How about a VI PBM?

EDITED

I had a slightly different idea for what you refer to as Provincial rulers. (when everyone is tired of new ideas and just wants to get on with the game, I'll shut up and just go along with the rules)

Anyhow, my idea was that each of the role players, with the exception of the chancellor, could be considered Dukes. As a Duke, the player wouldn't necessarily be represented by any unit on the board. In fact, since he's immortal, he could even be considered a "royal house." The first King would be chosen at random from the starting Dukes. The King could grant a Duke title to a Province or, as the game progresses, multiple provinces. The Duke would then be free to appoint "governors" for those provinces as he sees fit. The Duke would even be free to recruit his own armies and invade neighboring provinces as he sees fit (this would require an out of character communication with the chancellor, which the chancellor would not be able to refuse). Of course, this ability would be limited by the fact that the Duke would be obliged to support the King with taxes and tribute, and it will be extremely difficult to defend your own province while attacking another in this situation unless you had a very large Duchy. This could, however, make for some interesting politics. Duke A asks Duke B for assistance with an offensive mission, in exchange for cash or future assistance for Duke B. So, Duke B sends the Chancellor a message ordering that some of his units be given to Duke A temporarily. The King would have to try to do what's best for the kingdom (and himself) while the Dukes are out trying to increase their own holdings and power.

When a Prince is born, he should be considered the same as a title marker. Since we can't actually simulate princes realistically, the prince could be kind of an honor or reward that the king gives to another player. So, instead of province rulers and princes, we have Dukes who can command multiple provinces and can be "promoted" to prince, and thus, possibly, to king. The King can't give himself a prince, and any new provinces he keeps for himself get passed on to the next king as royal holdings rather than Ducal lands. The royal provinces remain royal unless the current king grants them to a Duke other than himself. So, the current King would have power over both his own duchy and the royal lands. This gives him the power to show some favoritism to his own duchy when it comes to taxes and royal grants for castles, etc.

To make all of this even more interesting, the Dukes could recruit agents, and (again, out of character) force the Chancellor to use Spies, Assasins, and Inquisitors against another players' generals. That way, if I'm a prince second in line to the throne, I can role play at a hostile takeover. If your Prince dies (or is removed from the "heirs" list), you just go back to being a Duke and the prince's bodyguard becomes a regular general in your army. If your King dies, the new King takes over any royal lands, treasuries, and armies, and you retain your Duchy and its armies.

Of course, the Chancellor (whom I won't envy even one little bit) will probably need to be permanent.

I think all of this will promote the inter-player competitions we are looking for as well as a very feudal atmosphere without exceeding the limitations of what we can do with the game.

EDIT: The king would have two methods for obtaining troops from the Dukes. One would be to order up troops as "tribute." These troops would be his permanently, and would be passed on to the next king, along with their maintenence costs. The other method would be more of a "call to arms." These troops would be on loan to the king with the maintence covered by the Duke. The Duke could then recall these troops at any time, with the consequences being an angry king and the political consequences among the other Dukes. I suppose the Duke could even refuse to pay taxes and tributes, although I'm sure the current King would do something extremely nasty if that happened. After all, the king has ultimate power in granting AND revoking provincial titles (unless we agree that a large majority of Dukes can override him).

Gunslinger, I think we have similar ideas when in comes to players being entites comprising (potentially) of multiple heores and provinces. However, since there might be more players than provinces and even heroes initially, I proposed dividng all players in 4 rivaling noble families, and I think it should be possible for players within each of these families to control multiple units and provinces (each unit is a hero, and any commander with at least a star can be promoted as a provincial ruler). It gets confusing, but what I trying to say is that I do not think a player would be tied to a single character or province. So no problem there.

As for the military decision, I still think players should need a King's permission or the support of the Council (not the Consul) to launch an invasion. The problem is that if someone attacks the Sicilians for example, then the Sicilians will not be content to punish the guilty party, but will go after all of Genoa. And imagine what happens if the noble family that controls Tuscany has the idea of making a raid into Rome. The Consul will suffer most, and this is why I think he should have the right to determine whether an offensive is launched or not, and also who leads the army. Since Genoa was a republic, I guess if a player has the support of the rest of the players with a vote behind him (let's say at least 2 thirds of them), then by popular vote the Consul should be forced to grant the player a permission to launch an attack the player has planned.

