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  1. #11
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Many guilds are forced by circumstances to work with other guilds to establish trade routes. But guilds like Stjordvik Traders, with guilds in three regions in two different culture groups has only two reasons to trade with other guilders 1) more money and 2) diplomatic benefits.

    Stjordvik Traders may not be common in this regard, but other guilds do have extensive holdings across space, terrain, and culture which allow a guilder to avoid the necessity of forging trade routes with other guilds.

    Money is good, and guilds want it. Everyone wants it. But establishing trade with someone and getting it cut off by your partner, your partner's enemies, or having contest or law claims adds costs to that income that you don't get if you trade with yourself, or with good reliable friends in a strong position.

    Guilds have no natural friends. Realms and temples do, but guilds, by their nature are natural competitors. Even so, there can be friends even so, because you share other interests. The most obvious is having the same friends and the same enemies. They can make good trade partners. Figuring out who makes trade partners involves a little role play for each guild.

  2. #12
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    I'd expect that the Stjordvik traders built its wide reach by forging trade routes with 'competitors', then absorbed those competitors over time using the trade route as a foot in the door and method to identify key personnel in the rival guild. I see large domain-level guilds as conglomerates of a multitude of smaller guilds, certainly in modern economics one sees mergers and acquisitions arising from joint ventures akin to trade routes.

    In my opinion guilds are probably actually the least competitive of the landed holdings - guilds naturally tend towards monopolies and cartels (i.e. a single super guild) whereas religious faiths and the nobility tend towards centralisation of power and fragmentation which invite competition - the clergy actively push for laws on heresy and make rivals outcast, the nobles wage war, tourney, and the like - guilds by contrast mostly compete on price or through varying degrees of extortion.

    Whether that is reflected in the game is another matter of course, playing merchants as grasping seems to come naturally, so equally does playing a 'noble' noble or 'beatific' priest - the latter two possibly being what one would hope of such folk rather than what one would historically have found.

  3. #13
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Monopolies and a single cartel seem best represented by a preference for trade within a guild.

    I also miss the contrast between monopolistic guilds and centralization among other holdings. Monopoly seems pretty centralizing to me.

    Trade between guilds seems most likely to me between regions. Yet the official list gave us no examples of Khinasi-Anuirean trade despite the descriptions of same being important in the Southern Sea.

    Part of the problem from my point of view is that short trade routes provide the same income as trade that crosses more geographical and cultural distance.

  4. #14
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    I agree on the long vs short trade routes - creating an income inequality would also encourage people to spread their gaze which would encourage communication, etc. You could however increase the value of the trade route to reflect distance (+10% per 10 provinces crossed) or culture (+25% per different culture in the trade chain).

    On competition; guilds tend to have no ideology or purpose beyond the creation of wealth and continuance of employment. Competition between another guild of similar power is wasteful - smaller guilds can be crushed and subsumed, larger guilds would normally come to a nice cosy arrangement that left them both raking in the cash without any unpleasant price wars, etc. The ego of the guild master will obviously have a role, so cartels will be common at first, but as the cartel matures and new blood rises increasingly the cartel will be seen as the 'wider guild' not just each individual guild and there will be a pull towards mergers.

    This pull towards conglomeration is less between the nobility, where ego is even more important to each person and ties of blood, feud, culture etc get in the way and cause uncommercial views to become predominant and far less amongst temples where ideology is key and doctrinal differences may e seen as fundamental to the character of the domain rather than an impediment to its growth.

  5. #15
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    Competition between another guild of similar power is wasteful...
    This is true for all domains (and all human interactions) but it is neither the human experience, nor is it the campaign description. Were I to rank the ruthless competition I would be hard pressed to decide whether the guilders or the dukes are more liable to fight one another. The temples are clearly less combative, and we have little information on the wizards, so they might be entirely withdrawn from affairs, or highly involved. They may also be highly variable.

    This pull towards conglomeration is less between the nobility
    I think this is mostly irrelevant. The new monarchies of the Renaissance formed because new ideas of government, the revival of Roman law (along with the rest of Classical culture), and the cost of fortification and artillery. I think that with translation, all of these factors are present. We get the idea that feudal forms are creaky and giving way to something new, Anuirean law and Haelyn's law never went away and so don't require a revival. Fortification and the high cost of magic are both expensive. Put this all together and the domain regent becomes much more powerful than their nobles.

