have meant Land Owner of blah city, governor of duchy of blah (governor = duke in madina)

Well, in the sane world (kidding, kidding...), duchies are ruled by Dukes. Hence the prefix. I was suggesting that the lord of a city be called "Governor".
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 12, 2011, 09:52:18 PM
A shame though, i'd like to see the duke title customized as realms might vary in how they would deal with this (new) position.

The problem with customized titles is that it means nothing to everyone outside your realm. Or in other words: You would have to learn what a hundred or so (number of positions times number of realms) words mean. Not my idea of fun. Who liked the vocabulary part of learning a foreign language?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Kain on September 12, 2011, 09:55:15 PM
The problem with customized titles is that it means nothing to everyone outside your realm. Or in other words: You would have to learn what a hundred or so (number of positions times number of realms) words mean. Not my idea of fun. Who liked the vocabulary part of learning a foreign language?

I agree. We already have to do that with all the council positions and that feels like enough.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 12, 2011, 09:56:53 PM
won't it be the same number as each custom gov positions that we already have? all dukes in the same realm get the same customised title.

just call it (customised duke title) of the duchy of blah
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 12, 2011, 10:17:50 PM
Or, how about we just stick with Duke, and move on to something more useful?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 12, 2011, 10:29:26 PM
How much gold does a guild pay actually? From the example it is around 77. Like does this directly come from the local treasury?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 12, 2011, 11:51:13 PM
The problem with customized titles is that it means nothing to everyone outside your realm. Or in other words: You would have to learn what a hundred or so (number of positions times number of realms) words mean. Not my idea of fun. Who liked the vocabulary part of learning a foreign language?

Commander sounds fine, for the systems that don't use senator or the like.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 13, 2011, 12:21:18 AM
How much gold does a guild pay actually? From the example it is around 77. Like does this directly come from the local treasury?

Guilds pay the current tax rate on their treasury. So if the guild has 200 gold stored away, and the tax rate is 12%, it will pay 24 gold in taxes.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 13, 2011, 12:51:16 AM
oh man people are going to avoid storing gold in their treasury from now on.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 13, 2011, 01:09:44 AM
oh man people are going to avoid storing gold in their treasury from now on.

That was always the case with guilds.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Leon on September 15, 2011, 01:56:01 PM
Well, in the sane world (kidding, kidding...), duchies are ruled by Dukes. Hence the prefix. I was suggesting that the lord of a city be called "Governor".

I am no history expert, but here in England we still retain some of the historical titles. Like the currently elected 'Lord Mayor'  of London, as well as similar offices in other major cities.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 16, 2011, 02:12:18 AM
I am no history expert, but here in England we still retain some of the historical titles. Like the currently elected 'Lord Mayor'  of London, as well as similar offices in other major cities.

Lord Mayor generally means the city has a Cathedral. Otherwise you are just a plain old Mayor.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 21, 2011, 04:54:46 AM
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/New_Taxes (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/New_Taxes)

I added an example to the new Taxes page, that incorporates every part of the flowchart. Let me know if it's helpful, correct, etc.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 21, 2011, 09:04:48 AM
The example is rather confusing, and could be incorrect, because it doesn't follow the flow chart - guild taxes are added after you've calculated the knight and lord share.

Do you want an actual example from the game engine? You can use that and simplify the numbers by multiplying them by some factor. Or I can set up a region with pre-set numbers. Note that the example below uses actual regions and characters, but it's not what the actual region looks like because I've played around with things on the dev server.


here's one:


The following taxes were collected in Nid Tek. The tax rate for this collection was 13 % and the lords share was 10 %.

Regional income and expenses
Peasants Taxes
180 gold
Trade Balance
120 gold
Taxes from Guildhouses
+ 1 gold
Buildings Upkeep
- 8 gold
Collectable Tax Gold
293 gold


Estate ofSizePeasantsTax CollectedKnight ShareLord Share
Franz
16 %
1392
46 gold
41 gold
5 gold
Ramiel
38 %
3306
111 gold
111 gold
Zena
22 %
1914
64 gold
57 gold
7 gold
Tobel
22 %
1914
64 gold
57 gold
7 gold
Wild Lands
2 %
174
2 gold
2 gold
Region Totals
287 gold
155 gold
132 gold


Lord and Duke Shares
Lord Share
132 gold
Dukes Share
- 66 gold
Lords Tax Income
66 gold
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 22, 2011, 04:04:51 AM
Okay, fixed. Your diagram does not show the knights share, by the way--might want to add that.

I had thought that the knights would not get any trade/guild income, and also not be affected by militia/building payments--that their share would be taken out of the peasant taxes.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 22, 2011, 11:54:20 AM
My Duchess is taking half me income? Time to go to WAR ;) :D
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 22, 2011, 12:00:21 PM
Diagram updated.

And yes, the point where guilds and upkeep come in was changed at some time during the design of the new system.

If anyone can format the example as proper wiki tables, that would be really good.


My Duchess is taking half me income? Time to go to WAR ;) :D
That's exactly the kind of internal strife I was hoping to create. :-)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 22, 2011, 03:04:36 PM
Tom: The new diagram you uploaded was a duplicate of the previous one. I think you re-uploaded the old version.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 22, 2011, 03:20:07 PM
Tom: The new diagram you uploaded was a duplicate of the previous one. I think you re-uploaded the old version.
reload the page.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 22, 2011, 04:09:47 PM
Wow, that was weird... I even went to the File: page on the wiki and compared the two versions from the file history page, and they were identical.

Oh well... It works now.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 22, 2011, 08:16:30 PM
There should now be a branch, out of the lord's share, going to the duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 22, 2011, 08:40:46 PM
There should now be a branch, out of the lord's share, going to the duke.

I tried that, but it looks bad and it doesn't tell the whole story, because the duke's share comes from multiple lords.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: ben3256 on September 23, 2011, 06:28:07 AM
I have a great concern that the new system will leave all the realms deficient in knights to be able to efficiently utilize the existing regions. I am sure that in my present realm, that there are only sufficient knights to have only one per region. How can we expand without sufficient knights (2)  to occupy the regions properly? Without an influx of knights, wouldn't all the realms become become fixed in size? What happens to the incentive to expand or defeat the enemy?

I would appreciate any response on the theory.

Bruce Newmyer
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bedwyr on September 23, 2011, 06:34:58 AM
Bruce,

Under the current system, you need at least one and often two or more to run a region without stats deteriorating.  Under the new system, all that will happen if you don't have enough knights is that you get less gold.  Region stats will still be fine, and you will get full food production.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 23, 2011, 06:40:24 AM
I have a great concern that the new system will leave all the realms deficient in knights to be able to efficiently utilize the existing regions. I am sure that in my present realm, that there are only sufficient knights to have only one per region. How can we expand without sufficient knights (2)  to occupy the regions properly? Without an influx of knights, wouldn't all the realms become become fixed in size? What happens to the incentive to expand or defeat the enemy?

I would appreciate any response on the theory.

Bruce Newmyer

That is the problem with the current system, not the proposed one. Currently without sufficient knight estate coverage, region stats drop until the region rebels. You can offset this somewhat with courtier work or holding court. the new system allows a region to remain stable without any knight estates at all. Sure it is below optimum but all other things being equal, it is stable.

Does your realm currently have regions with no knights?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 23, 2011, 06:52:34 AM
Bruce,

Under the current system, you need at least one and often two or more to run a region without stats deteriorating.  Under the new system, all that will happen if you don't have enough knights is that you get less gold.  Region stats will still be fine, and you will get full food production.

Cheers.

Now when is that gonna happen? I need that looting back, and there are a few nearby rogue regions I wouldn't mind annexing...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 23, 2011, 09:52:14 AM
Under the new system, you need one lord and one knight per region to run an acceptable tax. Since rulers, dukes, etc. can all be knights as well (though only of their own duchies/regions), that means 2 characters per region the realm holds. 3-4 if you want to run at 100% efficiency.

Frankly, if your realm has less than 2-3 characters per region, it is trying to hold more land than it can and should get rid of a region or two.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 23, 2011, 11:00:29 AM
wait.. i thought a duke can't be a knight unless he's a lord as well? to avoid a duke being someone's liege and that someone's knight at the same time.

which would infer a ruler can't be a lord without being a duke at the same time... where does that leave a ruler+knight?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 23, 2011, 11:06:01 AM
I'd figure the ruler could be duke of a region, lord of a region in his duchy, and as he has an estate, technically a knight in said region.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 23, 2011, 11:21:40 AM
Frankly, if your realm has less than 2-3 characters per region, it is trying to hold more land than it can and should get rid of a region or two.

Isn't that exactly the problem that we tried to fix with the new system? There are many realms which cannot expand even though they have land in which they can expand. Telling them they should get rid of a region or two won't incite them to go to war.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 23, 2011, 11:55:29 AM
slightly different. old estates, stats drop. new estates, stats don't drop (but they don't rise either...), you just get crap gold. relatively speaking. i'm rather interested in what acceptable tax rate means in practice..

let's take avengmil, 15% gives 570 before expenses and for 3 people atm. so let's say there'll be only 1 lord who's also the knight.. let's say 40% max in estates (don't know what the max is for town). that means 228+171=399 @15%, which is obviously unlikely. let's say 8% 213 gold or perhaps 5% 133. that said, expenses (~100 gold, including militia) will be eating up a big chunk of that, and not counting duke's share. mind you, food sales (let's say 100 bushels) would probably gain more, since there's no such excuse as money transfer from cities to food sellers via realm share anymore.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 23, 2011, 12:46:27 PM
Isn't that exactly the problem that we tried to fix with the new system? There are many realms which cannot expand even though they have land in which they can expand. Telling them they should get rid of a region or two won't incite them to go to war.

Hmmm that is something... am trying to get Luria to expand but we need nobles under the old system... and seems we still need the same amount under the new system...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 23, 2011, 01:16:28 PM
Frankly, if your realm has less than 2-3 characters per region, it is trying to hold more land than it can and should get rid of a region or two.

Heh..that statement implies about half the realms on Atamara should give up some regions.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 23, 2011, 05:01:31 PM
Heh..that statement implies about half the realms on Atamara should give up some regions.

And that 90% of realms of Dwilight and BT do as well, and I imagine a high percentage on most other continents as well.

Isn't that exactly the problem that we tried to fix with the new system? There are many realms which cannot expand even though they have land in which they can expand. Telling them they should get rid of a region or two won't incite them to go to war.

My thoughts exactly. Say we got 10 nobles and 5 regions. In the old regions, we possible could not hold onto any more regions, as it would cause them to revolt due to lack of estates, meaning many realms had very little reason to go to war (other than because TMP ordered them to). If with the new system we'd gain more gold with 10 nobles in 5 regions than with 10 nobles in 10 regions (because realm size penalties, lack of knight tax tolerance penalties, and 50% tax loss penalties for wildlands), then we really aren't improving anything at all.

I really deeply believe that a realm should grow richer every time it expands. The benefits should be smaller as you grow larger and larger, but acquiring a region should never, ever be a net loss for the realm. Otherwise, all the complaints about the old system will apply to the new one, and people won't be going to war for IC reasons and ambitions, but will mostly get into lame wars because of TMP.

The game took a wrong turn when it was decided that we would discourage peace as a band-aid solution for having removed the biggest incentives for war. Until we make it so that acquiring a region will always make the realm richer as it used to be the case, gameplay will continue to deteriorate.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 23, 2011, 05:04:50 PM
And that 90% of realms of Dwilight and BT do as well, and I imagine a high percentage on most other continents as well.

My thoughts exactly. Say we got 10 nobles and 5 regions. In the old regions, we possible could not hold onto any more regions, as it would cause them to revolt due to lack of estates, meaning many realms had very little reason to go to war (other than because TMP ordered them to). If with the new system we'd gain more gold with 10 nobles in 5 regions than with 10 nobles in 10 regions (because realm size penalties, lack of knight tax tolerance penalties, and 50% tax loss penalties for wildlands), then we really aren't improving anything at all.

I really deeply believe that a realm should grow richer every time it expands. The benefits should be smaller as you grow larger and larger, but acquiring a region should never, ever be a net loss for the realm. Otherwise, all the complaints about the old system will apply to the new one, and people won't be going to war for IC reasons and ambitions, but will mostly get into lame wars because of TMP.

I fully agree. You should gain more gold with 20 nobles in 5 regions than with 10 nobles; but whatever the noble count, there should always be an incentive to gain more regions.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 23, 2011, 05:05:37 PM
My thoughts exactly. Say we got 10 nobles and 5 regions. In the old regions, we possible could not hold onto any more regions, as it would cause them to revolt due to lack of estates, meaning many realms had very little reason to go to war (other than because TMP ordered them to). If with the new system we'd gain more gold with 10 nobles in 5 regions than with 10 nobles in 10 regions (because realm size penalties, lack of knight tax tolerance penalties, and 50% tax loss penalties for wildlands), then we really aren't improving anything at all.

Don't be absurd.

There's an enormous difference between "if we expand, we will lose the regions we already have, and won't be able to support the new ones" and "if we expand, we won't make quite as much gold from the regions we already have, but we'll add another region that also doesn't produce its full potential".

BattleMaster is never going back to the days when you could have a half-dozen people running a 15-region realm, and I can't see any rational argument for why it should.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 23, 2011, 05:14:35 PM
Don't be absurd.

There's an enormous difference between "if we expand, we will lose the regions we already have, and won't be able to support the new ones" and "if we expand, we won't make quite as much gold from the regions we already have, but we'll add another region that also doesn't produce its full potential".

BattleMaster is never going back to the days when you could have a half-dozen people running a 15-region realm, and I can't see any rational argument for why it should.

How can 6 people run 15 regions? Doesnt make sense...

But 6 people running 5 regions? Would be incredibly beneficial for the War aspect...

I mean the New Estates are to try and fix the problems we all have with the current set up and to force us (when combined with TMP) to do more wars correct?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 23, 2011, 05:18:38 PM
How can 6 people run 15 regions? Doesnt make sense...

Used to be, there wasn't any particular incentive to have a Lord of a region.  And, of course, there were no Knights of regions.

Quote
But 6 people running 5 regions? Would be incredibly beneficial for the War aspect...

And with the New Estates, you'll be able to do that.

Quote
I mean the New Estates are to try and fix the problems we all have with the current set up and to force us (when combined with TMP) to do more wars correct?

Er...well, not exactly.

The New Estate System is intended to fix many shortcomings of the old one, and make it much easier for us to tweak things to find the right balance between preventing people from running huge realms with tiny noble populations, and not being able to expand.

