Well, in a way you can contest a province: its called war. The war rules exist for this purpose and should not be replaced by a holding type contest system, unless you want to eliminate warfare.
Why would this take power from temples?
There is no reason to think of Bellam as either Roesone’s or Ghoere’s. If its Ghoere owns 2 province holdings and Roesone 1, then Ghoere owns 2/3’s of Bellam and Roesone owns 1/3. At some point the Count of Bellam has a choice to make, but that’s a role playing issue. There is no reason there can’t be eight counts of Bellam, in terms of who has the title. (That’s kind of silly, two is a typical ceiling, but you get then point).
The neat thing about provinces is how you can have wars take parts of a province, rather than whole provinces. I would require an investiture when you install a count (or any civil authority) and end occupation. Not a separate investiture as you extend your control of the province.
Guild activity is an extensive activity. I would say the income and wealth of the cattle barons was in Texas, which was a state since 1836 and was reasonably well organized. The wealth and holdings were not in Oklahoma where the cattle drives passed by on the way to market. After some time, guilds developed in Kansas City and Independence where Philip Armour and Gustavus Swift moved guild holdings from their base in Chicago.
Regarding the Church model. Many missionary activities are properly thought of as an expense, not as a source of revenue and regency.
But I thought that one of the things of the Birthright regency is that it is not about monetary wealth. It is about power and influence. If you have a level 2 holding, then a larger percentage of the population would dedicate their resources to you than someone with a level 1 holding. This enables you to “do things”. The resources can be money, land, possessions, manpower, political support etc.
So a Church is powerful if it “controls” a large percentage of the population. “Missionaries” may not bring money to the church but they would still bring it resources, and hence regency.
My problem is that I thought the province level tended to indicate the population size of the province. So how can a temple holding have a level above the province level if both are indicating a proportion of the population? Or is that just indicating that it has resources that can’t be included when considering the province level (ie. its not all about population)?
Sorontar
ps. this is all of the top of my head… I might need to recheck the definitions of the levels and regency
Missionary work may have the faith of the people, but looking at actual missionary work, it doesn’t pay for itself through the contributions of the converted, but through efforts from home. This was true when Patrick went to Ireland, Columbanus went to Germany, the attempts at re-conversion of heretics (in fact another of the Church’s problems with wealth, was that it would gain revenues to combat heresies and pursue crusades, and then after the effort would still retain the ability to raise revenues).
Second, it doesn’t follow that devotion of people translates into holdings. Holdings represent the ability to collect revenues and political capital. That may or may not mean lots of followers. It can also mean important, well placed followers; prestige; ownership of things (land, rights, privileges, &c).
And the purpose of province holdings would be to divorce province level from population size. So that province level represented how well organized the provincial rule was.
I want to begin play with King Bevering (sp?) issuing a Decree that Jarl X has been selected to be the next King. The six other Jarls have their own ideas about who should be King and it is not the PC. The next Decree from King B says the ceremony will be in the Spring, 6 months away. This gives the PC six action rounds to build alliances, remove enemies, strengthen their grasp on the Law/Guild/Province levels where possible, and hope the senile old fool doesn’t change his mind between now and then.
At some point, a mission may be successful enough that the community becomes self-sustaining. That’s when it gains holding levels. Since Cerilia uses a polytheistic setting where many gods are revered even if the worship of one is more prominent in one area, temple holdings can grow rapidly. This is because there is less “conversion” that needs to happen, and instead a great show of wealth or power (building temples/Ruling holdings) or other concerted efforts can grow the influence of a temple in an area.
Any raise in Province level would decrease Source level?
The concept behind Province Holdings assumes that Province level has very little to do with the population in the province, and much more to do with influence over the people already settled their and organization/centralization/efficiency of government. As I tried to get into before, then, the interaction between Province level and Source level should change. By this mechanism, one way increased Province level would decrease Source potential is if you want to say that concentration of political power over a populace disrupts mebhaigl. That doesn’t make much sense to me. Another way would be to say that as a land’s people are brought under the influence of a divine bloodline, mebhaigl is disrupted.
