A Count is the owner of the land has has full control over who he will lease the parcels to and which settlements he wants to grant the status of township. Of course there is plenty of room for abuse there, you can just grab the best spots for yourself (maybe build a nice vacation home) and in order to cover the costs just raise the taxes and tell the people it's because of a bad harvest. However, how long such a Count would remain in power is.. questionable.

Posted By TheEvilBassist at 01:42 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

A Count is the owner of the land has has full control over who he will lease the parcels to and which settlements he wants to grant the status of township. Of course there is plenty of room for abuse there, you can just grab the best spots for yourself (maybe build a nice vacation home) and in order to cover the costs just raise the taxes and tell the people it's because of a bad harvest. However, how long such a Count would remain in power is.. questionable.

See, I don't think that's right. How can you be the owner of the same land that a mayor or someone else already owns? You can rule it but I don't think you own it. If you stopped being a Count the land you own doesn't suddenly stop being yours because of the title change.

Another thing that points in this direction: the pledge package of Gentry specifically states, "As a member of the Gentry, you are a sanctioned landowner." These players also have access to Exposition and have EP to spend as part of the package. To use for their homes. Which they own.

You are right Ravenlute, people abuse the term owning land as they want to fit it to some plan or desire they have.

Ownership is simple and easy, OWNERSHIP of land is a contract, the one owning the parcel of land is the one which is mentioned on the land deed, plain and simple. You do not have that land deed, you do not own the land, period.

Now, all land is part of a domain, a county, and displayed on that county's land management table. One of the count's power/duty is to register non owned parcels of land onto the county"'s LMT for people to buy them and become their owner.

Once registered on the LMT the land deed can be bought by anyone meeting the requirements, including the count himself. Technically, the count can manage to sell to himself lots/all the non owned land of his county, but by definition, if he needs to buy it it is proof that he was not owning it.

Settlements also have borders, as you pointed it, the mayor of a settlement do not own the land inside those borders, he may and will most of the time own a good part of it, a mayor must own at least one parcel of land in a settlement he is mayor of, as he do not own that land he can not do with it as he please. on the town management UI he'll be able to zone part of the town for specific use, he can monitor things and lead the council of elders, but he can not do as he please with land that is not his or that is communal.

Posted By markof at 02:50 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

Ownership is simple and easy, OWNERSHIP of land is a contract, the one owning the parcel of land is the one which is mentioned on the land deed, plain and simple. You do not have that land deed, you do not own the land, period.

Agree to everything you said. The quoted here is the main point.

So yes, it is possible for a Count to "buy" those non-registered parcels on the cheap and more than a few seem to have that in their plans. That comes back to the purpose of this thread. Once they have acquired ownership of those parcels they are then responsible for all things related to them, including landownership taxes owed to the Duchy/Kingdom.

Unless they have a heck of an income, that's going to quickly be a drain on them. It will be much more beneficial to let them be sold and used productively.

Posted By Ravenlute at 11:38 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

See, I don't think that's right. How can you be the owner of the same land that a mayor or someone else already owns? You can rule it but I don't think you own it. If you stopped being a Count the land you own doesn't suddenly stop being yours because of the title change.

Fair enough I may have slightly misspoken when I said that the Count owns the land, I believe Markof has put it better in saying that you are assigned with managing said land. Which can also be said for aristocrats which are tasked with upholding a settlement. That being said, my point about abusing such privileges granted to you still stands.

You know, this being a game and all, having a minimum price requirement for parcel contracts sold on the LMT would go a long way toward preventing such abuse.

That would keep non-registered parcels from being bought for nearly free (because they can only be purchased on the LMT), while still allowing those owners who want to sell their land contracts directly to a buyer the ability to do so for any price.

Could it all just be semantics? Claiming that you own something is a bit of a farce in a feudalistic society, specifically land. You will still pay the count either way to have the land to work with.

The only thing that would change is the name on the deed contract, people that work and develop the land within the counts domain just have responsibility to pay the count for the land in increments.The same would happen if he owned all the land and then rented everything out via a less automated contract system that bypasses the land table.

It is actually quite advantageous to rent the land rather than owning the land. The only thing that renting does is not increase fame level as quickly. This comes with pro's and Con's. But lets say you rent and are free to develop land, what then happens when they then want to rent out parts of what they rent from the count. Again it's just semantics and adding a second step than just leasing land off the table..

Another thing that this changes is what is actually being traded, the kingdom's (county's) land or the player's (player that is a count's) land rights.

The only thing that this "games" is that the count would prevent the fame level of people that rent rather than buy from the land table as much fame, which would make people within his domain less of a risk of fighting him internally with a legal Cassus belli.

