Posted By markof at

So the question is simple, will all tier of law be available to be crafted at start and will there be for each at least a NPC available to hire to craft them ? A side question would be does the size of the domain impact the tier of the law ? as in is a law crafted for a county exactly the same as one crafted for a triple county ?

So my guess at this point, and it is only a guess...

Since you will be spawning into an already existing world, that none of this should be an issue for you.

And what I mean by that is we aren't starting at day one of Elyria and going from there. We are joining the civilization at a specific point in it's development, so somebody has already made the laws and all the other things from scratch previously.

There was a King before you became the King, and so on and so down the line. You are just the newest one.

You would actually be modifying what is there already is to meet your own new and specific personal agenda now that you have the office.

So it then would follow that if the people before you had the resources to do it, then similar resources should exist for you.

As for your second question I would think that the sizing issue wouldn't be a problem either. Unless for some reason you wanted each entity to have a separate set of laws, then I think a single set would be applicable to all the territories that you govern. I would assume that they would be in essence considered subcounties of whichever county you chose to rule from, for administrative purposes, unless you expressly make them otherwise.

I'm going with the theory that the power rests in the status of the ruler, not in the actual amount of area ruled. While you would control a lot more physical space, and probably more resources and such, you would still hold the same office as another Count who holds a fraction of the area.

I think it would then depend on the ruler above you to decide if that gives you multiple "votes" in the same way that each state in The House of Representatives gets varying amounts of Reps. or if it is going to be like the Senate where each one gets the same number irregardless of land area.

Texas has lots more seats in the House than Vermont, but both have the same number of Senators because that was how The Constitution was written. And while Alaska is larger than Texas it doesn't have the most seats, because it isn't based on actual land area but population, so that could also be another variable that gets put into your particular equation.

I would also ask the Dukes and King how they plan to write your particular Duchy and Kingdom laws as they will tend to trickle down and override your laws at the County level as well. Kind of the same way that federal laws can supersede particular state laws. The most current example of this would be the current marijuana laws.

Didn't realize I had written so much lol...

Short answer...It could be really simple or really complicated.

Interesting, the postulate on which your answer is built is that when we will take control of our domain we will also inherit the administration and contracted relations our forefathers had.

It makes sens and would indeed answer my question with a positive, but then, it opens a new line of questions...

If we do inherit the former administration and work relations, how much can we safely modify, change them ? From the years i have spent here, one thing i can tell is that all of the communities i have encountered or read about all have plans to set their own administration and work relations as soon as they arrive. Doing so would mean replacing skilled NPCs with unknown loyalty and agenda by teenager characters, mostly unskilled, which in turn would invalidate the reason why players would be able to edit or create new laws at start.

To go even further we could theorise that the removed NPC might dislike the situation and that the population that grew to respect and like them may see that as a bad move that could hurt the confidence the population has in its ruler, that business have in the word and value of contracts emitted by the ruler. And those damages would only be made deeper by the lost ability to create laws.

A very interesting line of thoughts, will people aime for a slow smooth transition by taming players ambitions and visions or will they rather ride the tiger by changing their whole world to accommodate their friends and community ?

I think we will see a wide range in attempts to make over pre-existing legal arrangements with players' own preferences. Some of them will work well, while others will meet with disastrous failure. My own bias is that the more revolutionary the attempts, the more likely the attempts will end in disaster, but that is opinion and not likely to be anywhere near a consensus.

To answer the original question, I believe all players with domain responsibilities will have all the powers necessary to make whatever changes they wish. They may meet with opposition from some of the pre-existing NPCs, or even from PCs that replace them, but resistance is just one of the usual forces that power has to deal with. The use of power is never without unintended or unpredicted consequences.

The more i think about it the more sens it makes that we'd inherit not only our title but also pre-existing administration and contracted deals.

Since we know that some settlement primary purpose is trade and that some trade roads will exist, those should not disappear just because us becoming head of our families. But in that case does it also mean that we have to make with what the world generation decided our settlement needed ? What i mean is that if the trade road was for say, silk and spice it will not turn over night into building materials and food, even if because of merged titles our settlement grew and now need more of those than silk and spice.

Does it also mean that Dukes might inherit some Barons or will those be voided by the transition from npc to pc ?

I totally see how, from that inherited foundation we can improve and extend by investing EP during expo and resources once the game start, but i have a very hard time to see how we can modify that foundation without crumbling our domain.

because no matter how "good" or smart players think they are, the game care very little, for all the characters in our domain we will be teenagers, unskilled and unproven, that can only count on the loyalty our parents managed to gather for us from their vassals and partners.

To be honest that is not totally true, for settlements and some counties it might not be unrealistic, but the higher up the chain one go, the less probable it seems, partly because the skill level needed is higher but also because the higher the position the more it relies on the support of others.

maybe a thorough reminder or advisory statement that things will need time and hard work to change is in order, because from what i got off the different communities, it seems people expect a rather fast pace of changes and they expect to remodel the political and business landscape, all while leaving their mark on the world fast.

Last question, do you think the pre-existing administrative and trade network we'll inherit includes npc guilds ?

I believe the answers to your questions are yes...yes...and yes.

I'm basing my theory on the fact that Mayors are inheriting the settlements and people in their cities "as they are". You can add more things during exposition and such, but it doesn't start as an empty space. So if that is the case, then it would logically follow that it should apply at the next level up. And so on and so on.

I also think more than a few players are going to be rudely surprised that they aren't getting a "blank canvas" but are essentially inheriting what their forefathers have built and developed for generations.

For better or worse.

And that "turning that battleship" in another direction isn't going to be as easy as they think.

It's one of the reasons I hope that people do take the time to look closely into exactly what situation they are plopping themselves down into prior to selecting domains and settlements. Not all rulers are going to be PC's. And some of those NPC rulers may not have the learning curve that the players will.

Nothing is going to take the place of old family money and connections. It will be very hard for a ward to climb the tree of nobility because of that. You will have to be a very successful self made man to overcome the built in head start.

And as far as the inherited Barons and Mayors below you, I would think that they would be disinclined to change the status quo without some type of incentive.

If it has worked for my fathers' father, and his father's father before him, then why shouldn't we keep doing the way we have always done it? Don't rock the boat, Sonny.

Or conversely, if it hasn't been working well because your father was a poor ruler, then why should we keep doing it? And why should we follow you?