I think I’d prefer to divorce Province level from Source potential entirely, though, in favor of maintaining the wildness/mebhaigl connection by instead perhaps linking Guild activity to Sources.
Well, strictly province holdings doesn’t have to budge from province level = population at all.
All the mechanic really represents is that some people in a geographical region follow one ‘king’ and a second lot follow another ‘king’. Two kings thus get RP from the same geographic area for the same type of holding.
To keep the link between the number of province holdings and the population you just need to accept empty slots as potential and track the overall cap - much as you do for any other holding.
So you get a province 4 with holding levels Ghoere 2 / Roseone 1, Ghoere controls 2 levels (say the big city) and Roesone 1 (say the southern farms and villages) with 1 uncontrolled (say the farms in the north) which doesn’t produce any significant RP or GB for a province regent.
Either Ghoere or Roesone could try and rule up their province holding by one level (effectively claiming the fealty of the independents, or straightening the chain of command to reduce inefficiency) or they could agree to an investiture to transfer their holdings.
War itself doesn’t do much - the people retain their old loyalties until there is a ceremony of investiture.
Any raise in Province level would decrease Source level?
It depends on what you want Province holdings to indicate. My main reason for preferring province holdings is to allow a regent’s hold on their province to rise and fall like every other holding without a connection to population. So while population may fluctuate, it does so much less than control of a province. So, with that in mind, I would not alter source levels with province levels.
The only way for Roesone to lower Ghoere’s province holding levels are through war? (Or the other way around) Or investure with both regeants present?
Yes. The only way for Roesone to lower Ghoere’s province holding levels is through war. You have to take them by force (or destroy them, which is very hard and would require pillaging ruthlessly for a long time).
Investiture is a positive act of claiming a province. Investiture with both regents present would become something that only happens in vassalization. Specifically not in the context we’re discussing here. The other main advantage for me for province holdings is that there are too few provinces in any given realm for provinces to be handed over as the result of war. Instead the gains of a successful war should be fractions of a province, rather than whole provinces. So no more handing over a full province as a normal course of losing a war.
Now then, what about Realm spells that affect Province (holding) levels? A Bless or Blight spell would only affect the targeted holding or all? By all, I mean the Area of Effect is so great that it always effects all province holdings (in addition to other holdings in this case)? Or a death/disease type spell? Can you target these to only work on certain Province holdings? If so, then what happens if by Realm Spell you reduce an opponent’s (or your own) Province holding below 0, effectively destroying it?
How does the Investure spell work? Do you have to destroy all the province holdings of other regeants before you can cast it? Or just have the only military units in the province until the spell is finished being cast? Do you need the permission of the other ruler?
Examples: King B names Jarl Kjessen of Helkstraad to be the new King of Halskapa. Jarl Kjessen has had enough of Jarl Dherg Wir of Selkhauste saying bad things about him and the his being named the new King. Does he march his 4x units of Mercenaries into Selkhauste and have his own personally allied Druid cast the Investure spell? Now he has all of Dherg Wir’s province and law holdings? What can Jarl Dherg Wir do about this tatic? Does running away help?
Now that Jarl Kjessen owns two provinces he convinces Rvanik of Dvasiik to hand over control to him. This can happen without destroying the Province Holdings as long as they both agree?
Sorry. In the previous post I was talking about the 2nd ed. Investure spell. I now see that is a Ceremony Action in BRCS. Seems pretty straight forward, so I guess nothing changes if you are using Province Holdings.
To keep the link between the number of province holdings and the population you just need to accept empty slots as potential and track the overall cap - much as you do for any other holding.
AT, are you saying that you’re going to track an extra number? So Bellam in your example has a population of 4, but only 3 province levels are claimed?
