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Crown authority as part of the vassal contract is kind of weird and bizarre,* as it is supposed to represent realm wide authority, and instead should just be switched to a law system. The various bonuses that you get with crown authority could be laws that are passed that way a player doesn't need full crown authority just to be able to pick their heir.** Like, I personally don't care about my vassals fighting over land inside my realm but I don't want to expand my borders but I need maximum authority to do that which also prevents them from fighting internal wars. You could also have "tax" laws to represent things like tariffs and salt taxes to keep the extra money that higher levels of authority provide. Liberty wars would be changed to wars over specific laws.
Also, I'd like to see vassal contracts reworked before they are made more important to the game because, right now, trading special rights for higher levies and taxes just isn't worth it so, at a minimum, contributions from vassals would need to be worth it. From what I can tell, giving away enough rights to get max tax and levy contribution is just a total negative to liege so why bother?
Admin realms should have a centralization mechanic that basically defaults to the equivalent of max crown authority that can be lowered through things like the existence of vassal factions, vassal opinion and controlling non-de jure territory.
*Also, doesn't work in the slightest for clan or admin realms.
**Ironically, this is now mainly necessary for clan rulers despite the fact that they, historically, could appointment whoever they wanted as heir while feudal rulers where basically stuck with their eldest child while that is no longer really the case thanks to co-rulers being available to feudal (and tribal!) but not clans.
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To be clear this idea was only for Feudal government type, not clan or admin. There wasn't really a thing called "realm wide authority" in places like France or HRE. I was reimagining it as "crown authority over a particular territory". I was inspired after reading today about how even after the Kings of France enacted legislations to ban private wars. It still regularly took place in many part of the kingdom throughout 13th and 14th centuries, most notably in the south. This wasn't a case of these vassals having the right to wage war, it was against the law, but the Kings authority simply wasn't strong enough in those areas to enforce it, but it was in other places. The king couldn't just pass the crown authority law and suddenly all his vassals listened. He had to gradually strengthen his grip on the area.
I thought about including ideas of realm laws you could replace crown authority. But didn't want to distract from the main idea. My perfect system would be to replace crown authority law with a series of Royal laws that you could pass, including things like criminal imprisonment, war declarations, title revocation, heir selection ect. but then these wouldn't be applied equally. You could pass the "Kings peace" law but that only applied to areas you have sufficient control over, enough "crown authority". In places without this they could ignore the law. Which is really what the above idea is trying to represent.
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These things are a really poor fit for vassal contracts though. Vassal contracts are supposed to represent the reciprocal obligations that a liege and vassal have towards each but "obeying the law of the land" was never one of those things. So, again, vassal contracts are a weird place to assert royal authority.
Speaking to your example, the French kings used the Cathars as a means to assert royal authority by waging war against vassals either accused of or being sympathetic to them. Victories would then give the king better leverage in the region, which is how the French kings centralized their authority generally. Through the 900s to 1100s generally you would see the French kings assert some right against a vassal, or a vassal refuse to acknowledge an existing claim of authority, they'd fight over it and when the king won it would strengthen his authority. Project Tinto has a "control" mechanic, if I'm remembering correctly, that is basically a representation of the crown's authority that degrades the further you get from the capital. Combined with tours* you could represent this mechanically were certain laws aren't "active" if royal authority hasn't been asserted often or strongly enough.
*Which are unfortunately DLC locked
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Whose law of the land? That wasn’t a thing in 867 or even 1066 in many places. Law was custom, and custom was different place to place.You need to remember “common law” is called that because prior to its introduction each individual shire and earl court had its own laws. The common law was introduced to standardize it everywhere. This was new! As such Vassal contracts were more complicated than that. Yes they include stipulations about reciprocal payments, but they also laid out the general duties and rights each had in that territory. Just because a person was granted the title of count did not mean he had the same authority, related to taxation, administration, and justice as other counts had. For example most English earls in 1100s didn’t have much governing administrative authority in their counties. An earl would have some baronial rights for his specific owned manors, and additional honors and privileges from being above regular barons. But the kings authority superseded his in matters of law and the Kings sheriffs handled administrative and taxation duties for that region not the Earl. But During the same period however, the county palatinate of Durham would not only have his manorial rights but also full autonomy over administration, tax collection, and justice. And these rights would be preserved for centuries, well into the modern era. Medieval Europe is filled with strange contradictions like this. That’s what I’m trying to capture.
And yes what the French king did to the cathars is exactly what I’m talking about. He used the revolt to revoke titles and land from autonomous vassals, then either granted it to lower barons with much less autonomy (higher crown authority) or held it directly with an appointed governor-general. But as I was saying there were other barons who had not been purged in Languedoc, who continued their private Seigneurial wars well into the 1400s. Because they literally didn’t recognize the kings law. Those barons argued that by their custom they had a noble’s liberty to conduct wars for honor and property. In their view that law didn’t apply to them. The French king one baron at a time had to by hook or by crook get his noble to renounce that custom and accept his authority on legitimate violence.
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I'm all for it personally. As you say administering a feudal realm was akin to or literally managing a patchwork of different local customes, tithes, obligations, freedoms and liberties and charters and rights and utterly not a realm wide thing. Would make it more distinct from the various admin govs we getting. Tribal and Feudal really do need changing and clan needs more.
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The Kings. Like, just because it was hard for kings to assert central authority doesn't mean they didn't try. Wanting to do something and being able to do something aren't the same thing. Kings would issue edicts and laws all of the time, which may or may be effective and which may or may not superceed local laws and customs.
