Caraldia council : adding depth to the last stages of the game

[Elgarion]

First, let me say how your mod is amazing : now I can't play M&B:W without it! Second, please forgive the spelling/grammar mistakes, as English is not my native language

Currently being in the last stages of the game, I started to conquer the all caraldian territory as a king. And I must admit that I feel a little bit bored, with a lot of repetitive actions. So I imagined a little concept, which would, in my opinion, enhance this last part of the game.

You could create a Council of Caraldia, with a voting assembly every year, composed of all the kings who agreed being part of the council, to nominate the Chief of Council.

To be part of the council, you must :
be a king with at least one castle and one town
pay 1000 denars / year

The Chief of council would have several proposition to give :

Embargo a nation (no more caravans)
If majority votes it, the nations who agreed won't trade anymore with the given target, until a delay (of one month?).

Help a nation in its war effort (money)
If majority votes it, the money from the “council bank” will be given to the target

Declare war on a nation
If majority votes it, the nations who agreed will be at war with the given target, until a delay (of one month?).

Exclude one council' member
If majority votes it, the target won't have the right to vote until a delay (of one month?)

As chief of the council, you have a secretary awaiting for you in your court, with this kind of dialog :

* Submit a proposition to the council
- Embargo > target
- Help a nation > target
- Declare war on > target
- Exclude one lord > target

* Retire (voting assembly will be called again to choose another Chief of council)

Player

If the player meets the minimal requirements, he will be asked one time a month if he wants to be part of the council assembly. If yes, 1000 denars will be taken from him, and he will be called to the meeting for voting.

Council assembly

One time a month, the council assembly will be called in the court of the Chief of council, to vote for resolutions or for an other chief of council. From the announce of the meeting, there will be a truce between all council' members.

Votes

As for taken castles / towns, lords support each other / hate each other, so they will vote for the lord they support.

I checked the forum but didn't see a proposition like this one. If there is, please delete / edit this one.
Thanks again for the mod, anyway

 

[manekemaan]

this would be really cool but then whats the use of conquering calradia? then you would be the only one in the council?

I think it would be cooler if every kingdom had this on its own. so that after a while when you have like 20 vasals those vassals would really have an effect of how you run your kingdom.

This would mean: king always the chief council
and all of your vassals become members of the council

Once every month you all gather for this council in the capital city (the city owned by the king)
As soon as all lords are there the meeting begins
Topics to discus: trade agreements, naps, wars, Fief assignement, Marshallship, Expansion (to where), ...

After the council there should be a feast, since al the lords are already present.

One thing you should have in mind is that to organize this council your kingdom should be at peace: otherwise while every lord is obliged to be present, your kingdom can get entirely ransacked.

Maybe like a once in a year coming together of all the kings of calradia but i don't really see the use of it since everyone wants to own the entire land.

 

[Elgarion]

I think that a council in our own courts would not make sense : you're the king, so you rule. But, with other kings, you're equals. So you can trade, discuss, etc.

The final goal of the council is making things more complex, harder, for players who are Kings and at the beginning of their expansion. For example, we can imagine that a too agressive player could be exclude from the council, even that the council could declare war on him.

So, it's set in the continuity of the diplomacy mod : you have to be politic to rule an entire continent...

 

[Moribund]

Elgarion, not entirely true. Nobles can, and have forced kings to listen to them. Look up the Magna Carta.

 

[Badger0]

Having a council with your vassals would be kinda cool, but then I think you should be able to set your type of government, all of which have different effects on the vassals.

Giving them more power, as with a council, might make them happy as long as things are going smoothly, but if there are major disagreements amongst the lords, they may take it out on you.
Without a council, as an absolute monarch, they may not be as happy with you, but you're a good king/queen, and help them out, they might appreciate it more.

Obviously other people can come up with better ideas, just mostly wanted to make a proper post and give my +1 for an idea like this.

 

[Elgarion]

Honestly, I prefer a Caraldian Council as described in the first post, because it can add challenge and something news to the later stages, which can be quite boring (ok you're conquering things... but) ; on the other hand, being a young king you have already plenty things to do. Maybe it could be possible to put both ideas in the game (court council / Caraldian council), one day

Well, this post was my two cents. Amazing mod and amazing game anyway and thanks to all people who're paying attention to my suggestion

 

[Rewjeo]

The problem with the Calradian Council is that there is at most 7 factions on the map. Now, if there were 22 (each city is its own faction) I could see it. But that's about the same number as an in-country council. Even less as the game goes on.

 

[Elgarion]

Rewjeo => No, it would be the council of the kings of Caraldian. So 7 kings, 7 potential members for the council, if they all accept.

 

[manekemaan]

yes but thats on day 1... day 400... ups its just me and ragnar  in that council.(for some reason i save the nords for last)

thats why i suggested a council with your vassals. Since you were talking about the endgame; this could bring more in depth gaming as you would want to conquer calradia AND make your vassals happy.

