Author Topic: Dukes and Duchies  (Read 11517 times)

Chenier

  • Exalted Emperor
  • ******
  • Posts: 8120
    • View Profile
Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #30: October 11, 2017, 02:24:50 AM »
Dukes are never going to have the power to dismiss lords upon their whim. When you make a lord (or your predecessor), you are granting them the title for good, not 'until I say otherwise'. Remember, BM is not a historical simulation, but a game that must make balance decisions, based in medieval history.

As said earlier, duchy capitals have been frequently requested, frequently rejected. Again, a matter of game balance.

The realm size penalties do not need relaxed, nor do we need ducal size penalties. There aren't realms in BM with proper density. If you allow realms to grow larger, you reduce the number of realms, the number of potential council positions, the number of potential conflicts between realms, increase the distance you have to march to fight et cetera. The point is to localize conflicts, not have a few empires under the control of a few characters. That tends to be how islands get locked in peace more easily than having a wide variety of different personalities leading realms and conflicting with other personalities.

Sirion has 50 nobles for 20 regions. Westgard has 30 nobles for 7 regions. A bunch of realms have a 2:1 density, or slightly more or slightly less.

When it comes to Dwilight, the issue of distance between realms is moot, because the capitals are mostly static. All the realm size penalties do is encourage rogue areas between realms. It doesn't reduce marching distances, heck it increases it, because if a realm was to expand into another, at least that would mean shorter refit cycles for the latter.

Nobody wants to return to how things were in the 2000s, where a clique could control half a continent, with their double characters, and three quarters of characters having no title at all. But is now really the perfect sweet spot? Where there are basically as many titles as there are characters? Where most people run without any competition in all elections, and where it's hard to find candidates for many. Less realms would not be a terrible thing.

That said, the core of the issue is not more or less realms, it's about realms having incentives to war each other. And with far away capitals and soft size caps on realms, realms have no incentives to fight each other.

These change proposals, for the most part, are not for the sole sake of realms being able to grow huge. It's for the realms to be able to expand into each other. To have a reason to fight each other. Because looting doesn't give much and you can't reliably make a region go rogue. The point of having more supraduchies and using them to grow realms isn't to make mega realms, but to give realms something to fight for.
Dit donc camarade soleil / Ne trouves-tu ça pas plutôt con / De donner une journée pareil / À un patron