M2 Test Imperial Orders Thread

[Lucjan]

This is the orders thread for the M2 HRE pbem Test. Here the Chancellor will announce the opening of each orders phase, along with player's starting balances. Players should place their orders for recruitment, taxation and construction. Orders may be clarified here, but all in character discussions should go in the deliberations thread.

Current Savegame Is - http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/M2HRE-PBEM.zip

[Tamur]

Orders for the Vienna Region:

1. Decreed: that there shall be Dirt Roads built in the Vienna region, immediately.

2. Decreed: that there shall be a Merchant recruited in the Vienna region, also immediately.

3. Decreed: that said Merchant shall be as soon as possible moved to the Silver Mine southwest of Vienna (@ 158,121).

4. Decreed: that the tax rate in Vienna shall be upped to the highest possible level, except in the case of seige or pestilence.

[Lucjan]

*The chancellor takes note of Duke Leopold's orders.* Your requests have been noted friend.

EDIT

I am issueing the following orders for Imperial Territory.

1 - Roads to be built around Staufen Castle.
2 - Land Clearances to be made around Frankfurt.
3 - The tax level of Frankfurt to be set to High.
4 - One spear militia, peasant archer, and peasant regiment to be disbanded from Frankfurt.
5 - One spear militia and peasant archer regiment to be disbanded from Staufen.
6 - One diplomat and one merchant to be commissioned in Frankfurt.

[econ21]

Standing order: The Chancellor is authorised to accept the building of any swordsman's guild, woodsman's guild or crusading chapter in Innsbruck, provided that one does not exist elsewhere in the Empire.

Land Clearances to be made around Innsbruck.

One spear unit and peasant archer regiment to be disbanded from Innsbruck.

Duke Otto to be moved (or not) as the Chancellor sees fit. (ooc: are we worried about Bologna? if so, should I head there to avoid an autocalc? or post me wherever you think the risk of an autocalc greatest.)

[Lucjan]

(OOC - Hopefully Ignoramus will take Bologna, so I'm not really worried about an autocalc there, but if Venice or Milan start to make some sketchy movements around there before Ignoramus gets back to us we'll see.)

[Strappy Horse]

Don't know about Ignoramous, but I'll be bold and assume control of Bologna.

Orders for the Bologna region:

1. Increase taxes to high.
2. Build a small church in Bologna.

No recruitement or movement orders.

[econ21]

Don't know about Ignoramous, but I'll be bold and assume control of Bologna.

Yes - go for it. We still have the Crown Prince as an avatar if Ignoramus wants to join as a full blooded participant.

[Lucjan]

Ok, I'm ending this turns orders thread now. After I carry out the orders, calculate the finances, deal with the edicts (I don't think we really need a poll for 4 players, do we?), I'll advance to next turn and proceed with my chancellory duties.

[econ21]

Sounds good - we definitely don't need formalities like polls.

[Lucjan]

Ok...I'm stuck.

No matter what I seem to do, I can't make our projection match up to the projection in the game.

Econ, you said you got it to work out for Scotland? I'm going to try it with Spain and see if I can get it to work there. In the meantime can you show me what you did with Scotland? Certain things like the army upkeep, and where the heck the "king's purse" income is supposed to come in are driving me up the wall.

If we can't figure this out, I think we might be reduced to a simpler approach.

[econ21]

What I posted earlier about HREs accounts was probably wrong - for example, I did not factor in the free upkeep of militia units (yet another financial benefit of cities); is that a factor?

But because I could get Scotland's accounts to add up, I thought we should be able to manage things with HRE.

Did you keep a record of what was spent by the Dukes and the Imperium? If you've post that, and a start of turn 2 savegame, I could see what I come up with for the new balances. Then we can see if we concurr.

For Scotland:

The faction financial details says:

Income = 2639
360 farming
725 taxes
54 corruption (really admin)
1500 King's purse

Expenditure:3316
2416 army upkeep
900 wages

Edingburgh has income of 1139 - that equals the faction's income excluding the King's purse.

There are three armies:

Edmund = 850 upkeep
Prince = 833 upkeep
King = 958 - 375 free upkeep = 583
fleet =150 upkeep
Total army upkeep = 2416

For wages, we have:
Cardinal 150
Spy 100
Diplomat 50
Three generals 300
Total wages = 600

[Lucjan]

Here's what I'm coming up with....

Here's the financial overview from the game.


Here's the spreadsheet.


On the Financial Overview, the Income adds up nicely.
On the Spreadsheet, I'm short 58 florins when you add the Totals from the Ducal and Imperial budgets together. (The income numbers are correct I checked them a thousand times over.)
If you add the Ducal Total, the Imperial Income and Emperor's Purse, and the Corruption gain, then subtract the difference between the corruption values, which ironically enough is 58, then you get the 7797 the financial review shows as total income. But that doesn't make any sense to me.

Our army upkeep doesn't match up either. I've added our upkeep up a thousand times over. When you add the ducal army upkeep up with the Imperial army upkeep you get 5610. I am seriously convinced the computer is pulling 226 florins out of its butt on that estimate of 5836. If you right click and check the upkeep costs of every military unit we have, there is absolutely NOTHING that ends in an even number, so therefore, you can NOT have an upkeep value ending in an even number. We only have a few types of units in play.

Peasants - 90
Spear militia - 125
Spear Sargeants - 155
Archer militia - 100
Mailed knights - 250
Generals - 250

I don't see how the computer is getting an upkeep number ending with a 6, when that's mathematically impossible given our upkeep values.

Wages make sense though.
6 generals x 250
1 cardinal x 100
1 spy x 50

Somebody shed some light on this.

[econ21]

I don't think there's a problem.

On income, you do take the difference in the two corruption numbers, as the first number is extra income from "administration" (governors benefiting their settlements), not waste from corruption.

On the upkeep, I think you have assumed the Emperor and Prince have bodyguards cost 250 florins each, when in fact they cost 388 and 338. The difference is the 226 you are short of.

But I sympathesise - if it is this messy with only 6 settlements and no orders, imagine what it will be like after 6 months.

Calculating how long it took us to play WoS today, I did wonder whether we should be streamlining the WoS model rather than making it yet more complex. However, I would persevere with this because the whole point of a trial is to see if it is workable. And I really don't see any easy half-way house between decentralisation at this level and giving all the money to the reigning player to allocate.

BTW: do you want your character to take Nuremburg as his Duchy? If not, I suggest we treat it as belonging to a Count with an Imperial patron, rather than an Imperial city per se.

[Lucjan]

I'll request the next chancellor bestow a settlement on me after I'm done. Wouldn't want to abuse my station.

Anyway.. good point on the emperor and prince bodyguards, hadn't taken that into account, but the income thing still gives me a headache. I understand the formula, it just seems backwards.

Total Income + Corruption Income - the Difference between Corruption Income and Corruption Loss. Bit of a goofy formula don't you think?

[flyd]

I think I found the issue. The "income" displayed for each city (on the map under city name for example) is the net income of the settlement. It is the income minus the corruption. You can check. Look at the details for the settlement. If you add the income from farms, trade, taxes and admin, you will not get the income that is displayed for the city, unless you also subtract the corruption. The fact that the difference between corruption income and corruption expenditure is 58 is not ironic at all, but a consequence of counting corruption twice. I haven't looked at the upkeep discrepancies yet.

[econ21]

Total Income + Corruption Income - the Difference between Corruption Income and Corruption Loss. Bit of a goofy formula don't you think?

Um, I should go to sleep now so I don't have time to load up M2TW and start digging. But the formula looks fine to me. If you are saying:

Total income + corruption income - corruption income + corruption loss

then it reduces to:


Total icome - corruption loss

which is very intuitive. Contrary to FLYdude, I think settlement income does not include corruption loss (ie corruption). But it does include corruption income (ie administration).

