I'm a High Fantasy Tax Collector, So What? A CKII Tax Collector Quest

Random Member · Jun 21, 2020

[X] [Haul] Box of Junk
[X] [Haul] Secondhand Compass
[X] [Haul] Spell of Dictation

[X] Plan Random
-[X] [Martial] Site Investigation
-[X] [Diplomacy] Calming the Angry Streets
-[X] [Diplomacy] The Merchants
-[X] [Intrigue] Breaking Into Nobility
-[X] [Intrigue] The Subservient Hands
-[X] [Learning] Understanding Justice
-[X] [Stewardship] City Organizer
-[X] [Stewardship] Personal Investigation
-[X] [Piety] Local Answers

tygerbright · Jun 21, 2020

[X] Oshha

Simon_Jester · Jun 21, 2020

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
And now that the local economy just exploded I can actually circle back to this real quick:

Gresham's Law, where bad money drives out good money, only really works when vendors are forced to accept both forms of currency by some outside entity - when you see an absence of those strong institutions, the exact opposite happens.

In the absence of a strong force that makes vendors and consumers hold bad currency and good currency equal (or close enough), Thier's Law holds that good currency will drive out bad currency as vendors will only accept the good currency for their transactions, thus forcing everyone to only circulate the good currency, and hold their own bad currency in reserve.

And, well, Oskaria isn't exactly known for its strong, central institutions, is it

The thing is... that kind of makes me wonder how this system ever caught on in the first place. It sounds like the nobility came up with some Very Clever way of writing paper notes to each other as currency, but that the notes are only being accepted by other members of the same relatively small clique of nobles.

At the same time, any noble family whose net cash flow involved taking in too many notes and spending too much specie would rapidly run out of specie and be effectively bankrupt, so the cash flows among the nobilities MUST be more or less balancing out somehow; nobles who were afraid of running out of specie would start insisting on payment in specie and the buying power of the bad currency would start plummeting. I get that one response is "yes, and that is exactly the outcome you triggered by cashing out your shares," but this overall economic state of affairs has managed to persist for at least a couple of years with a supply of notes great enough to cause economic distortions that were noticed in the capital. And I don't think it's stable enough to last that long.

Someone had to be the first noble or very small group of nobles to suggest drawing up their own personal notes. And it's at a bare minimum an interesting mystery to ask the question: "why did any of the other nobles accept those notes as currency, to the point where it became a province-wide economic trend that the nobles were basically printing and exchanging their own Monopoly money as if it were valid tender?"

Zaealix · Jun 21, 2020

...Oooh I think I get it.
People wanted to trade the good stuff, because no one trusts the bad. But we came along, did our usual 'build our power so we don't get run outta town' thing, and ended up the straw that broke the camel's back.
I suspected this case was odd what with the whole 'you can solve this thing in three turns!' but uhh...Not being sure WHAT was going on was a significant problem.

Doctor Elsewhere · Jun 21, 2020

@huhYeahGoodPoint What's the difference between the diplomacy actions from the merchants and nobles, and the stewardship actions asking for their documents and verbal accounts?

Hydroplatypus · Jun 21, 2020

[] Plan Fixing This Mess Because That Is What The Spider of Justice Does

like this plan in general, but I think we can afford to overpay for our mercenaries for one more turn, use the martial for the site investigation, and then use the free action for either personal investigation or document analysis, which will be more useful for figuring out who is going to take the blame for this mess. And having someone to blame will probably help calm things down for everyone else, and might give us another opportunity to put someone on trial, and confiscate some land for the crown, and generally give the crown a way to get a bit more resources to keep the nation afloat.

hYGP · Jun 21, 2020

Simon_Jester said:
The thing is... that kind of makes me wonder how this system ever caught on in the first place. It sounds like the nobility came up with some Very Clever way of writing paper notes to each other as currency, but that the notes are only being accepted by other members of the same relatively small clique of nobles.

At the same time, any noble family whose net cash flow involved taking in too many notes and spending too much specie would rapidly run out of specie and be effectively bankrupt, so the cash flows among the nobilities MUST be more or less balancing out somehow; nobles who were afraid of running out of specie would start insisting on payment in specie and the buying power of the bad currency would start plummeting. I get that one response is "yes, and that is exactly the outcome you triggered by cashing out your shares," but this overall economic state of affairs has managed to persist for at least a couple of years with a supply of notes great enough to cause economic distortions that were noticed in the capital. And I don't think it's stable enough to last that long.

Someone had to be the first noble or very small group of nobles to suggest drawing up their own personal notes. And it's at a bare minimum an interesting mystery to ask the question: "why did any of the other nobles accept those notes as currency, to the point where it became a province-wide economic trend that the nobles were basically printing and exchanging their own Monopoly money as if it were valid tender?"

And that's the thousand-dollar question, isn't it? :3

Doctor Elsewhere said:
@huhYeahGoodPoint What's the difference between the diplomacy actions from the merchants and nobles, and the stewardship actions asking for their documents and verbal accounts?

Difference between merchants and nobility is a matter of "who do we approach first claiming that we have the answers" - while the nobility and the merchants are closely related, they are not the same power bloc, so naturally

The stewardship action differs in that you'll be able to discern some patterns with a pile of accurate financial documents in front of you, and you'll be able to figure out different ones based on what you ask people. For example, it'll be easier for you to model what the hell happened if you have their accounts in front of you, provided it's accurate, but testimonials would be better able to tell you "so who the hell thought this was a good idea?"

Oshha · Jun 21, 2020

Hydroplatypus said:
[] Plan Fixing This Mess Because That Is What The Spider of Justice Does

like this plan in general, but I think we can afford to overpay for our mercenaries for one more turn, use the martial for the site investigation, and then use the free action for either personal investigation or document analysis, which will be more useful for figuring out who is going to take the blame for this mess. And having someone to blame will probably help calm things down for everyone else, and might give us another opportunity to put someone on trial, and confiscate some land for the crown, and generally give the crown a way to get a bit more resources to keep the nation afloat.

Yeah, I have already swapped out Contract Renegotiation for Document Analysis after the QM's explanation as I feel it is more useful to figure out what happened in greater details whilst explaining to the nobles, merchants and spirits what happened.

silentorphan · Jun 21, 2020

This plan looks way too abbreviated. Eh, what the hey...

[x] Plan Not My Problem Anymore
- [x] [Martial + Free] Contract Termination
- [x] [Stewardship + Free] Exit Strategy

Simon_Jester · Jun 21, 2020

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
The stewardship action differs in that you'll be able to discern some patterns with a pile of accurate financial documents in front of you, and you'll be able to figure out different ones based on what you ask people. For example, it'll be easier for you to model what the hell happened if you have their accounts in front of you, provided it's accurate, but testimonials would be better able to tell you "so who the hell thought this was a good idea?"

Also, several times so far in the quest we've run into cases where looking over the pile of financial documents led to "well crap, these bozos don't keep coherent financial records." I don't think that was always the consequence of a failed roll, either.

So a successful Diplomacy check may in effect be more likely to yield good results than a successful Stewardship check. Maybe. Dunno.

On the other hand, Diplomacy checks would obviously tend to be harder when dealing with someone who has something to hide. And since Agueda knows a lot more about finance than almost any of the nobles and likely most of the merchants he talks to, if he IS dealing with someone who keeps accurate records, he may be able to learn more from their records than even they themselves realize happened.

So it's like...

Stewardship: risk of getting nothing from an idiot who keeps bad records.
Diplomacy: risk of getting nothing from an idiot who keeps good records.

065tdsa · Jun 21, 2020

Simon_Jester said:
Someone had to be the first noble or very small group of nobles to suggest drawing up their own personal notes. And it's at a bare minimum an interesting mystery to ask the question: "why did any of the other nobles accept those notes as currency, to the point where it became a province-wide economic trend that the nobles were basically printing and exchanging their own Monopoly money as if it were valid tender?"

The obvious answer: someone convinced them all that they had access to a great source of wealth. The promised bounty never materialized, for whatever reason. By the time that was revealed, everyone had vaults full of paper and no interest in admitting that it had no value.

Hydroplatypus · Jun 21, 2020

[X] Plan Fixing This Mess Because That Is What The Spider of Justice Does

Oshha · Jun 21, 2020

Simon_Jester said:
Also, several times so far in the quest we've run into cases where looking over the pile of financial documents led to "well crap, these bozos don't keep coherent financial records." I don't think that was always the consequence of a failed roll, either.

So a successful Diplomacy check may in effect be more likely to yield good results than a successful Stewardship check. Maybe. Dunno.

On the other hand, Diplomacy checks would obviously tend to be harder when dealing with someone who has something to hide. And since Agueda knows a lot more about finance than almost any of the nobles and likely most of the merchants he talks to, if he IS dealing with someone who keeps accurate records, he may be able to learn more from their records than even they themselves realize happened.

So it's like...

Stewardship: risk of getting nothing from an idiot who keeps bad records.
Diplomacy: risk of getting nothing from an idiot who keeps good records.

Not really. That is the difference between the two Stewardship actions not between the Diplo and the Stewardship actions. The Diplo actions is who we approach to offer our help fixing the problems and explaining what just happened.

Doctor Elsewhere · Jun 21, 2020

[X] Plan Fixing This Mess Because That Is What The Spider of Justice Does

[X] [Haul] Box of Junk
[X] [Haul] Secondhand Compass
[X] [Haul] Spell of Dictation

I kinda want to find a way to blame the nobles for this mess, as it was said that they were recently decimated by the crusade catastrophe, and this feels like a good time to reduce their power by reducing their numbers even further. Not necessarily by having the crowd execute them, but maybe we can liquidate all their assets/titles to the crown to pay off their debts and protect them from the potential crowd.

Though I may have to go over the trial in the first case to see what was necessary to have that stick in court.

Edit:

huhYeahGoodPoint said:
conspiring to lie to the Crown, for stealing from the Crown, for shirking the duties of his position as appointed Governor General, and for abusing the terms of the charter in order to inordinately profit off the citizenry of the city of Gorlin.

The trick was that while the first two were financial crimes and would likely keep his money, position, and fury mostly intact, the next two would see him and his conspirators revoked of their rank - and if you played that right you might be able to leverage the successive court cases, each building off the last, to strip them of their titles and remunerate them to the Crown. That would be the main way you would be able to recoup the costs for the Crown.

Here we go. Conspiracy to lie to the crown, Stealing from the crown, Shirking the duties of their positions, and Abusing the terms of their charter to personally profit beyond acceptable amounts.

We'll have to see what all the evidence we gather will allow us to do to them, but these were the charges that led to a removal of Noble rank.

Parzival95 · Jun 21, 2020