You're the Queen - Now What? [CK2ish Character-Focused Quest]
- Thread starter Kylia Quilor
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- Mature Fantasy
Funnily enough this was my first thought, just refuse to pay and dare them to come at us.
Because that interest rate is freaking high (I don't know if that is actually standard for the time) and I'm still half tempted to just say fuck it.
At the vary least we should suspend the interest for a few months? Years? (I'm not actually sure how long a turn is), honestly that was probably the thing that should have been negotiated for (by the minister) instead of reducing the interest rate by a little.
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Months would be much better. Vanessa is too uncertain for moneylenders to just suspend payment for a few years, so they propably want to get money as fast as they can. Telling them to go to their stinky Mountain Holds/Banks and not bother us would end tragically, from making our merchants unwelcome at any venture, sponsoring bandits and up to throwing money at Syrokiss's little bastard child.
Kylia Quilor
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You could suspend some or all of the interest payments as well, yes. That will raise total amounts owed, but is not unknown in-setting. If it gets too big or you go too long without making payments, that could lead to some problems, but that's a matter of many turns (1 turn represents 1 month) before consequences (like economic downturns, inability to get new loans, diplomatic costs, etc). Technically defaulting entirely is also possible, but doing that before you've stabilized your regime is a risky proposition.
In the middle ages, a "risk free" loan could be as low as 10% interest. But a Higher risk loan could run as high as 28%. In this setting, when lending to monarchs, at least ones with the theoretical earning potential of Halrun (Halrun does have a lot of tax potential, when it's not in a bad state like right now) 15-20% is the High Risk amount, and 5-10% is the low risk amount. So your interest rates could get worse, but there's a lot of room for things to get better.
For monarchs and other important such people, getting the best healing mages and priests on hand for childbirth etc is very easy, so barring an assassination attempt, Vanessa dying in childbirth is functionally impossible in this Quest.
Levies are definitely an option, I'm not saying never use them, but they take time to raise, and as you say, have their own downsides. My suggestion was just don't rely on them too much.
All realistic concerns.
Oh dear, semi-realistic medieval finances 
Quick, what we need is a short, victorious war...
More realistically, some tax reform is probably required. Will likely involve kicking and screaming, but might be best to do it now while we still have momentum on our side.
Quick, what we need is a short, victorious war...More realistically, some tax reform is probably required. Will likely involve kicking and screaming, but might be best to do it now while we still have momentum on our side.
that is probably what I'll vote for.
BTW is there a post where all the modifier that hurt the kingdom are listed out?
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Well, the good news is that we could use at least some of the short-term money raises to pay off a few of the debts, and that may buy us time with the other lenders.
Yeah, the most common modifiers dragging us down are Ruinous Roads and Outdated Tax Assessments. Much of the remaining stuff aside from Banditry are things that will only go away over time as we rebuild. Just being able to fix the first two will give us a good shot in the arm.Oh dear, semi-realistic medieval finances
More realistically, some tax reform is probably required. Will likely involve kicking and screaming, but might be best to do it now while we still have momentum on our side.
Ruinous Road should also go away relatively quick. Local nobility, iirc, is obligated to use their serf labor to maintain the roads. Of course there is a possibility that said roads were blasted to hell and back, but otherwise it will fix itself. Outdated Tax Assesments are just a matter of a group of well-paid royal inspectors, to search for peasants in the areas to which they undoubtedly escaped during the war. Long term problem for certain. Surveying cities should be much easier.
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
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Oh dear, semi-realistic medieval finances
A viable plan.
No. Probably should have included that in the post 😅
But in terms of "Kingdom-Wide" stuff, you have Economic Dislocation, Ruined Roads and Currency Contraction. The Ruined Roads are just a matter of money and time to repair the roads (Maintenance of roads is covered under the Shire and Reeve budget/etc). Currency Contraction is "all the debts running around and the post-war chaos means people are hoarding hard currency right now" so reducing your debt will chip away at that. Economic Dislocation is mostly just a matter of time and not screwing up.
The Outdated Tax Assessments are the easiest (and potentially, cheapest) ones to address, and won't even piss people off too much, even if it raises their taxes a little, since everyone with money expects it. You can increase the cost of the tax assessors/etc a little to make that go faster, but baseline, it doesn't cost extra, since that's what you're paying those clerks and surveyors for already. It won't give you a HUGE boost, but it will be a nice, early boost.
Each instance of Banditry resolution will be it's own task, and generally won't cost much or any money, if you use existing soldiers, etc to do it.
Very true. Even if you don't pay a specific lender, paying any lender will be a good sign. This is not meant to be a 'turn 1 - you die' quest, the debt is just meant to represent that you do have an uphill battle. ^^
So a few quick comments/analysis.
Modifiers that are hitting are "War Ravaged" and "Ruined Roads". War Ravaged is probably not something that can be solved by central planning projects. A better idea might be to invite regional/city governments to come to us and present reconstruction plans, with the Kingdom then acting as a "banker" to arrange funding for promising projects and decline to fund others. Ruined Roads on the other hand actually does sound like a Kingdom Responsibility, and it occurs to me that this is a case where Vanessa's magical contacts could come in hand. This is exactly the sort of thing where magic (in the form of Earth type mages) could presumably speed the work along a lot.
Outdated tax assessments are also a common problem, but I think that's definitely going to be "Opinion" hit so we may want to delay moving on that, at least until some benefits have been shown/
Looking over the army, let's try building a force based on the heavy calvary. These are "knights" and hence the mostly highly skilled of the combatants and also the ones who can least afford to just go get another job. So keep them as is, and trim the others based on a formula. This sort of "rationalizes" the number of soldiers we want. Let's saw the regular foot soldiers (met at arms and skirmishers) are at x3 and the specialty units are at x2.
Heavy Cavalry - Base
Light Cavalry - 2 x number of Heavy Cavalry (HC)
Men-At-Arms - 3 x number of HC
Crossbowmen - 2 x number of HC
Skirmishers - 3 x number of HC
Pikemen - 2 x number of HC
Heavy Calvalry - 950 (keep)
Light Cavalry - 1800 (drop by 900, reduce cost by 9.75 Durek)
Men--At-Arms - 2700 (drop by 500, reduce cost by 2.75 Durek)
Crossbowmen - 1800 (drop by 700, reduce cost by 3.5 Durek)
Skirmishers - 2700 (increase by 1000, increase cost by 3.25 Durek)
Pikemen - 1800 (increase by 300, increase cost by 2 Durek)
Total savings 10.75 Durek... but wait, then we hire back 500 of those Light Cavalry as "Highway Patrols" and have them spend their time riding the roads putting down bandits rather than stationed as soldiers. Increase cost by 5 Dureks.
Net result:
Savings of 5.75 Durek
300 less total employed... but we've done this largely by cutting the more expensive units in favor of cheaper units, while still keeping the most professional of the soldiers happy.
Ehhhhh.... that is way too much micromanaging and I'm sure we will never be asked for a plan like that, but I enjoyed thinking through how to "rationalize" the army along some kind of standard.
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Wait contraction? I figured we would be having very high inflation from all the loans and from the fucked up supplies chains not meeting demand and people rushing to buy the avelibel basic goods but not contraction.
Money is based on precious metals, not fiat currency, so I'm guessing the issue is a lot of coins have been taken out of circulation and none minted to replace them. There is physically not enough money in the economy to handle all the transactions that need to happen.
This can be a lot worse than inflation. At least inflation means that people are constantly buying and selling goods because they don't want to hold their wealth in the form of currency. Not enough money means that people will hold on to their coins and not engage in economic exchange because they don't think they can get coins to replace the coins they have.
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Crawkid
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In that case.... Should we figure out where the coins with the metal we need went and look at replenishing that way?
Minting money is one of the primary responsibilities and privileges of pre-modern governments.
Bonus: Putting your face on coins is a major way of earning legitimacy as a ruler. Nothing tells people you are in charge like seeing your face every time they buy something.
Kylia Quilor
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@Briefvoice is correct here on all counts. The currency contraction specifically affects trade-related things because gold and silver coins (which are being driven out of circulation) are more commonly used by merchants and rich people. The copper and bronze coins that commoners and peasants use when they're not using barter/payment in kind are still mostly okay right now.
Why can't we have our normal soldiery patrol the roads instead? It's good experience, good public relations, and is hopefully temporary until we can disincentive peoples from murder and theft, instead of a more peaceful employment.
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@Kylia Quilor
Two questions for the storyteller….
What, exactly, is a man at arms? Are not nearly all footsoldiers, and probably a good period of outright cavalry, men at arms? I'm not sure what the distinction is.
Secondly, I've noticed that we seem to have a sort of Renaissance era system, in which although nobility can raise their own soldiers, the state maintains a strong standing army of professional soldiers, and isn't reliant on feudal bonds to govern or deploy troops. Is that normal, or is the current a deeply abnormal situation caused by the recent civil war, and we're meant to rely on a banner of banners and bonds of fealty, instead of haemorrhaging funds faster than the lifeblood of the former royalists?
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Kylia Quilor
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For the purpose of this quest, a "Man-at-Arms" is a sword (or axe, or mace, or similar one-handed melee weapon) wielding soldier with a mid-sized round shield and either chainmail armor or pretty thick hide/leather armor. They're the mid-size of infantry, between skirmishers (lightly armed and armored) and Pikemen (heavier armored and with 15+ ft long 'fuck off' sharp pointy sticks).
