Anaris Family/Anton's Tome/Money

Money

Money in BattleMaster comes in two types: gold and bonds. They are useful for different things, and can easily be changed back and forth at any city of your realm.

• Gold is just what it sounds like: gold coins of common weight, accepted by many fine establishments the world over. Most of the transactions you will wish to make must be made in gold coins: hiring and weekly pay of units and paraphernalia, paying blacksmiths, pubs and academies...just about anything where you're giving money in exchange for goods or services.

• Bonds are pieces of paper with your name and a number on them, issued by the bank of your realm. (Alternatively, you can think of them as being simply your name and a number next to it in a book at the bank.) They are not accepted by anyone outside of your own realm, and can be used for a very limited number of things. Their primary function is to transfer money between nobles of a single realm. You can also send bonds to your family, where they are converted to gold and added to the family fortune.

Important: you cannot give gold coins to other nobles of your realm--only bonds! This is counterintuitive, but it is a feature that helps to keep the game's balance. It is also something that is never likely to change, so don't even bother asking the discussion list or a GM about changing it.

It is possible to transfer money to nobles of other realms, but the conditions are strict: it must be in gold, not bonds, you can only do it in their capital, you must transfer at least 100 gold, and there is a fee of 50 gold for each transaction (thus, you will need to bring at least 150 gold with you to be able to transfer any).

Taxes

The vast majority of the money you, as a noble, get will be through taxation of your realm, which happens once a week. All money received through taxes is in the form of bonds, so you will need to go to a city to change them to gold if you want to spend your tax money. The amount to be distributed to the realm depends on the daily earning potential of the regions of your realm, the production levels of those regions, and the tax rate. The amount you receive depends also on the tax distribution shares, which you can determine by looking at Check Taxes under Information. That page is reasonably self-explanatory.

Also note that when taxes come, if you have more than 100 gold or more than 100 bonds, you will be taxed on the amount you have over 100. So if your realm has a tax rate of 20% (this is quite high), and you have 200 gold and 150 bonds, you will be taxes 20 gold and 10 bonds.

Another thing that can be a little confusing is the timing of the tax day. Taxes are collected and distributed at dawn the day after the day designated as the tax day. So if the Check Taxes page says the tax day is tomorrow, you will actually receive taxes at the 0600 turn the day after tomorrow. If the tax day is today that means you will receive taxes tomorrow morning at dawn.

Though normally taxes are collected once a week, the Banker can call an early tax any time between 3 days after the last tax and the day before the next, which means that the money collected from the regions up till then will be distributed the following dawn.

Thus endeth the lesson.