I’m assuming you’re saying that a max pop level needs to be attributed to each province that, for the time scale of most games, is relatively static (which is what Kgauck is going for, as well). Unless you set the population max to some standard, such as province level maximums by terrain, this creates an arbitrary system that requires a bunch of extra book-keeping. That’s not necessarily a problem, but I don’t know that many people that would want to do that kind of work. You could always accept the map statistics, but then you’d be saying they are static except for taking existing holdings away from other people. And in the end, you’re actually not tying province level to population, just setting a different static number.
If my assumption is wrong and you’re not suggesting a static max pop level for each province, then you have the problem of Rule Province actions rapidly expanding populations (which offends the sensibilities of us simulationists). For example, using Bellam, Roesone could Rule into a Province level 3, but then keep going, till Ghoere and Roesone chase each other up to the likely max of 8 or 9 for the terrain. Now, if you don’t tie province level to population, you’re saying that those 80-90,000 people were already there. If you DO tie province level to population, you end up saying that this province of originally 40,000 or so people doubles in size–possibly in a single year. Where do those people come from? Migration can’t contribute that many people unless other provinces are losing population. And given the increase in GB and RP from province level increases, the majority of that population needs to be productive adults–which doesn’t happen in 1 year.
There’s another, perhaps more disturbing scenario caused by tying province level to population: what happens when province level goes down? In discussion about a PBEM after it had ended, I heard the idea espoused that an entire realm could be pretty much wiped out with all its people–nobility and peasantry alike–through a short but determined occupation and sequence of pillaging. The rationale was that as province level goes down due to pillaging, so does population. So if Bellam is pillaged 1 province level, 10,000 people or 25% of its population is considered slaughtered. Imagine the effect that sort of thing should have on the in-game psyche!
Even more odd is what happens if a few hundred levies desert, are dispersed, or killed outside their nation’s borders: with the loss of a few hundred people, suddenly 10,000 die back home.
As well-ingrained as the tendency is to associate province level strongly with population, I personally think it is perhaps the poorest abstraction in the game, the one that strains the suspension of disbelief the most when you really start to think about it
That’s a DM call. I’d look at the spell description. The thing I would focus on is does it only effect my holdings or if my enemy had holdings in the province would they be effected too? If the spell description effects friend and foe in holdings, it would work that way for province holdings too. Otherwise, it is selective.
The Investiture spell means about a million things so every questions gets a sometimes yes, sometimes no answer. And sometimes its just a question of where you set the DC for a certain action. You can destroy everything before you cast investiture, and then you own a waste land. Why not capture holdings intact and get those?
Considering your occupation scenario, having the only military units in the province, it sounds like you are still at war with someone. I don’t like investitures during war. I prefer settling matters at the peace table. I set the DC high and it has an effect on the other side’s attitude towards you. I prefer territory changing hands by treaty. So its the easiest way to make that happen. Once you have physical possession of territory, you want to establish a civil administration. Use the investiture for this by naming someone count.
Examples: King B names Jarl Kjessen of Helkstraad to be the new King of Halskapa. Jarl Kjessen has had enough of Jarl Dherg Wir of Selkhauste saying bad things about him and the his being named the new King. Does he march his 4x units of Mercenaries into Selkhauste and have his own personally allied Druid cast the Investure spell? Now he has all of Dherg Wir’s province and law holdings? What can Jarl Dherg Wir do about this tatic? Does running away help?
It make a world of difference if Kjessen is still Jarl in this scenario or if he is acting as King. As king, Dherg has acted as a rebel, and his power will fade quickly once you have control of his province. He will spend every last RP and GB to hold his province, but once these are spent, the province is basically yours. Keep a garrison there, but the DC’s for investiture will be easy.
On the other hand, if you are just the heir, the DC for outright conquest (no agreement) would be very high. Plus it would make the other Jarls frightened.
Now that Jarl Kjessen owns two provinces he convinces Rvanik of Dvasiik to hand over control to him. This can happen without destroying the Province Holdings as long as they both agree?