Maybe a few people would rather rent things from the count than lease things from the land table. That's all about perspective, would you like to slow the rise in fame/notoriety? Or do you want to increase fame, and increase the cost of your death so you can achieve positions of power such as possibly a mayor? But renting or leasing from the count is semantics. You never technically own land in this game, unless you are king.

Unless I am mistaken, not many counts would do a one and done fee for land, only special circumstances. Most counts would use a yearly fee or some other method of time through testing to get money in return to pay the count. Then the count pays the percentage to the duke, the duke then pays a percentage to the king. That's the most straight forward way of dealing with taxation is through land. The other form of taxes can come way of assisting trades and confirming routes to be guarded.

Income, gains, trade, and other ways of gaining money would be hard to audit or follow, counts will have an idea of how much resource is coming out from a given area, but they wouldn't be precise, which may cause a problem.

Renewal would likely happen monthly to account for a change, of some kind to gauge the value of the land accordingly. You possibly can luck out for a month before the count catches on that you struck gold within your land. But once he notices that.... That there is a time limit.

As a mayor things are a bit different you have the ability to zone once you get a town hall up and running and meet the requirement. Essentially you direct the flow on a micro-level rather than the macro that count and up focus on. If you have a goal for the settlement you aid and assist, Even as a mayor you may even have a land table of your own to sell and pars out your land to new people. That's also up to the deal you made with the count for the land you own within his/her domain. If you are savvy enough you can run your mayoral settlement much like a count would, while also having access to zoning and planning tools. Though that may be much harder, but if you own 70 of the 81 in a capital, you would come close to achieving a mini-county.

Posted By Ravenlute at 02:38 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

Posted By TheEvilBassist at 01:42 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

A Count is the owner of the land has has full control over who he will lease the parcels to and which settlements he wants to grant the status of township. Of course there is plenty of room for abuse there, you can just grab the best spots for yourself (maybe build a nice vacation home) and in order to cover the costs just raise the taxes and tell the people it's because of a bad harvest. However, how long such a Count would remain in power is.. questionable.

See, I don't think that's right. How can you be the owner of the same land that a mayor or someone else already owns? You can rule it but I don't think you own it. If you stopped being a Count the land you own doesn't suddenly stop being yours because of the title change.

The count doesn't own the land that someone else owns. Once someone else owns the land within the county, that person can create their own Land Management Table (LMT) and sell that land themselves. The count can tax the other owners of land within his county though. And yes, the count can either sell to himself (for zero gold if he so wishes) all the land that hasn't already been claimed in settlement selection/bought with EP, he can let the land just sit there unable to be used by not putting deeds on the LMT and not allowing adverse possession, he can allow/not allow squaters, he can lease it, or sell it to others.... as he sees fit.

Posted By Gunghoe at 03:36 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

You never technically own land in this game, unless you are king.

That is false.

From DJ18 - "Once you've purchased a plot of land, you own it and can legally build on it. And before anyone asks, yes you can re-sell your recently purchased land. You can even build a Land Management Table of your own that shows all the land you own and put it up for sale."

If the king owned the land that you purchased, then he could sell it out from under you. But the king has no capability to do that. YOU own it. It is the Gentry that own lands, not anyone else. Note that a king is also a duke is also a count is also a mayor is also a gentry. It is the king also being a gentry that makes him an owner of any land, not him being king.

To make it easier to define the distinction between actual land ownership and land management rights, while a count is count he has management right, which means he can build on any non privately own land and he can sell land through the LMT.

Now that same count is deposed and lose his title, all the land he had management right on, is now beyond his reach and falls in the hands of the new count, but all the land he was privately owning is still his.

Owned land can only be taken from someone through adverse possession and therefore need to be abandoned first.

The land is Land. School is School. What does it matter? Abandon Royal Feets become one with the people.

With how big counties can be. I'm not really seeing any one count really planning to give themselves some huge amount. Even if they went around paying any taxes and was just trying to abuse/be a bad ruler as much as they could. What would really be the whole point? Assuming they didn't have some grand plan to use it all.

Assuming those people you heard about didn't have some grand plans. Well they still need to visit all this land every so often. To keep it and mostly make sure no one was doing whatever they pleased with it.

Yeah bro I own 1/2 a county. Sure it's completely empty and I have no power to enforce if people come on trying to steal it. Unless those counts plan to rent everything out. Just seems like a simple way to turn people off from setting in their county and worse case getting themselves removed from being greedy.

A couple of scenarios I had heard in passing, not sure how serious they were, so take them for what you will...

There are some Counts who do plan on buying up as much of their county as they personally can and then subdividing and reselling the land again for profit after it's value has increased...land speculating, if you will...kind of unscrupulous, but legal unless the Duke or King makes it a no-no. You may wish to ask your local Duke or Monarch about this prior to committing to any location.

