Mad Renaissance STGOD

[Lys]

Holy shit about the connectivity and economy though. Historically those islands have always been underdeveloped backwaters. Hell of a lot of investment the Norman overlords did on their own lands. Guess that's where all the plunder went.

Which reminds me. Comrade Tortoise, you forgot the navy rules. They are kind of important given every player so far is a Mediterranean power.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Give the provinces the numbers in addition to the names if you can.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Holy shit about the connectivity and economy though. Historically those islands have always been underdeveloped backwaters. Hell of a lot of investment the Norman overlords did on their own lands. Guess that's where all the plunder went.

Which reminds me. Comrade Tortoise, you forgot the navy rules. They are kind of important given every player so far is a Mediterranean power.

They are part of the armed forces. Use the army points for those. I am still writing the military costs etc.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Also: Those army points are measured in Florin costs. Just to clarify.

[Cavalier]

I will (predictably) claim a greatly aggrandized Austria, under the rather charismatic leadership of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian von Habsburg. That will be Austria Proper (Austria, Ostmarch, Salzburg, Steiermark, Tyrol, Istria, Ansbach), the Vorlande (Alsace, Baden, Bern, and Schywz), and the new lands of Burgundy (Flanders, Brabant, Luxembourg, Zeeland, Holland, Friesland, Geldre). That gives 9 points put into size, leaving 17 for everything else. With a low connectivity score of 4, the empire is not very compact and nor really urbanized outside of the Netherlands, and keeping it politically intact is a difficult juggling act. On the other hand resources are available on a respectable level of 8, but the economy is underdeveloped (again, outside Burgundy) at a rating of 5.

Maximilian is an adept politician and an early innovator in what can be considered "public relations," assiduously cultivating his youthful, chivalric image through patronage of troubadours, poets, artists, and the printing press. He also has pretensions of being an author, and has penned a hybrid political manifesto and biography in the wake of his marriage to the young heiress of Burgundy. His push for reforms to the creaky structure of the Holy Roman Empire will inevitably take the course of a struggle for integration and greater centralization, pitting the lower nobility and townsmen against the Electors and other territorial princes. He has also been surrounded by signs and portents from God, dutifully recorded and disseminated throughout Germany and the rest of Europe, hinting at election as the savior of the Church from the heresy, corruption, and schism plaguing the land. There is no doubt Maximilian faces an enormous task simply knitting together his domain but he is a vigorous, energetic, intelligent and headstrong man in the prime of his life. And though his virtues are balanced by impulsiveness, thus far the House of Austria has been on a lucky streak...

[Dark Silver]

Bowing out of the running of the Byzantine Empire, I've still got a lot on my plate with fixing up LibArc's website stuff, and some other projects I'm working on.

Sorry Havoc and CT.

[frigidmagi]

Given that everyone is crowding around the Western Med, I am electing to play the Kingdom of Occitinia (South France).

Provinces by number:
405
406
407
408
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426

Sorry, folks I can't read all the names.

Picture

[General Havoc]

Here are the territorial claims for the Neo Roman Empire

Rome, Venice, Mantua, Lombardia, Liguria, Romania (Umbria), Marche (Picenia), Sienna, Naples, Apulia, Piedmont, Dalmatia, Crete, and Thrace (yes).

[Lys]

I am saddened outraged by this perfideous dismemberment of France! And if I didn't play Spain there would have been some perfideous dismemberment of it instead. Can't win them all, I guess.

Anyway, here are your province names (without fancy grammar marks):

405 - Savoy
406 - Provence
407 - Dauphine
408 - Lyonnais
417 - Vendee
418 - Poitou
419 - Limoisin
420 - Avergene
421 - Cevennes
422 - Laguedoc
423 - Guyenne
424 - Gascogne
425 - Bearn
426 - Rousillon

I take issue with that last one. It was Spanish from the 12th century to the 17th. I will not let the French take it away this time.

[frigidmagi]

Blame CT, he made the system that doesn't reward taking to many provinces. As to the status of Rousillon, give me a PM and we'll discuss.

