RoE Development > Regent Guide
Some ideas for expanding the rules on cities.
Ruideside/OM (RP):
In RoE, cities are treated as features of a province, and only capital cities have any effect. This is a nice easy simplification, and it works well. However, it doesn’t reflect the true potential of cities. Historically, in the medieval period, cities were extremely important both economically and politically. Therefore, I propose the following amendment to the way cities are treated in RoE.
First of all, cities will remain a feature of the province they are in, and their primary effect will continue to be to raise the maximum province level of the province they are part of. What does change is the amount by which that MPL is raised and the method by which that is determined.
Rather than having only three descriptive types of city (Capital (Barony), Capital (Kingdom), and Capital (Empire)), I propose that cities be divided into five categories, based on their potential economic impact. Each category would increase the MPL by its category number. Thus a category 1 city would increase the host province’s MPL by +1, a category 2 city by +2, a category 3 city by +3, and so on.
A city when first founded will be a category 1 city, and the following factors will modify that.
Capital Status
A city that has been designated a capital will have its category increased as follows.
Type of Capital Category Increase
Quasi-capital +0.5
Minor capital (Barony) +1
Medium Capital (Kingdom) +2
Major capital (Empire) +3
Assets & Structures
Certain assets and structures (port, cathedral, university, etc.) could also increase a city’s category. I suggest an average of an increase of +0.5 each
ECONOMIC EFFECT OF CITIES.
Because cities are a more efficient manner of organizing a population for more advanced economic activity, the presence of a city in a province will increase the income from Manor, Temple, Guild, and Trade holdings by 10% per category.
EFFECT OF CITIES ON SOURCE POTENTIAL.
The presence of a city, regardless of category, will reduce the current Maximum Source Potential by 1 (subject to the minimum level rules).
What do you think of this idea?
Ruideside/OM (RP):
I should add that the cost of founding a city should be affected by climate/terrain/remoteness like other constructions
Talinie & NIT/TD (Linde):
well, I think the cost/gain/Time to found has to balance somehow. What does it cost to found a city and what should its build DDC be?
The idea has potential.
Ruideside/OM (RP):
Those details have yet to be worked out, but I was thinking something along the lines of a base cost of 2 or 3 GB (modified by terrain/remoteness) and a base DDC of 10 (again modified by terrain/remoteness)
Yggdrasil (DM Andy):
An approach for building in the various cities would be good, at present its flat.
Bjorn's rules mean that income increases significantly as province level increases though, so the cost would probably be a lot higher if the population was expected to utilise the extra levels (consider the cost of Ilien's twin towers which boost trade only by comparison) and an income gain would come inherently throguh that population rather than needing to be added. But in practice provinces over L6 are very rare, and if its by the coast that only needs a L4 capable province, so the counter-argument would be that the max population benefit is something of an illusion so shouldn't be paid for except in desolate areas - where a city isn't as likely.
I'd note that there is a lot of abstraction in the system, so a L6 province for example presumably has a city, even if it doesn't show on the P&H, one could say that the various cities that are features are representing the "above average" city elements rather than the city itself, while not representing the grand structures within the city as those already have mechanics to represent them - so a very efficient city layout, an exceptionally well functioning bureaucracy, a particularly good location for resources, etc would be represented by the city mechanic.
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