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3 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

Question, corebook say knights can mobilise their peasants for defence

I never used levée (what's the name in english?) in my game. Peasants are not dragonfooder. They don't want to fight, they don't know how to fight, they have bad moral, and will run away easily.

I don't use Berroc Saxons either. Sorry 😢

 

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14 hours ago, Morien said:

Maybe. But if I am giving the PK access to slightly higher quality troops, I am going to make him pay for that, too. For example, the Saxon Warriors might be expecting some gifts from their generous chieftain if the year has gone well, and the Saxon ceorls might not be willing to put up with Squeezes.

Make sense. + that aren't big price.

15 hours ago, Morien said:

and the warrior elite is fighting in the Cymric style and needing Cymric type social organization to fund the knight and the horses.

Though, presumably this saxon knights/sergeants/soldiers still will have better stats 😅

15 hours ago, Morien said:

As for Kent, Wessex, etc... By the time the Saxon lands are reconquered after Badon, there are not really all that much call for the peasant militias, and you probably would have forbidden the Saxon ceorls to own weapons and armor anyway, in order to make rebelling harder for them.

 Well, GPC and BaL say that there are plenty of rebels and bandits in this land, + potential rival lords. That is good reasons to ensure defensiveness of lord's economic base. Especially if said lord is saxon, even assimilated one.

14 hours ago, Tizun Thane said:

I never used levée (what's the name in english?) in my game. Peasants are not dragonfooder. They don't want to fight, they don't know how to fight, they have bad moral, and will run away easily.

Understandable, yet both game rules and history say that they will defend their homes and families as well as they can.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Domesday Book was used to calculate incomes and status/rank of parcel owners. It was also used in conjunction with some of the old online maps that showed a good approximation of their location to map out the various hundreds and such.

It was always an art more than a science.

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  • 3 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Morien said:

If we go by KAP 4 scaling of bannerets, you'd expect about 50/50 split, so the 'kingdom' might be a small one with a £50 demesne and £50 enfeoffed manors, for a total of £100. However, if we go with BotW scaling of 10-20% enfeoffed, this would give the size of the full kingdom somewhere between £250 and £500. So about a regular baronial honour of £300 or so.

  BTW, that also interesting question - demesne of William the Conqueror was just 17% of kingdom. And this was a guy who goes out of his way to ensure advantage over his vassals...

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2 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

  BTW, that also interesting question - demesne of William the Conqueror was just 17% of kingdom. And this was a guy who goes out of his way to ensure advantage over his vassals...

A King is different from a Baron. More interesting would be to look at how much subinfeudation was going on in English baronies, and how did that evolve with time.

Interestingly, subinfeudation was ended by Edward I, in 1290: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quia_Emptores

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On 2/15/2022 at 1:55 PM, Morien said:

A King is different from a Baron. More interesting would be to look at how much subinfeudation was going on in English baronies, and how did that evolve with time.

Well, your original post was about kingdom, however small one 😅 but demesne-to-enfeoffed proportions for different titles is indead interesting question.

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12 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

Well, your original post was about kingdom, however small one 😅 but demesne-to-enfeoffed proportions for different titles is indead interesting question.

Fair enough. 🙂 It would be a bit strange to have 5 vassal knights of £10 each, and the "King of the Red City" with the city itself of £10, though.

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On 2/16/2022 at 2:15 PM, Morien said:

Fair enough. 🙂 It would be a bit strange to have 5 vassal knights of £10 each, and the "King of the Red City" with the city itself of £10, though.

BTW, my historian friend said thet there was cases of kingdoms where kings had no demesne whatsoever, relying solely on vassal support...

Not sure it would be good from players perspective, but it seems that relatively smaller demesne would be more interesting from world building perspective - less high noblesse, more knight, less intrigue, more adventuring, smaller societal gap...

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1 hour ago, Oleksandr said:

BTW, my historian friend said thet there was cases of kingdoms where kings had no demesne whatsoever, relying solely on vassal support...

No demesne whatsoever? Apart from some palace princes/kings of late Merovingian dynasty, where the de facto control of the kingdom was in the hands of the Carolingian mayors of the palace, none come to mind off-hand. Even the early Capet Kings had Paris.

It is true that the early Capetians and the early Habsburgs were very much the small fish in a big pond, with vassals who were mightier than they were. So it is not totally out of place to have a kingdom where vassal might even be stronger than the King. However...

1 hour ago, Oleksandr said:

Not sure it would be good from players perspective, but it seems that relatively smaller demesne would be more interesting from world building perspective - less high noblesse, more knight, less intrigue, more adventuring, smaller societal gap...

It would be better from play balance perspective, sure, and keeping everyone on the Vassal Knight level. However, it would be strange to call this guy a King, then, when his demesne is that of a vassal knight.

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  • 9 months later...