TMP is intended to prevent ruling classes from locking a realm into peace against the wishes of the regular knights.  (And the ideas that currently have the most traction in our discussions of how to fix TMP look very little like the current TMP.)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 23, 2011, 05:19:47 PM
I fully agree. You should gain more gold with 20 nobles in 5 regions than with 10 nobles; but whatever the noble count, there should always be an incentive to gain more regions.

I can't say with certainty that there will never be a situation where taking one more region would cause your total income to dip (slightly), but in the vast majority of cases, it should not happen.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 23, 2011, 06:00:57 PM
Don't be absurd.

There's an enormous difference between "if we expand, we will lose the regions we already have, and won't be able to support the new ones" and "if we expand, we won't make quite as much gold from the regions we already have, but we'll add another region that also doesn't produce its full potential".

That's what I originally understood too, but seeing the Word of Tom being contrary to that got me worried.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 23, 2011, 06:02:14 PM
I can't say with certainty that there will never be a situation where taking one more region would cause your total income to dip (slightly), but in the vast majority of cases, it should not happen.

That's alright. As long as nobles think their income is likely too increase, expansion will occur. You can expect a reasonable rate of failure.....
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 23, 2011, 06:09:29 PM
BattleMaster is never going back to the days when you could have a half-dozen people running a 15-region realm, and I can't see any rational argument for why it should.

The game was more fun and much, much more care free that way. Just saying   ::)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 23, 2011, 06:25:33 PM
If with the new system we'd gain more gold with 10 nobles in 5 regions than with 10 nobles in 10 regions (because realm size penalties, lack of knight tax tolerance penalties, and 50% tax loss penalties for wildlands), then we really aren't improving anything at all.


you get more food though.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 23, 2011, 06:32:49 PM
BattleMaster is never going back to the days when you could have a half-dozen people running a 15-region realm, and I can't see any rational argument for why it should.

Because 1) the main reason to go to war is expansion, 2) the player base is declining, and therefore 3) less and less realms are having a reason to go to war, other than to deal with TMP. Are you seriously arguing that wars are better now than they were before the estates system, that there are more and they are of higher quality? 'cause I would totally disagree.

And nobody's talking about 6 nobles maintaining 15 regions. But if a 12 region realm with 12 nobles makes less than a 6 region realm with the same amount of nobles, then you've got a serious design problem, and we may as well stick with the old system as the new one isn't offering any better. Realms with few nobles will still be penalized, whereas realms with many won't be advantaged anymore. That's the sole difference.

This does nothing to reward expansionist realms. This only helps realm with huge food deficits, which other than D'Hara on Dwilight (which doesn't have any rurals to expand to anymore anyways), are rather rare.

That's alright. As long as nobles think their income is likely too increase, expansion will occur. You can expect a reasonable rate of failure.....

Uhm, no. As long as the gain from expansion isn't obvious, many will refrain from taking the risks of fighting an enemy at the border. Just like right now.

you get more food though.

For 99% of the realms, food isn't an issue. Since food is sold dirt cheap on most continent, I can't see any realm saying "well, if we gain this new rural, we'll lose gold overall, plus all the war expenses, damages, and risks, but hey, we'll make 200 more bushels of food every harvest!". No.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 23, 2011, 06:41:53 PM
food is dirt cheap, because people rely on a few odd ducks at the top handing gold out manually. or via realm share.

obviously this won't change anything, because the few odd ducks will try to hoard everything and hand gold out manually.

do d'hara and riombara count as only 1% of all the realms around?

come to think of it, does a region even need a lord? or is it one of those no lord around and you get unrest?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 23, 2011, 06:54:18 PM
food is dirt cheap, because people rely on a few odd ducks at the top handing gold out manually. or via realm share.

obviously this won't change anything, because the few odd ducks will try to hoard everything and hand gold out manually.

do d'hara and riombara count as only 1% of all the realms around?

come to think of it, does a region even need a lord? or is it one of those no lord around and you get unrest?

D'Hara doesn't have any rurals to expand to anyways. As for Riombara, these are regions that it would have annexed anyways because they have the nobles for it and because that seems to be their strategy against Enweil. Let's be honest here, you didn't wage war on Enweil because you wanted that food.

I can't say with certainty that there will never be a situation where taking one more region would cause your total income to dip (slightly), but in the vast majority of cases, it should not happen.

Don't forget that any new penalties will stack with existing penalties, such as realm size penalties. Now, I don't have access to your numbers, so I can't make any calculations to view at which point it would start doing a difference, but you are mentioning two new penalties, lack of knights on tax tolerance and wildlands on tax collection, in a manner that seems rather harsh. Not to mention that while more region increases infrastructure potential, it also increases costs in terms of upkeep, defense (against rogues and enemies), and maintenance (to clean up whenever something happens, or quite simply to bring the region back to shape after you take it over), which are all soft dissuasive issues that stack with the hard dissuasive ones on tax. I for one would very much love to be able to run the numbers myself, though since I don't expect that to happen, I would really like for test calculations to be done with various realms to see how many regions they could gain, without increasing their nobles, before a new region results in a net loss. Because while I can't affirm anything for a fact, I'm worried by what I have read.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 23, 2011, 07:00:39 PM
...but you are mentioning two new penalties, lack of knights on tax tolerance and wildlands on tax collection, in a manner that seems rather harsh.

No, Chénier, these are not "new penalties": these are replacing the penalties for lack of estates.

Furthermore, there is no increase in the penalties for running higher tax rates if you have fewer knights.  Tom just meant (unless he's changed something dramatic without telling us) that you'd need at least a lord and a knight to be able to run what you would consider an acceptable rate when averaged over the whole region.

So the only thing you lose by having just a lord in the region with his estate, rather than 2-4 knights with estates, is the extra income that they could generate from their estates.

As opposed to now, where having insufficient estate coverage means your region slides slowly (or, depending on just how insufficient it is, quickly) into ruin.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bedwyr on September 23, 2011, 08:11:39 PM
Let's also not forget the (in my mind) most important difference.

Right now, if you want to do some serious expansion or a colony, you have to gather all the nobles first with promises of future benefits if you are successful, which is extraordinarily difficult.

Under the new system, you can seriously expand or colonize and then send word out that people who join will get benefits right away.  Being able to expand and then fill your noble numbers will help a lot, I think.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 23, 2011, 08:44:20 PM
No, Chénier, these are not "new penalties": these are replacing the penalties for lack of estates.

Furthermore, there is no increase in the penalties for running higher tax rates if you have fewer knights.  Tom just meant (unless he's changed something dramatic without telling us) that you'd need at least a lord and a knight to be able to run what you would consider an acceptable rate when averaged over the whole region.

So the only thing you lose by having just a lord in the region with his estate, rather than 2-4 knights with estates, is the extra income that they could generate from their estates.

As opposed to now, where having insufficient estate coverage means your region slides slowly (or, depending on just how insufficient it is, quickly) into ruin.

New penalties that replace the old ones. You are arguing that it won't be worse than what we currently have, that it will be basically equivalent,

I thought the consensus was that what we currently have is bad, because people already hold out on expansion. What's the difference if that's because of lowered income instead of increased unrest, if as you seem to say the end result is the same? We are currently hammering people with harsh TMP mechanics *because* we have taken away their incentives to go to war with the old estate system. The new estate system doesn't seem like it will change the fundamental problem the old one had. It'll be much more possible to expand now, but this changes little if its not any more desirable to do so.

Let's also not forget the (in my mind) most important difference.

Right now, if you want to do some serious expansion or a colony, you have to gather all the nobles first with promises of future benefits if you are successful, which is extraordinarily difficult.

Under the new system, you can seriously expand or colonize and then send word out that people who join will get benefits right away.  Being able to expand and then fill your noble numbers will help a lot, I think.

While this is true, most wars aren't for the creation of colonies. And if you get all of the lords in place before the would-be colonists join, then you will have some troubles forming the colony, as the lords might want to remain in the realm, and many people would likely not want to see these regions taken from loyal lords to be given to whatever new opportunists show up. One of the advantages of having to recruit people before a colony is that you get to know them, and therefore get some assurances that the new realm will not backstab you on the next day.

And let's not fool ourselves into thinking that great promotion opportunities suddenly create a large flux of nobles. Noble mobility is relatively small, most are attached to their realm and/or continent. The only time you get significant mobility rates are when a realm dies, but if you are the one doing the killing, these nationless nobles aren't likely to be friendly to your cause.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 23, 2011, 09:42:10 PM
New penalties that replace the old ones. You are arguing that it won't be worse than what we currently have, that it will be basically equivalent,

I thought the consensus was that what we currently have is bad, because people already hold out on expansion. What's the difference if that's because of lowered income instead of increased unrest, if as you seem to say the end result is the same?

Seriously?

If that's what you think I've been saying, then you have not been listening. At all. For months.

The new penalties should be massively less severe than the current ones.  They will not make it impossible to hold a region with insufficient estate support without legions of courtiers stationed in the region. 

No, they will not make a region with no knights equivalent to a region with 8.  That would be stupid.

Quote
We are currently hammering people with harsh TMP mechanics *because* we have taken away their incentives to go to war with the old estate system.

If you're saying, "we implemented TMP to fight the peace problem caused by the current estate system," that's not true.  TMP was implemented because of the Great Peace on EC and more localized incidents in various places in the game, most of which predated the estate system.

Quote
The new estate system doesn't seem like it will change the fundamental problem the old one had. It'll be much more possible to expand now, but this changes little if its not any more desirable to do so.

If you don't want to expand once the new estate system comes online, you're welcome to sit on your hands and do nothing.  However, I predict that most of your neighbours will not see it nearly as pessimistically as you do.

Quote
While this is true, most wars aren't for the creation of colonies.

Congratulations!

You managed to fixate on the least important part of his post by far.

It's not about colonies, Dominic.  It's about all kinds of expansion.  Colonies are just one kind of expansion.

Let me illustrate this for you with a brief example, because you seem unable to grasp it:

Current system:

Your realm has exactly enough nobles to provide 100% estate support to all 10 of its regions.  You want to take five more regions, so you try to attract more nobles to be able to staff them.  By the time you get half of these nobles, however, two other realms have already taken all five of the regions you wanted.  Your realm is frustrated by the stagnation and inability to do anything, and half the new nobles leave.

OR

You take the five regions, and install a Lord in each one.  You now have ~60% estate support in 2/3 of your regions, and your region stats start to slip.  You try to attract more nobles to staff these regions, and get a few, but the rest are still in trouble.  A month and a half later, two of the regions you took have gone rogue, along with two that you held before, and you're only four nobles up from where you were before.  The new nobles are frustrated that they came here, to a realm that was just expanding, and they can't actually do anything but maintenance.  Two of them, and three of your longtime nobles, leave.

New system:

You take five regions, put a Lord on each one, and have no problem keeping all 15 of your regions under control.  Sure, you don't get full gold out of all of them, but you're still taking in some more gold than you were before you took them, plus the extra food.  Over the next few weeks, you attract a few more nobles.  When each of them joins, he gets to take an estate on one of the 10 short-staffed regions, which gives him an instant decent income, and increases the overall income of your realm.  The general upward trend in the realm makes the old and new nobles alike feel good about its future, and new players who join are more likely to stick around, thus increasing its population and income further.

Are these contrived examples, meant to prove my point? Sure.

But I think that the gist of them is pretty accurate.

So instead of insisting that everything is doomed, the dev team is a bunch of morons who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper sack, and the only way to save BattleMaster from total imminent destruction is to let every realm control all the regions they want with no effort at all, why don't you shut the hell up and try out the changes when they arrive, and make your judgement then?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Norrel on September 23, 2011, 09:58:31 PM
You take five regions, put a Lord on each one, and have no problem keeping all 15 of your regions under control.  Sure, you don't get full gold out of all of them, but you're still taking in some more gold than you were before you took them, plus the extra food. 

Does this mean that a realm would always have an incentive to take additional regions, with diminishing returns, or does there reach a point where taking additional regions would actually harm your realm, as it does in some cases under the current system? If so, at what nobles:region ratio does taking additional regions start doing damage, overall?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 23, 2011, 10:00:35 PM
Does this mean that a realm would always have an incentive to take additional regions, with diminishing returns, or does there reach a point where taking additional regions would actually harm your realm, as it does in some cases under the current system? If so, at what nobles:region ratio does taking additional regions start doing damage, overall?

As I said earlier, I can't say for certain, offhand, that there would never be a point at which taking an additional region would make you less money than before.  Tom wrote the code, not me, so I'd have to study it and run some numbers to check on that. 

However, if there is such a point, I am certain that it's a very rare one to reach.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 23, 2011, 11:02:15 PM
New system:

You take five regions, put a Lord on each one, and have no problem keeping all 15 of your regions under control.  Sure, you don't get full gold out of all of them, but you're still taking in some more gold than you were before you took them, plus the extra food.  Over the next few weeks, you attract a few more nobles.  When each of them joins, he gets to take an estate on one of the 10 short-staffed regions, which gives him an instant decent income, and increases the overall income of your realm.  The general upward trend in the realm makes the old and new nobles alike feel good about its future, and new players who join are more likely to stick around, thus increasing its population and income further.

Example for the new system:
10 regions with 20 nobles: 100% coverage, 100 gold each region,  50 gold for each noble:1000 gold total for the realm

expand by 5 regions:15 regions with 20 nobles:
5 regions with 100% coverage, 100 gold each region, 50 gold for each noble:500 gold
10 regions with 50% coverage, 65 gold each (remember, additional penalties), 65 gold for each noble:650 gold
total for realm:  1150 gold

See? a 50% increase in regions should lead to a 15% increase in gold income. That number could be anywhere between 5% and 25%, of course, but it would be hard to find a scenario where expanding leads to less gold.

Actually, I can think of one--city/townsland/stronghold estate coverage. But you can probably free up one noble from each of those region types.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bedwyr on September 23, 2011, 11:06:38 PM
Does this mean that a realm would always have an incentive to take additional regions, with diminishing returns, or does there reach a point where taking additional regions would actually harm your realm, as it does in some cases under the current system? If so, at what nobles:region ratio does taking additional regions start doing damage, overall?

I would argue that even if there is, at the time you take the region, a small decrease in gold output that you would never actually face a deficit for any length of time in practice because even a small increase in your noble numbers would make it profitable, and there are more reasons to hold regions than just gold.

