Large Manor, Small Estate

[Luca Cherstich]

What's the upper limit for calling a property a Manor?

Maybe are they considered Estates from £30?

Book of Warlord (Salisbury charter, notes) defines Westfort manor as encompassing the whole settled part of the Westfort hundred (whose CR is £27).

So can we have a single £27 manor?

Which means a Vassal Knight +at least 1 household Knight but Without the possibility of been defined Estate Holder? (and therefore getting only the 200 glory for vassal Knight but not the 200 glory for Estate holder).

[Morien]

BotE, p. 7: "An estate is like an honour but smaller, ranging in income from £30 to £150 per year. Income supports additional knights as well as a proper  lifestyle. A landholder can have any number of parcels or manors he has collected, but it is still not an estate. The ancient origins of many estates are long-lost, but recognized. Only the king can create a new estate and he alone has the power to dissolve one — and even then only if the estate comes back into his possession."

So £30+ manor is still a manor, although I could see an argument that it would actually be an ancient Estate.

As for the upper limit, I thought I had seen some indication where an estate holder should start getting insulted if he is not made into a Baron, but I can't find it. It is not £100, though, since there is explicitly overlap between minor barons and richest estate holders / bannerets. The £150 upper limit from the p. 7 quotation above might be a good limit for that.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Morien

[Luca Cherstich]

So....if through improvements the £27 manor will turn to £30 it is still a Manor UNLESS the King says so declaring a nrw estate (and the main difference is getting that +200 Glory, right?).

So, a Vassal Knight with a £27 manor will still have 1 single household knight (and maybe he even Knighted him in the Uther period) but still, he will remain a vassal knight, right?

Edited April 12, 2020 by Luca Cherstich

[Morien]

3 hours ago, Luca Cherstich said:

So....if through improvements the £27 manor will turn to £30 it is still a Manor UNLESS the King says so declaring a nrw estate (and the main difference is getting that +200 Glory, right?).

Correct. He would not get a higher title unless the king gives him one.

3 hours ago, Luca Cherstich said:

So, a Vassal Knight with a £27 manor will still have 1 single household knight (and maybe he even Knighted him in the Uther period) but still, he will remain a vassal knight, right?

By RAW, himself, 1 hhk and 6+7=13 footmen. Personally, I turn £7 into another hhk so it would be himself, 2 hhk and 6 footmen, instead. But up to you.

Yes, he would stay just a vassal knight albeit a wealthy one.

[IlluminatedSeraph]

What's important about an estate isn't the money it produces.

That sounds super-strange in a gaming context, but it's true. An estate could be so barren and ravaged it only produces 10 pounds or even less, but as long as a grant from a royal authority exists making it an estate, it still is one. And you can own enough land to produce any amount of money and still only own a manor or collection of manors, and not an estate, should higher authority choose to withhold that recognition. 

So goes the theory. If you become rich and powerful enough and the King goes on refusing to make/grant you an estate, that can create problems for him until he *does* decide to do it, but Kings can be stubborn. Until he changes his mind, that title isn't coming.

So goes dealing with the font of honour.

[fulk]

Put simply, Manor vs. Estate is a legal definition not a monetary one.  Obviously, estates would tend to have higher value, but the values doesn't really matter.  It is an estate, because the king called it an estate when that conglomeration of land was first put together. 

Similarly, adding together multiple manors does not produce an estate.  They are just multiple manors.  Now, multiple generations into a campaign, the holder might just start calling a group of manors an estate, and hope that no one really remembers anything other than that his family has had 50L worth of land for a while...and hope to pull it off.

If I remember, an Honour in KAP is >100L and gives 'Baron' status to the holder if held directly from the king per Baroniam.  I think in the RW it was land with a servitium debitium of 20 knights. 

 

[The Wanderer]

3 hours ago, Morien said:

Personally, I turn £7 into another hhk so it would be himself, 2 hhk and 6 footmen, instead. But up to you.

Wouldn't it be better to have more foot soldiers in order to have enough combatants to fill the minor requirements to defend a fortification (which I think it is 10 people, according BotE)? 

[Percarde]

But isn't one knight worth ten foot soldiers?  Go with the knight.

[Atgxtg]

39 minutes ago, Percarde said:

But isn't one knight worth ten foot soldiers? 