[Lys]

Question about the rules. It says that: "For each new province you conquer, your resource score increases by .5, and your size score increases by .5." Theoretical exercise time. Suppose I decided to make a power with Size 1, Resources 10. My next door neighbour also has Size 1, Resources 10. If I conquer my next door neighbour I now have Size 2, Resources 11. How and why did my neighbour's Res 10 turn into Res 1? Where did the other nine points go?

[Comrade Tortoise]

There are hundreds of provinces, I cannot assign individual values for each one. There are also massive game balance issues, where a state that does exactly what you describe has just increased its resource score from 1 to say, 5.5 if I average them, and that is just too large a gain for reasons that should be rather obvious. It also leads to larger powers actually losing resource points if they conquer a less resource rich state, if I average all of the values. In the end, you get rather large gains in what really matters (Florins per turn) with the system I have defined.

[Lys]

The current system is paradoxical. Provinces in a country with more points in size than in resources are worth more to the people conquering them than the people owning them. For example, a Size 6, Resources 4 country averages a third of a resource point per province. However if they were conquered by a theoretical stateless army, the country would magically become Size 6, Resources 6. So resources not just vanish into thin air as outlined in the prior post, they can also appear from such.

I think the logical solution is to let the resource value of each area be determined by the players simply by averaging their resources across their number of provinces. Such that the resource gain of wholly conquering any one country is equivalent to the resource value of said country. While this does mean that in the example of a Size 1, Res 10 country conquering its identical neighbour results in a Size 2, Res 20 country, I think it only makes sense. Basically, 2+2=4. This does not, however, necessarily mean that the increase in size and resource values be accessible the moment the peace treaty is signed. They could be filtered by how well integrated the new provinces are. A new acquisition wracked by insurgency should obviously contribute less than a similar one that has peacefully acquiesced.

I should perhaps also note that the values of Connectivity and Economy could justifiably be averaged to account for new additions. Just ask the Germans about their unification. West Germany had better economic and infrastructural indices than West Germany+East Germany, however the united Germany was self-evidently bigger and had access to more resources.

I do appreciate that a lot of work already went into the system, and that at this point you are surely eager to stop tweaking and get to playing.I've no wish to get into a long drawn out argument over this, it's just that paradoxes such as these confound me. My comments are in the hopes that there is a simple and quick resolution. I do think resolving them has a number of beneficial effects beyond logical consistency. It would do much to add texture and strategic depth to the geo-political situation. For example overseas adventures could be more appealing in some circumstances than simply marching across the border.


Also a side comment not related to the above. The Renaissance was an era of ruinous interest rates due to a number of factors. If I may, I suggest the following scale: Finance 1=50%, 2=45%, 3=30%, 4=35%, 5=30%, 6=25%, 7=20%, 8=15%, 9=10%, 10=5%. It also has the advantage of not devaluing the two upper levels, as the reduction is always five percentage points straight through.

[Cavalier]

I have some thoughts about the rules, especially a way to work with Resources. Please hit me up on AIM when you're available, Ben.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I am aware that there is some wierdness inherent in the system. When you try to simplify a complicated system into something with four variables, that is what often happens. I have to make a tradeoff between accuracy, and workload for players. Were I to implement the system you suggest, it would entail that players keep track of their seasonal income by province, which is a massive amount of work for the player, and setting up so that there is something resembling balance is exceedingly difficult as well. Particularly because that setup would require that I completely re-write the Florins Per Turn equation, and it would by necessity have to get more complicated than it is. To make everything more consistent, I would have to use summation terms and other things.

After game start, what is important is the amount of Florins you get per turn as far as that aspect of the mechanic is concerned. There may be a mathematical paradox there, but it is one that is necessary to avoid multiplying the book-keeping players have to do, which when you are playing a game, is the overriding concern. I will be spending a few hours tweaking things, I will work the math out, and see if there is a way to resolve the matter without having to (again... it went through 10 drafts) rewrite the florin equation significantly.