What I do expect to see with this new system is that realms will suddenly be more interested in rural regions.  Currently, you're much better off taking cities or townslands because the way estates work favours them.  But, under the new system, you can take a few rural regions for their food and see a major benefit with only a lord, where you need full knights for a city to see the true benefit of the gold, and you have to feed the whole populace regardless of your inefficiency numbers.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 23, 2011, 11:44:53 PM
Example for the new system:
10 regions with 20 nobles: 100% coverage, 100 gold each region,  50 gold for each noble:1000 gold total for the realm

expand by 5 regions:15 regions with 20 nobles:
5 regions with 100% coverage, 100 gold each region, 50 gold for each noble:500 gold
10 regions with 50% coverage, 65 gold each (remember, additional penalties), 65 gold for each noble:650 gold
total for realm:  1150 gold

See? a 50% increase in regions should lead to a 15% increase in gold income. That number could be anywhere between 5% and 25%, of course, but it would be hard to find a scenario where expanding leads to less gold.

Actually, I can think of one--city/townsland/stronghold estate coverage. But you can probably free up one noble from each of those region types.

You ignore the fact that a larger realms has to run a lower tax rate, which pretty much eats away the gold benefit.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Norrel on September 23, 2011, 11:55:55 PM
You ignore the fact that a larger realms has to run a lower tax rate, which pretty much eats away the gold benefit.
Even then, you get more gold in this system since estates aren't tied to efficiency any more, which means you can just sell the surplus food and you'll come out ahead regardless.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 24, 2011, 12:16:08 AM
You ignore the fact that a larger realms has to run a lower tax rate, which pretty much eats away the gold benefit.

That's a pretty big assumption.  I wouldn't think that the tax rate decrease required by taking an additional region would come close to offsetting the amount of gold you gain from taking it.

In fact, I'm nearly positive (haven't run the numbers, but don't feel like it's necessary) that under either the old or the new system, it wouldn't come close at all.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 24, 2011, 01:17:15 AM
That's a pretty big assumption.  I wouldn't think that the tax rate decrease required by taking an additional region would come close to offsetting the amount of gold you gain from taking it.

In fact, I'm nearly positive (haven't run the numbers, but don't feel like it's necessary) that under either the old or the new system, it wouldn't come close at all.

Not really a big assumption. If the region forces a 1% drop in tax rate all around, that can easily add up to eating away any gain the region provides. Especially true if you have big cities(1% drop is easily 100 gold lost in such cases, add the other regions and you quickly eat away any gain from a normal rural region).
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 24, 2011, 03:40:51 AM
Not really a big assumption. If the region forces a 1% drop in tax rate all around, that can easily add up to eating away any gain the region provides. Especially true if you have big cities(1% drop is easily 100 gold lost in such cases, add the other regions and you quickly eat away any gain from a normal rural region).

Then you can have your 1-region realm, and I'll have my 20 region realm, and we'll see who comes out ahead.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Vellos on September 24, 2011, 04:09:48 AM
What I do expect to see with this new system is that realms will suddenly be more interested in rural regions.  Currently, you're much better off taking cities or townslands because the way estates work favours them.  But, under the new system, you can take a few rural regions for their food and see a major benefit with only a lord, where you need full knights for a city to see the true benefit of the gold, and you have to feed the whole populace regardless of your inefficiency numbers.

Shhhh... don't tell them.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 24, 2011, 05:11:32 AM
Seriously?

If that's what you think I've been saying, then you have not been listening. At all. For months.

The new penalties should be massively less severe than the current ones.  They will not make it impossible to hold a region with insufficient estate support without legions of courtiers stationed in the region. 

And you aren't paying attention to what I am saying. I'm not saying it won't be any more possible to take on additional regions. That, I recognize, it will be. What I am saying is that it won't make it any more desirable.

No, they will not make a region with no knights equivalent to a region with 8.  That would be stupid.

Did I say that? I don't believe I said that.

You managed to fixate on the least important part of his post by far.

It's not about colonies, Dominic.  It's about all kinds of expansion.  Colonies are just one kind of expansion.

Let me illustrate this for you with a brief example, because you seem unable to grasp it:

Current system:

Your realm has exactly enough nobles to provide 100% estate support to all 10 of its regions.  You want to take five more regions, so you try to attract more nobles to be able to staff them.  By the time you get half of these nobles, however, two other realms have already taken all five of the regions you wanted.  Your realm is frustrated by the stagnation and inability to do anything, and half the new nobles leave.

OR

You take the five regions, and install a Lord in each one.  You now have ~60% estate support in 2/3 of your regions, and your region stats start to slip.  You try to attract more nobles to staff these regions, and get a few, but the rest are still in trouble.  A month and a half later, two of the regions you took have gone rogue, along with two that you held before, and you're only four nobles up from where you were before.  The new nobles are frustrated that they came here, to a realm that was just expanding, and they can't actually do anything but maintenance.  Two of them, and three of your longtime nobles, leave.

New system:

You take five regions, put a Lord on each one, and have no problem keeping all 15 of your regions under control.  Sure, you don't get full gold out of all of them, but you're still taking in some more gold than you were before you took them, plus the extra food.  Over the next few weeks, you attract a few more nobles.  When each of them joins, he gets to take an estate on one of the 10 short-staffed regions, which gives him an instant decent income, and increases the overall income of your realm.  The general upward trend in the realm makes the old and new nobles alike feel good about its future, and new players who join are more likely to stick around, thus increasing its population and income further.

Are these contrived examples, meant to prove my point? Sure.

But I think that the gist of them is pretty accurate.

"Two other realms have already taken the five regions you wanted"? Seriously? When the hell does this happen? The only cases where I can imagine such a thing happening is on BT following invasions or on Dwilight. Because if they aren't rogue (such large number or rogue regions just aren't seen on stable continents), then to have them adjacent to both your realm, and another realm that would both be able to take it and have the will to take it... The scenario is just incredibly unlikely, unless you mean that you go to war against a realm with an ally that also neighbors it, and then the ally takes all of the regions of the enemy instead of you. In which case, I'd say it's just as much your fault if you get ripped off by your own ally... And even on BT and Dwi, having the regions taken from under your nose is likely a result of bad diplomacy, either by claiming/wanting too many regions or being bad at defending your interests in them. And even in these cases, it's quite rare to have all avenues of expansion cut off. I just don't see it happening. Please give me examples of this actually happening.

So instead of insisting that everything is doomed, the dev team is a bunch of morons who couldn't code their way out of a wet paper sack, and the only way to save BattleMaster from total imminent destruction is to let every realm control all the regions they want with no effort at all, why don't you shut the hell up and try out the changes when they arrive, and make your judgement then?

I didn't say you were all morons, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with what you are saying. And I did say I was keeping some reserves, but I most definitely will not wait until it is released to voice my concerns. Modifying updates per-release is a lot easier than modifying them post-release. Did I go saying the new system sucked? Please quote me if I did. What I did say is that what you and Tom have written, it sounds doubtful that the new estate systems will create significantly more interesting wars.

You ignore the fact that a larger realms has to run a lower tax rate, which pretty much eats away the gold benefit.

This is what I have been voicing concerns about.

Even then, you get more gold in this system since estates aren't tied to efficiency any more, which means you can just sell the surplus food and you'll come out ahead regardless.
That's a pretty big assumption.  I wouldn't think that the tax rate decrease required by taking an additional region would come close to offsetting the amount of gold you gain from taking it.

In fact, I'm nearly positive (haven't run the numbers, but don't feel like it's necessary) that under either the old or the new system, it wouldn't come close at all.

You say I complain without having seen the new system, but honestly, you are arguing while admitting that you don't know it any better. You are assuming just as much as we are. Run the tests, and then you can rub it in my face if you were right for all I care. In addition to realm size penalties, you must also consider distance from capital penalties, which are on average proportional to realm size. This of course stacks with the knightless tax tolerance penalty, and the wildlands tax collection penalty. You have *not* taken all of these penalties into consideration when doing your example. These penalties are very significant. Most of the regions part of Fheuv'n used to have big troubles if they tried running a 10% tax rate. They now all run 19% tax rates without problem. Size penalties *are* significant.

Saying that a 50% region increase will only generate a 15% income increase, perhaps as little as 5%, without taking all of these penalties into consideration, is cause for concern.

Again, I'm not saying you are stupid, but some change have had unintended consequences in the past due to how they interact with other mechanics. Takeovers having become considerably more difficult since pre-estates system is one example, and measures to help ease that have only been taken quite recently. Oversights happen, everybody does them now and then. That doesn't make them stupid. Please stop saying I'm calling you all stupid when I express concern that new features might have unintended effects when combined to existing mechanics.

Will the system be worse than the current one? I seriously doubt it. But after all this time, and after all that was said about the new system prior to these last few days, I expected it to be considerably better. Estates have been a burden to gameplay for years, I was hoping the new system would solve the problems of the former, mainly that it killed motivation for most wars of expansion. And notably, that it fix this problem for the vast majority of realms, and not just for certain realm that for specific reasons while most would not.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 24, 2011, 05:20:13 AM
You say I complain without having seen the new system, but honestly, you are arguing while admitting that you don't know it any better. You are assuming just as much as we are.

Actually no you are wrong there. The devs have been running the changes on the Dev server for quite some time now, so apart from also being involved in in coding the damn thing I'm pretty sure he knows the proposed system and its specific implementation better. The fact he hasn't run the numbers on a specific scenario doesn't mean he doesn't have enough info to be a pretty good educated guess, where as we players are left with only the most basic info to try and peace things together.

I can see a case were it would would be detrimental to take another region, but such cases involve realms that are already very large. As Tom has said, the game still aims to give incentives for large realms to split up into smaller ones, so I would guess it designed to work that way.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 24, 2011, 06:48:06 AM
Takeovers having become considerably more difficult since pre-estates system is one example, and measures to help ease that have only been taken quite recently.

The new estate system should make takeovers even easier--you don't have to find a knight. I guess that's the main point we've been trying to make--takeovers now require your realm to cough up one noble instead of two.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 24, 2011, 07:30:43 AM
seriously..

do you even need a lord? or does a lordless region descend into chaos? (nevermind the smarties going around claiming empty regions, that doesn't count)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 24, 2011, 07:44:58 AM
seriously..

do you even need a lord? or does a lordless region descend into chaos? (nevermind the smarties going around claiming empty regions, that doesn't count)

Right now the regions descend into chaos. I suppose in the new system a lord would still be required, but knights not so much.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 24, 2011, 10:22:33 AM
currently region descend into chaos due to lack of estates. has anyone seen a region which has full estates cover but no lord? and does that go into chaos all on its own despite full estates coverage?

in future they don't go into chaos from lack of estates. which is why i'm asking, do lordless regions go into chaos for being lordless.

in short, if it doesn't, there's no reason why you can't take a region, stick a lord up there to set some auto sell thing for food (that works when no lord is around?), then move on to another region whilst it goes lordless. banker gets (a bit of) gold? other regions get food.


or does the duke get income from lordless regions?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 24, 2011, 03:20:33 PM
Not really a big assumption. If the region forces a 1% drop in tax rate all around, that can easily add up to eating away any gain the region provides. Especially true if you have big cities(1% drop is easily 100 gold lost in such cases, add the other regions and you quickly eat away any gain from a normal rural region).

Do you see that happening now?

Because the tax penalties to large realms aren't getting changed.  So if you don't see that happening now, you're not likely to see it happening under the new estate system, either.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 24, 2011, 03:25:09 PM
Will the system be worse than the current one? I seriously doubt it. But after all this time, and after all that was said about the new system prior to these last few days, I expected it to be considerably better. Estates have been a burden to gameplay for years, I was hoping the new system would solve the problems of the former, mainly that it killed motivation for most wars of expansion. And notably, that it fix this problem for the vast majority of realms, and not just for certain realm that for specific reasons while most would not.

And, as I think I said before, one of the most important aspects of the new estate system is that it will provide us with much simpler and more powerful levers to lean on if things seem to be going poorly.

If it seems like people aren't getting enough gold from newly-taken regions due to large-realm tax penalties...increase the % of gold you get from wild lands!

If it seems like lords are hoarding estates all for themselves...increase inefficiency penalties!

If it seems like all the knights are clustering in cities...adjust the balance of estate requirements between cities and rurals!

We fully expect to be watching all these things over the months after the new system goes live, and making any tweaks that seem necessary.  But the new system should allow us to make those tweaks.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 24, 2011, 05:28:19 PM
Do you see that happening now?

Because the tax penalties to large realms aren't getting changed.  So if you don't see that happening now, you're not likely to see it happening under the new estate system, either.

I do. Most recently in Thalmarkin, though the regions we took were so rich it didn't actually hurt overall, but had the regions been rural regions, the story might have been different all together. Certainly made the duke of Unger a bit unhappy since he lost hundreds of gold in income personally  :P
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 25, 2011, 12:51:40 AM
I do. Most recently in Thalmarkin, though the regions we took were so rich it didn't actually hurt overall, but had the regions been rural regions, the story might have been different all together. Certainly made the duke of Unger a bit unhappy since he lost hundreds of gold in income personally  :P

You sure that didn't have anything to do with Dominic's secession?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Lorgan on September 25, 2011, 12:54:14 AM
I do. Most recently in Thalmarkin, though the regions we took were so rich it didn't actually hurt overall, but had the regions been rural regions, the story might have been different all together. Certainly made the duke of Unger a bit unhappy since he lost hundreds of gold in income personally  :P

Well, it was a combination of less estate coverage and realm growth but it did result in having to drop the tax rate 5%, which meant 500 gold less indeed. My personal income actually increased since I don't need to pay 15 knights anymore. But I was indeed quite surprised that it affected the tax tolerance that drastically.

My biggest fear for the new estate system is that it will reduce the benefits that having lots of estate coverage do for the tax rate you can run. I like me lots of knights and lots of gold. :)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Lorgan on September 25, 2011, 12:58:57 AM
You sure that didn't have anything to do with Dominic's secession?

I think we took Vore before Rio declared war and Chénier seceded. I might be wrong though.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 25, 2011, 02:24:53 AM
Well, it was a combination of less estate coverage and realm growth but it did result in having to drop the tax rate 5%, which meant 500 gold less indeed.
Gaining a region or two will not change your acceptable tax rate by 5%. Not by any means. If you had to drop your taxes by 5%, then something else caused. Probably a combination of effects. But it was not all from gaining a region or 2.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 25, 2011, 03:08:36 AM
So.... around when is this thing gonna be implemented?  :P :P
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Norrel on September 25, 2011, 04:24:03 AM
So.... around when is this thing gonna be implemented?  :P :P
I believe they said in the 1-9 weeks range.. About 2 weeks ago, ish? So any day now, I'm guessing.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 25, 2011, 07:55:01 AM
Gaining a region or two will not change your acceptable tax rate by 5%. Not by any means. If you had to drop your taxes by 5%, then something else caused. Probably a combination of effects. But it was not all from gaining a region or 2.


i think it's more a case of you having to drop it by 5% or more and then raise it back 4 or whatever % slowly, as simply dropping it 1% won't stop the anger.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Lorgan on September 25, 2011, 06:57:26 PM
As I said, it went hand in hand with 150-200% less estate coverage on both production and authority. And Iato's secession might also have had something to do with it, it was definitely around that time and it takes a while before you can figure out a changed tolerance level. Another factor may be that I was running the taxes at the absolute maximum and any change in circumstances (like too high morale drops too close to eachother) already required a decrease in taxes even without anything out of the ordinary happening.

Pushing it higher now is manageable concerning morale, but it's not worth it as production drops too fast resulting in less income anyway.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 25, 2011, 11:17:48 PM
Isn't that exactly the problem that we tried to fix with the new system?

No. I will say this again: If your realm can not attract 2 players per region, then either it has overexpanded or it sucks. I do not want realms with few players control large areas of land. If you consider it a "problem" that 5 players can't rule 20 regions, you're playing the wrong game.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 25, 2011, 11:19:23 PM
Heh..that statement implies about half the realms on Atamara should give up some regions.

If it is that bad, I'll shut down an island or two. BM is a multiplayer game and we may have made a mistake spreading a dwindling player base across too many game worlds. Maybe Dwilight was a mistake. I'm not above admitting and fixing mistakes.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Norrel on September 25, 2011, 11:20:42 PM
Maybe Dwilight was a mistake.
Oh god no.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 25, 2011, 11:23:25 PM
Oh god no.

Oh yes. From what I've seen from the distance, it has sucked the spirit out of every other island in the game, and it's the main reason everything is spread thin.

Find me 500 new players and I'll eat my words, but right now, I do think that Dwilight was a mistake.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Lorgan on September 25, 2011, 11:44:43 PM
Oh yes. From what I've seen from the distance, it has sucked the spirit out of every other island in the game, and it's the main reason everything is spread thin.

I have to disagree. I'm not experiencing any less spirit in the realms I've been in since Dwilight was created. Dwilight's SMA has even had a positive influence in my opinion with people on other continents taking atmosphere more seriously without getting too serious. EC has an epic war going on in the South with the Northern war being as good as over (and it was pretty epic as well); AT has the Allies vs. Empire war; BT is finally alive again and man, do I love that continent and everything about it :) ; FE has Arcaea creeping ever closer to island hegemony from what I hear; the Colonies... no idea and Dwilight has an excellent atmosphere and some amazing plans for the future brewing in pretty much all realms I think. The BM spirit has never been so alive.

Those who whine are just not willing to make sacrifices, sacrifices that are sometimes necessary to have fun. I honestly don't see what's wrong with large patches of rogue wastelands being created on the front lines, or behind them, it's the price of war and actually pretty darn realistic. I personally love the current estate system and for me nothing has to change but I like the proposed changes so far, they'll make a great system even better and that's why I look forward to them. Not because I expect them to solve all my problems, you should never rely on code changes to solve your problems, solve them yourself.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bedwyr on September 25, 2011, 11:55:57 PM
Oh yes. From what I've seen from the distance, it has sucked the spirit out of every other island in the game, and it's the main reason everything is spread thin.

I agree with Lorgan, I just don't see this.  AT is finally having the war people have been wanting for years, EC's having some great conflicts, FEI has been in turmoil for a while and it's just going to get better, BT has picked up from what I've heard and the implications of the last Invasion are rippling outward, Dwilight's awesome...I don't know anything about the Colonies, but I don't think the game is going half-badly at the moment.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 26, 2011, 12:23:33 AM
I agree with Lorgan, I just don't see this.  AT is finally having the war people have been wanting for years, EC's having some great conflicts, FEI has been in turmoil for a while and it's just going to get better, BT has picked up from what I've heard and the implications of the last Invasion are rippling outward, Dwilight's awesome...I don't know anything about the Colonies, but I don't think the game is going half-badly at the moment.

The conflicts are there, but you have to admit, all those wars would be more dynamic if there were more characters involved. Heck, Atamara would probably be looking at a few colonies right now which would have made things an order of magnitude more interesting. Will the new estate system be enough to change that? No. It will help, but not that much.

When Beluaterra was being invaded there was a very natural chance for drowning an island that the player could have accepted. Now..well..no matter what island might be sunken, there would be angry players. Is sinking an island needed? Hard to say. Maybe. I know I'd certainly enjoy it if Darka was able to go back to the days of having 80 nobles instead of 55.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 26, 2011, 12:31:53 AM
The game has became a bit too complicated for people looking for a light text based game?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Perth on September 26, 2011, 12:35:13 AM
The real question is, however, would sinking an island translate to more characters/players on other isalnds? Very hard to say. Some would simply move to the remaining standing islands, while yet others would probably be upset and leave the game.

The question is what the ratio would be between those two groups, and if the ratio of people staying to people leaving would be worth sinking an island.

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 26, 2011, 12:41:53 AM
Maybe Dwilight was a mistake. I'm not above admitting and fixing mistakes.

So long as your "fix" is not to close Dwilight.

If you look at Vellos's analyses in the Retention thread, Dwilight appears to be the continent with the best retention numbers, and has actually been increasing its player count, while the other continents are generally trending down.

I think that the one of the very worst things you could do for the game at this point would be to close Dwilight.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 26, 2011, 12:52:32 AM
Oh yes. From what I've seen from the distance, it has sucked the spirit out of every other island in the game, and it's the main reason everything is spread thin.

Find me 500 new players and I'll eat my words, but right now, I do think that Dwilight was a mistake.

Did Dwilight suck the spirit out of the other continents, or just offer a compelling game experience that highlighted the dissatisfaction with the other continents.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on September 26, 2011, 12:55:35 AM
Did Dwilight suck the spirit out of the other continents, or just offer a compelling game experience that highlighted the dissatisfaction with the other continents.

Pretty much.   I would never touch EC or Atamara.

At this point I play to play on dwilight and cause I have some character history on FEI.  otherwise. . yea.   Dwilight kept and keeps me playing.   
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 26, 2011, 01:15:28 AM
Love Dwilight... Even if I was kicked from the Luria's I know enough about the general realms of the Continent to ensure many RL years of fun if I felt "hurt" and didnt go back to the Luria's. Heck SA will be crazy fun to play for my next toon (maybe), or maybe I would do a 'Dirty' Madinian republican... or one of the realms close to the Zuma... or... well I could go on. Only Realm on Dwilight that I personally wouldnt play is D'hara cos of their silliness in taking Cities they cant afford to take (IMO).

Pretty much: Dwilight is Awesome!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 26, 2011, 01:34:00 AM
Pretty much.   I would never touch EC or Atamara.

At this point I play to play on dwilight and cause I have some character history on FEI.  otherwise. . yea.   Dwilight kept and keeps me playing.

I'd never play on Colonies or FEI. There are people who'd never play on Dwilight. There are people who think Dwilight is boring and Atamara and EC are awesome. Really, this is an argument that could go on forever and lead to nothing useful.

It is also a discussion that has nothing to do with the new estates so..split to different topic by a mod?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Kain on September 26, 2011, 02:24:42 AM
We did have a vote on favourite continent. While my favourite is still EC, Dwilight won that vote by about twice as much votes as the runner up.

Would be kind of strange to close the most popular continent.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 26, 2011, 03:14:43 AM
Blaming Dwilight not how other continents suck makes no sense. I am currently playing in it, and also in Atamara and FEI, but I would not be playing in any of them if it were not for Dwilight.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 26, 2011, 08:21:00 AM
just give us a hell o an invasion we won't probably survive, meaning, delete beluaterra if we fail and by the time, also invade EC.
After the ibladesh war, Ec will probably deteriorate again.
We all loved EC and the long history it has, yet if there is going to be a continent deleted i'd say one of the two.
I never liked Atamara, so my opinion would be too biased.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 26, 2011, 08:34:05 AM
I love East Continent.  I love Beluaterra.  I detested Dwilight and FEI.  Never really got into Atmara and I've never tried the Colonies.  If BT and EC were closed, I know a lot of players would leave the game.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 26, 2011, 08:51:44 AM
I love East Continent.  I love Beluaterra.  I detested Dwilight and FEI.  Never really got into Atmara and I've never tried the Colonies.  If BT and EC were closed, I know a lot of players would leave the game.

Of course, the same is true of ALL the islands. If the islands didn't have fans, they would be empty. Simple logic really.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 09:09:23 AM
If you consider it a "problem" that 5 players can't rule 20 regions, you're playing the wrong game.

I don't consider it a problem; you do. When a realm wins wars, it takes regions. When it takes over regions, its noble base spread thin. Then it can't take regions anymore. It has won, and it can't expand anymore, yet TMP kicks in.

TMP would bother me a lot less if realms had reasonable expectations of expansion. Conversely, limitations on expansion would bother me a lot less if the game didn't insist that having won a war is somehow wrong unless you start another one within 10 days for no reason whatsoever.

And I know that I haven't yet tried the new estates and that they seem to work rather in the way I would like and will not kill realms with low noble count, and I know TMP is being worked upon, and I know these things take time and I understand. But when I see statements like these, I worry because I feel I don't even understand the direction in which you want to go.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 26, 2011, 09:51:51 AM
When a realm wins wars, it takes regions. When it takes over regions, its noble base spread thin. Then it can't take regions anymore. It has won, and it can't expand anymore.


But you CAN loot some regions ;)

Its one of the most important aspects of the game that you can't expand limitless, or else you'd turn bm into a game you could win (rule the entire continent with your friends and kick all other characters/players out.

also don't be afraid to have a decent war declaration for change.
Which states for example that you intent only to fight there armies and deplete there resources, not take there lands, no allies can join, etc and state what the goal of the war is.

The game more then allows constant war and fun even if you can't expand anymore.
There is no game mechanics that hold you back, (except bugs and tmp perhaps) so no excuse.
Besides looting is much more fun than maintaining regions... :P
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 26, 2011, 11:00:10 AM
The game has became a bit too complicated for people looking for a light text based game?

Which is one of the reasons why the new estate system is a ton simpler than the old one. The new tax system is a lot simpler. The new hierarchy is a lot simpler.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 26, 2011, 11:02:27 AM
I don't consider it a problem; you do. When a realm wins wars, it takes regions. When it takes over regions, its noble base spread thin. Then it can't take regions anymore. It has won, and it can't expand anymore, yet TMP kicks in.

It has bugged me for a long time that people think expansion is the only reason for war. Several realms I ruled had plenty of war and very little expansion. We fought for loot, we fought because we liked fighting, and sometimes we fought simply to kick someone's ass and teach them who's boss.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 11:45:00 AM
We fought for loot, we fought because we liked fighting, and sometimes we fought simply to kick someone's ass and teach them who's boss.

Well, this has nothing to do with the estates, but to answer your comment:

Yes, there are plenty of reasons to fight, and I agree with all of them. If you want to have  SMA atmosphere, however, you need to at least envision the possibility of winning. As you say, winning does not only mean expanding; however unless you RP your realm as a bunch of barbarians (which is fine, but not everyone should do it), then fighting for the sake of fighting does not work either.

If I take the example of Morek, we've fought for expansion, we've fought for defense, we've fought to impose our views on other realms, we've fought to shape continental policies, and we've fought just to show who's the boss. And it worked. We don't need to fight to show who's the boss when our neighbors do everything we want them to do, don't we? Should we remove the ruler of a neighboring realm whom we like to have it replaced by one we don't like, only to start a war and put the old ruler back in place? No, of course, this goal is already achieved.

There are many reasons to fight wars, but expansion is the only one that is situation-independent. All the other reasons can exist, and do exist, and we act on them when they do, and we provoke them when they don't, but respecting SMA. But you shouldn't need to provoke a desire for expansion. It should be always there as a gnawing feeling in the back of your head: you are not strong enough, and if you were stronger you'd be better off. There should always be room to grow.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 26, 2011, 11:46:54 AM
It has bugged me for a long time that people think expansion is the only reason for war. Several realms I ruled had plenty of war and very little expansion. We fought for loot, we fought because we liked fighting, and sometimes we fought simply to kick someone's ass and teach them who's boss.

But expansion is still a very legitimate reason for war and TMP punishes it.

Nice forum theme btw.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 26, 2011, 12:06:22 PM
why does tmp punish expansion?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 26, 2011, 12:14:30 PM
There are many reasons to fight wars, but expansion is the only one that is situation-independent.

I disagree. Expansion is situation-dependent, too - the situation is a need or desire to expand. Historically, very few realms have expanded just because they could. There was always some kind of pressure - overpopulation, politics, need to secure access to resources, etc.

We've tried adding resources before. Maybe we should have another go at that. Without the whole trading thing. That's another aspect of the game I'm no longer sure about. Maybe adding trade was an overcomplication that doesn't really add to the game?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 12:37:34 PM
I disagree. Expansion is situation-dependent, too - the situation is a need or desire to expand. Historically, very few realms have expanded just because they could. There was always some kind of pressure - overpopulation, politics, need to secure access to resources, etc.

I was thinking more in terms of gameplay. Historically, many realms would have peace for long stretches of time until such pressure occurred; that's also the kind of thing that makes for poor gameplay.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 26, 2011, 01:13:27 PM
We've tried adding resources before. Maybe we should have another go at that. Without the whole trading thing. That's another aspect of the game I'm no longer sure about. Maybe adding trade was an overcomplication that doesn't really add to the game?

This is an interesting thought. While trade has no doubt has definitely added a layer to politics and gameplay and I think it's possible it might be excluding players who don't wish to go to that level of complication. Then the players that do want to go into all the nitty gritty are largely benefitted.

Perhaps we need to level the playing field?  ???
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 26, 2011, 01:54:38 PM
I was thinking more in terms of gameplay. Historically, many realms would have peace for long stretches of time until such pressure occurred; that's also the kind of thing that makes for poor gameplay.

We can play with timelines more easily than in reality. We can make sure pressures appear in quicker succession than decades and centuries.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 02:10:35 PM
We can play with timelines more easily than in reality. We can make sure pressures appear in quicker succession than decades and centuries.

You can stretch it down, but there is a limit of human nature to consider.

Take the example of human ressources. You could make it so that you need iron to build swords. Realms would need to secure iron mines. A realm that doesn't have iron mines will start wars to get them, and will want to deny them to their neighbors. But it must be possible for a realm to conquer an iron mine and deny it to its enemies - if it's impossible, why go to war? But if it's possible, it will happen. And once it happens, there is no more pressure.

In the real world, there is always pressure because needs are shifting. At some point it's iron, then it's coal. This could be simulated in BM - to keep it simple, make ressource exhaustible and have new mines discovered once in a while. But how fast do you want this to happen?

