Estates
The Estate system is the basis for the entire realm hierarchy. It defines the allegiance of the nobility from the lowest of the knights all the way up to the highest of the rulers.
Hierarchy
The hierarchy is simple, but consistent on all levels:
- An estate is always a part of a region. The lord of the region can, but doesn't have to, have an estate. If he has, it must be in his region (can't be lord of region A and have an estate in region B).
- Regions are always part of a duchy - there are no "imperial regions". However, there can be duchies with only one region in them. It is also possible for duchies to exist, and still have a Duke, without any regions at all.
- Duchies are their own entities now, meaning the duke does not have to be the lord of the duchy capital. In fact, there is no such thing as a duchy capital. The duke does not even have to be a lord. In addition, duchies can be created and dissolved by the ruler of a realm, with some limitations.
- Duchies form realms. As before, the king does not have to be a duke.
Now for the somewhat trickier parts, assignements:
- Region lords define estates and anyone who comes by can take an available estate for themselves. The lord can also kick out a knight at any time. Knights can only leave and/or take up an estate once per turn.
- Lords are appointed by dukes (or election) and dukes are appointed by rulers. Once appointed, a duke or lord cannot be removed by the noble that appointed them.
- Lords can change their region to another duchy and dukes can change their entire duchy to another realm. Regardless of diplomatic settings, this is a violation of the oath of fealty and will changing realms result in an automatic ban.
Estates
An estate is a part of a region, currently defined abstractly as a percentage part of the region (e.g. 20% of the region of Keplerville). Everyone can have at most one estate, and the size of estates is limited. There are minimum and maximum sizes that depend on the region type and size. The minimum sizes go from 5% to 20% while the maximum sizes go from 30% to 50%. So every region will need 2-4 knights (of which the lord can be one) to cover it entirely.
Estates can be created and resized at will by the region lord, but each adjustment takes 1 hour of the lord's time.
Vacant estates (those without a knight) and "wild lands" (parts of the region not assigned to an estate) will collect taxes directly to the region lord, but only at half efficiency, so half of the tax income is lost.
Efficiency
It is easier to control a limited area than a large area, and tax evaders can become a problem if the size of an estate is too large. Many smaller estates are more efficient than few larger ones.
The efficiency of an estate depends on its size and a couple of factors that differ by region (type and population, mostly). It will be listed in the estate display. The efficiency of the estate directly affects the amount of taxes collected by that estate.
Taxes
Under this new system, taxes are collected by the knights in their estates. The details can be found on the New Taxes page. Rulers tax dukes > dukes tax lords > lords tax knights > knights tax peasants.
Q&A Log
There was an IRC Q&A session regarding the new estate system. Here is an edited log of the session. For ease of reading, it has been reorganized so that the questions and answers are together, and extraneous comments were removed:
Old Estate System
This new system replaces the Old estate system. The page is preserved for future reference, if necessary.
other pages that need to be updated or removed
- Politics up to date
- Region Command up to date
- Knight Commands needs to be removed
- Manual/Realms_and_Regions
- Taxes and Region_Economy_Example
context-sensitive help pages:
