Strongholds and Domains: A Revised Approach

[quote="koewn"]

Does the peasantry get anything out of the increased land value, though?

There's a qualitative difference between the gently rolling, tree-dappled glens, and the howling barren waste, but all else being equal, the quantitative experience of random family #7 is the same, in that they're scraping by as their parents did before and their offspring after them. The lord gets the extra value, or misses the lack thereof after they've managed to feed themselves.

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They get wealthier leaders who can provide larger garrisons and strongholds and better protect them from the dangers of the wilderness.

I also operate under the assumption that while the land value is a measure specifically of what the lord can extract, the populace is also better off. While their increase may be measured in cp instead of gp (and generally consumed, rather than saved), I assume it exists.

Good points! One could presume then that the wealthier lords have, on average, better domain morale, which already includes attracting more peasantry, so my other conjecture's already included in the system. Voila, Q.E.D., etc.

The discussion of land value versus hexes has been a good one!

Since the average land value is always going to trend towards 6, saying that peasants will tend to settle evenly dispersed across the territory will result in land value always averaging towards 6. That somewhat defeats the point of tracking separate land values.

Therefore I think I will make the official rule be that the ruler can allocate peasants throughout his domain as he prefers, subject to the limits of growth, but that by default peasants will settle in the available hex with the highest land value.

 

 

LEAVING ASIDE the land value issue for a moment, I'd very much appreciate feedback as to whether you think these rules are an improvement on the current rules.

If they capture the support of the ACKS community then I will likely adopt them for the Auran Empire setting, future updates, etc. 

If they do not capture your support, I'd like to know why so I can perhaps make further updates.

 

Having given them a quick once-over last night, I have to say overall I like them quite a bit.  They feel much more clear and easy to comprehend than the original rules, while still covering most of the important ground. They also seem better positioned to have additional rules plugged in to them.

 

I also really like the attempt to get away from complicated recurive calculations, though it does seem that, under the new rules, urban settlements will become extremely important because they'll be the only way to gain large amounts of domain income, with the possible exception of favoring more non-henchmen vassals. Under the new system, the maximum a ruler could earn from non-urban, henchmen vassals only income, regardless of how sprawling her realm was, would be 12,500*11gp + 7*(12,500*3gp) = 137,500 + 262,500 = 400,000gp.  This is probably fine since the XP threshold for level 13 is 150,000 and it's unlikely to be relevant that a level 14 couldn't level up from this since 14 is the maximum.  That being said, it does mean that once you get to the point of subhenching, consolodating your realm, growing urban settlements, and favoring non-vassal henchmen becomes incentivied through XP.

As I did out the math, I'm realizing it's probably not actually that big of a deal and the reduced complexity is a major boon so... good job Alex! 

I'm still puttering through my own math, but overall I think the simplicity is worth it. I'll post back with further thoughts later today-ish.

Stronghold Upkeep is missing from the Paying Expenses section. Is that an actual removal of the concept, or an oversight?

Thanks for doing that analysis. That's the same conclusion I came to. Moreover, since ACKS does often lean towards a more Late Antiquity setting, the encouragement of urban settlements is a good thing. 

A few other random thoughts that inspired this approach:

- About 66% of the Byzantine Empire's entire budget was spent on its military. In ACKS, this is reflected in the 2-4gp per family at every level of the realm. While in a feudal setting this represents feudal lords with private armies, one can just as easily view it as imperial officers authorized to collect local revenue to pay for their local garrisons. Another 25% was spent on the imperial bureacracy, which later was handled by granting the right to tax particular territories to the officers of the bureacracy. Again, this is well-represented by the tax revenue that vassals have over their domains (the land/service revenue is from land ownership). The rest of the Emperor's budget was spent on maintaining the household, gifts, etc. and more-or-less came from the imperial holdings themselves.

- In Medieval England, the king's revenues were derived from the crown lands (in ACKS, a personal domain) and from "special" taxes (in ACKS, favors extracted from vassals). And of course the system was feudal, with land allocated in exchange for the availability of troops. 

It feels like both can be well-modeled by the new rules, WITHOUT requiring recursive taxation. 

I removed it from the system. Here were my thoughts:

1. In the Middle Ages, rulers often extracted "services" from their peasants. It seems likely that these could encompass stronghold upkeep without having to track it separately.

2. Under the Romans, stronghold upkeep was very much handled by the troops. Since the system already requires a large body of troops that scales in proportion to the stronghold, it seems like this, too, could allow one to assume stronghold upkeep is handled implicitly.

3. The Ancient Greeks handled the maintenance of public facilities through their use of liturgies - donations from their citizens. Since liturgies is already listed as an expense, this, too, could be a place where stronghold upkeep is taking place.