Assuming your serious here, not quite. Fortifications need a minimum number of combat trained defenders to get their full DV, and a knight only counts as one trained defender, plus another for his squire. This is so they can cover enough of the wall to prevent attackers from just climbing over before someone can get to them.

Now the old Knight Value calculations used to give a knight a KV of 2 (Knight plus squire), but that was worth ten bandits (KV 1/5), or 20 peasants (KV 1/10), but that reflected how much better the knigth fought compared to the poorer quality troops, and didn't account for the footmen ganging up on the knight. 

[Morien]

4 hours ago, The Wanderer said:

Wouldn't it be better to have more foot soldiers in order to have enough combatants to fill the minor requirements to defend a fortification (which I think it is 10 people, according BotE)? 

From that point, yes. However:

1) It is not you but the liege lord (the GM) who writes up the SD in the Grant.

2) Most manors are not fortified, anyway.

3) It takes 5 professionals to defend a manor enclosure. Knight, squire and 3 footmen. With 12 (3 knights & squires, 6 footmen) you have enough to defend a motte-and-bailey castle, anyway, so it hardly matters.

4) Another household knight is a potentially interesting NPC. 7 foot soldiers are just part of the background of commoners.

[The Wanderer]

10 hours ago, Morien said:

3) It takes 5 professionals to defend a manor enclosure. Knight, squire and 3 footmen. With 12 (3 knights & squires, 6 footmen) you have enough to defend a motte-and-bailey castle, anyway, so it hardly matters.

You're right, I always forget the squires!! 😂

[The Wanderer]

However, how do you determine when there is a saxon raid, if the knight and squire are home? Do you roll a dice to determine the season or just assume he is there?

Edited April 13, 2020 by The Wanderer

[Atgxtg]

15 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

However, how do you determine when there is a saxon raid, if the knight and squire are home? Do you roll a dice to determine the season or just assume he is there?

That depends 

 on which books/ method you use .Some of them did have random tables to determine the season. 

Logicality it would depend on how much time the knight spends away adventuring and when.  

 

10 hours ago, Morien said:

From that point, yes. However:

1) It is not you but the liege lord (the GM) who writes up the SD in the Grant.

True, but nothing in that grant says you can't hire a couple of extra men. 

 

Considering how things work though, I'm surprised more liege lords wouldn't prefer four poor foot solider instead of two average ones. 

[Morien]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Considering how things work though, I'm surprised more liege lords wouldn't prefer four poor foot solider instead of two average ones. 

Because you need to feed two extra men. At some point, it stops being efficient, and you get a mob instead of an army. I am sure Book of the Castle will get more into the logistics of it all.

The other thing is that it is more of a matter of someone bring in just TWO poor foots oldiers vs. two average ones. That is what really gets the Liege upset.

Finally, we can debate whether poor foot soldiers would actually count as 'professionals', or at least as efficient as the the average foot soldiers. Quality ought to matter some, too. I would have no problems saying that: poor x0.5, average or squire x1, armored/veteran x2, knight x4 for the minimum manpower calculation.

Which would mean that in the 1 vassal + 2 HHK + 3 squires + 6 foot soldiers (1 armored + 5 average) = 22 'average-equivalent men'. Even if the knight would just be equal to the armored veteran, this would still be 16 average-equivalent. This would also get rid of the issue of spamming poor foot soldiers.

[Percarde]

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Assuming your serious here, not quite. Fortifications need a minimum number of combat trained defenders to get their full DV, and a knight only counts as one trained defender, plus another for his squire. This is so they can cover enough of the wall to prevent attackers from just climbing over before someone can get to them.

Now the old Knight Value calculations used to give a knight a KV of 2 (Knight plus squire), but that was worth ten bandits (KV 1/5), or 20 peasants (KV 1/10), but that reflected how much better the knigth fought compared to the poorer quality troops, and didn't account for the footmen ganging up on the knight. 

I was thinking in the field and not in a fortification.  😞

Does anyone still use the levy rules from previous editions?  Or is there just the knight and the three footmen?

I haven't played in a while so don't really have current first hand experience in game.  

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Morien said:

Because you need to feed two extra men. At some point, it stops being efficient, and you get a mob instead of an army. I am sure Book of the Castle will get more into the logistics of it all.