As for the princes, I think your suggestion is quite good, actually. I was thinking of having the Royal Family as a separate player, or team of players, controlling certain domains and raising its own, Royal army. This way the Consul will have a small army of his own. Innocentius is proposing that the Consul does not control provinces, and that his army and provinces are actually governed by the Chancellor, which might be a better idea. You take it a step further, proposing that princes are allocated as heroes to the four competing noble factions. I really like the idea of each faction being able to elect a Consul, and since a Consul was not a monarch, I think we should have a vote for who will assume this position every time a Consul dies. Every faction will be able to appoint a candidate (player candidate, not a game character) and then whoever gets most votes, wins, and this player becomes the Consul for the remaining lifetime of the Consul in the game. When the Consul dies, there are new elections, so a player can potentially get an unlimited amount of mandates, but if he loses the elctions, he can simply go back to his role within his faction of nobles, and command a province or more belonging to this faction (or armies, it is up to the team of players to distribute roles among themselves). I think that princes, as long as they are alive, should belong to the Royal Army, controlled by the Consul. Once the Princes die, and the unit commander of the 20 or so RKs is no longer from Royal Blood, then the Consul should be able to allocate them to whichever faction he likes or deems necessary, which may be a rare opportunity for a noble faction to acquire heavy horse if some of my sugegstions are accepted.

Now, I really like how this is developing and I am itching to play it.

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Originally Posted by Kavhan Isbul

However, since there might be more players than provinces and even heroes initially. . .

The problem is that if someone attacks the Sicilians for example, then the Sicilians will not be content to punish the guilty party, but will go after all of Genoa. And imagine what happens if the noble family that controls Tuscany has the idea of making a raid into Rome. The Consul will suffer most, and this is why I think he should have the right to determine whether an offensive is launched or not, and also who leads the army. . .

You take it a step further, proposing that princes are allocated as heroes to the four competing noble factions.

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Point 1: Maybe I had the scale of this thing wrong. I guess I was assuming we would be playing with the half-dozen or so people who have been responding to this thread. I think Genoa starts with four provinces. If that is the case, the Chancellor could randomly choose the first three dukes, who would each get one province. From those three Dukes he would also choose the king, who would get the capital as royal lands. Additional players would join in as more lands are conquered, with the king being forced to grant them provinces until all waiting players have joined. I guess my whole setup was only good for a small number of players where each player gets a chance at forming a large duchy with many provinces.

Point 2: Absolutely! The independent actions of the Dukes can have terrible consequences for the kingdom as a whole. This will have to be held in check by the fact that the Duke wants the King's favor so that maybe he can become a prince, or get financial aid, whatever. It will also be held in check by the ability of the king, with the majority of other Duke's consensus, to punish him very severely, even take him out of the game by revoking his title to all lands. Also, since any player can end up as king at some point, there will be a bit of a Do unto others. . . attitude.

Point 3: Actually I saw princes more as a chance at the throne than anything else.

Gunslinger, I really do not know how may people will be interested in participating.
If we have more than 4, I think it will be only fair to distribute everyone into four teams, so that all teams can start on somewhat equal terms. Otherwise anyone entering later will be at a disadvantage, and nobody can guarantee that expansion will be rapid enough to be able to allocate a duchy to each player. If a team conquers multiple provinces, they can distribute them among each other so that everyone controls one or more and is involved in the game. If there are not enough provinces, then team members who do not get one can lead the team's army into battles. But generally, everyone will have a role and be involved from the very beginning.
As for the princes, I am not sure how this can work, because as soon as a player from one of the teams becomes a Consul, most likely all heirs will start ending up in his faction (since he chooses that), thus making it impossible to depose this team. This is why we would either need an independent player to be the Consul, or we should have elections. If we choose to have elections, then the Consul should not have the right to strip teams of provinces already given to them, except if they fail to supply the agreed amount of troops or go into the red, causing loss of money to the whole kingdom. This way we would prevent the Consul from taking other players' lands.

Well, in the end we will be limited by the restrictions of the game, and IMHO it would be the easiest way to have the Consul as an independent player. This will not be very realistic, but we could get around it by having declared that a new Consul has been elected in Genoa everytime the old one dies (who gets to play the Consul is determined by OOC-votes, as already proposed). The Republic has its obligations towards the Consul, and the Consul has his towards the Republic. Among his obligations is to send able generals (i.e. Princes) to all factions and disperse them evenly. Of course, he will (or at least can) summon these back to himself once he needs them for campaign.

Overall, I agree with Kavhan Isbul on that the Consul should have no right to undo the promotings of his predecessor.

The fact of the matter is, we can get bogged down over the rules, and I have to admit I am quite guilty here.
Just a few final proposals that have to do with the Consul. I think the Consul should pay for the troops he distributes to the various provinces in his kingdom. For example, if he sends a few heirs with several units of RKs to Corsica, he can bankrupt the owner of Corsica in a matter of few turns.
I also propose that all ships and special agents are an exclusive property of the Consul, just to make the life of the Chancellor easier. It is going to be hard enough to keep records of which faction owns what money and troops, but commanders at least have names, while tracking assassins, emissaries and bishops may become unbelievably hard and tedious.
And what do you think about my suggested self-imposed rules?

