Define a new type of entity. For sake of argument, lets call it a Kingdom. A
kingdom must have a capital, which is a castle in a city. This province is
always part of this kingdom. Other provinces may be made part of this kingdom
by a noble who is a member of this Kingdoms nobility enforcing peace there.
[The civilisation level of this province rises to 1 less than the highest
adjacent province in the kingdom] as long as it has a civilisation level of at
least 0.5 and is adjacent to an existing kingdom province. [Civilisation is
always calculated from the capital outwards]. [I'm not sure that civilisation
requirements are worth while - ignore them if they are too complex] Enforcing
peace is time consuming requires a force of at least 50 soldiers to subdue the
populace, and requires a standing force of at least 10 soldiers to maintain it
(they will defend the province against pillaging). All standing armies are paid
for by the owner of the Capital, who is termed the King. Each alligned province
generates contributes 10% of its tax base to the capital. [30 cr usually]. A
castle which is built, or becomes part of a kingdom of which it is not the
capital will double the tax base to 600 as before, and again 10% of the tax must
be forwarded to the capital. The rest goes to the owner of the castle.
Allegiance of a province is easily determinable. [cv13, Plain, Kingdom of
Sartar [gq93], Greater Camaaris. Capital City Roshvan in ak15] for instance.
Aligned provinces are harder to convert to a different kingdom, requiring double
the time and more troops.
Aligned provinces may rebell from time to time, requiring peace to be enforced
in them again. [Stealth skill, anyone?].
Membership of a Kingdom is on a noble-by-noble basis. Membership of the kingdom
is granted by the King in a ceremony at his castle. Nobles belonging to
kingdoms are required to display their allegiance at all times!
A noble may renounce his allegiance to a Kingdom at any time. Any building he
owns will rebell with him. If it is a castle, then the city and/or province
will also rebell.
Kingdoms may merge by consent of both kings. One becomes a vassal of the other,
and the capital of the vassal becomes a normal castle in the new kingdom. This
is the only time a king may obtain a new vassal without the vassal having to be
present at his capital.
Optional: Any cash mined, or received in trade within a kingdom pays 5% tax to
the capital.
Comments?
I have a religions system which would work in a fairly similar way to this, but
easier to spread [Convert a kingdom at a time, for instance] and much much more
vicious in its competition. [A religions goal might be to wipe out a rival
religion in its entirety for instance].
Also, schools of magic could be in opposition with necromancers being totally
opposed to weather mages, for instance. A mage couldn't learn spells of
opposition schools for instance, and would gain power from destroying their
opposition schools and promoting their own. [sacking/destroying cities which
teach necromacy, or founding schools to teach it in a city]. That sort of
thing. I can flesh these out as well if you like, but I'll leave you with my
mind-dump of kingdoms for now.
John
Faction Curumo