If you have a problem with a realm being at peace for not even a month, then that's the timescale you want to have, but I argue this defeats the purpose. In the real world, realms go to war for ressources because they think the long term benefits of gaining this ressource outweighs the cost of the war. You can make it go faster, but you can't go against this cost calculation.

If a realm must break the alliance that has protected it for ages to gain a ressource that they will only enjoy for 4 RL weeks, they won't do it. If they can keep the ressource for 3 RL years, they will do it, but you will end up with larger realms so that everyone has access to ressources.

Unless you make it so that the ressources available scale with the number of realms, such that there is always some missing? That would seem artificial, but it may work.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 26, 2011, 02:38:43 PM
We've tried adding resources before. Maybe we should have another go at that. Without the whole trading thing. That's another aspect of the game I'm no longer sure about. Maybe adding trade was an overcomplication that doesn't really add to the game?
You mean having regions generate resources, and the realms only being able to use those resources if they own the region? That would surely drive realms toward taking strategic regions due to the resources they provide.

I guess the question is how much would this add to the game in attracting/keeping players vs. how many players would we lose due to dropping trading? I have tried the trader game myself, and decided it really wasn't for me.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 26, 2011, 02:46:53 PM
Everyone talks of wanting constant war... I dare say that occupationally  a few realms just want to have a bit of peace so that they can rebuild everything before going at it again...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 26, 2011, 02:53:34 PM
Everyone talks of wanting constant war... I dare say that occupationally  a few realms just want to have a bit of peace so that they can rebuild everything before going at it again...

To this end TMP should be much less present in general.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 26, 2011, 02:54:37 PM
To this end TMP should be much less present in general.

As I have said before, the versions of TMP currently under discussion amongst the devs resemble what you think of as TMP very, very little.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 26, 2011, 02:57:00 PM
As I have said before, the versions of TMP currently under discussion amongst the devs resemble what you think of as TMP very, very little.

Whoops. Sorry for being impatient. It must be annoying, I often forget things are being worked on.   :-[
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 26, 2011, 03:44:53 PM
You mean having regions generate resources, and the realms only being able to use those resources if they own the region? That would surely drive realms toward taking strategic regions due to the resources they provide.

While it sounds fun and realistic, I doubt it would be. It would be yet another layer of complexity on the game that could go wrong since balancing such a system would be a nightmare.

Seriously, the game used to be dead simple as far as getting started and keeping things running went. It was fun and care free. Then we got the push towards duchies, oaths, the new tax system, various realism addition that, while realistic, didn't really make the game much more fun.

You've pushed responsibilities on people who generally don't seem to want to deal with them(food being a major one with regard to lords).

You've pushed the responsibility of getting an income on the new players instead of it being automatic like it used to be. The new estate system won't fix that issue as far as I can see though it might mitigate it..maybe.

The push for duchies to be prominent seems to be pretty much a failure to me. They're too small units and just about anyone will choose their realm over the duchy because it is the realm that provides all the fun and atmosphere in 99% of the cases. Start pushing for the realm as a team again since that actually has a chance of working.

There are lots of these things that eat away at players fun. Look back to how the game worked in 2004-2005 or so and learn from that. I suppose what I'm trying to say is..instead of further making the game complex, simplify instead, see how the players actually play the game and try to support that instead of trying to force them play a certain way.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 03:50:13 PM
I see the new system will be going live today. Will Lord characters need to be in their own realms to change estates? I had expected it would take a few more weeks, I'm far.....
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 26, 2011, 04:22:09 PM
While it sounds fun and realistic, I doubt it would be. It would be yet another layer of complexity on the game that could go wrong since balancing such a system would be a nightmare.
Yeah, it would be hard. I'm not going to disagree on that. It would take some work to set up.

Quote
You've pushed responsibilities on people who generally don't seem to want to deal with them(food being a major one with regard to lords).
I agree with this. I'm a big proponent of lords being able to turn food responsibilities back over to the banker, if they want to do so.

Quote
You've pushed the responsibility of getting an income on the new players instead of it being automatic like it used to be. The new estate system won't fix that issue as far as I can see though it might mitigate it..maybe.
I think it will definitely help. Getting an estate and an income is much, much simpler under the new system.

Quote
The push for duchies to be prominent seems to be pretty much a failure to me. They're too small units and just about anyone will choose their realm over the duchy because it is the realm that provides all the fun and atmosphere in 99% of the cases. Start pushing for the realm as a team again since that actually has a chance of working.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I've always been a supporter of realm-as-team. This concept is supported by several game mechanics, including diplomacy and the messaging system itself. Trying to force the game down tot he duchy-as-team level is fighting a losing fight. That doesn't mean that I don't like some of the newer duchy-centric features. However, trying to force the duchy to be the team just doesn't fit.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 04:30:01 PM
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I've always been a supporter of realm-as-team. This concept is supported by several game mechanics, including diplomacy and the messaging system itself. Trying to force the game down tot he duchy-as-team level is fighting a losing fight. That doesn't mean that I don't like some of the newer duchy-centric features. However, trying to force the duchy to be the team just doesn't fit.

This is actually my favorite part of the new system. You want a realm-centric realm? Make your ruler the only Duke around. You want independent smaller teams? Name many Dukes. Your group wants to integrate another realm but keep some kind of autonomy? Have your leader named Duke and keep a separate structure.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 26, 2011, 04:57:03 PM
You mean having regions generate resources, and the realms only being able to use those resources if they own the region? That would surely drive realms toward taking strategic regions due to the resources they provide.

I guess the question is how much would this add to the game in attracting/keeping players vs. how many players would we lose due to dropping trading? I have tried the trader game myself, and decided it really wasn't for me.

The trader game is only interesting when demand exceeds supply. If nobody needs to buy food, there's no point. My trader in D'Hara is VERY interesting to play, he's visited almost every single realm on Dwilight.

The concern, of course, is that if nobody else cares, then they could have resource shortages, especially for wood/metal.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 26, 2011, 05:29:12 PM
well.. it depends, doesn't it. food can be done in a way that there's simply no such thing as starvation. ie.. the food you are trading are luxury items. just like the wood/rock/ore don't have to be needed at all. but having them speed things up or lower costs.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 26, 2011, 06:15:27 PM
The concern, of course, is that if nobody else cares, then they could have resource shortages, especially for wood/metal.
And will those shortages make the game more fun for the majority of players, or less fun? That's really the key to adding more resources, and the possibility of shortages. IMO if it doesn't pass the Fun Test, it's probably not worth adding.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 26, 2011, 06:35:59 PM
um... in the estate screen, do the estimate tax numbers include things like maintenance?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 26, 2011, 07:45:18 PM
Will Lord characters need to be in their own realms to change estates? I had expected it would take a few more weeks, I'm far.....

Apparently, they don't. It's all good.

Thanks!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 26, 2011, 08:05:35 PM
So the buttons to manage estates and set taxes have moved from 'Command' to 'Politics'. Should we ignore the 'Manage Estate...' in 'Command'?

By the way, 'Change Allegiance...' is broken.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 26, 2011, 08:38:29 PM
So the buttons to manage estates and set taxes have moved from 'Command' to 'Politics'. Should we ignore the 'Manage Estate...' in 'Command'?

By the way, 'Change Allegiance...' is broken.

where is this, what continent?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 26, 2011, 08:39:31 PM
New estates are only active on Testing islands: BT and Dwilight. All the others should remain the same.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 26, 2011, 08:46:01 PM
but the point is.. the old estates link is still active in command in testing. at least for the lord.

strongly suggest not to touch anything in that particular link... XD
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: MaleMaldives on September 26, 2011, 09:05:14 PM
Is there a difference between having wild lands, and a vacant estate that covers it, besides a nobles being able to take the estate? Pretty much will having a vacant estate cause harm compared to it being wild lands?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 26, 2011, 09:10:28 PM
Is there a difference between having wild lands, and a vacant estate that covers it, besides a nobles being able to take the estate? Pretty much will having a vacant estate cause harm compared to it being wild lands?

At this time, it's the same thing, except what you mentioned.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 26, 2011, 09:34:46 PM
'Religion' button is also broken.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 26, 2011, 09:36:22 PM
'Religion' button is also broken.

Please do not just say "X is broken."

In order to fix what's broken, we need specific information.  Please tell us what you tried to do, and what actually happened.

95% of the time "X is broken" is both worthless and frustrating.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 26, 2011, 09:55:20 PM
Please do not just say "X is broken."

In order to fix what's broken, we need specific information.  Please tell us what you tried to do, and what actually happened.

95% of the time "X is broken" is both worthless and frustrating.

Sorry, thought you would be able to see it and reproduce it yourselves.

I click 'Religion' and it opens a page exactly like the 'Actions' one (saying Actions) but with no options at all.

Here's the page source:
Code: [Select]
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Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bedwyr on September 26, 2011, 10:00:36 PM
Regarding religion:

When I click on religion (Koli Bedwyr, Dwilight, Dantooine) all I get on the page is this text.

"There are ca. 1960 believers in your faith The Manifest Path in this region. That's about 99% of the population."
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Lorgan on September 26, 2011, 10:20:13 PM
What will one be able to do with his estate once you get around to coding them?

Also, I'm not really a fan of those hard limits. Like, is there some rebellious peasant union telling me more than 25% tax is just too cruel to take from poor peasants? Or some cocky administrator who forces me to tax my lords 5%? And why can't my knights just rebel against me if I want to tax them more than 50%? Or which arrogant city planner dares tell his noble lord that his estate can't be larger than 30%?
I understand that there's the need to be some limitations, but I'd very much prefer it if it was up to the players to decide what it was in stead of just having the game tell us "You can go this far, but no further!". I thought that was why good and bad marks were removed, and even there characters had some say in it.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 26, 2011, 10:37:21 PM
Currently knights cannot see how much the lord's share is, nor lords can see the duke's share. I suppose dukes cannot see the realm share either. Is that intentional, or as I think more likely something that will change?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 26, 2011, 10:54:33 PM
Also, I'm not really a fan of those hard limits. Like, is there some rebellious peasant union telling me more than 25% tax is just too cruel to take from poor peasants? Or some cocky administrator who forces me to tax my lords 5%? And why can't my knights just rebel against me if I want to tax them more than 50%? Or which arrogant city planner dares tell his noble lord that his estate can't be larger than 30%?

It could be done so that you can raise your taxes up to 100%, and incur in a high chance of get kicked out of the region in the process. The minimum and maximum lord/duchy/realm share I don't really understand, though I must admit to like them, personally. Regarding the size of the estate, simply making an exponential function that turns the profit of a estate higher than the current max percent equal or lower than leaving it wild would solve the issue. The question is if it is worth coding it, of course.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 26, 2011, 11:12:28 PM
Regarding religion:

When I click on religion (Koli Bedwyr, Dwilight, Dantooine) all I get on the page is this text.

"There are ca. 1960 believers in your faith The Manifest Path in this region. That's about 99% of the population."

is that a dwi thing? on bt, my p/d sees normal priest options under religion... (preach, etc) haven't actually try using them as that's not in my plan. mind you.. the priest is within own realm, though that shouldn't make any difference.

unless of course.. they fixed whatever it was already?
----
now i'm getting it in bt.. how odd XD
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: LilWolf on September 26, 2011, 11:19:14 PM
Currently knights cannot see how much the lord's share is, nor lords can see the duke's share. I suppose dukes cannot see the realm share either. Is that intentional, or as I think more likely something that will change?

Politics -> Your estate. It tells at least a knight how much the lord takes. I'd expect it works for lords as well.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 26, 2011, 11:35:40 PM
nope.. lord's doesn't say how much the duke takes. or at least i can't see it.

even for the knight, it's in numbers not %.. but no big deal, except no idea if those numbers are with or without maintenance... and it also seems buggy (reported on bugtracker)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 26, 2011, 11:55:22 PM
Also, I'm not really a fan of those hard limits.

Neither am I, which is why they are far beyond anything that one could call "reasonable", even if both drunk and stoned. The hard limits are there to make sure nobody does insane crap that 20 people then go complaining about in the forum. Really, if you hit them, you've gone off the deep end.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 27, 2011, 05:35:51 AM
So, one of my characters is on Dwilight, and is the Banker of a realm. As far as I can tell from the advent of the New Estate System, I am officially out of a job. I don't actually do anything anymore. I don't have access to any actual ability to change anything related to taxes, as usually suits what a banker is supposed to do. This is on top of the fact, that we already have reduced duties for the banker because their involvement in the food process right now is minimal right now anyway. A banker's access to food data isn't anymore than a Duke already has, and since banker's can't actually move food around any more I'm essentially a scapegoat which people can blame when things go bad, but I can't actually do anything at all.

What is the point of even having a banker any more right now? Unless, we create like a realm bank system where all of the "ruler's share" goes into a bank vault that a banker can distribute and use in place of the ruler or something, there is no point in having a banker. Or if lords are given the option to let the banker have control once again of their food stores directly, I don't see why we have this council position.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Norrel on September 27, 2011, 05:59:39 AM
So, one of my characters is on Dwilight, and is the Banker of a realm. As far as I can tell from the advent of the New Estate System, I am officially out of a job. I don't actually do anything anymore. I don't have access to any actual ability to change anything related to taxes, as usually suits what a banker is supposed to do. This is on top of the fact, that we already have reduced duties for the banker because their involvement in the food process right now is minimal right now anyway. A banker's access to food data isn't anymore than a Duke already has, and since banker's can't actually move food around any more I'm essentially a scapegoat which people can blame when things go bad, but I can't actually do anything at all.

What is the point of even having a banker any more right now? Unless, we create like a realm bank system where all of the "ruler's share" goes into a bank vault that a banker can distribute and use in place of the ruler or something, there is no point in having a banker. Or if lords are given the option to let the banker have control once again of their food stores directly, I don't see why we have this council position.

I believe it was said at some point earlier that finding a new niche for the banker would basically be the top priority after the update.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 27, 2011, 06:17:58 AM
A few things seem to have been bugged. For example, police work no longer uses up your hours and has no impacts. You also don't see the information bar at the bottom after performing it. (appears to have been fixed)

By the way, has anyone answered the question about the other council positions yet? I remember the question having been asked, but I don't remember an answer. Where do generals, bankers, and judges get their extra income from, if any?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 27, 2011, 07:07:47 AM
A few things seem to have been bugged. For example, police work no longer uses up your hours and has no impacts. You also don't see the information bar at the bottom after performing it. (appears to have been fixed)

By the way, has anyone answered the question about the other council positions yet? I remember the question having been asked, but I don't remember an answer. Where do generals, bankers, and judges get their extra income from, if any?

We got no extra income for council positions in PeL so I'm guessing they don't any more.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 27, 2011, 07:12:55 AM
Right now they don't Chénier.