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Originally Posted by Kavhan Isbul

As for the princes, I am not sure how this can work, because as soon as a player from one of the teams becomes a Consul, most likely all heirs will start ending up in his faction (since he chooses that), thus making it impossible to depose this team. This is why we would either need an independent player to be the Consul, or we should have elections. If we choose to have elections, then the Consul should not have the right to strip teams of provinces already given to them, except if they fail to supply the agreed amount of troops or go into the red, causing loss of money to the whole kingdom. This way we would prevent the Consul from taking other players' lands.

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You're right, it wouldn't work if there were teams. I wasn't suggesting teams, though. As for the rest of it, everything I was suggesting depended on the fact that any player could end up as king, and he would surely remember what past kings had done to him. Also, there was the fact that the more drastic measures, such as the stripping of provinces, could be overridden by 2/3 of the other players.

I think all of my ideas were geared toward making each player as independent as possible (Live free or die!) and trying to create a lot of political intrigue within the faction while still trying to win the overall campaign as a team. If I understand correctly, you're more interested in setting up something where everyone is kept as equal as possible (From each man according to his abilities and to each man according to his needs) and just cooperates to try to get the overall faction a victory. Two different philosophies, but both very playable.

I will give a whirl to any format that we choose, though. I'm with you in that I'm just excited to get the thing started.

BTW- Sorry about the parenthetical backroom-type comments. I've been on the road a lot lately, and I think I've been listening to too much talk radio.

I have been enjoying MTW for over two years now (I started playing it relatively late), and as great as it is, I have always wondered if it can be made more realistic. The mods covered most of the things I desired to see in the game, except one - unruly nobles within my faction, plotting against me, refusing to cooperate in certain times. It is hard to explain, but sometimes I feel that I am in charge not of a medieval faction of loosely connected feudals, but of a modern nation of immaculate patriots- we have a planned economy, devoted soldiers and commanders, willing to go all the way from their homes in let's say Naples to Volga Bulgaria leaving their homes almost undefended without objection, the titles are given to lowly peasants with lots of acumen instead to the local warlords, and the latter do not mind at all. Just something felt a bit improbable, and what was missing was the human element. Putting humans in will make it more interesting, especially when they are motivated to behave in a manner, similar to that of the main figures during the Middle Ages. When the Zaccaria family conquered Chios, expelling the Muslim Pirates from this small island, they did not do it out of a desire to give Genoa another colony. They did in it in order to expand their domains and increase their income, so that they could compete against other noble families. In fact, they even proclaimed this island a Lordship and it was a sovereign entity for a short period of time. So when eventually we win the game (the AI does not stand a chance), I just want it to be a tough and long campaign, which would involve plenty of setbacks due to inner dissent, rather than a glorious blitzkrieg by a well-oiled machine.
But at the end, I would also be happy with any format, because even without inner competition it will be fun and there will be plenty of chances for role playing.

I'm right there with you Kavhan. I also started MTW just a couple years ago (when it was $10 on the bargain rack at Wal-Mart). I've often wished for the ability to conquor and exert control over territories without them becoming MY territories. I have no idea how this could be accomplished satisfactorily with an AI, though. The role playing part is something that intimidates me a bit. I've seen posts from other orgahs who are obviously seasoned role players, and I don't think I'll be able to match them. I'm ready to go, though. Let's get started!

I'm interested in the concept, and willing to do a minor role to get used to the system, is that possible?

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Originally Posted by Wasp

I'm interested in the concept, and willing to do a minor role to get used to the system, is that possible?

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Of course it is:yes: In fact, none of us here are used to this system, at least not when applied to MTW.

I was also thinking that I might volounteer to play the Chancellor during the reign of the first Consul, so that no-one will feel as if they have to do it and to attract more players (it's a pretty busy character).

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

Of course it is:yes: In fact, none of us here are used to this system, at least not when applied to MTW.

I was also thinking that I might volounteer to play the Chancellor during the reign of the first Consul, so that no-one will feel as if they have to do it and to attract more players (it's a pretty busy character).

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Thanks Innocentius, I was hoping you would step up. Of course, we will need to take turns as Chancellors, and I suggest that as a reward for doing the dirty work, the Chancellor's vote in any decisions should count as two votes. This is my final suggestion thoguh, as I do not want to cause any more delay.

I've started a Library thread now, more threads will follow...Just one final question, on what difficulty will we be playing? Expert?

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Originally Posted by Innocentius

I've started a Library thread now, more threads will follow...Just one final question, on what difficulty will we be playing? Expert?

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I vote for expert.