The importantness of the council could be depending on your domestic policies (centralized no council decentralized council)

 

[Elgarion]

In fact, the main issue I see, not far from the end of the game, is the lack of challenge. I will try to make my point clearer : if a Caraldian Council would have seen you soon enough as a threat, helbed your rivals and declared war on you, you wouldn't be just "you and Ragnar" , and your game would be probably more challenging, if not more interesting. By the way, a setting could be set to destroy the council once there"s not enough kings left.

 

[manekemaan]

they already kind of do something like that: when a kingdom gets 2 strong they all declare war on it

 

[Waihti]

I guess a council of caladria doesn't make much sence since you have not enough members in the endgame and most of the decision finding (where nations look at other nations to act appropiate) is already there. But still an interesting idea.

However a vassal council does make sense. But we need a good concept here so the player doesn't loose control but still has to fear a vassal rebellion.

 

[manekemaan]

waihti, if you think you have time to start working this out let me know ok?

 

[SilentK]

I love the idea but with vassals, OR this idea but WAY more frequent, day 1 then only day 400, its way too far, maybe 100 days, (a lot already), but still i see no point, in the end they all want to become the supreme rulers of calradia...

when a faction gets strong they tend to "ally" with eachother anyway, even if they are not officially listed as allies they will 90% of the times attack the strong guys rather than the far, weaker ones...

the council would be a nice idea for a different game, or mod, like the 1257 AD mod, where there is little hope to conquer all the map, on wich such a council (of only allies or any1 as suggested) would make sense..

for 7 nations that try to be supreme rulers, such a council would be unlogical, why would they bother talk to each other when, in the end, they want to conquer everything?...

 

[Dagorath]

I'll just note that kings usually, historically, had privy councils.

You could implement a privy council internally in a kingdom so that every X days the king "reconvenes" the council. So, what happens is, the council gets re-evaluated based on various factors like

Are any current members captive to an enemy? If so, remove them.

Have any current members increased their notoriety by more than X%? If so, remove them.

Have any members fallen in popularity with the king more than X%? If so, remove them.

Out of the remainder, are any members less than X% (on average) popular with all the remaining members? If so, are they less than at 70 relationship with the King? If the answer to both is no, remove them.

Then each remaining member + the king decide on new appointments to replace the outgoing ones based on certain criteria.

For example, be popular with all the privy council members (relation above 50) and have a reputation above 80% of the median of the privy council. Further, since the king makes the final decision, you must have relation above 70 with him.

Being appointed gives you, say, 100 reputation (since this is a pretty big deal) which should bring you even closer. Being removed reduces your reputation by 80 - you ARE a former bigwig, after all, so that's something to trade on.

This would also enable a whole ton of extra intrigue potentially. You could add intrigue type quests that specifically target the removal of certain members of the privy council by other members - or the king may disapprove of a member but be unable to remove him, so you could improve your relationship with the king by helping him.

This could also be interesting in that if at all possible, it could be an alternate path to rebellion.

Say you have the entire privy council in your pocket, as it were - your reputation is greater than anyone else in the land, all of the privy council approve of you. But what if they're all annoyed with the king? Maybe a war has gone on too long, or the marshal is an annoying git who they want rid of, etc etc. If certain conditions were met (again through your own intruiging coupled with others) then you could overthrow the king and turn them into either a second pretender, or if said already exists (then, being aware they couldn't garner support to return), a mere noble.

But not necessarily with you becoming king - ideally this would be something the AI would be trying to do as well. The Great Game.

This is probably far too ambitious as a whole, but still... would be pretty neat and would make the mid-game much more interesting beyond simple conquest.

Of course, ideally, something like this would also need wars to be significantly less likely - it could actually make wars less likely, since the king would have to balance the desire for additional territory against the possibility of irking the nobility to the point of rebellion.

You could even factor in populism, I suppose; a secondary route to the privy council could be high reputation coupled with a certain number created by averaging the attitude towards you of all the villages/towns. So if you're super-popular with the people, the privy council/king would be practically forced to involve you as soon as possible - or (off-camera, as it were) they would have to face popular discontent.

Incidentally this could also improve the endgame dramatically: if the nobility all continue to intrigue against you, and you have to factor that in...

Quests could change to things like

"My Lord, Count Suchandsuch is intriguing against you and clearly desires the throne! This cannot go unanswered! You must challenge him to a duel." That could then go three ways: either you take the advice of the noble and duel the other noble, or you disbelieve him and do not do so, or you just downright don't do it because you're a damned coward (:p). All three would have different effects based on the personality of the noble offering it - so a cunning noble would be considered to be almost certainly lying, for example. Take his advice and you lose reputation with all the nobles who are cunning (they see weakness) - don't take his advice and gain grudging respect from those and increased rep with all the less conniving sorts - and so on.

This game has so many variables you could play with to make this super-interesting.