A radical solution to the food problem...

[Vita`]

This would not be the case if the rural region's survival was equally dependant on trade as the cities are. The reason there's an imbalance is that rural regions don't need trade for their survival but cities do. If rural regions could starve for lack of gold then rural lords would have to sell to cities. And if one rural lord is demanding exorbitant prices, another rural lord can easily undercut him. If they get into a stale mate, as you predict, then they both starve, their realm becomes unstable and another realm comes in and takes over. It couldn't be more poetic than a realm destroyed by its own greed. Of course, if a region is starving and the lord isn't doing anything to stabilize it, they should be relieved of their duties and replaced with someone more competent.

While I'm extremely hesitant to suggest anything along the lines of new economic goods after the last attempted implementation, I do think there may be a point about rural lords not needing to trade for the survival of the region like cities do. Perhaps to sustain food production, non-city regions need to buy some form of good from cities? Fertilizer? Irrigation specialists? Sickles? Blacksmiths? All of these seem silly though. If the region *doesn't* get this good from cities, then their food production doesn't go higher than what is sufficient for the region to feed itself, meaning a city will starve if it doesn't sell enough of these goods to their surrounding regions.

Again, I'm very hesitant on this suggestion, but it seems a far more useful discussion than removing all gold production from non-city regions.

[Buffalkill]

While I'm extremely hesitant to suggest anything along the lines of new economic goods after the last attempted implementation, I do think there may be a point about rural lords not needing to trade for the survival of the region like cities do. Perhaps to sustain food production, non-city regions need to buy some form of good from cities? Fertilizer? Irrigation specialists? Sickles? Blacksmiths? All of these seem silly though. If the region *doesn't* get this good from cities, then their food production doesn't go higher than what is sufficient for the region to feed itself, meaning a city will starve if it doesn't sell enough of these goods to their surrounding regions.

Again, I'm very hesitant on this suggestion, but it seems a far more useful discussion than removing all gold production from non-city regions.

Adding to your thoughts about not wanting to introduce new goods, you could also just tie production in the region to how much trading it does, i.e. more trade leads to increased production. The rural lord needn't actually purchase fertilizer and such, as it could just be implied. Maybe the lord needs to decide how much of his gold to "re-invest" in the region, and it would just be understood that the investment is for tools, seeds, labour, etc.

[Azerax]

I would love to see a Margrave starve a city because they refuse to buy food for whatever the market rate is.  It creates conflict.

[Buffalkill]

Economic warfare!

[Indirik]

While I'm extremely hesitant to suggest anything along the lines of new economic goods after the last attempted implementation, I do think there may be a point about rural lords not needing to trade for the survival of the region like cities do. Perhaps to sustain food production, non-city regions need to buy some form of good from cities? Fertilizer? Irrigation specialists? Sickles? Blacksmiths? All of these seem silly though. If the region *doesn't* get this good from cities, then their food production doesn't go higher than what is sufficient for the region to feed itself, meaning a city will starve if it doesn't sell enough of these goods to their surrounding regions.

I have had similar thoughts in the past. If the rural isn't selling food, then why is it producing food? Who's going to grow 10,000 bushels of food that just sit and rot in the warehouse, and then get burned because they're spoiled?

But let's say you do implement something where you have a feedback mechanism from the city to the rural that the rural needs to keep food production high. So, the rural stops selling food to the city, so the city stops selling widgets to the rural. So what? Why does the rural lord care? He's not selling the food to the city, so he doesn't need to still grow it. His region is fed, and he gets gold from taxes, so why does he need the food that he's not selling anyway?

There is an imbalance in the food system. The city needs what the rural has, but the rural doesn't need what the city has. The only way the city can force the rural to give up the goods is by getting the realm leadership on their side. And the realm council has to be willing to stand up for the margraves, and tighten the screws on the lords refusing to sell. That's the only real power the margrave has to enforce the food sales on the lords.

There really is no mechanism I can see that allows us to give a strong need for the rurals to sell food to the cities, if the rural lord decides that he doesn't need the extra gold. The only way I can see that enforcement coming down is via IG enforcement by the characters in the realm.

[Buffalkill]

Here's another alternative: if a region is starving, peasant militias form and steal food from surplus regions, causing morale and productivity to drop and, in extreme cases, the region goes rogue. This would create impetus for rural lords to sell to the cities or suffer the consequences.

[Buffalkill]

There is an imbalance in the food system. The city needs what the rural has, but the rural doesn't need what the city has.