Except in game terms it doesn't work that way. Upkeep wise it's a wash, and skill wise the poor troops catch up in skill in a few years. If Pendragon didn't have the 1 sesion per year thing going it would make a difference, but as written, not so much. Basically it's twice the prices for +1 CON.

1 hour ago, Morien said:

The other thing is that it is more of a matter of someone bring in just TWO poor foots oldiers vs. two average ones. That is what really gets the Liege upset.

Oh yeah! That's a whole differnt kettle of fish. My PKs haven't gone that route though. I had one PK who did end up replaicng his average footsolider with poor troops but he hired ten of them, and outfitted them with haubergeons he picked up over the years,  so the Count figured he was way ahead in the deal.

1 hour ago, Morien said:

Finally, we can debate whether poor foot soldiers would actually count as 'professionals', or at least as efficient as the the average foot soldiers. Quality ought to matter some, too. I would have no problems saying that: poor x0.5, average or squire x1, armored/veteran x2, knight x4 for the minimum manpower calculation.

Which would mean that in the 1 vassal + 2 HHK + 3 squires + 6 foot soldiers (1 armored + 5 average) = 22 'average-equivalent men'. Even if the knight would just be equal to the armored veteran, this would still be 16 average-equivalent. This would also get rid of the issue of spamming poor foot soldiers.

I dunno, is Knight Value still a thing? 

Personally I think Poor troops should probably cost the same upkeep but just be cheaper to hire, I'd probably start them off at 10 in their skills too, or maybe even lower. But as written they aren't all that much different than normal troops. 2 points of skill and 1 point of CON isn't all that significant.

[Morien]

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

skill wise the poor troops catch up in skill in a few years.

Meaning they will become Average Spearmen and hence cost £0.5 in upkeep. You can't cheat the game like that. Poor Infantry is explicitly: "These soldiers are quickly-raised, green, and unarmored."

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

the Count figured he was way ahead in the deal.

Sure, if you bring 10 armored (if a bit green) footmen instead of 2 average footmen, of course the Count likes it.

But it is going to cost you. I would give a discount on those armor, though. Kinda like the legionnaire arrangement: you get your kit upfront, but then pay it from your salary after the fact.

5 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I dunno, is Knight Value still a thing? 

It ought to be. Otherwise one can go around saying that a 14-yr squire on a rouncy is equivalent to a knight in plate armor on a destrier. After all, both of them are mounted soldiers, right?

5 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Personally I think Poor troops should probably cost the same upkeep but just be cheaper to hire,

As you can see, I am not far off from that. Basically, the thing is that as long as they QUALIFY as Poor Infantry, they are cheap, but when they gain the experience and the equipment to be equivalent to the Average Infantry, they ought to get the same upkeep. Kinda like you can't just take an esquire, put him in armor and say that he now takes one of your SD knight slots while still paying him £1 upkeep.

5 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd probably start them off at 10 in their skills too, or maybe even lower. But as written they aren't all that much different than normal troops. 2 points of skill and 1 point of CON isn't all that significant.

It is really the point that they also lack 4 points of armor and are green troops, meaning they will have a lower morale, too.

In KV terms, they have half the KV of an average foot soldier.

[Atgxtg]

40 minutes ago, Percarde said:

I was thinking in the field and not in a fortification.  😞

 

Ah. Gnerally speaking the field ins't as big a deal as the fortification, since fortifications need so many men to get their  full DV>

40 minutes ago, Percarde said:

Does anyone still use the levy rules from previous editions?  Or is there just the knight and the three footmen?

No, because it was stated that the levy isn't normally available to the knight, and that only the king can raise them. They were mostly useless anyway. 

 

[Atgxtg]

1 minute ago, Morien said:

Meaning they will become Average Spearmen and hence cost £0.5 in upkeep. You can't cheat the game like that. Poor Infantry is explicitly: "These soldiers are quickly-raised, green, and unarmored."

Unforntalety that's not how it is worded. IMO it should be something like they start as green troops and become average tropps but that isn't mentioned anywhere in the text. 

1 minute ago, Morien said:

Sure, if you bring 10 armored (if a bit green) footmen instead of 2 average footmen, of course the Count likes it.

