Think it through. If mere battles was all that it took to make master sword men, then the common foot solider would fast become a master. I'm not against some sort of tweak to to the battle/academy system, but I'm not in favour of the proposed system of making academies much slower, since they will soon become irrelevant and might as well be removed from the game.
I'm not convinced there is some sort of epidemic of people doing nothing but training, and I am certainly not convinced that the few that do this are actively attempting to maintain peace. Even if they were GREAT, that gives you someone within your realm to rail against. If you can't motivate a realm to override the desire of peace by one or two characters, then game mechanics to "fix" it is not the solution.
Game mechanic restrictions have their place, but we seriously need to get away from trying to dream up mechanics to fix every perceived "undesirable" activity.
Disagreed. If risk-taking is modulable, the default would be "safe", where the skill gain is slow, "engaged" means slightly higher skill gain with say 33% chance of getting lightly wounded in battle, and "reckless" with high skill gain, 30% chance of getting seriously wounded, 20% chance of getting a normal wound, and 20% chance of getting a light wound. Numbers would obviously vary according to the details of the battle, but that's just to give a general idea.
Who would take the "reckless" option if they end up wounded all of the time? When serious wounds are pretty much the only threat old characters have to lose their titles?
Only characters who actively participate in as many battles as they can, and continue to take great risks even when old, would become truly elite in swordfighting.
Academy whores are
de facto peace mongers. They pour huge resources into their training, and thus very little into units or military infrastructure. What do rulers look at before starting a war? "How strong is our army and what are our capacities?". It doesn't matter if there isn't a huge number of people doing it, the resources training suck up has great impact regardless.
Training should be both cheaper and less effective. That way, even those who decide to drain all of their hours at it don't represent a significant financial drain on their realms. And put the cap much lower, like 40%.
