Political mini-game - feudalism, religion & city politic

For those who don't want to read through all the posts in this thread, here is a summary of the scheme so far:

SUMMARY OF SCHEME

(0)Basics

- Three offices in every city (Justice, Administrative, Ecclesiastical)

- Four classes in every city (Nobles, Burghers, Clergy, Peasants)

- You earn appointment to an office by buttering up the right people via appropriate quests & bribes

- Who you have to butter up depends on the type of city:
(i) Regular City (justice officer is military man) - appointment by king & people
(ii) Royal City (justice officer is a royal agent) - appointment by king
(iii) Ecclesiastical City (justice officer is a cleric) - appointment by archbishop
(iv) Free City (justice officer is a burgher) - appointment by people

- You can't please everybody (by satisfying some people, you piss off others)

- Once in office, you have a whole new set of rights & responsibilities:

- If you play your cards right, you can gain additional offices in additional cities

- You can be demoted/lose appointments by misbehavior.

- You can eventually declare yourself a rebel and begin creating a kingdom of your own, one city at a time.

(1) Justice Officer

Rights=
(a) Adjusting internal power sliders (for the four classes)
(b) Use of city barracks

Responsibilities=
(a) Fulfill Ban of Arms (participate in king's campaign)
(b) Crush noble, burgher & peasant rebellions

(2) Administrative Officer

Rights =
(a) control city budget
(b) Use of city barracks
(c) if of seneschal rank, adjust own internal sliders
(d) if of missi rank, adjust any internal sliders anywhere
(e) Petition for staple rights
(f) Petition for mint rights
(g) borrow from moneylender in the city's name

Responsibilities =
(a) deliver tax trains to temporal overlord
(b) security & attendance of fairs
(c) maintain city fortifications

(3) Ecclesiastical Officer

Rights =
(a) adjust fervor slider
(b) use of city barracks
(c) if of prelate rank, adjust own clerical slider
(d) if of archbishopal see, adjust clerical sliders in all suffragan cities
(e) Petition for elevation to archbishopal see
(f) Petition for holy relics
(g) borrow from moneylender in the church's name

Responsibilites =
(a) deliver tithe trains to spiritual overlord
(b) maintain church
(c) maintain charities
(d) maintain schools
(e) crush heretic and puritan rebellions.

------------------

Highlighted features

I - Really novel (& probably difficult to code):

(a) Appointments to city offices
(b) Manipulating internal balance (judicial & religious sliders)
(c) Special petitions (= for staple rights, mint rights, holy relics, dismissal of officers & reassignment of sovereignty (city charters, elevation to see, suffragans))
(d) Declaration of Independence (personal rebellion/own kingdom)

II - Occasional events (moderately difficult to code):

(e) King's summer campaign
(f) Fairs (moneylenders, luxury vendors & tournaments)

III - Variations on old themes (shouldn't be difficult to code):

(g) City-specific war parties (counts)
(h) City-specific rebels & militias (baronial, civic, peasant, heretic, puritan, episcopal guard)
(i) New buildings (Church, City Hall, Barracks)
(j) New goods (stone, special luxury & beautifying items)
(k) New places (monasteries, stone quarry)
(l) New neutral party (monastic armies)
(m) New caravans to escort (= merchants, pilgrims, tax trains, tithe trains, missi, legates, petitions)
New actions (commandeering, detaching escorts, detaching patrols, assembling caravans, borrowing, purchase-in-advance)
(o) New hero (Chaplain)

Click to expand...

===========

(First Post)

Evidently a lot of people are searching for something interesting to do in the higher levels.

What about politics?

I mean, thus far, we have a king & his counts, but there is little or no interesting interaction between them. And Medieval politics could be rather intricate.

If there was internal politics, we could play a role in it and, in time, ascend to count ourselves and kick off a little administrative mini-game at the higher levels.

Introducing politics would also kill off a few other birds, e.g.

-- rather than just adding quests upon quests haphazardly, an underlying political framework could provide a host of quests in a more systematic fashion.

-- many here have suggested we use our accumulated riches to buy land. Unfortunately, in the Medieval era, most land was not for sale. It was invested via feudal grants, i.e. granted by a feudal lord to a vassal in return for personal services. Rather than purchase land outright, we should be required to "work" for it by performing the right quests & using our accumulated money to grease the right people so that we are invested with land & titles.

-- also introducing politics will allow us to insert the religious factor. I mean, what were the Middle Ages without religion? Although "Caladria" has thus far operated without religion, it would nonetheless be interesting to toss it in in a non-controversial manner. I have really only three possible religions in mind -- Christian, Muslim and Pagan -- which will translate in political terms into the persons of bishops, qadis and druids.

(And there's perhaps not a better antidote against the silly insistence on "magic" than a dose of some good old-fashioned religion. )

Here's a sketch of an political framework. It is based on the kind of feudal, religious & city politics that prevailed in the High Middle Ages (1000-1200) in which M & B is set.

Career paths
========

After achieving the level of "knight" in regular M & B fashion, you have various career paths:

-- a military career (lord, viscount, count, marquis, duke)

-- a royal officer career (sheriff, bailiff, seneschal, missi, chancellor)

-- a clerical career (priest, vicar, bishop, prelate, archbishop)

[the Muslim route would be imam, mullah, qadi, mufti, chief qadi; I am not certain of what the Pagan path would be, perhaps witch, shaman, druid, grand druid?]

These are not mutually exclusive. You hold some rank in each line, e.g. you can be a count-bailiff-vicar.

But the highest rank you achieve in each line will determine whether you are primarily identified as a military careerist, a royal careerist or a clerical careerist. The primary career will determine the kind of posts you're likely to get appointed to.

You advance in each career path via experience points (qualitatively differentiated by career path). The type of the quests you choose to perform improve the experience in each career path.

You can also use money to "invest" in experience points in a particular career path (think of them as bribes).

Ranks are prerequisites to achieving actual offices in cities.

The Offices
=======

Each kingdom has a king in his capital and whole bunch of cities.

Every city does not have just a count, but rather three "offices" -- Justice, Administration & Ecclesiastical affairs. The holders of each office will give us the relevant quests of the relevant type.

(a) Justice (most powerful job, juridical & military control of the city, responsible for holding intermittent courts to hear cases, pass judgment & resolve disputes; also military responsibilities like implementing the ban of arms & delivering the city's militias for the king's campaigns.)

(b) Administration (responsibilities for upkeep of walls, towers, roads, collection of taxes & tolls, allocation of commons & open spaces, running royal mints (if applicable), setting up & maintaining security of fairs)

(c) Ecclesiastical affairs (maintenance of church/mosque, hiring priests, schooling, distribution of alms to the poor, persecuting heresy, implementing instructions of archbishop/chief qadi/chief druid).

These three slots can be filled by different people (including, at some point, ourselves).

A single person can hold one or more of the office slots in a city.

Intitial Set-up
=========

In the capital we have:

Justice = a King
Administration = a Chancellor
Ecclesiastical = an Archbishop

This doesn't change.

In every city we start off with:

Justice = a Count
Administration = a Bailiff
Ecclesiastical = a Bishop

But this can and probably will change a lot over time.

The king makes removals & new appointments of office in all cities intermittently with some degree of randomness, with probabilities adjusted according to a variety of factors, including internal political sliders (see below).

The king will usually make appointments consistently in terms of primary career path -- military men are appointed to judicial posts, royal officers to administrative posts and clerics to ecclesiastical posts.

OR ocassionally the king may decide to do something interesting & mix the offices, appoint a military man to ecclesiastical affairs, appoint a royal officer to the justice post, or a cleric to administrative affairs, etc.

But the justice office is the crucial one. If the king appoints anybody other than a career military man to the justice post, the city's TYPE changes. (see below)

City Types
=======

The justice office is the crucial one. It determines jurisdiction and rules of accession to the other offices in the city.

There are four "types" of cities:

(a) Regular cities -- justice office is held by a Count or other military person. All appointments in a regular city are made by the king.

(b) Royal Cities -- justice office is held by a Bailiff or other royal officer. All appointments in a royal city are made by the king. A royal city can return to a regular city if the king decides to appoint a count.

(c) Ecclesiastical cities - justice office is held by a Bishop or other cleric. All appointments in an ecclesiastical city are made by the nearest Archbishop. Once a city becomes ecclesiastical, the King ceases having anything to do with it. (Unless we take control of all three offices and deliver the city "back" to the king).

(d) Free Cities -- a special rare class of city which is created when the king (with some randomness) grants a particular city a "charter of incorporation". Free cities are run by a "City Council", who elect two Consuls (Judicial & Administrative) and a Bishop. All appointments remain under the control of the City Council. Once a city becomes free, the King ceases having anything to do with it. (Unless we take control of all three offices and deliver the city "back" to the king.)

Note: Only the justice office matters to determine the type of city, e.g. if a regular city goes from Count-Bailiff-Bishop to Count-Count-Bishop, Count-Count-Count, or Count-Bailiff-Bailiff or Count-Bishop-Bishop, it remains a regular city and the rules of earning appointments remain as they were. The only thing that is changed when a single man holds multiple offices is the probabilities of next appointment (less if a single man holds more than one office) and the probabilities of that city generating revolts (higher) or the count himself going into rebellion (higher).

Appointments
=========

All offices are by appointment.

In regular & royal cities (see below), appointments are made by the king.

In ecclesiastical cities (see below) appointments are made by the archbishop.

In free cities (see below) appointments are made by the city's council.

The officers die after a while, or are removed and a new appointment made. It is also possible that they go into rebellion.

Objectives
=======

The objective is to deftly use career investments and quest choices to position yourself so that you maximize the likelihood of being appointed to an office in a city, manage that office diligently so that you might acquire more offices in the same city, and/or in other cities.

The ultimate endgame will be to acquire complete control of a sufficient number of cities, go into rebellion and declare yourself independent king.

The even-more-than-ultimate endgame is to use your new "kingdom" as a launchpad to seize control of all other cities on the map (i.e. conquer the Swadians & Vaegirs), by conquest & diplomacy, one city at a time.

Earning Office
=========

You don't earn office automatically, but can increase your probability of being appointed by king/archbishop/city council or whomever controls the appointment in a particular city you have your eye upon.

To earn appointment to any office in a regular city, you must be (a) popular with the king; (b)popular with that city.

To earn appointment in a royal city, you must be popular with the king only.

To earn appointment in an ecclesiastical city, you must be (a) popular with the nearest archbishop, (b) popular with that city.

To earn appointment in a free city, you must be popular with the city only.

Rank Prerequisites
============

You must have achieved the relevant career rank in order to have a chance at appointment in the relevant office.

Justice office:

-- you must have at least the rank of "Count" to be eligible for this office in a city.
-- you must have at least the rank of "Marquis" to be eligible for this office in two cities.
-- you must have at least the rank of "Duke" to be eligible for this office in more than two cities.

Administrative office:

-- you must at least have the rank of "Bailiff" to be eligible for this office in a city.
-- you must at least have the rank of "Seneschal" to be eligible for this office in two cities.
-- you must at least have the rank of "Missi" to be eligible for this office in more than two cities.

Ecclesiastical office:

-- you must at least have the rank of "Bishop" to be eligible for this office in a city.
-- you must at least have the rank of "Prelate" to be eligible for this office in two cities.
-- you must at least have the rank of "Archbishop" to be eligible for this office in more than two cities.

Special rule:

-- "Royal City": to achieve an appointment in a royal city, you must have at least already achieved the rank of bailiff in the royal career path, regardless of the actual office you will hold in that city.

So a regular city could look like:

Justice = Tweedledum (Rank = Count*, Sheriff, Vicar)
Administration = Tweedledee (Rank = Count, Bailiff*, Prelate)
Ecclesiastical = Tweedledorp (Rank = Viscount, Seneschal, Bishop*)

(* - Rank that matters for that position).

But a royal city would additionally require that Tweedledum be at least of Bailiff rank too.

City Classes
========

To earn popularity in a city, you must earn the estimation of each of the following four classes of people:

(a) Nobles
(b) Burghers
(c) Clerics
(d) Peasants

They hate each other.

Each of them hold you in some estimation (high = 100, low = 0)

Only popularity among the first three classes affect your probability of being appointed to an office in that city (i.e. what the peasants think of you doesn't matter).

You get a higher chance of being appointed to the justice office if you're really popular among nobles, to the administration office if you're really popular among burghers, to the ecclesiastical office if you're really popular among clerics. Of course, as mentioned earlier, you must also have already achieved the relevant career "rank" to be eligible for appointment to any such position.

Your actions, quest performance & bribes will raise or lower your popularity in each class.

Of course, your actions actions also affect your king's estimation of you (high = 100, low = 0). So buttering up a city's classes can also create problems between yourself and the king. So you have to balance the interests carefully.

City popularity
=========

-- the more pro-nobility quests you perform (e.g. protect the city from the king's officers, retain tolls & taxes, crush civic & peasant uprisings, refuse religious quests, give barons a free hand in raiding caravans), the higher your estimation among the nobles.

-- the more economic quests you perform (e.g. securing fairs, escorting merchant caravans, blockading rival cities & ruining rival fairs, comandeering caravans towards this city, crushing baronial & peasant revolts), the more your estimation among the burghers.

-- the more religious quests you perform (e.g. escorting pilgrims & bishops, acquiring holy relics and learned books, crushing baronial revolts, contributions to the church buildings & charities, etc.), the more your estimation among the clerics.

-- Peasants are rather irrelevant, but their interests are usually in line with the king's. They like you more if you help escort royal officers and put down baronial & civic revolts, but dislike you if you put down peasant revolts. Their attitude towards religious quests are ambiguous.


City Revolts
========

Each city has some probability of spawning various types of revolters:

-- a count's revolt (extremely rare, very special case)
-- a baronial revolt (common)
-- a civic revolt (common)
-- a peasant revolt (occasional)

The probabilities of each type of revolt breaking out depend on the city's political sliders (see below).

The composition of the revolting armies varies according to type.

-- count's war party is very large and well-endowed with high-level troops.
-- the baronial army is small & almost all knights.
-- The civic militia is largish, some knights but mostly horsemen, archers and lower level troops.
-- Peasant armies are enormous and nearly all peasants, with the odd horseman & archer thrown in.

Revolting armies attack their opposites,e.g.

-- the army of a revolting count will attack/be attacked by royal war parties.
-- baronial rebels will attack/be attacked by civic militias
-- civic rebels will attack/be attacked by baronial armies
-- peasant rebels will attack/be attacked by both baronial & civic militas.

You may choose to help the revolters or quash the revolts. The choice you make will change your relations with the king and the various classes in the city experiencing the revolt.

Failing to quash a revolt of any type increases the likelihood that the count (or whomever has the justice office in that city) will be removed and a new appointment made.

So, you can think of allowing a rebellion to run its course as a way of hurrying up your chance of being appointed. On the other hand, failure to quash a revolt also lowers your popularity with the king (esp. if the count himself is in revolt) and lowers your popularity with the classes which are not revolting. So it's all a bit of a gamble.

Failure to quash a revolt when you yourself are in office will probably lead to your dismissal, esp. if you hold the justice office.

In Office
=====

Once you achieve control of an office in a city, you get special points you can allocate to each of the classes to butter them up further. Their relative position with each other will determine your popularity among each class and other kinds of things.

You must also fulfill your duties, or risk being replaced by another appointment. But performing them too diligently also affects popularity and spawns revolts which may lead to your removal.


Justice Duties
=========

If you control the justice office, you also get control of four sliders to weigh power within each class, between the "majors" and the "minors" in each class.

(a) Noble Slider: Captains vs. Valvassores
(Captains = great feudal & allodial lords; Valvassores = knights & vassals of the great lords)

(b) Burgher slider: Patricians vs. Freemen
(Patricians = masters of the guilds; Freemen = lowly artisans & shopkeepers)

(c) Clerical Slider: Priests vs. Deacons
(Priests = major clergy; Deacons = minor clergy)

(d) Peasant slider: Farmers vs. Serfs
(Farmers = free tenant farmers; serfs = unfree farm laborers)

These are shorthand for the "judgments" you make on your court days, when cases & petitions are presented to you.

How you adjust the sliders more in one direction or another, will affect the probabilities of the next appointments, quantity & quality of troops available, the wealth & tax revenues of the city, the revoltability factors, and other stuff I have yet to think of.

e.g. a city where the nobles slider is heavily weighted on captains will have few but high quality troops for hire. On the downside, it is also prone to civic revolt (will spawn lots of rebel civic militias). A city where the slider is heavily weighted on valvassores, will have many but low quality troops for hire. On the downside, it is prone to baronial revolt.

If you fail to fulfill your duties in the justice office (e.g. fail to show up on your prescheduled court day, etc.), you lose popularity and increase the probability of being removed.

You also have the special responsibility of regularly raising and delivering troops for the king, which are scheduled intermittently when you receive notice of a "Ban of Arms". Again, failure to do so increases probability of being removed. Implementing a Ban of Arms event affects your popularity negatively in the city but positively with the king.

Rules of slider adjustment
=================

The basic rule is that only the justice officer can adjust the slider in one direction or another (every once so often, on a prescheduled day, or after achieving a certain level of experience points via battle or quests or by "investing" money in experience points.)

But it is permissible that high-ranking royal and ecclesiastical officers may mess with your sliders without your consent. And, contrariwise, if you're yourself a high-ranking officer or cleric, you may mess around with other people's sliders.

The Special Rules are the following:

(A) Prelates. If you have the rank of "prelate" and hold the ecclesiastical or any other office, you can adjust the clerical slider in your city, regardless of who the justice officer is. Contrariwise, if you are the justice officer but your ecclesiastical officer is of prelate rank, he can adjust the clerical slider against your will. You can try preventing this by petitioning the king for his removal.

(B) Seneschals. If you have the rank of "seneschal" and hold the administrative or any other office, you can adjust the burgher slider in your city, regardless of who the justice officer is. Contariwise, if the administrative officer in your city (not you) is of seneschal rank, he can adjust the burgher slider against your will. You can try preventing this by petitioning the king for his removal.

(C) Archbishops. If you have the rank of "archbishop", you can adjust the clerical sliders in any city (except the free cities). Contrariwise, unless you live in a free city, you can be visited by a roving archbishop-ranking legate who can mess around with your clerical slider against your will. You can prevent that adjustment by seeking out & defeating the legate's guard before he reaches your city. But that will lower your popularity with the clergy.

(D) Missi. If you have the rank of "missi", you can adjust any slider in any city (except the ecclesiastical & free cities). Contrariwise, unless you live in an ecclesiastical or free city, you can be visited by a missi who can mess around with any of your sliders against your will. You can prevent that adjustment by seeking out & defeating the missi's army before he reaches your city. But that will tremendously lower your popularity with the king, but may make you wildly popular in the city.

Administrative Duties
=============

If you control the administration office, you get a budget which you must allocate to upkeep of walls & towers & roads, hold fairs, provide or assign part of your troops as escorts for merchant caravans, etc.

You also have the duty to provide security for pre-scheduled fairs. Failure to show up on fair day, and that's a big popularity hit.

You have also the special responsibility of collecting & delivering taxes & tolls to the king, again scheduled intermittently. Tax-collection is unpopular within the city, but failure to do ruins your relationship with the king.

If an ecclesiastical city, those taxes/tolls must be delivered to the Archbishop.

If an free city, you retain the taxes/tolls in your budget.

Although the city budget is separate from your own, you can steal from the budget and ruin your popularity. You can perhaps also take loans out in the city's name and saddle the city with the debt

Volume of taxes & tolls are affected by the burgher sliders which you may or may not have control of, depending on your rank.

Special Administrative Privileges
=====================

As administrator, you can petition & bribe the king to grant your city special administrative rights. You can request:

(a) "mint rights" -- the right to mint money (increases your revenues via seignorage fees)

(b) "staple rights" -- the right to commandeer any and all merchant caravans in the area into your city without harming your standing with the crown (improves your cities trade & finances)

(c) "fair privileges" -- exemptions from royal tolls & tariffs for all caravans headed for your city on fair day (increases trade traffic & wealth of burghers).

You can also petition your king for the abolition of mint rights, staple rights & fair privileges in neighboring cities (so that they don't compete with you, improves the wealth of your city & your popularity with your burghers)

[A way this could be done is to have the game set up so that, other than the capital (which automatically has mint, staple & fair privileges which it can't lose), there is only one other city in the kingdom which has staple rights, one other city with mint rights, one other city with staple rights. But these rights can be reassigned by successful petition. Cities should fight over & steal these privileges from each other.]

Ecclesiastical office
============

If you control the ecclesiastical office, you are in charge of churches, schools & pilgrims. I'll give this some more thought.

Rebel Lord
=======

Outside the popularity numbers, you also have a general "bad boy" number as a general indicator of your naughtiness. You earn bad boy points by:

(a) promising but failing to achieve quests, whether by incompetence or double-crossing
(b) persistently withholding taxes & tolls from their rightful recipients.
(c) persistently attacking royal or ecclesiastial officers as they go about their business.
(d) attacking peaceful religious pilgrims & merchant caravans without a special quest request or staple privileges.
(e) persistently failing to quash revolters or even helping them.
(f) some other stuff.

The more bad boy points you have, the harder it becomes to bribe your way into popularity (i.e. the gradient gets steeper) and the probabilities of rebellions in your city increase.

After a certain threshold of bad boy points, you have the option of becoming a "rebel lord" yourself.

When you become a rebel, all your fellow officers are deposed and you take control of all three offices for yourself in your main city (but lose rank & all offices elsewhere). You instantly lose a large amount of popularity among all classes. Massive rebellions will spawn immediately.

You will also be hunted down & attacked by large war parties, your city will be blockaded (e.g. merchant caravans heading in your direction will be attacked or redirected, you are prevented from entering other cities), etc.

You can continue living like a rebel, or make amends and return to good graces of your monarch or switch allegiance to the other king.

The incentive to remain living like a rebel is that you can make alliances with other rebel counts (if they exist or you can encourage them). If the number of rebel cities achieve a certain number and your relationships with rebel counts are good enough, you can declare yourself "king" and thus found a new kingdom of your own and control all appointments within it.

Bandit Lord
=======

If your bad boy points rocket quickly, but you have not yet achieved office in any city, you become a "Bandit" and take control of some bandit hideout (if these are included in the game).

You can return to the regular political game by working your way back into the good graces of one king or the other by quests & bribes.

Marriage
======

A one-shot thing. You can marry a widow/daughter/son of a Count, Bailiff, Consul or Bishop (!) of a city and gain an instant popularity boost among all the classes there, esp. in the class you are marrying into. Available wives/husbands are listed in every city and come with different dowries and how they affect popularity gradients. Divorce/assassination is not an option, so use your marriage card wisely.

Another advantage is that you can receive quests from your own wife/husband relating things to do with her/his extended family (brother-in-law needs x, cousin wants y). The more of your spousal quests achieved, the more you affect popularity among that class in the city.

[If you really want a second shot, I suppose an avenue to allow it is to give you the chance to "adopt" an heir (a son/daughter of some other count/bailiff/consul/bishop.) These also come with popularity points, but no dowry.]


=============================

Anyway, that's all I've come up with thus far. Does it sound at all interesting?

Sounds good but would be like a whole new game and probly won't get put in.But Besides that, sounds very good you coverd just about every thing.

wow, how long have you been working on this concept?

one question though:
how realistic is it to be able to pursue multiple career paths simultaneously? did this really happen back then?

great work!

It may not be realistic, but it would be amazingly fun to play. Then again, you caouldn't get on a horse in full plate by yourself, but we do that all the time.

Very well thought out. I like it...
It's a bit more elaborate than my earlier suggestion of simply buying titles beyond knight, from the king, with associated benefits and obligations...

As for the pagan path, if you're going druids then the first step on the path should be Bard... The classical Bard was more than just someone who sang songs for his meals at the local tavern, he was a student of life, histories, 'law' and lore (such as herbal lore for instance)...

I was actually wondering how hard this would be to implement seeing it's possible to add NPC's and dialogue tree's... It shouldn't require much more than that, although a fair bit more of that..

It's quite a good idea, but it's also a pretty hefty amount of work

Wow, if M&B were like this I would never stop playing. I doubt any of this will ever happen to the extent you've outlined (unless the modding system is REALLY good), but we can always dream can't we?

To add: Something I would love was if there were some real Machiavellian politics going on, and plenty of ways to get the upper hand on your rivals through subterfuge. If you're popular and rich enough to bribe the city guards and certain officers to look the other way, it should even be possible to oust someone out of their position by force (the city guards would come in handy here too). Of course you would have to deal with the resulting revolts and the king, who probably isn't too pleased that you upset his peace, and isn't about to listen to whatever flimsy excuse you made up to justify your actions. Assassination is always an option, as is blackmail and framing. Maybe there could be an option to set up a little spy network to get intelligence on your rivals and carry out these underhand tactics. If you're a powerful priest you could also whip the mob up into a religious fervor and burn the offending rival for heresay, inquisition style.

Basically it would be my goal to be the most cunning and deceptive little thug possible, so the political system would need to be really robust. Of course I would have to watch out, otherwise some night an assassin is going to come for me as well.

And what about some pope-like supreme religious authority? Someone to trigger holy wars and excommunicate people that piss him off.

I vote for Mare Imbrium as Pope.

Too late, I already got the job.

Well, I'll still vote for Mare Imbrium. Repeatedly. At least 6 times.

It still won't work, because I'm a sith lord.

Well I like many of the ideas posted in here. It's kind of in the direction of where M&B should end up in my eyes. Of course, like most suggestions, this has close to zero chance of being implemented.

These suggestions would pretty much change the game completely, and turn it into some mediaeval village sim. As i said above, i think this idea is poining in the right direction, but I find some of the details somewhat off. Attending fairs to keep my mayorship over a town doesn't sound particularly fun.

M&B is first and foremost a combat game. All the aspects of the game should somehow be tied in with combat. Non-combat situations would be nice, but they shouldn't form the bulk of the game.

This being said, my preferred vision of M&B is one where lots of stuff is actually causally related to other stuff, and you don't appear to be the only character in the game with unrestricted freedom. I'd like it if, when progressing up the military ladder, you are given more and more to consider and worry about.

You enter the army as a conscript, and are made to fight in someone else's war party as a crossbowman or something. All you have to worry about is following orders and saving your own skin. Yet the position's not particularly lucrative.
You advance in ranks and become a squire, then a knight. You now have access to quality weaponry, a fair amount of gold, and a small band of foot soldiers. You now have to worry about providing food, money and equipment to your soldiers, and make sure you don't make any tactical mistakes in battle, otherwise your remaining soldiers might desert you.

You eventually become a Count of a town, and own a sizeable portion of land. You can afford the best stuff in the game, have a handful of knights loyal to you and can call up a peasant army of hundreds. But now, it's your duty to protect this land that you now own. You have to organise the patrols that keep the bandits out, and make sure the county is running properly, and that the peasants are neither being overtaxed or undertaxed. You've also entered the messy backstabby world of politics, where you're answerable to your duke and king, and are required to do what they say, which may or may not be in your best interests or the interests of your county. You've also got people wishing to supplant you and take over and stuff.

If you wish it, you could abandon your political duties, and just roam around the kingdom, adventuring with your small band of knights and professional soldiers.


Do you see what i'm getting at? As you get added power, you have added responsibility. It's your job to reach the area which you find the most fun.

EDIT: The guy must've taken his time on this. I'm counting 4300 words.

If that's how it ends up Ingolifs, I just might pee my pants because I'll be having too much fun to get up. I would love to be able to organize my own patrols and tax rates, all while having to kill assassins occasionaly.

Personally, I really like both of these ideas -- i.e., Ingo's and Khalid's. I also think Ingo is right -- the simpler, more combat-oriented idea probably has a much better chance of being implementable in the final game. However, I'd really love to see something like Khalid's idea too. My strongest hope is that it could be made as a mod, if nothing else.

What I was thinking of while reading Khalid's idea was, if we assume all of the actual missions the player goes on are combat-oriented -- i.e., are likely to put the player in combat, such as "escort the bishop" missions and "hunt down the bandits" missions -- does it start to stretch plausability that the player character is really looking for a career in the clergy or city administration? I find it a little odd to think that a city's bishop could also be the guy out in the mud with the unshaven troops wading through the guts of the city's defeated enemies. Or that the guy who just spent the past hour standing on a hill with his archers putting arrows in the eyes of an attacking bandit horde is the same guy who haggles with merchants for bricks to repair the city walls. Not that these things are impossible, just that it feels a little odd, at least if you buy into the stereotypes of typical clergymen and administrators (i.e., that they are intelligent, bookish types). It's a lot easier to imagine a warrior-king than it is a warrior-deacon or a warrior-bookkeeper.

But that's a minor thing, really, and although it may seem odd from a narrative standpoint, there's no reason it wouldn't be fun from a gameplay standpoint. Overall, it would make the game a lot deeper, and a lot more interesting to play over the long term (which of course for a single-player game tends to be a month or two at most) than having just the one career path, or only being able to measure your progress in the quality of your armor, the number of your troops and the size of your gold purse.

Well i was thinking about this sort of thing as well. But i think, as BobG mentioned, a bishop's history as an "adventurer" doesnt really seem fit.

This also goes for the current situation. You are priest but you are into selling slaves also. This seems odd to me. What i think is, we need more ways to gain exp. Quests that dont involve much fighting.

This game is a RPG game. So it is just fair that we play our character as it should be. Don't get me wrong, i am overjoyed about the game and not underestimating, in anyway, all this work. But the game is just a power-play game for now.

To me, there are three characters playable:
1. Hunter: A warrior-character that stalks for criminals and enemies of the states He is mostly based on himself.

2. Commander: A charismatic character that is not born to slaughter, but to command men to do so. He is not personally very effective, but excellent at organization of armies.

3. Merchant: This character is kind of a hybrid. He may not be the best warrior the world has seen, neither the most brilliant leader. But he has the money and he uses it to the best effect. He travels city to city, buying cheap, making profit and with his good equipment and people he hires; he escorts caravans, delivers goods etc. He is a pragmatic self-based person.


The fact is, these are actually the same. I mean, there is no absolute commander nor an absolute hunter; which is very good and realistic since there is no black and white on real world.


Yet, this doesnt feel complete. I wish that if i were a merchant before this adventure started, i could get more quests from merchants. Becouse i am one of them, they'd find me more welcome among themselves. Same goes for squires; Counts and Barons would find them more "eligible" to converse.

Hunters would get better relations with militaristic people and the priests would be kind of a jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none.

Becouse of their divinity people would trust them a little more and like or fear them maybe but still, since so few people are so deeply religious; they'd still prefer their kind of people.

I think i couldnt explain very well. I dont have much time for now but i'll write more later i guess.

thats uh.. a really long post..
but wouldnt it make it from an adventure game into a Civilization game or Medieval Politics?
and it would also be pretty hard t ocode

Khalid ibn Walid said:

-- also introducing politics will allow us to insert the religious factor. I mean, what were the Middle Ages without religion? Although "Caladria" has thus far operated without religion, it would nonetheless be interesting to toss it in in a non-controversial manner. I have really only three possible religions in mind -- Christian, Muslim and Pagan -- which will translate in political terms into the persons of bishops, qadis and druids.

Click to expand...

If religion is ever implemented on a large scale, I for one hope it'll be a fictional monotheistic religion with strong similarities to medival christianity, but with no specific real-life symbols or anything like that.

As for the rest of the post: very impressive design outline! However, it does seem a bit far from the core gameplay of M&B, which IMO boils down to amassing wealth and power by fighting battles. Alright, and maybe trading a bit, but that's definately secondary.. Ingolifs far less detailed description of the progression of the game sounds more like something I'd like to play.

The way I envision the eventual endgame is that you're leading sieges on enemy towns, taking them over one by one (they'd be trying to take your towns back from time to time, obviously) until you've conquered the entire land. At this point you'd be praised as a war hero, and you'd end up on the throne, somehow. Maybe the king suddenly dies without an heir, and with his last breath appoints the savior of the lad as his successor. Anyway, you've risen from a lowly down-on-their-luck noble to the Lord of all you see, and thusly the game ends.

Somewhere in there I'd like for the player to be given a town of his own to govern. I shouldn't like for it to be too detailed and complex, but there should be a house of your own you could enter and store things in, you should get a steady income from tax revenues and such, and you'd have special responsibilities towards the town; quests forced upon you from time to time, maybe, like stopping raiders or negotiating trade routes with other cities, things like that. Unfulfilled quests from the township, too high taxes or too many enemy sieges (something you could affect by conquering nearby enemy towns) would cause unhappiness, which could eventually result in you losing control of the town, which would drop you in favour with the king, at which point you'd have to reearn his trust.

Sounds more reasonable imho, less complex and truer to what I feel is the core gameplay of M&B. Anyways, I expect the developers already have a rather detailed plan of how they want the game to turn out. Just posting what I think would be cool.

Wow. Those are some pretty positive reactions. Thanks for the vote of confidence guys.

A few replies:

(1) It didn't take me that long to compose. But I did blow Sunday off.

(2) I don't think it's overly complex to model nor does it detract too much from the current arrangments, vide:

-- Instead of a count giving out quests in each town, we would just have three guys doing so (count, bailiff, bishop). It only adds a couple more doors to a town (the treasury & the church).

-- Currently, the count's quests give you experience points and move you up a single career ladder. In the proposed plan, we'd just have it that three guys give you quests, so you follow three distinct career ladders. So you'd have three ranks, rather than just one.

-- A lot of the quests will be escort work like we have now with merchant caravans. It would just add some more of that type -- escorting pilgrims, escorting officers, escorting treasure trains, etc. Other quests will be primarily skull-bashing work, like defeating the rebels of this city or that one (or crushing the militias out to get them if you want the rebels to succeed). It is fundamentally what we do now, just more and with more varied consequences.

-- It would still be overwhelmingly combat-oriented. There would be the full gamut of bandits to hunt down and enemies to defeat. The only difference is that not all the military parties that sprout are wholly anonymous (many are city-specific) and they don't all spawn without reason (rebel armies & the militias hunting them spawn if a city is shaken by internal revolt).

The only factor that really wasn't there before in some form and would require novel modelling is the appointment formula. (And perhaps a couple of other things once you actually acquire office).

(3) Will it change the character of the game? Yes and no. It is still about bashing skulls atop a horse. It's just that new responsibilities kick in when you reach a high enough level and the bashing skulls business begins to get old. Besides, it gives you something to do with your cash.

(4) Admittedly, because it is a rather historically-sensitive set-up, it might throw a spanner in some fantasy mods which didn't anticipate archbishopal legates and squabbling burghers. But I offer no apologies. My prediliction is for making M & B more specifically Medieval and determinedly non-linear in progression. Others may wish to make it more fantasy-flexible or more linear in progression. My preference is in the opposite direction.

Note: It is not that I find that M & B must be historically-accurate. But it is quite expedient to make it so. Historical accuracy saves up on the gray matter. Instead of taxing your brain to invent interesting set ups & quests from scratch and weighing them carefully for game balance, you can just "look them up" and figure out how to model them in. I mean, real history is chock-full of interesting stuff, is non-linear and rather balanced already.

(5) All this is preliminary. At root, all I'm suggesting is that there should be a process for acquiring a town.

Many of the things people have hankered for (e.g. things to do with your wealth, bestowing lands as rewards, a barracks to dump surplus troops, a storage space for excess inventory, festivals, rival heroes, blockading quests, sieges, etc.) all become quite natural possibilities once you hold a town. We can argue over what should and should not be possible. But it seems to me axiomatic that before any of these extra things are modelled in, you must at least have a place you call "home", a town that is yours in some way.

And rather than just *poof, this is your town*, why not make you work for it?

(6) One of the thing I like about this scenario is that quests and skull-bashing are not "all good". They have consequences. They affect your standing with the king and popularity among the different classes of people. And you can't satisfy everybody. Whatever you do, you are bound to piss somebody off. So when picking and choosing your quests & battles, you must weigh them depending on what you want to achieve in the long-run.

(7) The thing I like about non-linearity is that it makes your game objectives personal, specific & adjustable to taste. I mean, what do you really know or care about the the Vaegir or Swadian "cause"? That's a quarrel between those two inbred idiots they call king. It's not your quarrel.

You need long-term ambitions of your own. In this set-up, even while in service of a king, you always have your eye on a prize of your own -- an office here, a town here, a town there, perhaps eventual own kingdom & conquest of the entire map. Or perhaps you eventually want to transform the map into a great ecclesiastical state for the greater glory of God. Or appoint yourself liberator of the people and work to ensure that every city is "free". Or become the swordarm of absolute monarchy, forging a centralized state where everything is run by your liege, the nobles & commons be damned. Or, just for the hell of it, make yourself champion of military aristocracy and keep the country in a permanent state of feudal anarchy.

Rising through the ranks of the Vaegir or Swadian army by dutifully fulfilling every task everyone tells you to do sounds like you're just "paying your dues". A linearly progressive game would have you continue in that servile fashion all the way to the end. It is not only unfitting for the richest and strongest warrior in Caladria, it is also a bit anti-climatic. You should get the chance to fashion the future as you want to see it.

This by itself will prevent the higher levels from becoming a doozy. Your efforts will have to be a little more focused, picking towns and really working your way into them by pursuing the right quests & battles. risking fall-outs with your people and your monarch all the while, balancing short-term gains against your long-term plans.

( 8 ) While multiple careers are unrealistic, they are not as unrealistic as all that.

There are quite a few instances of "Count-Bishops" (i.e. Counts who were appointed Bishop of their town as well). And far, far more numerous cases of lesser secular lords (e.g. Thomas Beckett) being appointed bishop overnight (with or without the formality of religious ordination).

In the opposite direction, bishops were quite frequently appointed counts of this or that. That is the basis of all the great ecclesiastical states -- Mainz, Trier, Salzburg, Trent, etc. Indeed, some bishops were even invested as full-blown dukes (Bishop of Wurzburg was appointed Duke of Franconia, Cologne as Duke of Westphalia, Aquileia as Duke of Friuli etc.)! So that is not unrealistic at all.

As for Counts & Bishops having also a career in the royal administration, again quite realistic. From the beginning down to the modern day, counts and bishops had an office (some for real, others "for show") in the royal household. They performed duties as royal bailiffs, seneschals, missi, purveyors, secretaries, treasurers, chancellors, etc. Traditionally, high landed counts & bishops had first dibs on appointments in royal service and were even paid a salary for it (in the form of tax-exemptions -- something that really irked the middle classes and provoked the French Revolution ).

That said, keep in mind that in the set-up I proposed, multiple ranks reflect eligibility, not actual title. If you have a bishop rank, you are merely eligible to be appointed bishop. Until you are actually appointed Bishop of X, you aren't really a bishop at all, but still just a lonely vagabond knight with a dream.

So while ranks reflect the career possibilities you can have in theory, it's the actual offices you are appointed to which is the career you do have in fact.

(9) I see no reason to force you to stick to a career in a pre-set fashion. You have the career you deserve, depending on your actions. You may start off as an apprentice priest and fantasize about religious office, but if you behave like a naughty thug, rob pilgrims, massacre epispocal legates, hijack ecclesiastical tax trains, let the churches fall into disrepair and piss on holy relics, you can pretty much kiss your clerical career goodbye. You're not likely to be appointed bishop of anything. Doesn't mean you're out of luck. Just means that the nobility will recognize you as one of their own and push for your appointment as Count.

(10) On warring bishops:

Keep in mind this is set rather early in the Middle Ages. The distinction between nobles & clergy was not quite as strict yet as it later became. They were drawn from the same class, had the same upbringing and often had the same lifestyle.

As noted, secular lords were frequently appointed bishops overnight by the king or city council with hardly anyone batting an eyelid. And many, many bishops (including a few Popes, e.g. John X) did lead armies in full armor and got down and dirty in the mud & slaughter with the boys.

For a long time, bishops so conducted themselves that they were practically indistinguishable from the lay nobility. Things only began to change when Pope Gregory VII decided to put his foot down near the turn of the 12th C. and tried to introduce formal religious requirements for ecclesiastical investiture (i.e. that there must be at least some recognition of religious authority when investing a bishop), tried to outlaw simony (point-blank purchase of church offices by secular lords) and began demanding stiffer clerical discipline (e.g. celibacy ) and spiritual responsibilities (bishops must try to fulfill some of their shepherding duties, starting off with just visiting the places they're supposedly bishops of ).

Up until then (and for quite some time after -- Gregory VII & his successors had quite some trouble getting their point across), kings and city councils routinely appointed anybody they pretty much liked as bishop and casually informed the pope to put up or shut up.

So bishops shouldn't be really seen as thoroughly "spiritual" back then as they later became. Despite their ecclesiastical responsibilities, most were still creatures of civil authorities.

The truer spiritualists of the era were really the abbots & monks. Because they had their own resources, monastic orders could afford independence from civil intereference and a cultivate a sense of religious mission. But even among these you could find quite some battlers (e.g. the monastic Knightly Orders of the Holy Land.)

Considering all the research and/or thought you put into your original post, I figured you'd have an answer for my concern about the blending of intellectual, spiritual and physical pursuits (i.e., managing a city's infrastructure, saving souls and smashing heads). And I think you're right about the blending of nobility and clergy. It probably feels a little odd to me because when I think of clergy, I think of old guys in flowing robes with impractical hats, but I suppose in the Middle Ages, it could just be a guy who "smites" in barbarian heads in instead of "smashing" them in. And of course, we're talking about an alternate history here anyway, so there's no reason the game can't take things in its own direction.

So all that said, I still like the idea, and I agree that a non-linear game progression would be a very good thing. In fact, any time a game like this is non-linear, it usually gets special mention in reviews specifically for that reason. People generally love games that let them forge their own path rather than following a set story or getting railroaded down one branch of a career tree. For that matter, not being forced to follow any career path can be a good thing too.

Only if we could follow a carreer instead of having it as a starting point