I think that loyality and revolts are a very good idea which ought to
balance the benefits of province ownership. But I think that the
suggested mechanism is a little bit too complicated. Why not just
have the server randomly create peasant revolts in provinces with low
loyality ? Those peasant revolts would simply be spontaneously formed
units which attack the government seat. If you want to get fancy you
could have that unit issue commands so that it spends much of its
time RECRUITing (with high bonus and without having to pay) and
attacks the government seat once a week or until either they are all
killed or the ruler is killed, in which case the peasants enter the
government seat and will defend it against anyone else who tries to
enter the government seat (but stops recruiting).
Oleg the Loudmouth writes:
> The notion that the first person who controls a structure in the
> region can tax it is a nice way to give more emphasis to
> structures, but the notion that 1 man in a tower can do anything
> to that heavily-armed group of 1,000 men is pretty laughable. Why
> should the only recourse to paying taxes be an attack? How can a
> small force prevent anyone from moving through a province? These
> and other issues have yet to be addressed.
Why not ? _Ruling_ a province automatically implies fighting anybody
who resists your laws. If you are a single man and declare yourself
ruler of a big province which outlaws any passage and a 1000 man army
comes marching through the gates then _you_ attack it ! If somebody
doesn't pay taxes, _you_ apprehend him. What else does being a ruler
mean ? Those may not be very smart courses of action, but declaring
yourself a ruler without any army generally isn't. But that is no
reason to outlaw it. All other proposals which depend on evaluating
relative military power and all those factors are just messy and
confusing. Province rulership by declaration and battle, is both
simple and self-regulating.
Scott Hauck writes:
> I personally like the idea of requiring people both to
> STUDY and to USE a skill to get to a high level. The way I'd
> implement it is as follows:
I think that is a bad idea. If you believe that some skills require a
practical component, why don't you just imagine that this practical
component is automatically trained when you use STUDY. After all, who
said that STUDY is always just book learning ? If you STUDY combat,
you certainly spend most of the day out in the open training the use
of your weapons, so why don't you just take STUDY ship building to
mean that you practice ship building with some pieces of wood and
some tools ?
Carl Edman