Olympia PBEM

17.1: Quick overview

Each province and city generates an amount of gold each month. This gold is known as its tax base. The size of the tax base is determined by the civilization level of the province. This gold may be pillaged, taxed by a castle, or taxed by a garrison. It does not accumulate if left uncollected at the end of a turn.

A castle automatically collects all of the gold in its province.

The `garrison castle' order installs a group of at least ten soldiers in a province to claim it and guard against pillaging. Garrisons must be bound to a castle.

A garrison pays maintenance for its members from the province tax base, then forwards 1/5 of the remaining gold to its castle.

The castle owner gains status from the number of provinces under control:

provinces       rank
---------       ----
   1-3          lord
   4-7          knight
   8-11         baron
  12-15         count
  16-19         earl
  20-22         marquess
   23+          duke
  region        king     (region must have at least 15 provinces)

A noble may pledge to another noble, granting status and control of owned provinces. The status of a noble who pledges is the smaller of the original status or one below the rank of the pledge target:

new status = min(original status, one below rank of pledge target)

Control of a province allows one to change its name or the name of any of its sublocations, take items from the garrison, and issue decrees to watch for certain units, or to attack specified units on sight.

The castle continues to receive the income from garrisoned provinces, even if the castle's owner is pledged to another noble.

Every noble in the pledge chain shares control of the garrisoned provinces. In other words, a castle owner may pledge to a noble, who in turn may pledge to a third noble, etc. Thus a province may have any number of rulers.

Visitors to a province are informed of the castle to which the garrison is bound, and the top-most ruler in the pledge chain (which may simply be the owner of the castle):

Province controlled by Amber Keep [cy09], castle, in Forest [cj12]
Ruled by Erekosse [5210], baron
...
Seen here:
  Garrison [780], garrison, on guard, with ten soldiers