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More options for Stewards

Started by Constantine, October 05, 2020, 03:31:08 PM

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Constantine

Allow region lords to toggle specific permissions for their stewards to
- hold courts
- recruit militia
- disband militia
- manage estates
- build infrastructure
- set taxes
- control food distribution
etc.

Anaris

At what point do you stop being the Lord in anything but name...?
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Constantine

That's a strange take. I don't think that administrative chores were ever the main attraction of being a landed noble.
I mean, wasn't actual medieval steward's job literally what I desribed?

Anaris

Quote from: Constantine on October 05, 2020, 05:13:30 PM
That's a strange take. I don't think that administrative chores were ever the main attraction of being a landed noble.
I mean, wasn't actual medieval steward's job literally what I desribed?

While I am sure there were, in fact, plenty of medieval Lords who delegated every last one of their responsibilities to stewards, heirs, or whoever they found who would take them on, and spent all day hunting and drinking, there are a number of good reasons that I don't feel it best fits BattleMaster's needs to emulate that model.

One of the foremost of these is that it is intentional in BattleMaster for positions of power to come with increased levels of responsibility. If you are not interested in performing any of the responsibilities of a region Lord, you should not accept the positionĂ¢â‚¬"and this goes for every level of the hierarchy.

I think it might make sense to expand the abilities of stewards somewhat, but there is definitely a line to be drawn, and that line is well before "every button a Lord can push".
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Constantine

I find it disheartening how you choose to interpret this suggestion as "a feature to allow lords do nothing". Lazy lords are already lazy today and you can't even depose them. Also no one can force a steward to do all the work. It's just something to do for people who want to have an extra option to do something.
The idea behind was to give more people more stuff to do. With the recent changes landed titles are becoming very scarce and young knights in peace times don't have much going for them. On the contrary, this feature would allow for some sort of IG mentorship, where a lord can teach his steward how to run a region.
Why is delegating bad? It's great. It's engaging, it's inclusive.

I'm really looking for ways to make the game more engaging for newer players and so far stewardship is one mechanic that has a lot of potential in that regard.

Zakky

I don't understand why Anaris views this as a negative feature.

The lord can fire his steward anytime. I can probably leave things like holding courts/estate control to the lord while allowing the steward to build and upgrade. So the lord focuses on the ruling aspect rather than doing more chores or rolling RNG.

Anaris

I think there's a line to be drawn between buttons the Lord can press that require authority and those that merely maintain the administration.

Managing estates is not something that can be delegated. Period. That is part of the Lord's feudal duty to and authority over his vassal knights, and needs to remain something that only the Lord can do.

Controlling food distribution is merely a part of how the region is managed. It clearly falls into the same category as existing tasks the Steward can perform, and should be opened up to Stewards.

Others of these fall in the middle between these two; personally, off the top of my head, I would say that building infrastructure and holding courts both require the Lord's authority, while setting taxes probably falls just this side of the "administration" line.

I'm ambivalent about the militia ones.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Zakky

Quote from: Anaris on October 05, 2020, 11:08:08 PM
I think there's a line to be drawn between buttons the Lord can press that require authority and those that merely maintain the administration.

Managing estates is not something that can be delegated. Period. That is part of the Lord's feudal duty to and authority over his vassal knights, and needs to remain something that only the Lord can do.

Controlling food distribution is merely a part of how the region is managed. It clearly falls into the same category as existing tasks the Steward can perform, and should be opened up to Stewards.

Others of these fall in the middle between these two; personally, off the top of my head, I would say that building infrastructure and holding courts both require the Lord's authority, while setting taxes probably falls just this side of the "administration" line.

I'm ambivalent about the militia ones.

Maybe we should add more roles so Stewards just don't become the next 2nd lord in charge. That way, maybe people will be inclined to get more knights to do less tedious work. Maybe you can have a knight commander who will be a minor version of general that is in charge of building infrastructures/militias.

Building infrastructures should be done on estate levels. That would give knights another thing to spend their gold on and maybe they won't leave their estates as easily. Give them that feeling of attachment that the game lacks.

PolarRaven

Maybe the Steward could get extra gold (directly from the Lords share) for each thing that the Lord enables him to do.
eg.  3% per tax for holding courts (if toggled on)
eg.  2.5% per tax for keeping the food stores in order (if toggled on)
etc.


Stabbity

Allow stewards to embezzle from their regions like a banker can.
Life is a dance, it is only fitting that death sing the tune.

pcw27

One benefit of the ability to delegate more responsibilities to stewards is that it gives new players learning opportunities so they can know how to manage things before they get their first region.

