States, kingdoms, empires,...

[rye130]

Why would I won't to have to make monthly payments to a bigger village? If I was a nub village I'd run away or just quit. This sounds like a good idea to reduce server population.

[NaoWhut]

Perhaps if the upper level traded better
things to the lower levels for mindless
tasks to be performed or linen or bulbs.

Supplying a large group of villages with
occults and ranger's cltohes to find more
bulbs and they become super archers at
some point and you end up with an army.

?

[Butko]

Well you can pay them you want to resist or move your village outside of their territory. It's simple as that. As long you live on their land you have to work for them. But they offer you protection.
How can a noob like you defend yourself against someone who has q300+ weapons and armor and probably 1000+ in every stat? You can't, but your lord army can. With your payments in coins,, food or other resources they increase number of soldiers and ofc quality of them. When comes to conficts they are the first to die instead of u.

[NaoWhut]

Well you can pay them you want to resist or move your village outside of their territory. It's simple as that. As long you live on their land you have to work for them. But they offer you protection.
How can a noob like you defend yourself against someone who has q300+ weapons and armor and probably 1000+ in every stat? You can't, but your lord army can. With your payments in coins,, food or other resources they increase number of soldiers and ofc quality of them. When comes to conficts they are the first to die instead of u.

/dislike.

[HHG]

Bureaucracy will be the main problem to forming an empire. Very few people dedicate 5+ hours a day to this game, and a dozen of those are what you're going to need to manage finances for even a decentralized state. For a centralized state, you'll need about 5 per village under your control. Basically the only way you could manage a large empire would be to have appointed strongmen who have the responsibility of 'taxing' the hermits around the and citizens in their city who would supposedly deliver those taxes to the government. Of course you see the problem, they never would deliver taxes and probably pay off the bureaucrats and clerks to report larger gains than necessary. What does a peasant even have in this game? Low quality wheat, maybe?

Transportation costs are going to be a large problem too. If you want to transport things by sea... forget that. If you want to transport these 'taxes' by crossroads and deliver Q25 Baked Goods to the capital (Supposing you had some good cooks in the regional cities which processed the agricultural products), the tobacco amounts you would need to smoke in order to recover the travel weariness would be astonishing. Transporting the hermits' taxes to the cities are going to be even more problematic. You'll probably only be able to tax the riverside settlements without brick walls and moving this worthless Q10 grain seed back to the city will be annoying. The only things profitable to transport long distances are high Q clay, bricks, soil, or water, high level foraged goods, and ores, few of which hermit farmers have. So what if you just established city-settlements that didn't collect taxes? Downgrade?

Well things like that are already up. The problem will be building those settlements. Most cities in H&H won't accept conquest due to them being more like large families or something. They'll move out if you take the city, and repopulating it with experienced players with good processing skills will be a nightmare. Supposing you managed to do all this, and turn each of those cities into regional trade posts to trade with the local hermits, how are you going to manage taxes? I know most cities really don't have a 'tax' system, and each village member just puts into the common development, but if you have an extended empire, you'll need to. Bureaucratic management will be a nightmare, and the only way to keep the Bureaucrats fresh and happy are raises to powerful positions, not like the job of managing all your resources isn't powerful enough.

Which gets to the next point, conspiracy & Dissent. Eventually your local managers are going to get tired of your collections and stuff, and the Bureaucrats will want more. Naturally a conspiracy will be difficult due to transportation if this game were a realistic medieval simulator. xroads and the forum make this far easier. You'll have Bureaucrats projecting and reporting far larger revenues than those that have actually been brought in, especially if we follow your money idea (at which point overspending leads to inflation), the state loses revenues and the local governors all contact eachother about when to assemble the ones loyal to them and revolt before holding city-wide pogroms against dissidents. The whole thing will just fall apart. /long unneeded essay

[burgingham]

Perhaps if the upper level traded better
things to the lower levels for mindless
tasks to be performed or linen or bulbs.

Supplying a large group of villages with
occults and ranger's cltohes to find more
bulbs and they become super archers at
some point and you end up with an army.

?

[Melgui]

Unless I have misread the OP, you are suggesting new types of village claims and unique currencies. Well... the coin thing was suggested millions times before and J&L have said no. About the "states and stuff" you can do whatever you want with politics and player relations, why new types of claims? If we need a new claim type, that's one for outposts... leave the village, become LS, create a village claim, drain authority, etc. is the actual system for claiming Qspots or mines for a city and isn't exactly an intuitive system.

And if you are suggesting not a type of claim but a gameplay style that won't happen because, as said, no one wants to play as slave of other.

[juhubert]

well, i prefer my established - one could call it traditional system - of voluntary arriving hermits, villages and cities, offering me tribute while kowtowing before my golden throne in awe of my person and the beauty of our great Sodom.

[Chakravanti]

well, i prefer my established - one could call it traditional system - of voluntary arriving hermits, villages and cities, offering me tribute while kowtowing before my golden throne in awe of my person and the beauty of our great Sodom.

Translation: Sub or die bitches.

But seriously, Mechanics of some kind for such would be fucking awesome please yes. We've had a few threads with ideas about this. It should definitely represent the ability for an area authority to territory claim large tracts of land that enable them to more easily assist in the defense of their kingdom. This will be doubly important when teleportation mechanics are removed.

[Butko]

There won't be new claim. Just territory "claim" when u enable it u see color on the ground of state you are in.
Hot to extend that territory? To annex village. Ofc states won't be so big that you will have to travel around half of the world to collect taxes.
Hot to manage taxes?
Simple, each village representative should deliver certain amount of goods or money into capital each week/month. The officer in capital city write u a parchment with with date and confimration that you have delivered (or parchment with seal so ppl can't make them by themselves).
What is left for local farmers? They can keep what is left no matter on q of items they grow/make. They have protection for their village in case of being robbed/attacked. They would be crime free. Ofc they have a inner trading market, where they can get resources for smaller prices thatn they would in other state.
You don't rly need a certain ppl to manage taxes and so on. Only one big storagehouse and about some ppl dedicated to just write proofs that certain village paid what they need to.
So when one village is annexed to state, territory would simply grow in direction of that village. If there is one non-annexed village in the way annexation would fail or territory would be somehow stretched around it. Ofc rulers will have to annex villages around them first and watch on territorial stuff to make managing state easily.
How to create a state? Well there would be option to upgrade a village to state when for example village have 5,10, 20 or whatever number of dedicated soldiers. That means that chief of village make them like herdman. When they have enough authority and soldiers they can upgrade village to state. Then they can go and try to annex other villages and if they succed, they would grow of not, state would just remain small as it is (one village). Also state cannot annex another state unless state surrenders or all soldiers are killed/dismissed. And ofc annexation is always confirmed by both sides.
We would also need then to make flags for states so each village will have apropiate banners and flags around walls to show their affection.

P.S.: there would also be need for UI for tax collection, so in ruler village they have seperate option to check taxes. In that window there should be list of annexed villages and only a marker if tax is padi en when it was paid. And ofc option to set taxes to weekly or monthly. If someone would pay taxes regulary there should be green marker and if not yellow one. After week/month period over there should be red marker whowing that one village is revolting/not paying taxes. SO you send ppl there and ask where are taxes.
Also keep in mind that without sufficient military strength no state would survive, well only if there would be federation of villages. But do u imagine what woudl happen if u don't have good enough soldiers and one village starts revolting? They would go there and just get killed, u r left with no army. And there should be also option that one annexed village can overtake goverment of state if they would defeat ruler village...