By the way, some issues:
* Even being within the duchy, we received bonds instead of cash. Is that intentional?
* I noticed the following message:
Quote
Herle: Lack of knights reduces region control. The people here do not like being ruled by us. Production is being restored through regular repairs. Production rises 10%. Morale falls 2%.
Does this mean knights still influence control, or is it just a reminiscent message from the old code but of no effect? I am also curious as how the Production, Morale, Loyalty and Control changes will be handled (totally random/only based in king's presence, tax rate and population and lord's faith?).
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 27, 2011, 07:35:41 AM
The old estate options do appear to still be there.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 27, 2011, 08:20:07 AM
So, one of my characters is on Dwilight, and is the Banker of a realm. As far as I can tell from the advent of the New Estate System, I am officially out of a job.

Sorry that I didn't say this everywhere, but I did send an incomplete update live. If you check the Wiki page, it even lists a couple things that are not yet done. So please hold any complaints until it actually is done, ok?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 27, 2011, 08:23:03 AM
The old estate options do appear to still be there.

where? please don't post generic sentences like that, it really doesn't help me, and it's rather frustrating to have to ask for details all th time.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 27, 2011, 08:47:44 AM
where? please don't post generic sentences like that, it really doesn't help me, and it's rather frustrating to have to ask for details all th time.

Things are changing on me as I type, I swear.

Maybe it disappeared with the full TC? Police work didn't work last turn, and now it's working fine. I could swear I still saw estate tools last turn, and I don't see them anymore.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on September 27, 2011, 08:52:23 AM
Who has powers to appoint new Lords?

 We TO'd a region this turn - but as the Ruler I don't see options to appoint the new Lord anywhere.

Is it now the Duke's ? 

In the Hierarchy page the region does not show up - not Imperial like it would have been (no more imperial regions right?), but it is also not part of the Duchy it was next too.  So can the Duke appoint still (Nosferatus says:  No).

Guess this is just brokens till :D  Oh well, if we can get that working in the next few turns that'd be awesome.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 27, 2011, 09:23:56 AM
Who has powers to appoint new Lords?

 We TO'd a region this turn - but as the Ruler I don't see options to appoint the new Lord anywhere.

Is it now the Duke's ? 

yes, but apparently the duchy-assignement is broken.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: D`Este on September 27, 2011, 11:43:40 AM
Today we received a report for a region that because of the lack of knights, region control was reduced. Personally I was under the impression that a region could be kept under control, just with lower tax income by only a lord. Is my impression wrong of the new system or is this event still something from the old system?

Quote
Maf: Lack of knights reduces region control.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 27, 2011, 12:00:58 PM
Alright.  It's been established that a region has to border a duchy to join it.  I understand that.  It's how things currently are.

My question is this:

If a duchy loses all its regions (the Duke wasn't a lord), how does it get regions without being named a lord?  As a region automatically goes to a duchy that borders it, how would a landless duke be granted a lordship?

Could a landless Duke go to a territory and the lord there pledge to him, switching duchies that way for those that lack regions?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Telrunya on September 27, 2011, 12:52:36 PM
I *assume* any Lord can change allegiances to any Duchy that borders him, but also to any landless Duchy that exists.

Today we received a report for a region that because of the lack of knights, region control was reduced. Personally I was under the impression that a region could be kept under control, just with lower tax income by only a lord. Is my impression wrong of the new system or is this event still something from the old system?

From the Wiki:

Quote
An estate is a part of a region, currently defined abstractly as a percentage part of the region (e.g. 20% of the region of Keplerville). Everyone can have at most one estate, and the size of estates is limited. There are minimum and maximum sizes that depend on the region type and size. The minimum sizes go from 5% to 20% while the maximum sizes go from 30% to 50%. So every region will need 2-4 knights (of which the lord can be one) to cover it entirely.

Covering it entirely referring to Taxes. The Lord can act as a Knight from what I understand of this text. Has the Lord of that region tried to set up an Estate and act as a Knight of his region like that?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 27, 2011, 01:45:14 PM
yes, but apparently the duchy-assignement is broken.

Has it been revealed how the game will decide to which duchy belongs regions that are TOed?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 02:18:13 PM
A banker's access to food data isn't anymore than a Duke already has
Correction: A banker can see a composite of all the information that is available to all the dukes put together. No offense meant here, but as the banker of Pian en Luries, you have the small city of Poryatown and the medium city of Askileon to feed. Not exactly a difficult task, especially when your realm has a 150-160% food supply. In such a case I can see how the banker's job would seem to be a bit... superfluous.

However, when your realm grows a bit bigger, you will appreciate the overall view that the banker has. Try feeding a realm of 5 or 6 duchies on a food supply of just over break-even, and you will see how vitally important that banker's overview is.

Quote
What is the point of even having a banker any more right now? Unless, we create like a realm bank system where all of the "ruler's share" goes into a bank vault that a banker can distribute and use in place of the ruler or something, there is no point in having a banker. Or if lords are given the option to let the banker have control once again of their food stores directly, I don't see why we have this council position.
Come on... please have some patience. This is a huge change, and Tom has only just now implemented the first parts of it. He has already stated that the banker's position is not going away. We will find a way to fit him into the hierarchy with some meaningful tasks.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 02:19:47 PM
If a duchy loses all its regions (the Duke wasn't a lord), how does it get regions without being named a lord?
It doesn't. The ruler can either keep his pet duke around as a court functionary, or dissolve the duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Draco Tanos on September 27, 2011, 02:31:44 PM
So, essentially, if some shiny new lord hits the wrong button when figuring things out for the first time, a Duke/Duchess is screwed over?

That seems...  Silly.

In the past (current system too?) the last city of a realm couldn't leave the realm.  Either Duchies need a similar system or they need ways to reacquire regions.

If I'm the Duke of Xerus (consisting of three regions) and all my regions are taken by enemy forces, why can I not regain them when the army rallies and regains them for the realm, WITHOUT my Duchy being dissolved first?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 27, 2011, 02:36:20 PM
well.. why on earth does he end up with 1 region and then loses it in the 1st place? a brand new duke is by definition a lord of 1 region. he must have done something to end up in a position of no region... or 1 region but not him as lord.

--
i'm not against a duke of no region gaining regions. but it's not as dire as it sounds.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 27, 2011, 02:47:48 PM
It doesn't. The ruler can either keep his pet duke around as a court functionary, or dissolve the duchy.

Huh... so if you have the title of Duke and you get named Lord, you lose the title of Duke? Does this also apply to RTO and region buying? It would seem in these cases you don't have to swear fealty to anyone but yourself.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 03:10:53 PM
Huh... so if you have the title of Duke and you get named Lord, you lose the title of Duke?
The only way for a duke to get named as a lord is if he assigns himself as a lord of a region in his own duchy. And no, he will not lose the duchy by naming himself as a a lord. That would be kind of silly.


Quote
Does this also apply to RTO and region buying? It would seem in these cases you don't have to swear fealty to anyone but yourself.
I don't know how those will work yet.  Most likely if a priest does an RTO then the region will become part of whatever duchy to which he belongs. Same with buying the region. This could be a way for a regionless duke to recover his duchy. Provided the ruler doesn't dissolve it first.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 27, 2011, 03:15:04 PM
The only way for a duke to get named as a lord is if he assigns himself as a lord of a region in his own duchy. And no, he will not lose the duchy by naming himself as a a lord. That would be kind of silly.

But if he gets named Lord by another Duke, then he loses the Duke title?

That would make sense, of course. The disappearance of Imperial Regions makes it impossible for a Ruler to "re-populate" a duchy that has gone region-less. If there are workarounds, that would be quite nice.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on September 27, 2011, 03:18:03 PM
The only way for a duke to get named as a lord is if he assigns himself as a lord of a region in his own duchy. And no, he will not lose the duchy by naming himself as a a lord. That would be kind of silly.
But if he gets named Lord by another Duke, then he loses the Duke title?

Please reread the post you are quoting.  Let me highlight the relevant portion:

The only way for a duke to get named as a lord is if he assigns himself as a lord of a region in his own duchy.

If he gets named Lord by another Duke, that's a bug that we need to fix.  No Duke has ever been able to assign someone as Lord who's not already in his Duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 03:20:25 PM
But if he gets named Lord by another Duke...
That is impossible.

Think about it. A duke can only appoint a noble as a region lord if that noble is one of his vassals. A duke cannot be the vassal of another duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 27, 2011, 06:20:47 PM
Who has powers to appoint new Lords?

 We TO'd a region this turn - but as the Ruler I don't see options to appoint the new Lord anywhere.

Is it now the Duke's ? 

In the Hierarchy page the region does not show up - not Imperial like it would have been (no more imperial regions right?), but it is also not part of the Duchy it was next too.  So can the Duke appoint still (Nosferatus says:  No).

Guess this is just brokens till :D  Oh well, if we can get that working in the next few turns that'd be awesome.

appointing lords is now working under 'govern region', but i can only pick one knight, Luan, who recently unpaused for a moment.
I can't think of why him specifically.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 06:23:28 PM
Is there anyone else available? i.e. anyone else in your duchy who is not already a lord, and who meets the H/P requirements, etc.?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 27, 2011, 06:29:44 PM
That is impossible.

Think about it. A duke can only appoint a noble as a region lord if that noble is one of his vassals. A duke cannot be the vassal of another duke.

So if you are a Duke without region and your ruler refuses to dissolve your Duchy, you cannot have an estate or a Lordship, ever? That's interesting. I had not caught that from the discussion.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: D`Este on September 27, 2011, 06:30:46 PM
A knight can't have an estate if he wants to become lord. So he needs to abandon his estate first and then he can be chosen.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 27, 2011, 06:35:12 PM
Correction: A banker can see a composite of all the information that is available to all the dukes put together. No offense meant here, but as the banker of Pian en Luries, you have the small city of Poryatown and the medium city of Askileon to feed. Not exactly a difficult task, especially when your realm has a 150-160% food supply. In such a case I can see how the banker's job would seem to be a bit... superfluous.

However, when your realm grows a bit bigger, you will appreciate the overall view that the banker has. Try feeding a realm of 5 or 6 duchies on a food supply of just over break-even, and you will see how vitally important that banker's overview is.

I understand, that, but what I mean is that if the banker's data is just combined data that dukes could get by simply sending messages to each other, then the use of a banker is simply to not make dukes have to talk to each other, but him to just send the exact same messages to them each anyway. The job is thus just a relating of data comparisons to each other, but when the data isn't that hard to relate it is simply a messaging job. I realize that these changes aren't fully implemented yet, but I know before at least banker's had a fit niche to take and I am just hoping we once again reach that situation.

As far as my being banker of Pian en Luries when we have a large surplus, I was also banker of Pian en Luries when we had a 90% food production rate and 3 cities and it was a lot more difficult of a job, but still manageable when the banker could move food around. Right now, I don't mind that we have a lot of excess food and thus can make my job easy, but it isn't even much of a job if it is only sending messages from one person to another based upon things they can already know by talking to each other instead of me.

Please understand, I'm not griping or complaining, just making sure that this just wasn't overlooked necessarily in any of the changes just on happenstance. I understand now that it wasn't overlooked and is just continuing to be implemented so will wait, but I look forward to seeing what new roles can be adapted here.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 06:36:49 PM
So if you are a Duke without region and your ruler refuses to dissolve your Duchy, you cannot have an estate or a Lordship, ever?
Nope. An estate assumes an oath of service to the lord of the region. You become that lord's vassal, and they become your liege lord. If you are above them in station, then how can you take an oath of service with that lord?

You can always step down from the duchy. Then you won't be a duke, and you can then take service with another duke. Then *he* can give you a new region.

The way it works now makes more sense. If you are above someone in station, or at their level, then you can't take service under them. It makes absolutely no sense at all for the ruler to have an estate in a region, owing allegiance to another lord. The ruler is that lord's ultimate liege. Why the heck would the ruler be swearing an oath as that lord's vassal, and paying them taxes, then taking his own ruler share from that lord's duke?

The old system was horrible in that regard, but it's the best that could be done. Now it should be much simpler, and clearer, once you you discard the way it used to work, and take a fresh look at the system.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 06:37:44 PM
A knight can't have an estate if he wants to become lord. So he needs to abandon his estate first and then he can be chosen.
Are you absolutely certain about this? I do not believe it to be true, or at least not intended. When I was testing this on the dev server a few weeks ago, that was not how it worked.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on September 27, 2011, 06:41:04 PM
Has it been revealed how the game will decide to which duchy belongs regions that are TOed?

Not yet.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 06:41:09 PM
I understand, that, but what I mean is that if the banker's data is just combined data that dukes could get by simply sending messages to each other, then the use of a banker is simply to not make dukes have to talk to each other, but him to just send the exact same messages to them each anyway. The job is thus just a relating of data comparisons to each other, but when the data isn't that hard to relate it is simply a messaging job. I realize that these changes aren't fully implemented yet, but I know before at least banker's had a fit niche to take and I am just hoping we once again reach that situation.
Have you ever tried to manage the food situation of 6 duchies, when you can only see the food situation of 1 of them? Or none? The banker's bird's eye view is critical in keeping things organized. Sure, you *could* do it by trying to exchange messages back and forth. But that would be ridiculously cumbersome and error-prone. Especially if one of those dukes is just not interested in dealing with it.

Quote
Please understand, I'm not griping or complaining, just making sure that this just wasn't overlooked necessarily in any of the changes just on happenstance. I understand now that it wasn't overlooked and is just continuing to be implemented so will wait, but I look forward to seeing what new roles can be adapted here.
Tom is still working on it. Eventually there will be something more for the banker to do. Just not right now. So, take a bit of a vacation. :)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on September 27, 2011, 06:53:08 PM
Alright.

Update now is that we *can* appoint a Lord.  But it's a player whose character was at the far end of the kingdom.   He is however the only noble with the "Lord" title, as he was a previous Lord of a different region.

I've asked my players to keep me updated on if things change :)  Thanks!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 27, 2011, 06:55:39 PM
The way it works now makes more sense. If you are above someone in station, or at their level, then you can't take service under them. It makes absolutely no sense at all for the ruler to have an estate in a region, owing allegiance to another lord. The ruler is that lord's ultimate liege. Why the heck would the ruler be swearing an oath as that lord's vassal, and paying them taxes, then taking his own ruler share from that lord's duke?

The old system was horrible in that regard, but it's the best that could be done. Now it should be much simpler, and clearer, once you you discard the way it used to work, and take a fresh look at the system.

I agree, it's much better!