If you want to capture that then crown authority as part of the vassal contract is still a bad idea because those are rights are already part of the contract. The palatinate right already exists in game, its just beyond useless, like every other contract right in the game. Strengthening those and making them harder to repeal is closer to what you are after instead of have crown authority be based on the vassal contract.
Autonomy and rights aren't the same thing though. Southern France was basically autonomous during the early parts of the game because royal authority didn't reach there. Once it did, vassals asserted traditional feudal rights to check royal authority and the king's prerogatives. That's the difference, you don't need to assert a right if no one has the ability to stop you from doing something. You can kind of see this in the game already as your set up wouldn't even get the results you want because even if a vassal had a maximum crown authority contract they could still wage any war they wanted if they war declaration rights. The issue here is the weakness of contractual rights and the ability of lieges to easily remove them, not crown authority.
I feel like we’re getting bogged down in semantics here. I’m saying the king’s authority was heterogeneous and recognized differently in different places. In some areas being strong while others quite limited. You seem to also be saying that.
I’m saying the that this authority had to be negotiated, asserted and seized from the King’s many barons on a defacto basis. I think you are also saying that
Where we differ I think, is on de jure. Whether Royal prerogative superseded custom and privileges. Which ironically was the very ideological conflict the Kings like Philip Augustus had with his vassals.
I think part of the issue is you don’t like my naming and using of Crown authority. But I don’t think you reject the notion that the vassal contract should be better and more important to overall power and centralization. To tell you the truth I didn’t really think it would be controversial to suggest that French and Holy Roman Empire monarchs had differing levels of authority in different places. And that should be modeled somewhat rather than being increased universally with a mere button click. But it seems people disagree with that.
I appreciate you @InsidiousMage for replying and discussing this with me.
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I mean, if we are being honest here, the issue came down to who had more troops and better generals and, honestly, I kind of want to be able to wage military campaigns against my vassals. I was playing a Sicily game recently and ended up with half-a-dozen Waldensian vassals in northern Italy and just wanted to be able to declare a war against heretics and fight them all at once instead of having to deal with them one-by-one.
Crown authority really feels like a place holder that became permanent after the devs run out of time before game launch to come up with something else and has just stuck around since they haven't gotten to Laws and Legality DLC yet.
I don't think it is but the problem with vassal contracts is that they already hard enough to keep track of and adding crown authority to that would just make the issue much, much worse.
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I am against it. Crown Authority is right where it belongs. Sure, the numbers could be tweaked a bit, but no matter how you tweak them, most players will still prefer full crown authority, even if it means taking some number penalties. You will not change this aspect of preference.
I do think Vassal Contracts should matter more, but I don't think it would be more FUN to have that be the cornerstone of gameplay. If you want realism, walk outside - real as it gets bruh.
1. Making something harder just to be harder is not a benefit, it's a nerf. Most people wouldn't find it FUN.
2. Realism is never a benefit - walk outside bruh, real as it gets.
3. Crown Authority as it is, represents how people do play the game, and generally want to play the game. Your rework would not be FUN for most people, and if you just made it a mod, it probably wouldn't be popular enough that the majority community clamors for it to become the base game. Most people don't want fake difficulty and realism for realism sake.
4. Nobody would enjoy all the extra layers of micro, having to pause every 3 days to micro every vassal and vassal's vassal, in addition to the other things you're managing. People would begin wanting a macro system to handle the micro, which means undoing your idea entirely, or creating an automation method.
I think there should be two tiers - a crown authority tier that represents your laws that the realm MUST obey, by penalty of hooks, imprisonment, execution, title revocation, etc. Just like right now. Then on the lower tier, vassals should have a set of policies - for each crown authority law you set, the vassals should have like 3 options of how to ignore/resist or implement (either faithfully or with a dose of malicious compliance).
I also think different Cultures should have specific "our culture likes __________ law", which could compel players to use vassal contracts to appease different religions and cultures. Some of this could probably be done at the "region" level, "people in this region like X, but people in that region like Y, regardless religion/culture". It gives an extra layer of preferences/needs to interact with.
The solution is to add some gameplay depth, not to add fake difficulty and realism for realism sake.
I do think Vassal Contracts should matter more, but I don't think it would be more FUN to have that be the cornerstone of gameplay. If you want realism, walk outside - real as it gets bruh.
1. Making something harder just to be harder is not a benefit, it's a nerf. Most people wouldn't find it FUN.
2. Realism is never a benefit - walk outside bruh, real as it gets.
3. Crown Authority as it is, represents how people do play the game, and generally want to play the game. Your rework would not be FUN for most people, and if you just made it a mod, it probably wouldn't be popular enough that the majority community clamors for it to become the base game. Most people don't want fake difficulty and realism for realism sake.
4. Nobody would enjoy all the extra layers of micro, having to pause every 3 days to micro every vassal and vassal's vassal, in addition to the other things you're managing. People would begin wanting a macro system to handle the micro, which means undoing your idea entirely, or creating an automation method.
I think there should be two tiers - a crown authority tier that represents your laws that the realm MUST obey, by penalty of hooks, imprisonment, execution, title revocation, etc. Just like right now. Then on the lower tier, vassals should have a set of policies - for each crown authority law you set, the vassals should have like 3 options of how to ignore/resist or implement (either faithfully or with a dose of malicious compliance).
I also think different Cultures should have specific "our culture likes __________ law", which could compel players to use vassal contracts to appease different religions and cultures. Some of this could probably be done at the "region" level, "people in this region like X, but people in that region like Y, regardless religion/culture". It gives an extra layer of preferences/needs to interact with.
The solution is to add some gameplay depth, not to add fake difficulty and realism for realism sake.
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