From BotW (101): "Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains a bonus of £1 per £10 (ten percent) of render. Round off decimals to the nearest tenth." 1) so, from boy king period onward market towns provide 20% income bonus? that would make total bonus (town+port+city+woods) +50%?; 2) i understand correctly that this bonuses affect everybody in area, and commoners just pay more taxes due to larger income?

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1 hour ago, Oleksandr said:

From BotW (101): "Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains a bonus of £1 per £10 (ten percent) of render. Round off decimals to the nearest tenth." 1) so, from boy king period onward market towns provide 20% income bonus? that would make total bonus (town+port+city+woods) +50%?; 2) i understand correctly that this bonuses affect everybody in area, and commoners just pay more taxes due to larger income?

No. Uther and Boy King give +10% per market town/city/port, while Anarchy is 0%. See page 11, Table 1.2.

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21 hours ago, Morien said:

No. Uther and Boy King give +10% per market town/city/port, while Anarchy is 0%. See page 11, Table 1.2.

I'm not sure about this. It said that in BKP "Market Towns recover their purpose. Income bonuses from both are once again applied. Arthur also franchises many new towns to be Market Towns. Around 515, he begins granting new privileges to Market Towns...

...These changes benefit the inhabitants directly, and the local population indirectly, by making goods easier to access. The general and widespread saving of the rural populace is expressed as if it was income. Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains..."

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44 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

I'm not sure about this. It said that in BKP "Market Towns recover their purpose. Income bonuses from both are once again applied. Arthur also franchises many new towns to be Market Towns. Around 515, he begins granting new privileges to Market Towns...

...These changes benefit the inhabitants directly, and the local population indirectly, by making goods easier to access. The general and widespread saving of the rural populace is expressed as if it was income. Each hundred that includes a Market Town now gains..."

I was a contributing editor of that book, with my responsibility being the Economic system. I know how Greg intended the Market Town bonuses to work. The bonus is +10% during Boy King, not +20%, which is how I took your question originally. However, with that being said...

AFTER the Boy King it is a different ballgame, and I think you are onto something there. We can argue that by late Boy King (i.e. after 515), some market towns might get a higher bonus, and by Conquest, the boni ought to be +20% throughout. I would not have a problem with that, as the defeat of the Saxons opens up new trade routes to the continent and the disappearance of Saxon raids and internecine warfare makes it easier to conduct trade over longer distances. It fits well with the idea that post-Badon opens up a Golden Age for Britain under Arthur. So if you want to start sprinkling +20% boni around after 515 rather than after 518, I think you would be justified in doing so. I'd keep it at first more of a bonus for specific market towns (rewards for Eager Vassals and maybe even PKs who have caught Arthur's eye, indirectly rewarding them with a bonus to their finances) and then upgrade the general bonus to +20% from Conquest onwards.

So yeah, rereading your question and the text, I think the 515 mention was Greg foreshadowing the increase of the bonus for CONQUEST. In short, sorry for being so curt earlier. Good catch.

Oh, and yes, the market town bonus would increase the income of the PKs' manors in the same hundred. The peasants would not be paying any more taxes, since those taxes (rents) are likely set by time immemorial to be what they are. However, as it explains in the text, the easier access to markets and the increase in trade results in savings, which is expressed as income. I think you could also argue that the rising urban populations mean a higher demand for food, so there might be an increase in the monetary value of render, too, in comparison to craftsmen's goods. The details are not that important, though.

Edited by Morien
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On 1/7/2022 at 2:10 AM, Ali the Helering said:

Actually, there are many cultures that have romanticised egalitarian social structures, including most western liberal democracies.  I am in favour of such social structures, but not in favour of romanticising them!  The Arthurian myths are not so easily 'lumped together' though - there is a marked difference between the Mabinogion and the French geste. 

 I was specifically referring to pre-gunpowder societies.  We are after all, referring here to Pendragon.  You won't find much romanticizing of themes like Athenian democracy or Scythian egalitarianism until well into the early modern period.   

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37 minutes ago, Darius West said:

 I was specifically referring to pre-gunpowder societies.  We are after all, referring here to Pendragon.  You won't find much romanticizing of themes like Athenian democracy or Scythian egalitarianism until well into the early modern period.   

I don't see that you limited it to pre-gunpowder societies in your post, but if I missed it, fair enough.

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On 1/10/2022 at 10:48 AM, Ali the Helering said:

The use of violence by the elite or by those sanctioned by a local elite has frequently been accepted.

What is interesting in this regard is that some medieval states (in some part of HRE, for example) legally demanded commoners to be armed. Acording to BotW same true for arthurian kingdom.

On 1/6/2022 at 5:10 PM, Ali the Helering said:

Representative government in the UK didn't truly exist until the Representation of the People Act in 1928, with female suffrage.  Until then it was the domain of select and unrepresentative groupings.

