Author Topic: Dukes and Duchies  (Read 11510 times)

Ketchum

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #30: October 07, 2017, 12:26:01 PM »
Yes. Which is weird to be honest. The game is so centralized yet dukes still wield so much power. Feels like it can't make up its mind. If you want to be a strong ruler, you need your own duchy.
I cannot help but agree with Zakky here. Usually ruler will have its own duchy to rule over. When my Ruler character steps down as Duke of a duchy, he cannot be subjected to another Duke power, so he cannot hold any region. Anyway when he passed through a region which seen much fighting, the people of the region elect him as Duke and formed a Duchy under him automatically without he need to create a new duchy. And the region is not Townsland or City type. Of course I Roleplay it as people of the region supporting his realm cause.

I do believe even Townslands are available to start a Duchy with.

For a long time I have even believed that duchy capitals actually were a thing (had a conversation with Delvin about this many weeks ago), just because of the fact that you need to have this 1 starting city/stronghold/townsland. And I could have sworn that this starting region was somehow highlighted (bold, italic) on some pages.

Never was so wrong in my life.
Yes, Townsland can be its own duchy too. I have created duchy around Townsland before.
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Chenier

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #31: October 07, 2017, 02:17:15 PM »
Let's remember that the sum of new mechanics needs to give some breather room for successful dense realms to expand further, and not further bring everyone down to the ~10 region soft cap.
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Antonine

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #32: October 08, 2017, 08:18:00 PM »
Let's remember that the sum of new mechanics needs to give some breather room for successful dense realms to expand further, and not further bring everyone down to the ~10 region soft cap.

Agreed.

JeVondair

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #33: October 09, 2017, 09:33:31 PM »
Honestly, I think I'd add option B right away, as a passive feature.

"Every duchy that contains at least one city or stronghold increases the allowed distance from the capital before anarchists become an issue and increase the tax tolerance".

No need to build anything, just have it auto apply. It feels fundamentally wrong how the game discourages realms from having more than one duchy. And the newish size limit feels too small, there needs to be a way to increase it to what it used to be.


Even without applying all of this, what would be much easier to change is the current realm size penalty bonus into a duchy size bonus.
The more regions are part of the duchy, from a certain amount onward(like 4 or 5), the bigger the realm penalty.
Realms that ignore duchies and maintain a single large duchy get more penalized then realms with many smaller duchies.
This would already make dukes more important, increase their role and increase their numbers.

This wont effect the core of the game radically as the ideas suggested earlier.
Allthough i do really like the ideas of duchal capitals.


I do really like how this conversation has developed. I still think Dukes should be able to terminate their lords at will, but I really love this as well. I appreciate all of your thoughts/effort shared thus far!
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Chenier

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #34: October 10, 2017, 01:42:58 AM »
Nah I like rulers not having the power to boot everyone else. Most interesting strifes were caused precisely by this.
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Vamking12

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #35: October 10, 2017, 08:39:46 PM »
Well as a general rule, it's not possible to dismiss any noble from a position once it's been given to them (with the exception of marshals/vice-marshals/ambassadors). That's always been part of the game - you have to either protest them out or get the judge to ban them.

But what I think would be a good improvement would be to make it so that every duchy has a capital and units from RCs within that duchy can only be recruited at the ducal capital. You could also maybe change the distance from capital penalty so that it uses distance from the ducal capital rather than the realm capital.

That would give rulers an interesting choice to make. They could centralise the realm into one large duchy, which would limit how big it could grow, or create multiple duchies which would increase the maximum size of the realm and its ability to wage war, but with the trade-off of undermining central authority by creating powerful dukes who could declare independence any time they felt like it.

You could also potentially make it so that nobles of a duchy can only recruit at their ducal capital. That'd also strengthen duchy identity and would prevent realms from just creating a new duchy on the frontline of whichever war they happen to be fighting purely for faster refit times.

+1 I actually agree with this whole idea

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #36: October 10, 2017, 10:31:02 PM »
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.

Chenier

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Re: Dukes and Duchies
« Reply #37: 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.
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