Now hear me out, this is more than a 5 minute fix, but if we want BM to develop its trade facets this will be one step on that path. I've been awaiting the new trade system for about.... 2+ RL years and I'm ready. Okay, here we go!
I have a few parts to this idea, but there's one real core nugget to consider, and I know the initial reaction may not be favorable, but try to bear with me.
Each region needs a money vault.
Yes, you heard me right, a place to put money that's not on your person, a guild or bonds. A for real, local region vault. There's a reason (actually a couple), and I hope I can convince you it's a good idea.
For a trading system to work, gold needs to be associated with the trading, not just the noble. You see, if a region is buying and selling food (and eventually other goods), there needs to be a pile of gold to exchange for it. Right now that pile is in the hands of the Lord personally, but the Steward kind of mucks that up. If the Steward buys some food, he pays for it out of pocket. If we start adding more goods, then this will rapidly become untenable.
You see, we already have places to put gold (guilds, temples), but these are not associated with region maintenance. A region's vault would be the nexus of the region's various needs:
0) Building maintenance at regular intervals
1) Paying militia at regular intervals, with warnings about not paying just like a normal unit
2) Repairing (and upgrading) walls
3) Paying into monster/undead bounties
4) Building new buildings
5) *Trade* of all sorts. Sales go to the vault directly and immediately, purchases leave from there
6) Festival costs
7) (possibly) put funds into the warchest of any armies associated with the region
These could then be associated with the region's funds, not just the Lord's funds. The Lord (of course) could take and put into the vault, as is his prerogative.
This means that the role of Steward would no longer be a wacky, more title than use kind of role within the realm. Stewards could handle more of the maintenance, and give the Banker a redundant person to go to if the Lord is unavailable or just doesn't care.
This alone would be useful, but it also allows us to continue to even greater heights for how to organize things financially, and especially with trade involved.
A Lord's income (per tax) could come as a percentage, just like the other knights
The remainder would be put directly into the region's vault. A Lord may, if they wish, just set their share to all not going to knights, but then they would have to manually deposit to their vault as needed. Once a region gets up and stable, they could drop their own rate to start auto-filling the vault, but that's all personal choices.
Alternatively, knights get a fixed amount of gold per week instead of a percentage of the region's income. This is a big change, but it would mean that a region Lord can say "work for me, you'll get xx gold/week". This is harder to do, as a region's income is not nearly fixed and a bad tax day (due to war, etc) makes the process of deciding who gets how much, so I think this is overreaching for most players.
The overall goal of my suggestion here is to divorce a region's gold from being directly linked to the region Lord. That way there is more flexibility in how a region's things are paid for, as opposed to a noble's things (like unit costs). Stewards can be made more useful and there's opportunity for the Banker to start having more to do. This is a step in the direction of having an expanded trade situation as well.
Additional points:
1) The type of the region should limit the vault's size. Cities > Stronghold > Townsland > ... etc. Anything that won't fit from taxes goes directly to the Lord as normal income.
2) The region's vault should be the thing attacked by an infiltrator or looting, not the amorphous "tax not yet fully collected" vault.
3) Should the Banker should be able to inspect a vault? Not sure about this one. Perhaps if they actually visit the region in person.
4) Only the region Lord should have access to the vault, though I could see an argument for a Steward, Banker, or Duke to also have access.
5) If this is in place, and gold becomes a commodity that can be managed more like food (or stone, wood, metal, wares, etc), then can it be moved to another region's vault via caravans, like food? This is only important in the "give" sense right now, but it would allow you to empty the vault in the face of looting/attackers. At the very least this would mean the game now has two "goods": grain and gold, so the inital groundwork for a large economic system could be put into place and tested. Adding more options to the drop down box would be easier than building it from whole cloth at dev time.
1. What is the root problem I am trying to fix and/or What is the root benefit I am trying to achieve? (i.e. asking to increase the rate at which people lose positions from wounds is probably at root a request to increase turnover)
The root problem this is trying to address, in my mind, is that money in BM is currently very personal (unless stashed in a guildhouse), but that limits how a region's funds are managed. Adding a regional vault means that a Lord may delegate and eventually, as the economic side of things advances, those vaults will be working hand in hand with the warehouses of the region. Money becomes just another good from the perspective of a region, it is produced, sold, used, etc. without having to come through the 'personal vault' of the region Lord.
For example, if it took 180 gold, 10 stone, 50 wood and 50 metal to build a blacksmith in a region, that gold should come from the "warehouse" (vault) instead of the noble ordering the construction. It's still the Lord's money, but now it's not in his pocket and a Steward could make the building while the Lord is off galavanting about with the army (or in prison, dead, deposed, exiled, deported, AFK, or otherwise!).
2. Is this the smallest/simplest/least disruptive change to the overall game I can think of to accomplish my goal? (i.e. changing the percentage that you lose your position is a lot easier than an entirely new system of Council positions that takes into account realm conditions to provide the maximum number of people with positions)
I really don't know. I have lots of other ideas on how to take this to complicated extremes, but just adding a vault and paying the existing needs from it seems to be a simple way to make this change.
3. Does this issue reflect a local (i.e. one realm/religion/island/region/whatever) problem or a game-wide state of affairs?
I see it as a game-wide issue.
I have more ideas, especially as to how to grow out the economic side of things organically (as to not cause *too* much disruption to a running island), but this is a big enough change to cause the devs to blow a gasket as is, so let's hear your comments.
Thank you for reading this far.