I have also heard tell of some Counts who are essentially buying the land to resell it back to the Duke or King directly. It would be similar to the way the U.S. Govt. manages vast tracts of the Western U.S. through the Depts. of Interior and Energy (to name just two). In some cases it could then remain undeveloped that way as a hedge against over depletion of resources or as a strategic reserve of some kind, depending on what is inside it. Could also be used as a type of DMZ if the ruler so desired. It would just require some type of "visit" by a roving "family" member to retain the possession in perpetuity. Something else to ask your Liege Lords about before, rather than, after.

And I'm sure there are more loopholes that will be exploited, but those are the two I've heard about, besides the ones already mentioned above.

Somebody will always find a way of making themselves richer at the expense of others. It's what capitalism is based on. To quote ol' Gordon Gecko "Greed is Good."

I imagine that land and its ownership in the game, will work very similarly to how it does IRL. In real life, the government technically owns all of the land, they simply lease it to individuals and businesses, with a very broad terms of use.

Essentially allowing the person holding the deed, to do what they want. In real life though, we have a ton of laws established to both protect our rights to the land we buy, and also to protect the government's rights to use the land as well. While you as the land owner can do what you want, build a house, fence, driveway, etc. You still must follow what the government wants the land to be used for. The government makes their intentions clear by declaring what kind of zoning the land falls under. On an IRL deed, there is a section that declares what kind of zoning the land is. This puts limits on what the land is allowed to be used for. For instance, you can't buy land that has been zoned residential, and build a Mcdonald's. Since that would need a commercial zoning. Zoning is only one limit that the government places upon your land, there are many more on top of that. Also, the government always reserves the right to declare eminent domain.

Eminent domain essentially allows the government to do what they want with your property. Normally the government buys the property back in the fashion of paying the civilian owner a caretaker's fee (which is generally equal to or greater than the land's current value). But, in extremely rare cases, if the government wants, they can simply kick you off and reclaim the land, without compensating you. Normally it is never to the extreme of completely taking the land from you, normally just small parts of it (like if they need to widen the road but your land is next to said road), but it has been known to happen.

So, in terms of CoE, the king owns all of the land in the kingdom, he then leases that land to his nobles (dukes, counts, barons/mayors) who then lease the land to individuals. But, I imagine that even though you have the deed, the kingdom may declare eminent domain and take it all back at any time. So while the king does not have the ability to sell the land out from under you, nothing stops him from reclaiming it, then giving it to someone else. Then again, SBS may have an entirely different form of land ownership/management in mind, so all of this could be completely void. I would suggest taking preventive measures and pushing your leaders to write laws that minimize the abuse of land rights by government officials.

Posted By Protey at 07:36 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

Posted By Gunghoe at 03:36 AM - Sun Jan 14 2018

You never technically own land in this game, unless you are king.

That is false.

From DJ18 - "Once you've purchased a plot of land, you own it and can legally build on it. And before anyone asks, yes you can re-sell your recently purchased land. You can even build a Land Management Table of your own that shows all the land you own and put it up for sale."

If the king owned the land that you purchased, then he could sell it out from under you. But the king has no capability to do that. YOU own it. It is the Gentry that own lands, not anyone else. Note that a king is also a duke is also a count is also a mayor is also a gentry. It is the king also being a gentry that makes him an owner of any land, not him being king.

The term ownership used there is to make things simple, if they don't pay taxes do they lose their land? or do they some how ursurp the king's nobles? They never truly own land, Again this is just semantics. The noble class has the final say in the land and how it's used. If some one starts digging a hole in the middle of town expect the mayor to not like that at all. IF he is unable to do anything, he would then talk to the count...

If you truly owned the land you would be able to just start digging a hole in the middle of town with none of the leadership being mad.

Again most counts will not set a one and done fee for the land use, to expect otherwise is foolish from both perspectives. You as gentry or aristocracy or a player never truly "owns" land. Sure you have your name on the contract/deed.

Broadly you think you can own land and not pay taxes? Or do the deal you made with the nobility? Or will you lose the land immediately by not complying.

Saying it isn't true, is a farce. This is all semantics anyway. The perspective from a gentry is they own the rights to do things with the land that the mayors or count approves. If they veer off and do almost nothing with land and fail to pay taxes, they lose their land. Hence it's just leasing it. You never truly own land unless you are king.

No one in their right mind that is part of a government in this game will let people do anything they please on their land, they may however be more lax than some of the other nobles. Or be lax with special case scenarios, But the essential fact is that because there is tax on land, that means no one other than the king owns the land. If there was true ownership, they wouldn't owe anyone anything for it. After the purchase.

The count essentially is selling land rights, or the ability to use and develop the land. The scale of how free you are to how controlled everything is, depends on the leadership of the area you are in.