• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

unmerged(8642)

El Caudillito
Apr 9, 2002
216
0
Visit site
I was wondering if we could get a little more information on the roles of the 4 groups of society in the provinces. Does each group affect every area. Militarily I know with more nobles you'll probably have more cavalry, and more peasants would mean more infantry or archers. What about the burghers and clergy, do they take away from your numbers, add different sorts of troops, maybe more mercenaries if there are a lot of burghers. Economically I guess more burghers would be better but what would more clergy give you, better piety points?
 
Let's start guessing:

Military:

nobles: cavalry
burghers: siege train, navy, infantry
peasants: infantry
clerics: guys with clubs, "medics"

Production:

nobles: don't work if you don't consider war a product
burghers: refined/trade goods
peasants: food, raw materials
clerics: dont't work if you don't consider spiritual welfare a product

Society:

nobles: maintain law and order (or engage in feuds), prestige
burghers: crafts, trade, research
peasants:
clerics: piety/spiritual welfare, research (in monasteries), education, health care, charity
 
Keeping them all happy so as to maximize your income without being caught short of loyal troops should play a major part in realm management.:)
 
yeah, but how do you do that? Obviously you can't please everyone all the time. I think i'm going to try and focus on the nobility and clergy myself since this is in feudal times, though i would like a big enough serf, i mean peasant, population to fill my coffers and enlarge my armies with.
 
Machiavelli said it's better to please the people than the nobility.

1. There are many more people than nobles.
2. Nobles are never satisfied no matter how much they get. The more they have the more they want. People usually only want justice/good treatment and not too high taxes.
 
Of course. The burghers make the goods, trade the goods, and defend the goods. The peasants grow the raw materials for the goods and provide cannon fodder for the burghers to defend with.

The nobles and clerics do what again?
 
Originally posted by Faeelin
Of course. The burghers make the goods, trade the goods, and defend the goods. The peasants grow the raw materials for the goods and provide cannon fodder for the burghers to defend with.

The nobles and clerics do what again?
Nobles = knights

Clerics = religious and medical care?
 
Originally posted by MacRobert
Nobles+clergy= Crusaders!

Might need to throw in a few peasants to get some infantry for your crusade.:)

Perhaps pleasing the burghers will get you better trade taxes.
 
Hey, hey, hey; I think "clerics" are getting a raw deal in this discussion.

For centuries priests were the only literate members of society. All records, accounts, literary works, and legal documents were kept in the hands of the Church. "Curia" is Latin for Court (both royal and judicial; they were originally a single entity); and it's not for nothing that in Modern English "clerical" means office/paperwork-type employment.

Also, any student of medieval culture (not that you need a PhD; just visit any museum that includes medieval works) will notice the almost universal reliance on religious themes in artwork. All paintings, statues, plays, books, works of architecture, etc. had a religious theme. The only patron of the arts during the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church. The very existance of a "European" culture, with consistant norms and standards across the continent, was a product of the Catholic Church's organization and ideology.

Society paid a price for such a monopoly, true. Even the Bible was kept from the populace, on the grounds that ordinary people lacked the education to work out the "true meaning" for themselves. But the priesthood provided the only career path for people with more brain than brawn, at least until the Italian Republics (and their parallels in Barcelona, Flanders and the Hanse) made it acceptable to work with your mind and make some money.

At the beginning of Crusader Kings, a strong clergy would discourage banditry, promote the arts, and preserve learning. Later, as the Church becomes a victim of the Babylonian Exile Popes, and the Great Schism, clergy should be of less benefit and come at a greater cost. But room must be made for them; they defined "Latin" culture, after all.
 
Originally posted by Winkelried
Machiavelli said it's better to please the people than the nobility.

1. There are many more people than nobles.
2. Nobles are never satisfied no matter how much they get. The more they have the more they want. People usually only want justice/good treatment and not too high taxes.

But his ideas are based on the realities within a Renaissance Italian free city. Things might have been different elsewhere... He also expresses different ideas depending on if you read the Prince or the Discourses
 
Originally posted by Aetius


But his ideas are based on the realities within a Renaissance Italian free city. Things might have been different elsewhere... He also expresses different ideas depending on if you read the Prince or the Discourses

Macca was definately a man of his times but I think his theories are still valid in this debate.

Forget the Prince, it was a twisted theory he sent to please his new ruler and to try to get back in the good books. The Discourses was the real deal!
 
Originally posted by crooktooth
But the priesthood provided the only career path for people with more brain than brawn, at least until the Italian Republics (and their parallels in Barcelona, Flanders and the Hanse) made it acceptable to work with your mind and make some money.

