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)
===========
(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?
).
