Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
A procedural question for the group: How specific to edicts need to be?

There is talk of making trade agreements with the AI factions but nothing formal is proposes in-game. When I play, I secure trade rights with the AI as a matter of course. There is nothing to loose from securing trade rights. Do we need to specifically state which factions we want to trade with or can we do it automatically with every faction?
The way I see it, edicts are to usually to constrain the Seneschal to do something (except that a few like declarations of war empower him). So generally I think they are things you would want to propose because you don't think a Seneschal will freely do it or because you are unsure he would. In such cases, you might want very specific legislation as the Seneschal may try to lawyer his way out of doing what you want to constrain him to do.

For example, with trade agreements, an unconstrained Seneschal might go to town with them and trade with everyone. Consequently, as you say, they might not be the kind of thing you would typically need to legislate on - as a normal Seneschal would make the agreements anyway. However, there still may be role-playing reasons to legislate. For example, an economically minded Councillor might want to be absolutely sure that the Seneschal does make agreements and propose an edict to that effect. Others with an enmity of a specific faction may oppose agreements with that faction etc.