4. Removing stronghold upkeep makes tracking the domain revenues soooo much easier.

 

I like it so far. Did notice on the Domain morale modifier there was an error, as the chart appears to penalize the ruler for paying extra liturgy expenses and reward underpaying.

Yes, good catch! I'll fix that and a few other glitches and release a new PDF soon.

A thought occurred to me; extra garrison expenses in this version do not affect domain morale. How does conquering invaded domains work, then, if you can’t just march your army in and declare martial law?

(I do think it is probably a good thing to have garrison expenses not be the ‘pay more for more morale’ mechanic, since it no longer lets you double up on value, both having a large army and a happy domain.)

As a refresher, here are the mechanics for occupation:

To determine whether a domain is occupied, calculate the value (in wages/month) of the occupying troops in the domain, and subtract the value (in wages/month) of any of the owner’s troops remaining in the domain after any battles have been fought.  Divide the difference by the number of peasant families to calculate the net gp value of occupying troops per peasant. If the net gp value of occupying troops per peasant is greater than the domain’s garrison cost (2-4gp), the domain is occupied. Effectively, if the enemy troops, less any friendly troops, would be enough to garrison the domain, the domain is occupied.

So the new rules do not in any way impact the ability of a new ruler to occupy a domain. It's still (your army - owner's army) / (number of families) > (garrison cost).

What they do make much harder is maintaining control over a demoralized domain. Once it goes into the -2 to -4 range, and peasants start revolting, there's no apparent means of solving the problem except lowering taxes and spending money on liturgies. And that is a problem. There needs to be some mechanism by which a rebellious or turbulent domain can be pacified or repressed! It took Justinian slaughtering30,000 people in Constantinople to do it, but that just shows that sometimes violence can be the answer...

OK!:

1.5 mile hex "small domain" - The more-or-less 16 hexes contained in a 6 mile hex coexist peacefully with the maximum number of lairs findable in the same hex (2d8 wilderness jungle) - one could theoretically invert the L&E lair tables to generate random domain holdings?

I appreciate the clarification on starting domain type.

A 1.5 mile hex domain purchase (1,506 acres I think?) would be 52,800 gold. The 1.5 mile hex at 1,056 acres would hold about 35 30-acre farms, or 35 families/175 people - ~560 families in a 6 mile hex, very well civilized. If you could fill it up day 1, you'd get about 2800 gp/mo income (civilized plus tribute), returning your investment in about 19 months.

The 30-acre farm is a hex of 1,228 feet in height; 600 feet shy (about 1.5x less) of the height (1,822 ft) of the 1/16th subhex of a 1.5 mile hex. 

Territorial Control: This goes really well with the Demographics of Leveled Characters table on pg 235, and might help one make certain assumptions about how people in the world think of themselves.

If a L2 character can rule a Hamlet, one might think that anyone in the surrounding four 1.5 mile hexes identify themselves with that hamlet or that authority figure there - or the City (L8) has the surrounding four 6 mile hexes considered as it's "suburbs", to use a modern idea, or perhaps the primary destination for the goods and services exported from those lands.

Tribute/Liturgies: Festivals were previously 5gp/fam/quarter, or 20gp/fam/yr, or 1.6 gp/fam/mo. Taxes were 20%, tithes were 10%. 

3 GP is 20% of 15 GP: Maximum per-family income in a domain is 15 gp (9 LV+4+2), so except for the 3.7% of hex land values that were already 9, the value you take out of your vassals is much greater.

This encourages vassalization for the PCs, which is good - interaction with the game world. Some light math tells me the percentage of one's income that would come from one's vassals doubles in most cases, given 4 vassals of about half your personal domain size or so.

You can still gain at least an extra full 1 GP per directly vassaled family for non-henchman vassals even if you spend 1-2GP of the 3GP/family income back at the non-henchman domain (in effect reducing tribute, if allowed) to increase it's current morale score (offsetting the -2 by half or full - 1GP for 2d6-1 increases current 16% of the time and holds 58%, 2 GP for 2d6 increases ~27%, holds 72% of the time)  or let it fly and takes your chances. The thoughtful Judge, however, would nix that by having one's henchmen, as a group in a dark room, ask why Bob from Jersey's getting special treatment and they ain't.

Land Value Matters More With Lieges: On the other hand, if you have a liege lord, you really want a higher land value. The 3.7% of wilderness hexes with LV 3 are zero-profit with this change, as the garrison costs + tribute eats all the income - you pay your lord tribute as if your LV was always 9. You save a little on the backend from the lower Tithe and Liturgy costs, however, tithing was 1 GP at LV 4, so, again, LV 3 is penalized, with LV 5+ saves a couple percentage points of income, 1 SP per family per value above LV 4.

