Did you ever think the reason so few people WANT to be marshal is that the expectations of masses of scout analysis, on line times and other factors are simply more then people want to commit to for a recreational game? I've known so many marshal that felt amazing pressure to be online just before and after every turn change, to have scout reports in analysed and plans made within the hour of turn change so that nobody would log in and out before orders were given etc.
Attitudes like, "I can't afford to wait for my peers to tell me their status" etc only go to increase this hectic need, for a game that only has turns every 12 hours this is bordering on insane. They are your PEERS treat them with the respect a medieval noble would demand and forget the 21st century need to plan out meticulous strategies and tactics. Great medieval generals anticipated their enemies moves on info that was days if not weeks old, not on a scout report telling them what was happening 5 minutes ago.
Gee, you've never played a general, go figure.
Great medieval generals also didn't face enemies that could, over a few days of walking only, reach neighboring capitals from their own. Or armies that could triple their size in a day. This is a game, you've said it yourself. The pace is therefore significantly faster. Because really, nobody wants to spend a month to travel from a realm to the next, else there'd be more people on the colonies.
Great generals could also go and contact the ones under their command directly to make sure everyone got the instructions right.
In BM, we don't. We have 12 hour rounds, and we have to send the orders before the players' last logins of the turn, or else no amount of harassing them will make them move. Also, the battlefield can drastically change within the few minutes that TC takes. Breaking into a city often tooks months IRL, it takes 5 minutes in BM.
Why don't people want to be marshals? You have your theory, but I think that's putting too much emphasis on the marshal out of his context. I would rather ask: why don't people want any promotions at all? This last 6 months, in about almost all elections I've seen, there was no competition whatsoever, or very, very little. People of no history get elected because they were the only ones who, on the last day, bothered to put their names in the list. Same for dukes, and other lords, and other government positions. It's not just marshals, it's every single title in the game. Doesn't seem like anyone is seriously running for them anymore. Hell, on AT, when the judge left, I put my name in the ballot, never sent a single word to campaign. That character is a total nobody, a lord of a rural, and he won. I can't even tell you who the realm's enemies are, and I'm the judge.
There was a time where I was marshal of an elite army and I never logged in 'till like 8 hours after TC during a good period. You can't do that with every army, but with some it's easy to pull off "IF X, then Y" set of orders. Late enough scouts to have an idea of what things will look like are a boon in this case, though. The problem I've seen with the few new marshals, though, is not that they aren't timely enough: it's that they rarely even give orders.