Or maybe I am not understanding the two of you or M2TW accounts. In which case, I apologise - please put it down to sleep deprivation.

PS: FLYdude: any interest in becoming Duke Maximillian of Nuremburg for our trial?

[flyd]

I'm pretty sure settlement income includes corruption loss. If you look at the settlement details, under income, say for Bologna, you see:

Income:
Admin = 47
Trade = 133
Taxes = 617
Farms = 442

and in the "negative row" you'll see corruption = 83.

The settlement income is reported as being +1156.

You'll find that 47 + 133 + 617 + 442 - 83 = 1156 exactly.

Furthermore. I went and added the incomes of all the settlements while keeping them separated by category. The numbers matched exactly with the financial overview numbers, i.e. adding all the income from farms yielded 1877, as on the financial overview. Corruption and other income (192) is gotten by adding all the "admin" incomes, and corruption loss is gotten by adding all the negative corruptions in the settlements.

[flyd]

I tried adding the upkeeps together and got a value consistent with the financial overview. The even (and divisible by 3) least significant digit in the total upkeep comes from the bodyguard upkeep for the king and the prince, which is 333, not 250.

I hope this doesn't volunteer me to be the empire's accountant.

[Strappy Horse]

I have to agree with Flydude here, looking at Bologna, I've found the same. The numbers do add up nicely. Admin is included in the total income, and corruption is substracted from that. Result is the net income that is shown under the city name, and as net income in the city overview.

About the King's Purse, after a quick survey through my save games, I think it has to do with the number of (grand)sons of the royal family.
In 5 save games in follows the pattern of 500 florins per son (own or married) of the king and the heir.

Some examples:
-In our case we have a king and 2 sons, = 3*500 = 1.500
-In my Milanese save Duke Catelano does not have sons, but his brother and heir has 2 sons. 4 male characters in the ruling family account for a King's purse of 2.000 florins, which indeed it is.
-In my French save, King Louis has 1 son and heir, one grandson, the king himself, for a King's purse of 1.500

[Lucjan]

Ok, I think everybody's got the idea of what happened now.

I was doing this.

3158+4505+192-58=7797
I.E. Ducal Total Income + Imperial Income & Purse + Positive Corruption - (Positive corruption - Negative Corruption)

FlyDude has much simplified this procedure by noting that I overlooked the fact that negative corruption is already deducted from the accounts. So For Bologna, which reads as 1156 income on the screen, should actually read as 1239. and Vienna which reads as 1274, should read as 1325. Making the proper formula...

3158 (Total Ducal Income as Displayed) + 134 (Negative Corruption as shown in the Financial Overview) + 4505 (Imperial Income and Purse) = 7797 (the correct number)

And as for the upkeep, thanks to both econ, flydude and strappy horse for pointing out that I'm a silly fool and neglected to notice the obvious difference in retinue sizes for regular generals as opposed to the prince and emperor, therefore the difference in prince and emperor's upkeep. Off to work on the turn now that everything pans out correctly.

[Lucjan]

(OOC) Ok, awesome news for everybody.

Now that we've finally got all the bugs worked out of our system. I've gotten through turn 1, we're starting turn 2. Everything adds up properly, and Hamburg has fallen to the Imperial army.

A few notes. Merchant income doesn't add to the local city/castle income, so I took the liberty of adding it to it in the individual ducal budgets myself, with a side note of our total merchant's income for the whole of the HRE.

Also, Venice offered a trade agreement and gave us map information.

Anndd..(this is jumbled I know, but I've been up for 27 hours now), when you conquer a settlement, the florings gained from the conquest need to be added to the total overall income otherwise it doesn't quite add up, and also to the Empire's income for this turn, otherwise you'd be jipping the empire of hard earned cash (neglected to reflect this in the income of the Imperial budget, but did put it where it belongs in the overall income....I've been up too long, going to bed in a minute).