Of course, you could also go to the universities of most major cities to study law (post-renaissance you could also study history and philology) outside the church, at least from the early 13th century. Or become an architect and build nice churches and chateaus, etc etc. But we'll just have to give the church its due in shaping, preserving and promoting latin culture. And thank its philosophical members for being the firmament for the ideas of reason, something those grubby little backwards-looking italians had little to do with:D

EF
 
Originally posted by Endre Fodstad


Of course, you could also go to the universities of most major cities to study law (post-renaissance you could also study history and philology) outside the church, at least from the early 13th century. Or become an architect and build nice churches and chateaus, etc etc. But we'll just have to give the church its due in shaping, preserving and promoting latin culture. And thank its philosophical members for being the firmament for the ideas of reason, something those grubby little backwards-looking italians had little to do with:D

EF

The medieval universities were considered religious institutions, and were under the jurisdiction of clerical law. Most law studies on offer were in canon law, the law of the Church.

Similarly, the most gifted architects worked for the Church, designing cathederals, churches and monastaries. Chateaux were usually military in nature (until the 15th century); palaces as such didn't appear until about the same time.

It's just hard for members of a modern, secular society to fathom how synonymous religion and culture were. It wasn't like the Pope had a KGB enforcing a single point of view. It was as if there was only one point of view. Dissent wasn't repressed so much as it was nonexistant. The Renaissance really did amount to a revolution in thought.
 
Yeah, the church were the only one to write so that they could easily suppress several books. I will concertate on people, I want to be centralized Empire, nobles were the reason that HRE break up, I want to avoid that! Emperor of HRE worked too hard to please noble and look where it gonna him! I agree with the idea of 4 estates. It will make the game more realistic.
 
"The only patron of the arts during the Middle Ages was the Catholic Church." ????

No, just the only thing the Catholic Church allowed as far as art, books, etc was religious material. They only allowed people to read religious material so its no surprise the vast majority of literate people were priests. Yeah alot of good thing happened because of the catholic church but so did a lot of bad things. There probably was a lot more art and literature that existed back then but we dont know about it because it wasnt kept like the religous stuff and probably burned as heretical stuff every now and then.
 
Originally posted by Zhai
Yeah, the church were the only one to write so that they could easily suppress several books. I will concertate on people, I want to be centralized Empire, nobles were the reason that HRE break up, I want to avoid that! Emperor of HRE worked too hard to please noble and look where it gonna him! I agree with the idea of 4 estates. It will make the game more realistic.

Wow. You want to get rid of nobility. Be prepared for some serious trouble. Guess that's exactly what the people at paradox call "playing out of character" and being considered a weirdo.

crooktooth:

You're absolutely right. I tried to give them credit in my first post, while guessing what every part of the population affects the kingdom. Of course your post is much more accurate.
 
It is not out of character, after all, some of ruler tried to be centralized ruler look at Spider King. That is not weirdo, just challenger.

That will be very hard!
 
Originally posted by crooktooth


The medieval universities were considered religious institutions, and were under the jurisdiction of clerical law. Most law studies on offer were in canon law, the law of the Church.

Of course, the studium generale(what "universities" were called in the high middle ages) could be a exclusively religious institution, but more often as not(as in Bologna) it was run by a council of students, or(As Paris or Oxford) by a guild of instructors. Usually, the larger universities existed under they're own set of codes and laws, usually based on canon law but set apart from it in agreement witht the city in which it resided. The older schools were indeed based in monastries, but in the flowering of the studium generale(13th century), most of them, though usually centered around a cathedral(excepting italian municipal schools, based in the individual city-states), were not overly more more religous than the rest of medieval society. (which, as you've already correctly remarked, in out eyes would seem very religious). Indeed, the SG held close ties to the intellectuals in the church (the students in Paris were summoned to studies by the tolling of the bells of the Notre Dame, a great many of the teachers were churchmen), but this was only to be expected since it grew out of the older tradition of schools. This intermingling of the church in the learning institutions would carry on for several hundred years after the renaissance, and in many cases continues today.

However, to state that canon law was the sole focus of law studies is a gross overexaggaration. "Roman" law was studied extensively from the late 12th century onwards, and secular(that is, not _within_ the church) careers in medicine were also possible.

Religious dissent was very common thorough the middle ages, but I presume you mean objections against the church from grounds of reason or atheistic views. This was not something the italian renaissance brought. *Renaissance Humanism concisted of an increased emphasis on the humanities, that is, classical languages and literature, precise expression, historical scholarship, and the arts*(sic Hollister,1994). The renaissance humanists looked to the older classical ideas and the classical culture as a whole, rather than as a set of ideas one might use. In this they were different from the older scholars. They did not, as a whole, reject religion and indeed retained a great many "medieval" characteristics. Savaronala was a child of the renaissance as much as Da Vinci.

When it comes to the ideas of reason, opposing views on religion, and the beginning growth of secular literature, that is something that came solidly from the middle ages. Peter Abelard, Hildegard of Bingen, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and William of Ockham were medieval thinkers, rationalists, and in some cases, as Ockham, proponents of the idea that the study of God must be based on faith alone and the study of the natural world must be based on observation.
Villon, Chaucer and Christine de Pisan all wrote "secular" literature in the pre-renaissance period. All these people were firmly religious, just as the renaissance thinkers were. Reason and religion did not seriously come into conflict before the 17th century.

EF
 
Thomas Aquinas!