Absolutely. Real-life farmers need to sell their food to live, that's why it works: willing buyer, willing seller. In BM, there are no natural consequences if a rural lord refuses to sell. In the real world he would starve.

[Telrunya]

I never really had problems with Rural Lords not selling food. They get some extra money, and usually that Margrave and/or Duke on top is in that position because he holds a certain amount of power within the Realm that he can use to take care of any Rural Lords that just sit on their food for no reason. Especially when other Margraves / Dukes are afraid it might happen to them too. If anything, it's the Cities that hold more power over the Rural Lords instead of the other way around. If a Realm needs food, that Rural Lord will sell or else.

[Sacha]

Absolutely. Real-life farmers need to sell their food to live, that's why it works: willing buyer, willing seller. In BM, there are no natural consequences if a rural lord refuses to sell. In the real world he would starve.

Except rural lords aren't farmers. They're the huge agricultural companies that squeeze out the peasant farmers and rake in all the profit. And why would he starve if he's got all the food?

[Buffalkill]

Except rural lords aren't farmers. They're the huge agricultural companies that squeeze out the peasant farmers and rake in all the profit. And why would he starve if he's got all the food?

Because it's peasant food! Noble lords don't eat that !@#$...he needs gold to buy caviar and wine, and jewelry for his 12 mistresses.


My point is--draw whatever parallels your like, peasant farmers and huge ag companies and small ag companies and oil companies and internet companies--they all need to sell their product to survive.

[egamma]

I have a radical solution to the problem of rural lords selling food--charge lords (both rural and city) gold for the disposal of rotted food. Tack it on as a tax charge.

[Indirik]

yeah, I thought about that one. I'm glad someone else mentioned it. It's an interesting idea, since it does have to be disposed of to make room. You have to pay the workers to haul it out and burn it. Then lords would really have some incentive to get rid of it. Get way too much, and you could bankrupt yourself paying the disposal fees.

[Kai]

If the point of the food system is to check the growth of realms and force heavy-rich realms to trade for food, then it would be easier to make food a pure realm-wide statistics.

I would support this. I don't know anyone who honestly likes to leave (wherever your army is) every week to set up trades.

I would love to see a Margrave starve a city because they refuse to buy food for whatever the market rate is.  It creates conflict.

Trust me you don't. Intra realm conflict has to be carefully regulated. More than a very small amount is a massive turn off for people who don't play that much and don't have the time to investigate who is right or wrong.

I never really had problems with Rural Lords not selling food. They get some extra money, and usually that Margrave and/or Duke on top is in that position because he holds a certain amount of power within the Realm that he can use to take care of any Rural Lords that just sit on their food for no reason. Especially when other Margraves / Dukes are afraid it might happen to them too. If anything, it's the Cities that hold more power over the Rural Lords instead of the other way around. If a Realm needs food, that Rural Lord will sell or else.

Then you haven't seen the rural lords who feign bad harvest or semi-incompetence with 99% plausible deniability and think this makes them Machiavelli. Once I saw someone brag about how they got someone else kicked out by not selling food. Would be legitimate if there was an actual way to investigate from the demand side, but as it is there is no interaction, just one sided refusals possible.

I have a radical solution to the problem of rural lords selling food--charge lords (both rural and city) gold for the disposal of rotted food. Tack it on as a tax charge.

People will play chicken with food rot to buy at bottom price. I don't see how this can work.

--

You guys are all failing because you are trying to think of "the sale of food" all on one level. The first level is peasants selling food for their necessities of life and tools and stuff. This is the reason why people need to sell food. The second level is all this "disposable" food that can be played around with by the region lord. This can be traded for gold which is then used to buy armies. But the problem is that there is no "disposable" food. All food is eaten, but no food is ever traded for necessities of life. In contrast, all gold is genuinely "disposable" (true excess). This is the main inequality which makes BM food economy so difficult to work out.

[Buffalkill]

Correct. This is the fundamental flaw in the trade system. That the buyers need to engage in trade for their survival but the sellers don't. If the sellers' survival depended on making sales, trade would become a lot more interesting, and more people would choose the trader class (I would). We can debate different ways to address this imbalance, but this is the fundamental problem.


If eliminating tax gold from rural regions is too radical, you could reduce the amount of tax gold they get to something below what they need to survive. So they'll still get some gold, but not enough to survive and they'll have to sell food to make up the shortfall. I also like the idea of somehow requiring rural lords to re-invest some of their gold into the region to keep production going.

[Charles]

So...we need to get other commodities that rurals need that cities produce.  For this to be effective, the rurals must NEED the commodity.  It can't just be a minor benefit.