Golden Ideas - Suggestions for money-related features

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

First off, I want to explain why this isn't in the Ideas and Suggestions topic. I'd like to throw out a bunch of half-baked ideas about what to do with kingdom money, especially towards the mid-late game where a kingdom is drawing in more money in one week than it could spend in a year.
If you spend your first months of kingdom income wisely (investments in trade, kingdom income, then technology), you can really start building a massive treasury quite quickly.

My current concern is that there isn't much for a Kingdom to spend its income on. You can
1. Raise religious uniformity
2. Raise a small patrol that will only circle your Capitol
3. Bribe the heck out of your own lords
4. Gain technology
5. Pass edicts, which don't seem to really be as useful as they seem to be. I like the feature from an immersion perspective, but it doesn't seem to expand the gameplay.

Of the above, religious uniformity will rise over time regardless of your investment.
The small patrols are easy for enemy lords to take out, and their lack of ability to patrol around cities other than your capitol makes them almost useless at defeating bandits.
Bribing lords is quite useful early on in a kingdom, but as the income starts to roll in it becomes a very bland kingdom management system. Maybe if it had some decreasing effect over time, it would add, rather than remove, complexity. Having late-game kingdom income essentially negates the challenge of a weekly decrease in lord relations.
Gaining technology is a fantastic addition, and one of the most enjoyable features of kingdom management is getting into an arms race with another faction, but when tech vii is reached, the kingdom suddenly has a massive increase in income that was formerly going to tech.
Again, relating to relative class power in a kingdom, I've not noticed a huge impact in gameplay.

So, what should a kingdom be able to spend its money on? How could these features be modified or built upon to expand the already incredible gameplay of Nova Aetas?
Don't worry if your ideas are incredibly vague. Share it anyway. This is a topic for ridiculous and sometimes over-the-top ideas. However you want to present it is fine; however you want to discuss a previous idea is fine. Just try to stay on the topic of Kingdom Income.

Edit: There was a recent incident of unappreciation for Q in a similar "why aren't these features here" topic. I'd like Q to know:
Your mod is fantastic. I love it. I've spent way too many a lot of hours in it, and will continue to do so even if you never touch it again. I just want to do a little to give back to you, by throwing some ideas out there if you're still interested. I know it can get a bit stale working on the same project for years.

 

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

Supply Train

One of the biggest expenditures of kingdoms in the beginning of the age of gunpowder was in logistics. Suddenly, armies had to lug heavy cannons, heavy shot, and heavy barrels of gunpowder. Large armies took much more effort to assemble and move. Cannons and their ammunition were not cheap, and unlike trebuchets, rams, and siege towers, they couldn't be built on-site by engineers.

Basic Idea
I suggest that as kingdoms advance in technology, their armies slow down on the campaign map. A kingdom can rectify this by spending a large chunk of income on maintaining supply trains, so their armies can move at full speed. These supply trains wouldn't be reflected by actual parties on the campaign map, but would just be included on the weekly kingdom budget.

Advance Idea
Some kids include a movement debuff when an army moves in close proximity to an enemy settlement. The opposite could be done with supply trains, in which a particular city or castle is designated as a supply point. All kingdom armies within a certain radius of that supply point can move slightly faster. This could also be expanded to do things like increase the rate of casualty replenishment, or give lords in the area a higher Wound Treatment trait.
The payment from the kingdom would be scared such that establishing a supply train generates a cost for each supply train in use, scaled with the distance from the capitol of the kingdom.

Gameplay Impact
This would make later gameplay a bit more of a balancing act. Rather than decreasing the economic penalty over time, if forces players to shell out more money towards the later game.

 

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

Risky Bribing

Kings ran a difficult balance between giving their nobles power to gain their loyalty and limiting their power to reduce rebellions. Giving a powerful lord more land might make them more likely to answer a call to arms, but it could backfire if a lord became so powerful that he could bargain with the king to gain concessions. Take a brief look at the Holy Roman Empire from 1200-1600, and you'll see some of the difficulties that kings faced.

Basic Idea
Scale bribery payments over time. If a lord has multiple landholdings, increase the amount of money that has to be paid in order to gain relationship with him. If a lord had already been bribed recently, make future bribes give less of a bonus. The idea here is that if a lord get's used to a hefty handout, over time he'll expect more and more, particularly if other lords around him are getting the same treatment.

Advanced Idea
Give a random chance to bribes, so that giving a bribe gives a 1-7 relationship boost when it is given. During the same week, make successive bribes take more and more money, OR give less and less return. Possibly tie this into kingdom rank and relationship to the king; family members (by marriage) would take less money, and have less relationship loss each week, while lords who haven't been bribed in a while lose more relationship than normal IF bribes were given to other lords but not them.
There are a lot of ways to add complexity, and most of then are very complicated; it another instance of "how much effort should this feature take?"

Gameplay Impact
Bribes would be incredibly useful in the early game, when a little bit of loyalty goes a long way. As time goes on, however, adding a bit of uncertainty to the bribing system makes the player do a bit more kingdom management and a bit less "throw money at the lords and spend three hundred clicks every month doing it". It's keeping some of difficulty inherent in the weekly relation drop even after a kingdom is large and rich.

 

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

Professional Armies: Part One

As royal power grew, the size of royal armies, equipped and maintained by royal expenditure, grew as well. From levies to Tercios, armies became less accepting of farmers with pitchforks (with the obvious exception of Russia  ).

Basic Idea
Allow kingdoms to spend money to raise the overall quality of noble armies. Pretty straightforward from a player perspective, but it might be easier for you to adjust the system that removes non-player faction troops to make vassal armies a bit higher-tier.