Just one last point to be sure I cover everything. If a Duchy is without region, without nobles and without Duke, can the ruler still appoint a new Duke? Or does it remain an empty shell until dissolved?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 27, 2011, 06:57:19 PM
Have you ever tried to manage the food situation of 6 duchies, when you can only see the food situation of 1 of them? Or none? The banker's bird's eye view is critical in keeping things organized. Sure, you *could* do it by trying to exchange messages back and forth. But that would be ridiculously cumbersome and error-prone. Especially if one of those dukes is just not interested in dealing with it.

I think if one of the dukes isn't interested in dealing with it, and a lot of lords are also not interested in dealing with it because they view the food game as simply cumbersome and a responsibility not worth dealing with then you're screwed anyway. So, No I haven't been Banker of CE on Atamara for instance, but I think the entire situation is just more easily solved if lords were given the "option" to let the banker directly manage their food stores if they don't want to deal with it. Then, the banker can work with those lords that actually want to manage their food, and personally handle the food of those that simply don't want to waste their time that they don't have.

and sure a vacation sounds just fine, :)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 27, 2011, 06:59:27 PM
Question: How will the new estate system change the way that election of rulers that are currently Dukes work in Republics for instance?

ie. Right now if you are a Duke and you are elected as ruler in a republic, you automatically abdicate your lordship position of the city and become Ruler. Will this change under the new system, or would you still lose your position as Duke and lord?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 07:02:12 PM
Just one last point to be sure I cover everything. If a Duchy is without region, without nobles and without Duke, can the ruler still appoint a new Duke? Or does it remain an empty shell until dissolved?
I believe that as long as the duchy exists, whether it has regions or not, the ruler can still appoint a new duke when the position is vacant.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 27, 2011, 07:04:44 PM
I understand, that, but what I mean is that if the banker's data is just combined data that dukes could get by simply sending messages to each other, then the use of a banker is simply to not make dukes have to talk to each other, but him to just send the exact same messages to them each anyway. The job is thus just a relating of data comparisons to each other, but when the data isn't that hard to relate it is simply a messaging job. I realize that these changes aren't fully implemented yet, but I know before at least banker's had a fit niche to take and I am just hoping we once again reach that situation.

when's the last time you saw a duke talk to another duke about food. or for that matter a duke talking to a lord about food aside from "send me everything, for free"?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 27, 2011, 07:06:26 PM
I think if one of the dukes isn't interested in dealing with it, and a lot of lords are also not interested in dealing with it because they view the food game as simply cumbersome and a responsibility not worth dealing with then you're screwed anyway.
Yeah, pretty much. :P


Quote
I think the entire situation is just more easily solved if lords were given the "option" to let the banker directly manage their food stores if they don't want to deal with it. Then, the banker can work with those lords that actually want to manage their food, and personally handle the food of those that simply don't want to waste their time that they don't have.
I agree. I would love for there to be an *option* for lords to allow the bankers to control the warehouses in their regions.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Dante Silverfire on September 27, 2011, 07:07:36 PM
when's the last time you saw a duke talk to another duke about food. or for that matter a duke talking to a lord about food aside from "send me everything, for free"?

All the time in Coria....Seeing as my character is a duke and not only talks with the other duke about sending me food, but also about buying food from my lords...
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on September 27, 2011, 07:12:19 PM
when's the last time you saw a duke talk to another duke about food. or for that matter a duke talking to a lord about food aside from "send me everything, for free"?

Come to Madina :D   The Duke's have to negotiate with their Lords on Prices even, never mind convince them to sell to the Duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 27, 2011, 07:38:50 PM
when's the last time you saw a duke talk to another duke about food. or for that matter a duke talking to a lord about food aside from "send me everything, for free"?

(Don't you play Ivan, in D'Hara?) Every lord in D'Hara buys and/or sells food, and talks about it weekly, if not daily. We don't use ox carts, we use caravans, because they are safer. And we all want to be paid for our food.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 27, 2011, 08:18:01 PM
... is that the exception or the norm though?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Stue (DC) on September 27, 2011, 09:01:29 PM
it looks as if "check taxes" option vanished in new estate system, so we cannot see when taxes are coming.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shizzle on September 27, 2011, 10:11:56 PM
it looks as if "check taxes" option vanished in new estate system, so we cannot see when taxes are coming.

I noticed that. Presumably because the estimates have become worthless now, as they are listed elsewhere. Maybe the Govern Estates page could say when the next tax day is, though?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on September 27, 2011, 10:14:11 PM
... is that the exception or the norm though?

Seems to be the Norm in  Dwilight - probaby because food producing regions have MUCH lower gold production than on other maps, so its important for Lords to get that income.

But you are right, most other places it's "give me your food".   But you can't do that here, Madina has regions that make less than 150gp and need three knights. . .they need that food income and the Lords know it.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on September 27, 2011, 10:29:16 PM
Seems to be the Norm in  Dwilight - probaby because food producing regions have MUCH lower gold production than on other maps, so its important for Lords to get that income.

But you are right, most other places it's "give me your food".   But you can't do that here, Madina has regions that make less than 150gp and need three knights. . .they need that food income and the Lords know it.

Seasons definitely make a difference, too.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: D`Este on September 27, 2011, 10:55:53 PM
Or dukes rather share their wealth with those that require it. As regions with low gold value often have low food value as well. So even buying food won't solve it. Situation change now though, so curious how things will develop.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 28, 2011, 12:53:55 AM
So if you are a Duke without region and your ruler refuses to dissolve your Duchy, you cannot have an estate or a Lordship, ever? That's interesting. I had not caught that from the discussion.

nonsense. You can, of course step down.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 28, 2011, 03:01:59 AM
Seems to be the Norm in  Dwilight - probaby because food producing regions have MUCH lower gold production than on other maps, so its important for Lords to get that income.
I think that most of the time in Astrum, food is passed around for free. By default Libidizedd is always buying for 20/100, so anyone that sends me food by caravan gets paid for it. (Higher prices posted for foreign sellers, as needed.) But mostly, we just move it all around whenever it needs to go.

Personally, that's one of the things I really like about Astrum. We are mostly united as a realm-based team, rather than a bunch of people standing asking "What's in it for me?" Gold, food, etc. is all (usually) directed where it needs to go, and not based on how much profit can be gotten out of it. Part of that is, of course, the unifying effect of the common faith, and the shared goals it provides. But even beyond that, most of us just aren't into the whole "me me me me me!" thing.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 28, 2011, 04:43:05 AM
That is precisely why Astrum is doing great.  ;)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Kain on September 28, 2011, 04:54:03 AM
That is precisely why Astrum is doing great.  ;)

Yes and Tom doesn't want great. He wants intrigue, conspiracy, murder. Some more memememe ;)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 28, 2011, 05:06:55 AM
No wonder he named this game battlemaster.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 28, 2011, 05:15:35 AM
I think that most of the time in Astrum, food is passed around for free. By default Libidizedd is always buying for 20/100, so anyone that sends me food by caravan gets paid for it. (Higher prices posted for foreign sellers, as needed.) But mostly, we just move it all around whenever it needs to go.

Personally, that's one of the things I really like about Astrum. We are mostly united as a realm-based team, rather than a bunch of people standing asking "What's in it for me?" Gold, food, etc. is all (usually) directed where it needs to go, and not based on how much profit can be gotten out of it. Part of that is, of course, the unifying effect of the common faith, and the shared goals it provides. But even beyond that, most of us just aren't into the whole "me me me me me!" thing.

In D'Hara, I promoted the purchase of food at good prices since quite a while, maybe even since before I was duke of Paisly, back when I was Marquis of Paisland, but I'm not too sure.

Rergardless, it was never about conflict in our case. When I became duke, I voluntarily hiked my buy prices all by myself, both to be more fair to the rural lords whom I needed, and especially to attract foreign traders and exporters. Since one can't offer different prices for different people, these two went hand in hand.

It probably makes me the poorest duke in the world, but it has kept my city fed in almost all of the winters and built good relations with my vassals. After all, a starving city would be no richer anyways. Wouldn't want to end up like Port Nebel!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 28, 2011, 07:23:14 AM
Personally, that's one of the things I really like about Astrum. We are mostly united as a realm-based team, rather than a bunch of people standing asking "What's in it for me?" Gold, food, etc. is all (usually) directed where it needs to go, and not based on how much profit can be gotten out of it. Part of that is, of course, the unifying effect of the common faith, and the shared goals it provides. But even beyond that, most of us just aren't into the whole "me me me me me!" thing.

1 region produce lots of gold and little food, the other region produce lots of food and little gold. the fair thing to do with be to pay decent gold for food. that's not really about profit. but what happens quite frequently is that the cities don't want to pay for food and then call the food producers greedy when asked to pay a decent sum, thus gets to keep all those shiny gold and get to play generous man going around shouting "i've got gold to hand out, who needs it". whereas if they just pay a decent price, no one will need to ask for gold in the 1st place really.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Kain on September 28, 2011, 08:04:46 AM
1 region produce lots of gold and little food, the other region produce lots of food and little gold. the fair thing to do with be to pay decent gold for food. that's not really about profit. but what happens quite frequently is that the cities don't want to pay for food and then call the food producers greedy when asked to pay a decent sum, thus gets to keep all those shiny gold and get to play generous man going around shouting "i've got gold to hand out, who needs it". whereas if they just pay a decent price, no one will need to ask for gold in the 1st place really.

Yeah that is a good point, indeed. I wonder why food should be shipped around freely while gold is not.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 28, 2011, 12:47:03 PM
Yeah that is a good point, indeed. I wonder why food should be shipped around freely while gold is not.
Gold isn't handed out freely? Excuse me?

I don't know what realm you're playing in, but during war time my character hands out *thousands* of gold a week to anyone who asks. So, yeah, the rural regions hand out food to any region that needs it, without asking for anything back. And when gold is needed, we hand out it to who ever needs it, and don't ask for anything back.

And, honestly, I have never been in a realm where gold wasn't freely available to anyone who needed it, unless the realm was so in such bad shape that no one had gold to give.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: vonGenf on September 28, 2011, 12:50:41 PM
And, honestly, I have never been in a realm where gold wasn't freely available to anyone who needed it, unless the realm was so in such bad shape that no one had gold to give.

Which doesn't mean that these realms don't exist. You may not like playing in them, but that's fine.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 28, 2011, 01:29:34 PM
Wish you would do away with bonds alltogether :(
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 28, 2011, 01:45:29 PM
Just wanted to say that as a duke, I can't see how much my ruler is taxing me... it's quite anxiety-provoking  :P  :P
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 28, 2011, 03:09:41 PM
Just wanted to say that as a duke, I can't see how much my ruler is taxing me... it's quite anxiety-provoking  :P :P

working on it, should be there soon.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shizzle on September 28, 2011, 03:36:19 PM
Just wanted to say that as a duke, I can't see how much my ruler is taxing me... it's quite anxiety-provoking  :P  :P

I dont mind :D
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 28, 2011, 06:53:44 PM
a lord can now see how much his duke is taxing him now. which is good, until you see the number XD
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Kain on September 28, 2011, 08:15:16 PM
Gold isn't handed out freely? Excuse me?

I don't know what realm you're playing in, but during war time my character hands out *thousands* of gold a week to anyone who asks. So, yeah, the rural regions hand out food to any region that needs it, without asking for anything back. And when gold is needed, we hand out it to who ever needs it, and don't ask for anything back.

And, honestly, I have never been in a realm where gold wasn't freely available to anyone who needed it, unless the realm was so in such bad shape that no one had gold to give.

Hmm, I think my comment was hasty. Some people do give out gold, and a lot. But it depends on the realm, and as you say, sometimes there is little to spare.

I was somehow thinking more about lords (except for dukes). Marquises i.e usually does not hand out any gold in my experience, despite them somtimes making as much as dukes of small cities. And far from every duke opens his pockets when knights/rural-lords are in need.

But then again it is the cities that need the food, so you do have a good point if you overlook that not all dukes give, but still get the food for their city for free.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 28, 2011, 08:32:30 PM
Many dukes do, indeed, get food shipped to them without directly paying for it. And if this transaction were to occur in a vacuum, totally devoid of context, then sure, you could say that the lord is not getting paid for it.

But then to be fair, you'd also have to look at everything that happens in the same vacuum. So when the Duke of Keplerville sends the Holy Keplerstan Army to Kepler's Fields to wipe out that monster outbreak, you can also say the the Duke is not getting anything in return. So, to be fair, maybe the Duke should hand an invoice to the Viscount of Kepler's Fields for Services Rendered.

The whole system works up and down on terms of mutual support. To say that the rural lord is getting nothing in return for sending food to the city at no cost is as much of a fallacy as saying that the duke is not paying for that food that gets sent to him at no cost. He pays for that food every time he hands gold out to a knight to recruit troops, or adds gold to the war chest, or enlarges a recruitment center, or builds a new smithy, etc., etc. All the expenses that it takes to keep the city and the realm running are to the benefit of the entire realm, not just the duke.

If the duke doesn't support the realm or his lords in whatever way they need it, then he's a crappy duke. And those lords that serve him should find themselves a new duke.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 28, 2011, 08:40:32 PM
that's the point. the rich city lord gets to play mr. generous and hand out gold to individuals, whereas those individuals should get the gold via taxes (and trade) in the 1st place. he shouldn't have to go and ask for gold.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 28, 2011, 08:50:34 PM
Of course he gets to play Mr Generous. He's the duke. Want to be the one that passes out all the stuff? Then go get yourself a duchy. Then you get to be Mr. Generous.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 28, 2011, 10:04:44 PM
the rich city lord is not being mr. generous. he gets to act as mr. generous because he doesn't pay his bills and other idiots, the exact same ones who complain about lack of gold, back him up with "for the good of the realm" stuff.

on the other hand, it's no longer a duke thing and when things have settled down. i would imagine dukes on dwi would eventually be mostly ruling townslands.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Nosferatus on September 28, 2011, 10:21:07 PM
I geuss the system only allows me to apoint two people now.
I now manged to appoint the right person, but still i have no clue why i can only pick those two and why sudenly the right candidate is among them...

They both don't have estates in the region and none of them is present in the region.

There many other knights and lords who have the right requirements to become lord, yet they don't apear on the list.

The region is also not really part of the duchy and so are some knights who recently joined the realm(i've asked them to try and pick an estate again, maybe they never did or Tom changed something).
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 29, 2011, 12:04:40 AM
There many other knights and lords who have the right requirements to become lord, yet they don't apear on the list.

