- What's the big deal with strategic secessions? Most realms don't have enough nobles to split. And in most cases, splitting only makes the sum of the parts lesser than the original whole. Yes, the realms get numerical buffs. But the only cases where this is not offset by the human logistical aspects are when the realms were ripe to split anyways, and that this rule therefore only really regulates the context (ok to do so when there's no war, not ok during war). This rule doesn't contribute to anything anymore, we don't have the player counts for it to matter.
- Why have OOC rules against strategic capital moves? For starters, moving capitals is very costly. Secondly, the distance from capital allowance was greatly reduced over the years. A realm that moves its capital to the front will have an advantage in terms of refit cycle, but a HUGE disadvantage to its economy, as region stats and tax tolerance will drop. Furthermore, many current capitals barely allow for any wars, if they don't make it outright suicide, so why not give people a bit more flexibility if it means that, as a whole, BM gets more war?
The reason for both of these is the OOC restriction on recruitment in capitals.
Frankly, I'm interested in ways to remove that that will work well and not cause a raft of negative unintended consequences.
The most interesting simulationist approach I've come up with so far would be sort of a two-part thing:
- First, have the recruits in recruitment centers actually be in those centers. That is, you can only recruit them if you're physically in the region. But...
- Second, those recruits will be sent, over time, to a place that is designated as your realm's "Recruitment Fair" or something (yes, I think that's a dumb name, but I just came up with it
). The default place for this would be in the capital, but it could be designated as any region in your realm. Any region but the capital would cost a significant upkeep, and the recruits would have to travel, from region to region, toward this Fair, during which time they would be vulnerable to disruption.
This would be able to piggyback on some other code I've got simmering on the back burner for nearly-fully-automated (but still manually manipulable, for perfectionists) trade.
It would also require getting an OK from Tom. Changes to any of these rules and policies would, actually.
- Why not just make realm mergers legal? This has caused so many scandals in the past, for no gain. What's equal footing? What's friendly? What's hostile? Why does it all even matter? And what's the logic in banning strategic secession if the opposite is also banned? Are small realms the threat or are big realms? Or are any at all? Mergers mean less titles to share around, lower tax tolerance, a lot of people being moved away from their traditional area. There are a LOT of costs to it. And we don't have a ruler who can OOC ban the whole realm to make it happen anymore, either. Players will not willingly give up their realm unless they have strong reasons to do so, why not respect these reasons without threatening sanctions over them?
I dunno, I'm still a bit ambivalent about this. I
do have a hard time with the idea of a King just cheerfully giving up his crown to make his entire Kingdom just a province of someone else's.
However, I also have a hard time with the fact that a realm that's got 2 regions and 3 nobles, and wants to join the realm with 10 regions and 30 nobles, has to pretend to go to war with them so they can "surrender"...and then still has to have the larger realm run takeovers on all their regions.
I think we can find a balance, but I'm not sure we'll ever do away entirely with the rule against the former type of merger.
