BattleMaster > Development
Estate Improvements
Antonine:
At the moment you can use your personal estate to build monuments and memorials and not much else. But it's quite clear that there was always an intention to allow knights to do other things with their estates.
So I've been having a think and I'd like some feedback on whether these would make sense as things which nobles should be able to build on their estates. The idea is that each one should have an affordable but significant cost (for a knight), but then give the holder of that estate access to certain bonuses whenever they're in the region.
* Smithy - Get the blacksmith to repair 5% of equipment damage for free (can only be used once per week)
* Chapel - Hold prayers at the chapel to restore unit morale to 100% for free (takes a large number of hours)
* Training Ground - Train your sword/jousting skill for free (equivalent to free training sessions with an advanced academy trainer)
* Hunting Chase (rural/woodland/mountain regions only) - Allows you to recruit one of your huntsmen as a scout (can only be used once per week)
* Craftsman (townsland/city/stronghold regions only) - Allows you to get them to make two free banners for your unit (can only be used once per week)
* Mill/Workshop - Gives your estate a randomly generated extra income of 10 to 20 gold per week
* Guardhouse - Daily cost of your unit is halved while you're in the same region as your estate due to being able to quarter your unit in it
So, as an example, a knight could decide to save up 100 gold to build a mill on their estate or 60 gold to build a training ground. They'd then get a long term perk from it, but equally it wouldn't be a perk significant enough that you couldn't live without it.
I'd envisage the improvements as being specific to the estate. When an estate is destroyed completely (e.g. given 0% land allocation) then the improvements are lost. And none of the perks from the improvements should be game balance altering.
This would also have the advantage of a) giving knights something to do, especially in peacetime, and b) giving nobles more of a reason to feel attached to their region. Changing your oath to another lord (or letting the region go rogue) would be something you'd have to care a lot more about if it meant leaving behind all the nice improvements you've spent time making to your estate. Also, it's likely to mean that players think more about their estate as an actual place rather than something under the politics tab which you forget about - once you know what improvements your estate has you're more likely to build up a mental image of it.
It'd also mean that knights would have to weigh up the pros and cons of making an improvement:
90 gold to build a guardhouse is quite extravagant in wartime if you're going to hardly ever visit your region, but it's probably a very wise investment if the realm's at peace and you're able to go sit in your region and save yourself some unit maintenance costs. Though if you're just going to be sitting in the region then maybe you should build a training ground too so you can practice your jousting. And oh, maybe you should suggest that the duke to host a tournament now that half the realm are hotshot jousters from spending so much time at their estates.
So that's the kind of thing I'm going for. Again, I don't think any of the perks should be game balance breaking and I think the cost of the improvements should have to be within reach for the average knight.
I'd be very interested to hear what people think. If people like the concept then I'll submit it as a feature request, but I'm sure there are other estate improvement ideas which people could come up with and I'm sure that the whole concept could use some tweaks before being submitted.
Bronnen:
Pretty sure those things were already approved but shelved due to lack of volunteers to help with the coding.
Antonine:
Well I'm happy to do the coding (am already helping as a dev). But I'd be interested in feedback on the specifics of what I'm proposing and in details of what has previously been proposed - no sense in re-inventing the wheel.
Chenier:
Estates used to have a specific function, they could help control or production I think. I don't remember what led to this removal.
Bronnen:
This was the thread I found .http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php?topic=2653.0
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