Advanced Idea
Give more customization options for vassal armies than just professionalisation. Let the kingdom pay an upkeep cost and make all vassal armies spawn with a cannon on the battlefield. This would be a simple change, but could go nicely with the sense of a more uniform armament.
Alternatively, make it possible for vassal armies to be a bit smaller in return for a kingdom tax; again, a fairly simple change, but it could be tied with raising the weekly relation penalty so that if the player wants to raise a bit more money (say for tech research) they can, but in doing so will weaken the kingdom.
The professionalization of armies doesn't have to be limited to kingdom troops. If that seems a bit unbalanced, then make vassal armies spawn with extra mercenary troops (possibly include a few new mercs, like merc arquebusiers) to reflect a kingdom fleshing its armies out with extra mercenaries on a difficult campaign.

Gameplay Impact
Gives the player a bit more control over vassal capabilities. At current, an end-game king can actually be much more effective on campaign by himself than with a vassal army, since the addition of vassals dilutes the concentration of high-quality troops. 10 rodeleros and 100 levied loses a siege assault more than 15 rodeleros alone.
It could also make Cannons more common, which I'm all in favor of.

 

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

Professional Armies: Part 2, Customized

Kingdoms were free to experiment with their troop's equipment and deployment styles, but over time they adopted from each other and innovated new titles and terms, even for similar groups.

Basic Idea
The troop customization is probably my favorite feature of this mod. It allows for a TON of role playing, since the player can build their own style as time goes on.
Allow the player to rename their troop types, and reequip their troops, out of the kingdom treasury rather than just their own pockets. Raise the cost, definitely, so that it is still more efficient to use personal funds, but as the number of troops across the kingdom rises, it males sense for the cost of reequipping troops to rise as well, and a kingdom treasury is much more capable to handling that cost, even late game.

Advanced Idea
I'm not sure that I have much more to add. Possibly allow the player to make a weekly payment to receive a random collection of kingdom troops at the capitol at the beginning of each week. Since it is random, it doesn't remove the utility of having castles as recruitment grounds, but it gives a rich and lonely king a few more options when it comes to raising an army from his one town.

Gameplay Impact

Gives the kingdom treasury a bit more of a role in the kingdom's military power.

 

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

Professional Armies: Part 3

As kings monopolized military power, they were able to force recalcitrant lords to cooperate with royal campaigns. Financial incentives provides the carrot, while royal threats provided the stick.

Basic Idea
Allow the king to spend kingdom revenue for the duration of a campaign to force more lords to join the campaign. Since influence points don't work on your own vassals, this would give the player a bit more control. In my own playthroughs, by the late game I end up campaigning almost solo, even after I've named myself as marshal and declared a campaign.

Advanced Idea
Make npc kingdoms do this as well. I don't know how complicated it would be (since it would need to determine an npc kingdom income, campaign calls, etc), but by the late game I've also noticed a reluctance on the part of enemy kingdom vassals to cooperate very well.
For the player, this could also extend to driving a personal campaign while the marshal directs a kingdom campaign. The player could spend money to make lords follow the marshal, and spend additional funds to lead designated armies himself.

Gameplay Impact
A rich kingdom should be a powerful one, and this would let players and npcs continue to direct large campaigns im the late game.

 

[Alfonso dArmigerio]

Royal Court

Kings tried to outdo one another when it came to public displays of wealth. Palaces are among the most common of these displays, with such structures as El Escorial and, of course, the palace of Versailles. A dazzling court was powerful, because it attracted dazzling lords.

Basic Idea
Allow the player to spend extra money each week to raise the splendor of the court. It increases the rate at which vassals seek to join the kingdom, and makes unlanded vassals more likely to stay in the kingdom. Npc kongs could have this as well, with a random splendor value generated each month. Rebellious lords defect less frequently when their king's court is fancy.

Advanced Idea
Let the player spend kingdom funds to raise a court following. Having certain positions at court raise the court splendor (painter, composer), while others give the king's party bonuses to certain skills (physician, philosopher). A few could even lower splendor, but give other benefits like a slightly higher kingdom tax rate at the cost of vassal relations (tax minister).
To really get the management complex, set up the following:

Spoiler

1. Set up a certain static number of court members
2. Allocate the court members to random npc kingdoms
3. Set up each court kingdom to have a randomly generated court splendor each month (i.e., #towns*2 + #castles + rng(1-20))
4. Make court members drift from one court to another at a random rate, influenced by the relative levels of splendor
5. When a player kingdom appears, allow the court members to join the player kingdom on the same random movement as other kingdoms experience, based on relative splendor
6. The player can only impact his court's splendor by offering money to attract artists and painters away from other kingdoms. As they arrive, and if the player can keep them (through payment of kingdom funds), the player's splendor rises and begins to compete with npc kingdoms for the pool of non-artist court members.

I'm sorry, I'm sure that was not the most clear and concise description I could have given. As always, this is meant as a random idea generator, rather than a demand for a particular feature.

Gameplay Impact
This would expand a system of benefits that kingdoms could receive based upon campaign changes and non-war competition. I know that's a solid focus of this mod, and I think this could continue to showcase methods of competition through economic and social means.

 

[iporto93]

Lovely features. Too bad this mod was partially discontinued... No new features will be introduced. Another halfassed warband mod sadly...

 

[Evli66]

Iporto93 What mods have you created and implemented 100% at your cost or with little to no funding?

Just Curious to see if you have a mod worth looking at.

Thanks

 

[Easter Cow]

Iporto93 What mods have you created and implemented 100% at your cost or with little to no funding?

Just Curious to see if you have a mod worth looking at.

Thanks

Take a look around the forums, you’ll find plenty of other mods around here.

 

[Evli66]

Understood and I have played native and most mods over the years.

Just being polite to iporto93 and asking, since he is such a strong critic of Mod Creators.