Jim Cooper wrote:

> Which is why I posted the question about a week or two ago pointing that
> out, and suggesting a correction. What did you think about it? (That
> provincial rulers control the TRs in a realm).

Well, I think guilders should still control trade routes, but I'm starting to suspect a few things:

1. Law holdings should be able to tax each trade route just as if it were a holding.

2. Law holdings should collect more taxes from all holdings.

3. Maybe trade routes should make half of what they currently make. I mean, a single trade route makes something like 30% or 40% more GB per domain turn than the average province taxes generated. That just
seems wrong to me. Ilien could potentially make 42GB/turn with six trade routes, while only pulling in d8+1 in taxes. That's too much.

4. If a province regent sets a tax on a trade route it should be paid automatically. I mean, it's not like caravans can just traipse on by a toll booth in the middle of the night.

5. It should be somewhere in the printed materials that a tax on trade routes as high as 33% for trade routes that cross a national border and 50% for those that stay within a single country should not
considered too high. Trade routes should exist at the whim of the province ruler, after all. He should just be able to snap his fingers and they are gone. My understanding of medieval taxes leads me to
believe they could be pretty draconian, so I don't think this is unreasonable. Besides, I think a province ruler should be able to earn a competitive amount of money from trade routes in his domain as the
guilder who set them up.

In fact, I'd like to see some sort of guidelines for vassalage agreements in general. All the published materials do is state that vassalage agreements are possible without really going into how they work or
what kinds of terms are "standard" in them. It would be interesting to see what kinds of vassalage agreements had occurred in the past under the Empire, for instance, just by way of an example. I'm pretty
sure the Gorgon takes just about every RP and GB from his vassals, but he's a scuzbucket. What about a more benign ruler? What kind of agreement does Avan have with his vassals? What about even more kindly
rulers? Anybody want to take a stab at this one? (Note: In BR asking someone to take a stab at something is probably a stupid thing to do.... That's probably how Cerilians first came upon bloodtheft.)

Gary