Quote from: Anaris on October 05, 2020, 11:08:08 PM
I think there's a line to be drawn between buttons the Lord can press that require authority and those that merely maintain the administration.

Managing estates is not something that can be delegated. Period. That is part of the Lord's feudal duty to and authority over his vassal knights, and needs to remain something that only the Lord can do.

That I totally agree with. I assume you mean "managing estates" as in changing their size, kicking knights out, setting the lords share of taxes etc. I remember back when knights had to "manage their estates" by setting them to either authority or production.

I wonder though if it might be worthwhile for all knights to be able to influence the tax-rate of their own estates, just so they can get practice managing a tax system. It would be a good way to encourage more p2p interaction. Lords will have to warn their knights not to over-tax their peasants and might have to expell a tyrannical knight for being greedy.

Quote from: Anaris on October 05, 2020, 11:08:08 PM
Others of these fall in the middle between these two; personally, off the top of my head, I would say that building infrastructure and holding courts both require the Lord's authority, while setting taxes probably falls just this side of the "administration" line.

I'm ambivalent about the militia ones.

I'm pretty sure historically a lord wouldn't need to personally hold court like that. It even says here that medieval stewards had to oversee judicial proceedings:

https://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume6/steward.html#:~:text=On%20the%20estate%2C%20the%20steward,perhaps%20others%20with%20various%20duties.

You could have it be that a knight only holds court over their own peasants. In mechanical terms, you make it the same hold-court process but apply a penalty based on estate size. So if a knight would normally cause a 5% change but their estate is only 20% of the land they'd only cause a 1% change. You could also have a limit that if the estate is too small they don't gain this ability. In addition the court time should be only 3 hours or so since the knight is judging fewer peasants. The knights holding court also doesn't prevent the lord from doing so, though all can only hold court once per day. Now I know what you're thinking "that sounds like it would give a lord with knights an advantage", yup it would give them a small advantage provided they have loyal knights who will cooperate with them, and that's a good thing. IMO any mechanic that says "You can gain a small, non-game-breaking bonus if you talk to another human being and convince them to do something" is a good mechanic. This could make for a lot of fun p2p and roleplay potential. When a region is on the edge of revolt the lord calls his knights to help him restore order, holding court by day while policing the streets at night.

Creating a new building I'd agree should require the lord's authority, but repairing them shouldn't.

If we're concerned about too much delegation, the easiest solution is to limit the numbe of roles the lord can assign to a single knight. Also I've suggested this before, giving each role a different name would be cool.

So in summary

Suggestion one:

Stewards- remain the same

Magistrate- can hold court

Warden- can recruit or disband militia

Master Mason- can repair buildings and fortifications

Suggestion two:

Eliminate magistrate and instead any knight can hold court in a region but with a lesser impact than the lord.

Suggestion three:

Stewards get food and repair of infrastructure buildings

Wardens get militia and repair of fortifications and RCs

Court can be the version from either suggestion 1 or 2.


Quote from: Stabbity on October 15, 2020, 02:28:08 AM
Allow stewards to embezzle from their regions like a banker can.

That would be cool, especially if we ever got around to giving the banker investigatory powers.

Anaris

Necromancy!  :o Not just thread necromancy, forum necromancy!  ;D

Quote from: pcw27 on October 23, 2022, 05:49:40 PM
I wonder though if it might be worthwhile for all knights to be able to influence the tax-rate of their own estates, just so they can get practice managing a tax system. It would be a good way to encourage more p2p interaction. Lords will have to warn their knights not to over-tax their peasants and might have to expell a tyrannical knight for being greedy.

That's one thing I have in mind as a possibility for an eventual expansion/rework of the estate system. Details are still very much TBD.

Quote
I'm pretty sure historically a lord wouldn't need to personally hold court like that. It even says here that medieval stewards had to oversee judicial proceedings:

I've actually got some ideas in mind for making holding court a little less of a rote region-maintenance mindless click, and more something that feels (at least a little bit) like you're resolving disputes. I could easily see broadening that to include some disputes that a Knight could resolve, and some that require the authority of the Lord (and, indeed, have a concomitant increase in effect).

Now, it's also worth noting that as part of the Hinterlands feature package, I'm currently working on some changes that will significantly shift the knight/lord landscape: in particular, I'm looking at changing how many regions would be expected to have knights at all. In general, less-populated rural regions would not be expected to support a knight; many more knights would get shifted to cities, where they would be much more certain of getting a decent income.

How that will affect the region management needs of rural regions, I'm not yet sure; this is still all very much uncharted waters. Overall, I'd say it's likely to make expanding the role of Stewards much less effective at taking burden off of Lords, simply because there would be fewer Lords with Stewards in the first place.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan