Arelith

Just copying here from the discussion on another thread. Will edit if more nice things come up there. Makes it easy for the devs.

I like the idea of scraping elections. Taking over settlements would then be done using combination of economy and war. Well mostly economy because war would do economy damage.

Here is how it could work.

• There is a special building in each settlement that one person can be the owner of. It works like a quarter. The person owning the "building" or a simple quarter like sign (for certain settlements or large faction guilds) is the ruler of the settlement.
• It expires like the quarter. The size of the settlement decides the cost of the quarter. For example, Guldorand could be something like 1,000,000 where Cordor would be 10,000,000. Predefined factions could cost 100,000 or so (more like guilds).
• The gold from the quarter purchase goes into the treasury.
• If the ruler is not there it lapses and somebody else can take over.
• If the treasury goes below 0, the quarter is released.

Now the economy implications are obvious, but war is not.

War would work just like now, except that there would alway be a chance to get gold for the head of the leader or settlement faction member at any time. Head of Cordor ruler? 5,000,000.

Benefits?

• Only large steady factions/guild or very rich characters can afford to be rulers (sorry this is middle ages ).
• Not everybody will want to be the ruler. This is more important than it sounds.
• Rulers would have to be very strong or hire a lot of guards.
• With well organized factions (which would of course require a lot of RP to form) anybody can take settlements over in a matter of a week RL if they choose so.
• Well organized factions can defend their settlements through careful planning.
• Because there is a component to treasury running out and the quarter expiring, even if the rulers decide not to log during conflicts there is a chance to overtake the settlement.

Biggest benefit - most of this already exists IG through factions and existing code.

Note that a lot of this puts together concepts I read on these boards from people that invested a lot more though into this than me.