Well, this isn't real history, so feudalism here doesn't work the same way. It's Quasi-Late Medieval Quasi-Early Renaissance in terms of the power of the state and the level of political/bureaucratic development, if I had to put a specific label on it.
the tl;dr version is that standing armies are more common, though it does vary by country, but that Halrun's standing army is oversized for the Kingdom at peace (and presumably not planning to invade anyone) due in large part to the fact that the civil war just ended.
Longer version: With orcs, goblins and monsters (and bandits that might have a hedge wizard or two), etc , standing armies are more necessary. Most states have a standing army of some sort - Morvak, being constantly at war with someone has the largest standing army in the region, but then, their entire society is bent towards supporting that army. (And the nobility in Morvak has long since been rendered utterly toothless). The presence of the Morvakian Army does force other powers to have standing armies as well - because you can't wait for your levies while Morvak's Cataphracts are tearing up your countryside and their siege forces are surrounding your border castle(s).
Halrun does have the advantage of the Thorn River not being easy to cross, so Morvakian invasion (now that they've been pushed over the Thorn River) only has a few places an army can cross, which makes it more practical to contain them long enough to call up levies and stuff, but Halrun is quite large size-wise, and the cost of the army wouldn't normally be quite this bankbreaking for Halrun anyway (but as I said, definitely is a bit oversized) because normally Halrun wouldn't be wrecked by all this civil war and stuff.
The size of Halrun's army is thus abnormal for Halrun's history - in part because all the compromises and exemptions Teran Halrun granted when he cobbled the Kingdom together meant he had less revenues as a percentage of total GDP (not that anyone uses GDP in-universe, but you know what I mean) when compared to a Kingdom like Selissa or Nerithar or Morvak. Halrun's sheer size balances that out, but either way, Teran Halrun didn't tend to keep the standing army so large and neither did Brunn. Syrokis did balloon the army even bigger than this during and immediately after the War with Morvak, but it dropped down to about 10,000 (with higher % of Heavy Cav than Halrun has right now) for most of his reign and then got even more during the civil war (but larger armies during wartime is normal), but Syrokis did jack up taxes a lot for that (and also just because he was paranoid that if his vassals had too much money they'd use it against him.).
But the current army size is not like... deeply abnormal, just regular abnormal.
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Considering one of the modifier we have Morvakian saber rattling I'm not inclined to lower our standing forces, that seems like a good way to get invaded.
Kylia Quilor
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Certainly a reason to keep the Thornmarch Garrisons solid, yes.
Morvak's habit of being at war with everyone means you can count on someone opening a 2nd front, and the Zarsim Civil War is a gaping black hole of money and men at this point, including for Morvak, but Morvak invading is a possible outcome.
By no means guaranteed - Morvak may be Alternate!Prussia, but their military capacity is not endless, so they do take breathers (they just rattle their sabers while they do) and there are in fact ways you may be able to get Morvak to not even be a threat at all for the foreseeable future, or at least just stave them off for now anyway.
Do they have any allies? Because at this point I'm wondering if we can build a coalition of their neighbors and just divide their territory between members.
Kylia Quilor
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Morvak is nominally allied with South Zarsim, but given the Zarsim Civil War, that's not much.
Actually pulling off a Partions-of-Poland style invasion and take over is a tall order, both because that's expensive and risky, but then you'd have to hold onto it, trust everyone else to do their part, and even if Morvak can't beat everyone, they can beat you. (i.e. if Morvak decides they're doomed, they could decide to put everything into destroying one nation's army - they are they kind of spiteful - and no one wants to be the that has that happen to them.)
I won't say it's impossible, but it's definitely a project for the later game, as it were.
IC. A good troop to have!
Ah… the end of chivalry and the rise of the state, for better and for worse.
If you don't mind my curiosity: how does magic affect warfare? It seems to be supplementary, from what you describe; useful and dangerous, but an army with magic seems to fight similarly to one without.
Kylia Quilor
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Supplementary. Mages are like, 0.1% of the population at most - cities have higher concentrations of mages because two mages beget a mage usually and cities attract mages as thats where you can work - generally, and mages whose talents lend themselves to battle and who want to actually fight battles are even less. Even less the ones who really want it. Forcing a mage who can fight and doesn't want to is generally not a good plan - normals (or another mage) can beat them, yes, but still, forcing one who doesn't want is usually more trouble than it's worth.
Mages are more likely to be a support adjunct to war - scrying, or using their magic to smooth out logistical difficulties, or conjuring elementals/demons/etc to help break particularly tough defenses or whatever. Every Kingdom has (or tries to) at least a few mages that can really blow shit up good, and Halrun does have about a half dozen of those right now. But that means you usually break them out only for sieges and stuff.
Priests also have magic (and are more common than mages), but priestly magic rarely lends itself to big battlefield changing stuff either, and so they're usually in support roles too.
The real, non-worldbuilding answer is: If you follow the logic of mages at war being a thing too far, it renders pitched battles obsolete, and that's just no fun. 😅