Ignoring garrison costs for domain types, the difference per family per LV for festivals/taxes/liturgies/tributes:

With Liege Taxes/Tribute due, if I didn't screw the math up:

LV Festival>Liturgy Tax>Tribute Tithe Difference/Fam
3 0.6 -1.2 -0.1 -0.7
4 0.6 -1 0 -0.4
5 0.6 -0.8 0.1 -0.1
6 0.6 -0.6 0.2 0.2
7 0.6 -0.4 0.3 0.5
8 0.6 -0.2 0.4 0.8
9 0.6 0 0.5 1.1

Without a Liege:

LV Festival>Liturgy Tithe Difference/Fam
3 0.6 -0.1 0.5
4 0.6 0 0.6
5 0.6 0.1 0.7
6 0.6 0.2 0.8
7 0.6 0.3 0.9
8 0.6 0.4 1
9 0.6 0.5 1.1

In general, then, this change nets the domain ruler more income except in the case of envassaled, low land value domains - the 62% of hexes with LV 6+ see some increase no matter their vassalage status. Nobody's ever even implied domain income might be too high, so. It does indicate that "hex shopping" for the elusive 8+ LV is still worth it.

Ignoring the fact that most players will not settle a below-average value hex without an overriding strategic reason to do so anyway, then, the change encourages either "going it alone", out in the wilderness or whatever, or encourages future conflict when the adventuring PC outlevels their liege lord, or the PC pisses off mutliple vassals and they ally against her. That's also good.

It also tends to make me think that, in general, higher land value areas are less turbulent, as there's "enough to go around" that every petty lord can have a good piece of the pie, whereas crappy parts of the world will tend to have a lot of folks squabbling over who rules who. Largely, then, ACKS models the human condition here.

Lastly, Tribute and Liturgy are cooler terms than Tax and Festival. 

Tribute implies that armies back your request, Tax implies Accountant Specialists. Liturgy implies serious works of art and entertainment and professionally staffed orgies, Festival implies Ren-Faire with greasy turkey legs and underengineered corsets.

So...yea. The simplicification is well worth it for the Judge, as, in general, a player gets more out of it, except in a corner case that players would intend to avoid anyway.

 

 

 

 

Domain hijinks maybe?

Something where some "hijink value vs market class" of success in carousing or assassination or whatever (redirecting goods to the poor populace via theft?) can increase morale up to +0/Apathetic but no further, and hijink failure risks further morale drop (or instant morale rechecks?) - you've either suppressed or encouraged the vocal rabble-rousers in any given group?

The reverse would work as well to reduce domain morale, I suppose, taking it down to a floor of +0/Apathetic.

One could work it so that garrison increases only really work in concert with domain hijinks - either a garrison increase is a type of hijink, or a garrison increase gives a bonus to domain hijinks succeeding, which sounds plausible.

 

 

You are correct, I misremembered how a domain goes from occupied to conquered! (I had thought it was based on the domain morale rolls for occupier and ruler, when in fact it’s based on capturing all strongholds and settlements within the domain.)

I was close enough to right to have a point at least, even if it wasn’t entirely the point I was trying to make >.>

This looks great Alex!  Much easier than the old rules... though would need to do some in practice.

That said, with all the other sort of great discussion on the forums and refining of rules with new suggesstions on your part, does this mean we may see a ACKS 2nd Edition at some point?

I enjoy that these rules are simpler, and better support low-level characters acquiring domains, given that my primary beef with ACKS is that too many games start at A and fizzle before C gets going properly, let alone K. 

My only concern is that this seems like a big hit to the personal income of Emperors. I have no idea what kind of reprecussions that'd have though. 

It at the very least, makes them much more beholden to the whims of their vassals - it severely curtails their autonomy in rushing off to make war, etc. That's probably more realistic?

The only class I feel it may really adversely effect is Mages, depending on if they're utilizing the realm as a gold fountain for researching putting new tentacles in new places, rather than playing political games.

Having read them twice, I’m left ambivalent. There are some nice things here: clarification on domain rulership for low-level characters, a clearer process for domain expansion, elimination of stronghold maintenance, elimination of high-garrison morale bonus. But, it’s still spreadsheet-complex, with time-varying per-hex population values, the (+1d10-1d10)/1000 rule (my least favorite rule), fiddly morale rules, and the expectation of multiple levels of vassals. As a lazy DM with lazy players, this doesn’t really address any of the fundamental complexity/abstraction/focus-on-adventure issues with the old version of the domain system, as best as I can tell. I readily admit that I am no longer the target audience for ACKS’ domain rules, however.

Getting rid of percentages hardly matters if you still need a spreadsheet.

You sound like you might be better served by the domain rules described in "An Echo Resounding" from Sine Nomine.  It's much simpler and focuses tightly on the seam between domain rulership and the effect that adventurers can have on a domain.

For my part, I like elements from it, but find myself more drawn to ACKs, spreadsheets and all.  It definitely doesn't appeal to some people though.