Then they don't have the right requirements.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bedwyr on September 29, 2011, 12:11:42 AM
Are vacant estates supposed to have flat 50% efficiency, or do they just have a 50% modifier for being vacant on top of their size?  I'm seeing some vacant estates that appear to have 31-32% efficiency.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on September 29, 2011, 12:57:06 AM
the rich city lord is not being mr. generous. he gets to act as mr. generous because he doesn't pay his bills and other idiots, the exact same ones who complain about lack of gold, back him up with "for the good of the realm" stuff.

on the other hand, it's no longer a duke thing and when things have settled down. i would imagine dukes on dwi would eventually be mostly ruling townslands.

Well, with the new system, you'll see even more "mr. generous" types, because the game is forcing us to tax our vassals. We can compensate by giving ourselves smaller estates as lords, and dukes can compensate by giving more for food, but those low-food badlands and mountains are going to be giving a greater chunk of their income to the duke and getting very little of it back.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 29, 2011, 03:06:59 AM
the rich city lord is not being mr. generous. he gets to act as mr. generous because he doesn't pay his bills and other idiots, the exact same ones who complain about lack of gold, back him up with "for the good of the realm" stuff.
And you know how he is going to pay his bills? By taxing the lord. And then maybe he should start handing out invoices for protecting your region from monsters. And refuse to hand out gold when your unit gets wiped out while you try to protect it yourself. (Isn't that why you get paid for your food? So you can handle all your expenses yourself?) And when you don't sell him your food at whatever rate he wants, he'll just raise your taxes so he can buy it from elsewhere.

Quote
on the other hand, it's no longer a duke thing and when things have settled down. i would imagine dukes on dwi would eventually be mostly ruling townslands.
I can't imagine why you would think that would be the case.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Zakilevo on September 29, 2011, 06:52:41 AM
Hm.. The new system is great :) I didn't lose much gold. Well to be fair I had nothing to lose to begin with :).

But from reading the new report, knights seem to receive a lot of gold. Lords can adjust that in time I am sure.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: fodder on September 29, 2011, 08:08:49 AM
reason? food. towns mostly don't need to buy food. cities do. a city duke can tax a lot, but he won't get food. whereas a townsland duke won't have to think about food. and he get to tax city lords for extras.

a duke sets same tax rate for all his regions. if he's not paying for food and then attempts to up the rate, how many lords will stay?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: De-Legro on September 29, 2011, 08:22:32 AM
reason? food. towns mostly don't need to buy food. cities do. a city duke can tax a lot, but he won't get food. whereas a townsland duke won't have to think about food. and he get to tax city lords for extras.

a duke sets same tax rate for all his regions. if he's not paying for food and then attempts to up the rate, how many lords will stay?

Probably all of them. Lets face it if Lords don't kick up a stink about things like being expected to provide free food, they are unlikely to do much about taxes either.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 29, 2011, 08:24:49 AM
Hm.. The new system is great :) I didn't lose much gold. Well to be fair I had nothing to lose to begin with :) .

But from reading the new report, knights seem to receive a lot of gold. Lords can adjust that in time I am sure.

It's a bottom-up system now. If you want to receive gold further up the chain, you'll have to tax downwards. And if those below you don't tax their subjects much, you must raise their tax rates until they wise up.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 29, 2011, 08:54:39 AM
Probably all of them. Lets face it if Lords don't kick up a stink about things like being expected to provide free food, they are unlikely to do much about taxes either.

Hmmm... I think we shouldn't underestimate the capacity for lords to get pissed off about their gold. From my experience, lords feel a lot different about gold than they do about food.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on September 29, 2011, 09:44:49 AM
Hmmm... I think we shouldn't underestimate the capacity for lords to get pissed off about their gold. From my experience, lords feel a lot different about gold than they do about food.

Agreed. Food is food. But Gold can buy food if you are desperate or in a non-self-food-producing situation like D'hara.

Gold makes the world go around...and kept fed!
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Shenron on September 29, 2011, 09:46:01 AM
Question: How will the new estate system change the way that election of rulers that are currently Dukes work in Republics for instance?

ie. Right now if you are a Duke and you are elected as ruler in a republic, you automatically abdicate your lordship position of the city and become Ruler. Will this change under the new system, or would you still lose your position as Duke and lord?

I'd like this answered too. How does the new estate system effect the rulers ability to appoint himself duke as well?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on September 29, 2011, 10:08:47 AM
I'd like this answered too. How does the new estate system effect the rulers ability to appoint himself duke as well?

the system does not yet make a difference between government systems.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on September 29, 2011, 02:56:26 PM
reason? food. towns mostly don't need to buy food. cities do. a city duke can tax a lot, but he won't get food. whereas a townsland duke won't have to think about food. and he get to tax city lords for extras.
That's an interesting idea. We'll have to see how it plays out. I personally don't see it happening, but you never know.

Quote
a duke sets same tax rate for all his regions. if he's not paying for food and then attempts to up the rate, how many lords will stay?
That depends. I think very few lords care about the food their regions grow. Most would rather not have to be bothered with it at all.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on October 01, 2011, 10:38:07 PM
Another weird thing here. . . I thought we got rid of Imperial regions?

Imperial Regions
Panamana   195    Mountains    -    Core    Stoic    Loyal    Crawling    Details

We TO'd it a day or so ago - it appears to be an imperial region under the "Realm Regions" section, but does not appear in the Realm Hierarchy.

I do not know if Nosferatus (Abbot) can appoint to it though - I can't.   I'll check with our other Duke.

This may have happened because it's physically closer to Tower Fatmilak Duchy, but the region adjacent to it is from Madina Duchy.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on October 02, 2011, 01:54:27 AM
Newly conquered regions are still Imperial Regions for now. This will change in the future. In the meantime I think that both the ruler and the future lord need to be in the region for the appointment to happen.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 02, 2011, 09:13:02 AM
Another weird thing here. . . I thought we got rid of Imperial regions?

There's still a problem with some regions in TO.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Phellan on October 02, 2011, 09:30:07 AM
There's still a problem with some regions in TO.

I gathered, since it exists.

My question is how do we fix it?  Suggestions?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 02, 2011, 10:54:07 AM
I gathered, since it exists.

My question is how do we fix it?  Suggestions?

Not immediately, no. I will be cleaning them up, assigning them to a bordering duchy. But I need to fix up the TO code.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Bael on October 02, 2011, 12:30:38 PM
Hm.. The new system is great :) I didn't lose much gold. Well to be fair I had nothing to lose to begin with :).

But from reading the new report, knights seem to receive a lot of gold. Lords can adjust that in time I am sure.

From my experience, the most that a Lord can tax their knight is 50%. So in my case, I have only one Knight with a 50% size estate. So the least that I can give them is 25% percent of the region tax. (half of 50%). Of course, this is the upper end of the scale regarding estate size (from which they derive their gold). Many knights would have smaller estates.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 07:15:30 PM
From my experience, the most that a Lord can tax their knight is 50%. So in my case, I have only one Knight with a 50% size estate. So the least that I can give them is 25% percent of the region tax. (half of 50%). Of course, this is the upper end of the scale regarding estate size (from which they derive their gold). Many knights would have smaller estates.

Or you could just resize his estate to 1% and tax 50% of that if you want. *That* would be the least you could give him, 0.5%.

Obviously, he'd have to be pretty stupid to accept that, and it wouldn't really make you any richer than if you had no knights at all. ;)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 02, 2011, 08:07:28 PM
Or you could just resize his estate to 1%

No, you can't. Estates have minimum sizes, too.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on October 02, 2011, 09:12:39 PM
No, you can't. Estates have minimum sizes, too.

10% minimum for my townsland, which is 900 peasants.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 09:40:41 PM
No, you can't. Estates have minimum sizes, too.

I see.

I created a 5% estate the other day. Didn't try to create smaller, so I didn't know. 5% is pretty darn small, though.

Point remains, as 50% of 5% is 2.5%, which is perhaps a penny more than 0.5% would have been with the rounding or just about.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: egamma on October 02, 2011, 10:50:36 PM
I see.

I created a 5% estate the other day. Didn't try to create smaller, so I didn't know. 5% is pretty darn small, though.

Point remains, as 50% of 5% is 2.5%, which is perhaps a penny more than 0.5% would have been with the rounding or just about.

Okay, so we have:
5% minimum for cities
10% for townslands
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 11:12:30 PM
Okay, so we have:
5% minimum for cities
10% for townslands

It would appear so.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on October 02, 2011, 11:28:48 PM
Okay, so we have:
5% minimum for cities
10% for townslands

Nope, it depends on population, not only on type. Giask has max estate size of 30%, while Shinnen of 50%. Efficiency in Shinnen Purlieus for the same estate size is different than in Outer Giask. (All this regions are of Dwilight, first two are cities, second two are townslands)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on October 02, 2011, 11:30:53 PM
Nope, it depends on population, not only on type. Giask has max estate size of 30%, while Shinnen of 50%. Efficiency in Shinnen Purlieus for the same estate size is different than in Outer Giask. (All this regions are of Dwilight, first two are cities, second two are townslands)

Aye, its a mystical combination of Region Type and (Max?) Population.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 11:33:15 PM
Nope, it depends on population, not only on type. Giask has max estate size of 30%, while Shinnen of 50%. Efficiency in Shinnen Purlieus for the same estate size is different than in Outer Giask. (All this regions are of Dwilight, first two are cities, second two are townslands)

Why are you comparing max estate size with min estate size? They might not follow the same rules.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on October 02, 2011, 11:43:28 PM
Why are you comparing max estate size with min estate size? They might not follow the same rules.

If they didnt, i would be surprised.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 11:45:39 PM
If they didnt, i would be surprised.

I wouldn't be surprised if they had additional arbitrary min-max caps that vary according to city/everything else.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on October 02, 2011, 11:47:21 PM
I wouldn't be surprised if they had additional arbitrary min-max caps that vary according to city/everything else.

It sounds like you have an optimism for pessimism... wouldnt it take far more coding to do that?
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 11:53:14 PM
It sounds like you have an optimism for pessimism... wouldnt it take far more coding to do that?

I think it would be quite simple to code such caps, actually. And since estate needs varied according to region type (my rural with less peasants and income than my city required more estates), it would appear plausible that the new system also integrate a similar factor.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Ramiel on October 02, 2011, 11:54:27 PM
I think it would be quite simple to code such caps, actually. And since estate needs varied according to region type (my rural with less peasants and income than my city required more estates), it would appear plausible that the new system also integrate a similar factor.

Hang on... how does that work? Dont cities by virtue of being full of filthy peasants need more estates? o.0
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 02, 2011, 11:57:24 PM
Hang on... how does that work? Dont cities by virtue of being full of filthy peasants need more estates? o.0

In the old system, they required less estates per population. Therefore, smaller cities required less estates than large rurals.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 03, 2011, 03:55:56 AM
It sounds like you have an optimism for pessimism... wouldnt it take far more coding to do that?

It's reasonably straighforward. The code is about 12 lines. :-)
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on October 03, 2011, 04:47:46 AM
Why are you comparing max estate size with min estate size? They might not follow the same rules.

I am pretty certain the min estate sizes also vary, but don't remember the exact values.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: JPierreD on October 03, 2011, 06:41:35 AM
When Torpius, noble of Luria Nova, goes to see the region of Smokey Hills, the recently TOed Imperial Region, he gets this:

http://battlemaster.org/testing/RegionDetails.php?ID=147

Fatal error: Call to a member function getName() on a non-object in /var/battlemaster/live/testing/RegionDetails.php on line 407
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 03, 2011, 07:04:43 AM
When Torpius, noble of Luria Nova, goes to see the region of Smokey Hills, the recently TOed Imperial Region, he gets this:

http://battlemaster.org/testing/RegionDetails.php?ID=147

Fatal error: Call to a member function getName() on a non-object in /var/battlemaster/live/testing/RegionDetails.php on line 407

Same.

We also get that while scouting rogue regions.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 03, 2011, 03:05:10 PM
this is probably one of those regions that don't have a duchy, right?

need to fix that... urgently...

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Anaris on October 03, 2011, 03:08:44 PM
this is probably one of those regions that don't have a duchy, right?

need to fix that... urgently...

Yes, and there appear to be quite a few of them.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 03, 2011, 03:59:44 PM
oh... actually... most rogue regions will not have a duchy. Doh.

Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 03, 2011, 05:52:29 PM
Yup, newly TOed region doesn't have a duchy and has this problem. It also doesn't actually show anywhere in the realm pages. Rogue regions don't have duchies, and so that error shows up when we try to scout them.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Geronus on October 04, 2011, 10:02:34 PM
oh... actually... most rogue regions will not have a duchy. Doh.

Another note - regions without Duchy don't show up under 'Realm and Regions'.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Tom on October 04, 2011, 11:03:14 PM
Another note - regions without Duchy don't show up under 'Realm and Regions'.

yes, I realize that. It's not a bug. The bug is that it doesn't have a duchy when it should.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Jens Namtrah on October 05, 2011, 11:42:14 PM
small bug - my char switched to a new region, but still has the signature of "Knight of Sulorte" (his previous region).

the Realm Hierarchy shows him correctly

also, his personal pages says:

"You are currently

    * a knight of Sulorte
    * a member of Luria Nova

As such, you owe your allegiance to your local lord (Philip Drago, Viscount of Sulorte)."
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Indirik on October 06, 2011, 05:52:25 PM
We're having a problem with automatic allegiance fixes removing a noble from our realm:

Quote
Noble Joins the Realm   (1 day, 21 hours ago)

Wesley A. Cunningham has joined your realm. He used to be a noble of Astrum.

Noble left the realm   (1 day, 8 hours ago)

Automatic allegiances fix (Wesley A.)
Noble Joins the Realm   (23 hours, 25 minutes ago)

Wesley A. Cunningham has joined your realm. He used to be a noble of Astrum.
Noble left the realm   (8 hours, 48 minutes ago)

Automatic allegiances fix (Wesley A.)

This is the player:
http://battlemaster.org/UserDetails.php?ID=32651

Someone talked to him about it, and he stated he had not intended to return to Morek, and did not know why it was happening.
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: DoctorHarte on October 06, 2011, 11:41:13 PM
Aurvandil didn't receive any taxes today, we had a tax report but zero gold reached any of us. Dunno if this has been reported or not, but thought I'd mention it.

Also, in IVF, a noble has become my knight and has an estate in my region, yet his title still read "Noble".
Title: Re: New Estate System
Post by: Chenier on October 07, 2011, 01:06:57 AM
Aurvandil didn't receive any taxes today, we had a tax report but zero gold reached any of us. Dunno if this has been reported or not, but thought I'd mention it.

Also, in IVF, a noble has become my knight and has an estate in my region, yet his title still read "Noble".

The new lord of Eg Tutnu (elected) also still had his estates in Iato and I had the power to kick him out (which I did) and assign him to a different army (which I also did, prior to kicking him out).