I don’t know what would make Rvanik agree. If you bought two houses on the same block, would you expect a third home owner to give you his house? I think most nobles are the type to die trying rather than just give up.
Yes, if you want to keep source tied to province, keep population increases to a reasonable pace, but still allow rapid increase in’holding size’ then I think you need the extra number.
I figure you can stay flexible. if the actual population level can be increased as per standard rules then it is not static at all. If you increase the cost significantly then the actual population present will change only very slowly - at least at high population levels.
Hopefully the extra book-keeping would be kept to a minimum - we aready have maximum levels based on terrain and certain features, the only real book-keeping cost comes in the initial set up, and as you generally know who the province holder is, the book-keeping cost is less than if you added a new holding type completely like manor holdings.
I figure you’d take the map level as the holding level of the main local regent, then up the province level to reflect ‘uncontrolled’ population. That way you can set the population you think is reasonable without unbalancing the existing system - at least in the short term.
This is why I’d not just create the holdings and actual population, I’d also make the cost of ruling the province total population up much higher, there are a couple of possible methods on the wiki, my preference (to avoid tracking exact population) being: cost = level squared, even level +1 squared, would pretty much stop population growth at high province levels, that way you get rapid growth to the province total population, then very slow growth - in fact aside from low level provinces (which are presumably underpopulated for some reason which can be countered) it would almost certainly be more cost effective to do some other action than trying to rule the province population.
This is not uncommon - especially when referring to non-human populations. I see genocide as a far more prevalent threat in any fantasy game than in RL simply because you have so many different competing sentient species - but possibly there are still neanderthals around that I just haven’t met outside gym…
In general though I’d expect that most of the population would flee not be killed - logistically genocide is very hard to do - even the Nazi’s, a very Belinik bunch, took years to carry out their ‘final solution’ - and no BR realm even approaches their organisation or power. In terms of impact on the game psyche, six decades later and Germany and Japan still bear the burden of their actions in WW2, in fact many nations are still marked in one way or another. Taking the Janjaweed in Darfur, or government in Zimbabwe as more current examples, you still see years taken to reduce the population, even though in those cases the aim seems more forced flight than extermination.
I’d say that when pillaging the population level you first destroy the holdings, then, and I’d need to think of a mechanic, a much slower reduction of the people themselves. This reduction should mostly involve flight - trying to prohibit flight would encourage mass uprisings - which would destablise neighbours (possibly aiding their growth, but likely with someone native to the new population holding the province level).
The province holding mechanic would help here - the regent’s holding reduces, reflecting loss of morale, loyalty, whatever, the actual population would not itself then reduce. I’d note that I think think levies were intended to mostly be for low level provinces - where the old population figures made the levy a much higher percentage of the population.[/QUOTE]
I think that province holdings are a way to reduce these tensions somewhat - they don’t solve the problem completely, but its a start.
I think that province holdings are a way to reduce these tensions somewhat - they don’t solve the problem completely, but its a start.
I agree that province holdings help solve a lot of these problems. I was advocating for a more or less fixed population. It seems like our main difference is that you’d assign the max pop level and provide an expensive mechanism for increase, while I’m still leaning a little more in favor of Kgauck’s fully settled provinces, just trying to figure out what to do with refugees of conquered areas and frontier areas.
Would province holdings generate GB equiv. to % of Province Level?
For Example:
Bellam is a Province Level 3 (30,000 people?)
Bellam Generates 3 GB per turn
Marlae Roesone has 1 Province Holding = 1GB
Baron Ghoere has 1 Province Holding = 1GB
And noone claims the last GB of potential income?
Yes and no - I’d say that a regent gets 1 GB for each province level they hold, and just as with temple or guild if a level is not ‘controlled’ then it produces ‘no’ income. I use quotes as the province will no doubt be controlled by any number of minor nobles, courtiers, etc and will produce the income - but either squander it in inefficiencies, corruption, etc or see it go to ‘below the radar’ leaders.
Seems pretty straight forward, so I guess nothing changes if you are using Province Holdings.