As for your refinement suggested to the Finance system, I know that the Renaissance had ruinous interest rates due to the tendency of nobility to default on their loans. However, I have never seen anything higher than 40% in the literature, and for some things, there are diminishing returns. Interest rates are one of those areas. I cannot extend your proposal past a score of 10, which for a strong banking power is well within reach. I can extend mine reasonably up through 14 before it breaks down. Still, I will see about an alternate formulation that meets the same goals.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Rules updated with the following addendum


Connectivity and Economy can be increased by spending a number of Florins equal to your current total seasonal budget multipled by current rating. Resources and Size increase only by conquest. For each new province you conquer, your resource score increases by (Conquered Nation's Base resource score/number of provinces+bonus to that province's score due to a particular resource in high supply)

Bonuses to Resources will be assigned to particular provinces based on geographic and historical criteria, and will be applied to a player's Resource score at game start. These bonuses however do NOT average in to the above equation. They are applied to Florins Per Season. Economy will get similar bonuses, and are applied the same way, and are added to the conquering player's economy score upon successful conquest of an affected province.


Post Script: I will simply... NOT modify the Florins Per Season Equation. The bonuses to economy and resources will be applied in that equation as appropriate. So, say a player has a base resource score of 10, and a province with a bonus of +.2 They will apply the term in the Florins Per Season equation as 10.2. Yes they will multiply with size or connectivity, but that is fine. I am sure the players will appreciate it.

[frigidmagi]

I'll be trading Rousillon for Berri.

[Lys]

I moved the rules discussion to PMs to avoid cluttering up this thread. If anything come of it the rules will be updated, if not then they won't.

Note that my intended proposal is more simple and straightforward than Comrade Tortoise assumed at first, as I don't particularly relish the thought of large increases in book keeping or rewriting the florins per turn equation.

Finally, I told CT this over PMs but I might as say it in public too. I love this rule system. I think it's brilliant and inspired with an elegant simplicity to it that does a good job of mixing depth with playability. That I seek to tweak it is only to take it even closer to the always asymptotic perfection.

I'll be trading Rousillon for Beri

^-^

[Lys]

Blame CT, he made the system that doesn't reward taking to many provinces.

I ran the numbers. At game start the maximum possible income is 68 000 florins. There are only two ways to reach it. The first is to maximize economy and connectivity as Academia Nut did, and the second is to maximize size and resources. That's not quite what I would call no reward for taking too many provinces. Though it does make your country backward and feudal, that doesn't mean you're not a power to be reckoned with.

BTW - It is more likely that your nation would call itself the Kingdom of Aquitaine than the Kingdom of Occitania. Not saying you should change it, call it whatever you want, just making a historical note.

[Academia Nut]

I ran the numbers. At game start the maximum possible income is 68 000 florins. There are only two ways to reach it. The first is to maximize economy and connectivity as Academia Nut did, and the second is to maximize size and resources. That's not quite what I would call no reward for taking too many provinces. Though it does make your country backward and feudal, that doesn't mean you're not a power to be reckoned with

I can say from discussion with CT that this is precisely the effect that he was going or, and that he was engineering the equation so that it would produce values comparable to historical accounts for both large, feudal empires and small but prosperous city states.

Also, my Sicilians continue to grow increasingly insane with GM approval.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I ran the numbers. At game start the maximum possible income is 68 000 florins. There are only two ways to reach it. The first is to maximize economy and connectivity as Academia Nut did, and the second is to maximize size and resources. That's not quite what I would call no reward for taking too many provinces. Though it does make your country backward and feudal, that doesn't mean you're not a power to be reckoned with

I can say from discussion with CT that this is precisely the effect that he was going or, and that he was engineering the equation so that it would produce values comparable to historical accounts for both large, feudal empires and small but prosperous city states.

Also, my Sicilians continue to grow increasingly insane with GM approval.

Pretty much. Also, once posted, any special units other than those I put up for general use need GM approval, and their stats need to be worked out via negotiation with me for game balance... but insanity is permitted and encouraged.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I have attached the files containing all military units currently available in this post. Will also upload to the original rules thread soon. I may tweak the costs if I find that army sizes are over-small.

[frigidmagi]

I think you need to redo parts, the headings for your columns are jumbled together so I can't tell what is what. Also they are offset from the numbers.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Yeah, I noticed that too... I may use colors.

[Comrade Tortoise]

This should work a bit better. Original file replaced as well.