New food system -- inalienable?

[Geronus]

though its true that townsland earn a fair amount of gold, it just means townsland lords can, you know.. pay their own knights a ton.. rather than the rich lord hoarding the gold and then giving it out to any and everyone pretending to be generous, as is usually the case.

There's no difference between them and city lords at the moment, except that cities are still a bit higher income on average and city lords get more buttons. And they can totally still hoard gold if they want to just by taxing their knights heavily.

[Carna]

Remember that the duke is not necessarily the lord of the city anymore.

Trust me, people IC won't let me forget. Yet, in spite of that odd change most Lords of Cities remain as Duke's. And when that's the case (as it is in the majority of cases), where's all that fealty and stuff? Not seeing it, right now.

This is kind of an example of one of those areas where Tom wishes the game was one way, but the players just don't play it that way.

Geronus hit the nail on the head. Unless you're going to contradict the answers Tim gave, nothing changes for 99% of people and situations IC.

And yeah, being Duke of a city halfway sucks if you can be Duke of a townsland. Genius 

Finn.

[De-Legro]

That is a woeful amount of power to hand to every rural lord when their supposed fealty in most realms is to their Duke or their King.

Feudal oaths go both ways. If your liege is basically robbing in terms of food, the links that bind you are already broken.