Author Topic: REJECTED: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury  (Read 22824 times)

Blue Star

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REJECTED: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Topic Start: July 24, 2012, 02:25:04 AM »
Summary: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury. The concept is to give the realm a way of storing food as well as storing gold. Giving bankers some power as well as some interesting ways to store food and gold.

Royal Granary: The idea for the “Royal Granary” is to bring back some authority for the Banker and an actual way to assist the realm they are in. This granary stores food for the realm. It is collected from various regions. The Granary will allow the Banker to collect a certain percentage from regions and store inside the treasury, which will be located in the Capital. The Banker will only be able to access the granary and provide food assistance from it. The money collected from the bankers transactions come and go from my next point the Royal Treasury.

Royal Treasury: Vault located in the capital where money can be stored. Access for Ruler mainly, who then can determine how much access Dukes have on withdrawing, Banker granted access to set up to 10 buy/sell orders. Depositing access is allowed by lords of the realm. Ruler and Banker get reports about how much is in the vault monthly beside when visiting it. Vault must be 50% filled or the realm takes a hit in morale and loyalty.

Details

Royal Granary:
  • Rot % Higher, perhaps between 5-10%
  • Banker sets rate of collection for each region, 1-3%. Comes every tax day from current food stored
  • Granary – Size 1500. 1 allowed built in capital city, by Ruler. Cost: 500-1000
  • Banker can set buy/sell orders that come from granary and treasury
  • Transactions go to the Royal treasury
Royal Treasury:
    Ruler, Banker and Dukes have access[/li]
  • All Lords can deposit funds.
  • Must maintain 50% balance in vault else realms loyalty and morale are damaged until it’s attained.
  • Vault sizes – 1000, 2500, 5000, etc. Cost for building half that of what size is trying to be attained.
Both:
Allowed to have guards like religions and guilds do.

Benefits:
Banker has some authority and a interesting way to manage food and to protect the realm from starvation. Realm has a place to store funds and ways to take them out.
Enemy realms have more reason to hit capitals and can really do damage, militia becomes more important.
Infiltrators get a new target!

Possible Exploits: I'm sure there are some we can think of now or can be discussed.


Note*
Currently Bankers have the "responsibility to feed the nation, but not the authority to do so." -swholmes@gmail.com. Bankers need more to do and need to have actual ways of feeding the realm and managing food besides having to convert to the trader class. What’s the point of having a banker if he has no authority and can't do much?
« Last Edit: August 07, 2012, 03:03:54 AM by egamma »
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Zakilevo

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #1: July 24, 2012, 02:35:11 AM »
Why would food rot faster in the royal granary? more rats and bad locations?

And why would dukes be allowed to access the royal treasury?

Blue Star

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #2: July 24, 2012, 02:46:42 AM »
Great questions.

Royal granary would rot due having to travel to the capital, plus im sure the sewer rats of the cities would eat it rather quickly.

The idea for access for the dukes is questionable yes. However, the Ruler determines who gets access and the amount of access. If Ruler trust the duke then yes, you'd assume they'd have some access. Most likely regulated by the Ruler or perhaps Banker since his job is to handle finances for the Ruler as well as the realm.
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De-Legro

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #3: July 24, 2012, 02:56:23 AM »
Why would food rot faster in the royal granary? more rats and bad locations?

And why would dukes be allowed to access the royal treasury?

It is mostly a balance thing I think, and as such a real world "reason" is not strictly required. In other words it exists to ensure that realms don't try to store massive amounts of food in the royal granary in order to completely circumvent regional markets.

One thing I have often thought about, Dukes have the ability to tax gold from their regions, but not food. Back when Dukes were always the lord of the city I often though it would be useful if they could set a tax rate on food as well. Given that Dukes no longer necessarily control the city some though about where the taxed food is stored would be necessary.
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Foundation

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #4: July 24, 2012, 03:07:55 AM »
Does not being able to tax food take away from the idea that food is the lord's own produce?  What purpose does food serve in that case other than a mildly different form of less useful gold?

Rather than try to tax for food, has the idea of simply using the royal treasury to buy food (which the Banker can do) been considered?
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De-Legro

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #5: July 24, 2012, 03:19:31 AM »
Does not being able to tax food take away from the idea that food is the lord's own produce?  What purpose does food serve in that case other than a mildly different form of less useful gold?