Yup. Especially as the PK was situation on what had been a troublesome border. 

1 minute ago, Morien said:

But it is going to cost you. I would give a discount on those armor, though. Kinda like the legionnaire arrangement: you get your kit upfront, but then pay it from your salary after the fact.

What I've done is raise the upkeep over time as all that nice armor needs to be maintained. So eventually the are considered to be armored soldiers. But, the PK has collected several suits of armor over the campaign and has been using those to help offset the cost. 

1 minute ago, Morien said:

It ought to be. Otherwise one can go around saying that a 14-yr squire on a rouncy is equivalent to a knight in plate armor on a destrier. After all, both of them are mounted soldiers, right?

Except the knight is much more experienced, in  plate armor on a destier, and the squire isn't. Mind you if poor troops came in at the competency level that squires used to come it at, and footmen at the levels that 21 year old knights used to come in at the difference between the fotsoldier would be significant.

But as written, poor troops hold thier own against average troops much better than squires will against knights.

 

1 minute ago, Morien said:

As you can see, I am not far off from that. Basically, the thing is that as long as they QUALIFY as Poor Infantry, they are cheap, but when they gain the experience and the equipment to be equivalent to the Average Infantry, they ought to get the same upkeep. Kinda like you can't just take an esquire, put him in armor and say that he now takes one of your SD knight slots while still paying him £1 upkeep.

Unforntately the game stats don't really reflect that though. A poor foltsolder can give an average one a good fight, but a squire typically won't be a challenge to a typical knight. 

1 minute ago, Morien said:

It is really the point that they also lack 4 points of armor and are green troops, meaning they will have a lower morale, too.

The morale thing is't reflected anywhere though. Now if the troops got Loyatly (Lord) in the mix and the poor troops had lower scores there, the PKS would take notice. 

Hmm, maybe the next war I'll have a shortage of trained troops and up the price for green troops. I plan to do something like that for archers soon. 

 

[fulk]

My advice is to not overthink and try to game the mechanics. Sure you could hire poor quality soldiers and let them improve...to be underpaid regular foot soldiers. But in my game, those underpaid, now skilled foot soldiers would just leave for better paying jobs...or something. Just make PKs pay 1/2L for skills in the range of regular foot soldiers.  Otherwise, soldiers leave.  Really, the economics system in KAP is just not designed for tinkering. 

One of the big mistakes, in my opinion, was dropping knights value (KV).  That made some of the difference more obvious and gave better value for better troops. I was fond of KV.

Also, don't forget to apply 'Superior Troops' type modifiers for skirmishes or battles.

 

[Morien]

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

The morale thing is't reflected anywhere though. Now if the troops got Loyatly (Lord) in the mix and the poor troops had lower scores there, the PKS would take notice. 

The foot soldiers ought to have Loyalty (Lord), as they are part of the mesnie. And it would make perfect sense for the poor soldiers to start with a low Loyalty (Lord) (due to the lack of experience in the service) and not improve (due to the low upkeep).

[The Wanderer]

11 hours ago, Morien said:

The foot soldiers ought to have Loyalty (Lord), as they are part of the mesnie.

Is it loyalty to the PK they serve or to the lord of the PK (let's say, the count)?

[Morien]

10 minutes ago, The Wanderer said:

Is it loyalty to the PK they serve or to the lord of the PK (let's say, the count)?

To the PK, of course. He is their liege. Whose hall do you sleep in? Whose table do you eat at?

[The Wanderer]

Fair enough!

[Atgxtg]

On 4/14/2020 at 2:15 AM, Morien said:

The foot soldiers ought to have Loyalty (Lord), as they are part of the mesnie. And it would make perfect sense for the poor soldiers to start with a low Loyalty (Lord) (due to the lack of experience in the service) and not improve (due to the low upkeep).

Yes they should. If Loyalty started at values similar to skills, but didn't go up (since they aren't skills) then I think it would make a huge difference tot he players. Leaving the manor defended by two guys who are devoted to you (Loyalty 14-15 ish) seem much more reassuring that leaving in in the hands of a half dozen guys who aren't all that loyal to you (Loyalty 10).

 

I think I'll revise green troop to skill 7, and give troops a loyalty score equal to thier primary weapon skill. So the better veteran troops will be more loyal, which would make sense.