It's important to remember that unlike us (who focus on people as individuals first and foremost) traditional culture was way more collectivist. Person was first a member of group - tribe, clan, noble house, community, guild... In such society somebody representing large group of people (whole family* and community) was seen as perfectly feasible. For people from such cultures universal suffrage would be feeld as totally unnecessary.

*in fact, we know plenty of cases when rulers and nobles consult with their wives on political matters, and cases when spouses co-ruled as equal, and even when woman ruled from behind weak husband. There probably was more cases we don't know about. That, and remembering important administrative role of wives (and occasionally mothers), i would say women had much more involvement in politics than many people think.

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2 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

It's important to remember that unlike us (who focus on people as individuals first and foremost) traditional culture was way more collectivist. Person was first a member of group - tribe, clan, noble house, community, guild... In such society somebody representing large group of people (whole family* and community) was seen as perfectly feasible. For people from such cultures universal suffrage would be feeld as totally unnecessary.

*in fact, we know plenty of cases when rulers and nobles consult with their wives on political matters, and cases when spouses co-ruled as equal, and even when woman ruled from behind weak husband. There probably was more cases we don't know about. That, and remembering important administrative role of wives (and occasionally mothers), i would say women had much more involvement in politics than many people think.

Unfortunately that doesn't for a moment convince me of your case.  Collectivism is a useful structure, but individuals within that structure still existed as discrete entities.

Similarly, describing something as a representative democracy when it was anything but doesn't help.

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22 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Unfortunately that doesn't for a moment convince me of your case.  Collectivism is a useful structure, but individuals within that structure still existed as discrete entities.

The thing is, people who grown up in such collectivistic society don't view their individuality the way modern westerners do. And this explain quite a lot of weird behavior of our ancestors...

22 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Similarly, describing something as a representative democracy when it was anything but doesn't help.

Well, any form of representative democracy is compromise. Question of how many people are actually represented, with all that parties who don't get minimum % of votes (with their voters being effectively disregarded),  with people who didn't bother to vote...

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13 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

It is a dictatorship of plutocratic males. 

😑 Couple centuries ago my people (who was at the time occupied by large empire), end up under rule of 4 empresses in a row (two emperors in between lasted month each), 3 of them was absolute monarch, and ruled with iron fist, for majority of the century. Second to last imprisoned her 2 month old cousin for the rest of his (short) life to get rid of potential rivals. Last of them introduced absolute serfdom, which, due to peculiarities of local laws, effectively mean she enslaved ALL villagers. And persecuted minorities (including us. BTW, we had no serfdom before that). "Dictatorship" of plutocratic males? Try dictatorship of aristocratic females 🙄

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2 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

"Dictatorship" of plutocratic males? Try dictatorship of aristocratic females 🙄

I'd be very careful about labeling a society as ruled by women simply because the head of state happens to be female.

For example in Britain, at the time of Queen Victoria, women (even aristocratic ones) did not have a vote, and even Victoria's position had already become more ceremonial than anything else (although less so than in modern times), reigning rather than ruling.

Or if we want to have a even starker example, Queen Elizabeth I. Sure, the Queen had real power, but below her, it was the male aristocrats who occupied all the positions of power. And had the Queen tried to change that, she would have been overthrown.

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14 hours ago, Oleksandr said:

😑 Couple centuries ago my people (who was at the time occupied by large empire), end up under rule of 4 empresses in a row (two emperors in between lasted month each), 3 of them was absolute monarch, and ruled with iron fist, for majority of the century. Second to last imprisoned her 2 month old cousin for the rest of his (short) life to get rid of potential rivals. Last of them introduced absolute serfdom, which, due to peculiarities of local laws, effectively mean she enslaved ALL villagers. And persecuted minorities (including us. BTW, we had no serfdom before that). "Dictatorship" of plutocratic males? Try dictatorship of aristocratic females 🙄

As ever, your case does nothing to undermine my point.  As Morien says, head of state does not dictate intrinsic structure of state.

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Thing is, unlike England, which had parliament since forever, empire in question had absolute monarchy, and two of this 4 empreses come to power via military coup.

On 11/25/2022 at 1:30 PM, Morien said:

For example in Britain, at the time of Queen Victoria, women (even aristocratic ones) did not have a vote

It important to remember that people in the past (contrary to popular belief) wasn't any more stupid or cowardly then us. What i mean, this aristocratic women, if they wanted to influence politics, could, by influencing their husbands. Many did. In fact, most of such women did not support women rights movements, because it would actually diminish their personal power (why share with commoners?)

p.s. interestingly, in medieval elective monarchies at least 4 women was elected as rulers. 3 of them held title "king", not "queen".😉

p.p.s. sorry if my words sound to harsh. Cruise missiles flying over my head das not improve my mood at all...🤬

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