Rather than try to tax for food, has the idea of simply using the royal treasury to buy food (which the Banker can do) been considered?

Is not the gold produced by the Lords region ALSO his own produce? Where does the idea that the Lord owns his food come from. When you look at it some realms impose this idea to offset the fact that Lords of rural regions get poor gold incomes. It is not an inherent tenant of the game just one more arbitrary aspect of realm culture, much like realms that insist all food is owned by the realm.
However historically tax on food was extremely common.

And yes, the original idea allowed the banker to buy and sell from the royal Granary as well as impose a tax.
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Charles

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #6: July 24, 2012, 05:27:00 AM »
I don't see a difference between taxing gold and taxing food.

De-Legro

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #7: July 24, 2012, 05:39:53 AM »
I don't see a difference between taxing gold and taxing food.

The only time there would be a real difference is in realms where for what ever reason (inactivity, spite, some rebellious strategy) significant amounts of food are never leaving rural regions. Being able to tax food in those cases would allow at least some of the the food to be utilised.
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Charles

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #8: July 24, 2012, 05:43:32 AM »
Then I strongly support taxing food.  And the whole idea really.

fodder

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #9: July 24, 2012, 07:01:58 AM »
eh... how does that work?

duke taxes lords, ruler taxes dukes. no good reason to have a separate tax structure bypassing hierarchy just because it's food.

and if you have that, you'll reinforce city lord = duke mindset which is bad. because every man and dog will have duke+city lord tax rural lord and skip trading altogether.

and the other thing is... doesn't really make sense to have food taxed once a gold tax, as opposed to everyday. (though it would encourage those with large stores sell it quickly)
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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #10: July 24, 2012, 07:08:36 AM »
eh... how does that work?

duke taxes lords, ruler taxes dukes. no good reason to have a separate tax structure bypassing hierarchy just because it's food.

and if you have that, you'll reinforce city lord = duke mindset which is bad. because every man and dog will have duke+city lord tax rural lord and skip trading altogether.

and the other thing is... doesn't really make sense to have food taxed once a gold tax, as opposed to everyday. (though it would encourage those with large stores sell it quickly)

Firstly that assumes that you allow food tax rates to be high enough to replace regular shipping. 
Secondly there is no reason that food taxes and gold taxes would need to be collected at the same time

I do agree it could encourage the mindset of Duke must be the City Lord. I'm not really sure how prevalent that mind set is at the moment, so it could be that it is so wide spread little would change. I can think of ways to avoid this problem, but they would also result in increased complexity.
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Tom

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #11: July 24, 2012, 08:36:40 AM »
This idea goes against several concepts, as such I don't give it many chances.

One, food is very intentionally localized. It is one of the limiting factors for large realms, and a centralized treasury would defeat that purpose.
Two, gold is given to characters, not positions or places.
Three, this only fits for highly centralized government types.

Gustav Kuriga

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #12: July 24, 2012, 10:15:15 AM »
Thing is, Tom, you end up with situations where the banker has no ability to control the food in his own realm. Leading to two things, one nearly guaranteed, and the other likely. The first is that the Banker will have no power, and almost no purpose, his only ability being that of seeing where all the food is. The second is that you can end up with a situation like that you have in Morek, in which a rural lord has literally over 3000-5000 bushels all in one region (yes, this has happened, and I know exactly who is doing it and where), with no way for anyone to move ANY of that food back out again.

Zakilevo

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #13: July 24, 2012, 10:18:22 AM »
Why not just give the banker an option to forcefully take food and move them to whereever he wants? But only once a turn and the amount should be limited to maybe to 100 bushels?

Gustav Kuriga

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Re: Royal Granary and Royal Treasury
« Reply #14: July 24, 2012, 10:19:58 AM »
This idea goes against several concepts, as such I don't give it many chances.

One, food is very intentionally localized. It is one of the limiting factors for large realms, and a centralized treasury would defeat that purpose.
Two, gold is given to characters, not positions or places.
Three, this only fits for highly centralized government types.

Also, according to the tax reports, which states, and I quote, "The crown has received 205 gold tax income thanks to a realm share of 10 %.
In addition, the realm made 430 gold from other sources (fines, etc.), bringing the crown's total income to 635 gold."
Certain positions do receive gold. I remember the same happening for the other council positions, at least before the new estate system took effect. I'm not sure if the separate positions each get a share of gold anymore or not.