    I think one of the current trends in Anuire, certainly, and to a lesser extent, in Brechtur and Khinasi is the rise of the domain regent, and the decline of the sub-domain figures.

    Can I re-imagine a new order of things based on an abstract theory of what might be in the interest of guilders? Sure. But since the descriptions seem to strongly contradict that interpretation, I continue to view them as rival gangs, no more likely to bow to a single godfather than the Dukes will bow to a single Emperor. Turf wars, rival factions, and constant conflict seems to be the norm.

  6. #16
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Hmm, conglomeration increases profits and so is potentially in the interests of everyone (except the down trodden masses) - the nobles have more money to tax and the priests in tithe.

    The counter to the conglomeration method of growth theory is the domain set up, possibly the domain indicates the maximum 'natural accumulation' size before the ego of the leaders outweighs the economic benefits of mergers - or the point at which the efficiencies of scion rule come to dominate any 'inherent' efficiencies. And since only one scion can gain regency from the domain each scion has a strong degree of self-interest in keeping the 'super guild' from forming. That would explain the existing guild domains stability - if scions were more or less common likely the stable size would fifer significantly.

    In Anuire I'm note sure that the nobility is resurgent, has it's power ever really fallen away? I thought that if anything guilds were supposed to be growing in power, while the last decade has seen a second theocracy rise.

    Note. Wow I talk to much - 1,000 posts made...

  7. #17
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by AndrewTall View Post
    Possibly the domain indicates the maximum 'natural accumulation' size before the ego of the leaders outweighs the economic benefits of mergers - or the point at which the efficiencies of scion rule come to dominate any 'inherent' efficiencies.
    If we look to mechanics, in RP at least, bloodline serves this purpose. A domain larger than the regent's bloodline contributes no RP.

    Which hardly disputes the other arguments that the typical domain is near the optimal size of a given domain: efficiency of scale stuff. Just that in terms of RP, its obvious and easy to read.

  8. #18
    Do any of you ever see every nation nationalizing all their guilds because guilds and trade routes are such a great source of GB?

  9. #19
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
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    Only very small ones (Endier, Ilien, or in the case of Cariele, the guild acquiring a realm) because the limits on RP collection are a huge limiting factor, and trying to do two kinds of holdings has many of the same problems as multi-classing.

  10. #20
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by templaralberic View Post
    Do any of you ever see every nation nationalizing all their guilds because guilds and trade routes are such a great source of GB?
    I see that as a bug in the system - if you want overlapping domains in a game, then the PC ruler who says '100% of income is better than 20% tax' and starts hoovering up every holding in their domain is a game-buster.

    The way to get around the urge to monopolise provinces is, imo, to recognise that holdings are not just a source of income - RP or GB, they are collections of loosely tied together groups who often have competing agenda's. These groups want to have 100% of the regent's attention - not just a fraction, they want to know that their aims (downtrodden peasants, free trade for guild members, the greater glory of Haelyn, etc) are the aims of the regent, etc - and if a regent is clearly careless of their wants and needs they should seek guidance elsewhere.

    I tried beefing the likelihood of random events to add a mechanic to reflect this, but the main stopper I'd use in practice is the 3 action limit, RP caps, and internal dissent which show the danger of trying to do everything by oneself.

    The other stopper needed is a huge negative impact to pillage actions - the romp 'n' stomp approach to rulership should destroy most realms in months (since effectively the soldiers are massacring civilians wholesale, destroying buildings, etc, etc). If a ruler has to contest down every 'foreign' holding in their realm and rebuild from scratch it will take them an age, cost a fortune, and leave their neighbors far wealthier in the meantime.

    In short, make it clear to PCs that a wise ruler sticks to the knitting, and tolerates dissent if need be - absolute power may sound fun to the PC but no one below the regent will be happy about it!
    Last edited by AndrewTall; 04-18-2009 at 07:43 AM.

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