guild holding worth

[adrian]

how much would you say a single lvl of a guild holding is worth? how much would you pay for holdings if you were a guilder? how much would you ask for holdings if you were selling them?

[irdeggman]

what set of rules are you using?

2nd ed, BRCS or something else?

It matters.

In 2nd ed "income" from holdings was random in BRCS it is "fixed". What this means is that a "value" can't easily be determined in 2nd ed since the income being generated can vary greatly. It is much simplier to assign a "value" when using a "fixed" income system.

[ConjurerDragon]

adrian schrieb:
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> adrian wrote:
> how much would you say a single lvl of a guild holding is worth? how much would you pay for holdings if you were a guilder? how much would you ask for holdings if you were selling them?
>
IMO that depends strongly on your own games conditions.
If you expect the game to end soon (as sadly many PBEMS end after one or
two dozen turns) then selling the holding might be more lucrative then
keeping it and gaining the income until the end of your game.
If you expect the game to run for a long time, then the regular income
will in the long run be more valuable.

The holding is worth more if you actually can reap the full benefits
from it, meaning that your bloodline is high enough that you actually
collect the 1 point of regency each season.
If your bloodline is lower than the sum of your holdings (something many
guilders in the books have) then the holding earns only gold and is less
valuable (at least to you until you can raise you bloodline).

It also depends on the location of the holding. In 2E for example a
level 1 guild in the wilderness is far less lucrative than a level 1
guild in the city of Anuire...

I personally would sell holdings *only* if I know I will not be able to
keep them - e.g. if a powerful lord threatens to use chaotic or evil
measures (e.g. occuying his own lands to destroy or seize my holdings)
and I know I can´t in any way stop him.
In any other situation, when I expect the game to run longer, then I
would rather slowly raise my bloodline to be able to gain RP from the
holding and keep it.

[kgauck]

A guild holding is a collection of businesses. There are several way to value businesses, by book value, a formula based on revenue, or a formula based on profit. The easiest to use in BR would be a formula based on profit. You might suggest that ten three years of profit is the purchase price of a holding, or five years, or whatever seems sensible. This is a view of the holdings as just business centers, places of profit. Guild holdings are also sources of the tie between a regent and his followers and the people more broadly. This too has value, but is less easy to value. An expanding guilder would not wish to sell any holdings for just cash, while a guilder facing hostile overwhelming attacks may sell a far off holding to save his core holdings. Like all sellers, some are motivated, and most are not.

[adrian]

we're playing as per brcs. i've made a deal to buy some holdings in alamie for 5 gb per lvl. i might get a chance to buy more, but i'm curious how much i should offer.

as for rp, nope, won't get any from this. over my cap by a lot so untill i catch and bloodtheft few competitors i won't be getting an increase of rp per season.

[AndrewTall]

Normal business valuation models of a distributer/manufacturer/grower give profit multiple of 5-20 depending on the sort of risk involved - given this should be applied to annual profits you will get 13 - 53 Gb for a single L1 holding. This looks very high because guild holdings in BR are insanely profitable considering the capital cost requirements - a guild holding generally pays for itself in the first year (excluding RP and time costs).

So I'd avoid 'normal' business net present value calculations even if applied in conjunction with probability mechanic based yield trees as the internal rates of return for a medieval (i.e. virtually nil long term inflation) world give values far higher than the competition cost of the holding - which is often the starting point for a buyer.

The competition cost of the holding is the cost of the buyer of contesting the desired guilds to destruction and creating an equivalent holding.

The cost for someone to buy the holding should therefore be the cost of creation (2 Gb per holding level assuming a 50% failure rate) plus the cost of destruction (1 contest action per 2 levels) plus a non-compete payment plus a payment to reflect the ease and speed of transfer compared to the competition. This is complicated by RP and the need to use actions but 5 RP = 1 GB, and 1 action = 2 GB (being the army maintenance and the court level costs respectively) seem reasonable to cover these.

As an example this method would suggest that a L2 guild holding with a trade route should cost 20 GB as an absolute minimum (Creation 2 GB, Rule to L1 and L2 4 GB, use of Create trade route 2 GB, 1 contest action 2 GB, 5 actions 10 GB; average cost to seller = 20 GB). Given that L2 holding + 1 trade route produces 7/3 GB per turn 20, GB represents a little over 2 years yield.

Of course the seller would want a profit - and 2 years seems light for the sale of a profitable cash-generative business (unless regent turnover is very high for example in times of war or assassination) and the true cost will be higher in a competitive market where RP must be spent on every action. Costs will be lower however in stifled markets where spare actions are commonplace (cutting half the above cost as the actions had little marginal cost), similarly costs will be lower if the buyer is highly skilled or supported by the law holder as they are more than 50% likely to succeed in their actions and so have a lower competition cost.

On Irdeggman's point regarding 2e's variable yields, I note that probability mechanics can fairly easily identify the average income of the holding; the presence of law holdings does complicate matters in 2e due to taxation drawing from the income of the guild holder, particularly if there is more than one law regent but an appropriate risk premium could be identified and reflected in the sale price. It should also be noted that variable yields are almost invariably worth less than an equivalent guaranteed yield equal to the mean of the variable income for a prudent buyer.

A final note is the occurrence of random events - if DM's apply random events to guild holders (i.e. not just to province owners) then the yield of the holding drops since it will suffer more trade events, and have higher maintenance costs.

[cccpxepoj]

i used the guild holdings more as a political tokens, and the price varied from a current political situation , from 1 GB per lvl to 6 GB per lvl .
In some cases it even can be free, but you need to give the offer that other party can't refuse :D .

[Bialaska]

I guess there are other things that matter. A holding which is in a dangerous zone, which often is contested by the other guilders or something similar might be worth selling for just a bit of profit, as you get at least a bit from it and you save the RP from being contested. On the other hand if you're firmly established in another area it may be almost impossible for others to buy it from you, having to offer astronomical amounts. I think it would be up to the regent character to make the decision, rather than make a set amount. Some would think 3GB per level would be okay, while others may refuse a bid of 20GB per level.

[AndrewTall]

Being an accountant I'd build any expected opposition into my model - contests and opposed bids simply alter the cost of the wannabe creating their own equivalent holding and thus the starting point of any price. A lot does depend on how long you expect to stick around, but as a high level holder you have an advantage against newcomers so would expect a premium in a highly contested area rather than necessarily allow a discount - that would likely encourage your other holdings to abruptly become contested areas...

As always however the market value of anything is however simply what someone will pay for your goods in the price you are willing to wait before sale, a strong holding in a sleepy backwater can suddenly lose much of its value if the realm is caught in war or a scandal forces the holder to flee.

[Gwrthefyr]

I'd say it would probably depend in part on the income.

Interest rates at the time would be between 5 and 10% (calculated as a penny to a number of pence - so between 20 and 10 - Dupré de Saint-Maur thought the romans used to the penny 12 for aristocrats and the penny 20 between merchants [EDIT] for loans - not for trade); he also had some data indicating that the land was usually valued to the penny 20 (i.e. - the land is worth 20 times its produce; his estimation was that banking placements were about 75% of the land value; i.e. when placements were usually at the penny 12, land would be bought at the penny 16 (potentially as low as the placement rate depending on the safety of the land); he also considered the dutch trade comparable to land in relative safety).

So, all said, it would (realistically) probably give a rather long-term placement in game term, involving important loans, tens of turns of expenses... Buy-outs won't be easy, but a dedicated guilder could try, if the player is willing to accept it (and pay about 30-60 or even 80 times the average turn income (profit?) for this holding). The lack of non-regent sources of cash (in the rules) might be something of a problem to represent it, though (I have difficulty with thinking up rules abstractions, even more so for this system, which tends to be extremely abstract).

[EDIT] The Encyclopédie mentions even some cases were they went as high as the penny 8 (12.5%) in roman history, article Usure

[kgauck]

I have always felt that the game lacked debt and so it was hard to play a banker-guilder like the Medici or Fuggers. You can loan money to PC regents at terms agreeable to both, but that's really not comprehensive. Bankers should be loaning money to everyone high and low, more like an action.

[ryancaveney]

There are several way to value businesses, by book value, a formula based on revenue, or a formula based on profit. The easiest to use in BR would be a formula based on profit. You might suggest that ten three years of profit is the purchase price of a holding, or five years, or whatever seems sensible.

In 14th century England, the standard price for land was 20 years' worth of its profits. Businesses shouldn't be valued more than land (even in Brechtur, I'd say; in fact, I think that's part of why Ruling provinces is much more expensive than Ruling holdings), but also should rarely be as much less as three years -- though of course there are plenty of ways it could happen that way, depending on how desperate the seller is and how each side forecasts the market for commodity/service X will change in 3 years. If you want a random asking price from an NPC, 5d4 years' profit nicely fits Andrew's suggested range.

However, as Michael rightly notes, the time horizons for most campaigns are much shorter than real life: how many gaming runs actually carry through for 80 domain turns? The same idea applies to spending RP to increase your bloodline score: your character's children will thank you, but there's no direct payoff for you as a player unless your campaign lasts more domain turns than the score to which you raise your bloodline. As a world-builder, I really want in-game actions to act like the world wasn't going to end in just a few months, so I strongly favor some form of immediate award (RP, XP, bloodline score, etc) for investing in your domain: short-term rewards to the player which help the character engage in the long-term planning they ought to. If a player forked over a pile of 80 GB just to buy one guild holding, I'd definitely give him an RP award (and probably bloodline score boost, too) for so convincingly demonstrating his character's committment to investment in his domain.

The only way I see to set a "fair" price without needing to add any external motivation is to do as Andrew suggests: calculate how many GB it would be expected to cost, on average, to either Create Holding and then Rule it up from scratch, or Contest and then Invest it away from its current owner. What the market will bear works between players in a big PBEM, but when one PC at the table is negotiating with NPCs, DMs need some help in figuring out what their world's market ought to want to bear. =)