Individual town incomes change slightly each turn due to harvest, taxation fluctuation, admin skill, etc, so need turn by turn updating, as well as the issue of the "projected" treasury not actually being the treasury we end up with because of transitional events.

I.E. Venice offered us the trade agreement on their turn, we didn't do it on ours, so the income increase from that occurred after all our calculations for the next turns treasury had already been complete. I solved this by simply taking the new treasury, subtracting our total duke's projected starting balance for turn 2, and using the difference as the Imperial coffers new starting balance, allowing Imperial coffers to absorb both the fluctuation in harvest and taxation, and the increase in trade level.

Also...we hadn't thought of this. In the event soldiers are captured by an enemy army, who pays for their release? I think the owning duke should pay, it makes it more interesting that way. Or in the case of the Imperial Army, the empire's coffers pay.

Anyway... Bottom line, we've got everything working properly now and the game can commence without issue.

In the event that others may not wish to handle the finances aspect of the game, I'd be willing to deal with this at the end of each orders phase as a treasurer. I get a weird sense of accomplishment out of this. While still allowing the construction/recruitment/movement to be carried out by a seperate chancellor who wouldn't have to worry about the financial part. (Something like a co-consular arrangement, except the extent of my power would be to manage the overall finances and, obviously, my own dukedom.)


EDIT - Here is the latest financial record.

And the newest save file. http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/pbm/...M2HRE-PBEM.zip

[Tamur]

Very impressive work Lucjan and econ, good pursuit of the problem without giving up. You have proved to me once again why I flee in fear from accounting topics!

[Strappy Horse]

Looking good Lucjan!
One minor thing, if I made a correct estimate of the construction costs, they are included in the totals for round 2, but I don't see them in the purchases column.

EDIT: Never mind, they were purchases from round 1, not round 2.
Still, is it usefull to change the format a little to show the purchases we've ordered for the last round?

[Lucjan]

Thanks Tamur.

And not sure what you mean Strappy Horse. Are you saying you want me to add a column that details what you spent money on last turn? Because reminding players what they spent their own money on could get rather lengthy, and I'm not entirely sure how helpful it'd be if the money is already spent. On the other hand, I could see the benefit of adding another column that just says "Last Turns Expenditures" with a total of that player's spent florins from the last turn. If that's what you meant to begin with, sorry, just a misunderstanding on my part.

EDIT - Considering all players will have access to the save file on a turn-by-turn basis for the purpose of reviewing their duchy and giving new orders, I think it shouldn't be a problem for players to be able to see where there money's gone. Again maybe I'm just confused.

[econ21]

...I could see the benefit of adding another column that just says "Last Turns Expenditures" with a total of that player's spent florins from the last turn.

Good idea and to make it easy, I suggest that in our orders phase, we each detail our proposed expenditures and provide the total to save you some work (and allow double checking for errors).

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Also, Lucjan, it might be good if you posted in bold caps:

TURN 2 ORDERS PHASE STARTS

and then 48 hours make another post later:

TURN 2 ORDERS PHASE ENDS

Each Duke should only make one post between your bookend posts, but we could edit them to revise them. Once you have closed the orders phase, then we are not allowed to edit our post (orders) anymore. Doing it this way might keep things tidy and easy to manage.

*********************************************************

Tamur: on the knights you wanted, I suggested that we formalise contracts in the orders phase. So you could type something like:

"Contract Vienna 1: Duke Leopold offers Duke Otto X florins for one unit of mailed knights, to be trained immediately."

And I would reply

"Contract Vienna 1: accepted."

And at the same time, I would give orders for the unit to be training.

That way, it's all in black and white for everyone to see.

As for what X is, I suggest purchase price 680 + 25% = 850

Sorry I did not do this last turn - I did ask you to formalise it and then you said something about mounted knights being no good defending in a siege. If it is the dismounted knights you want - which I agree are a more useful unit - they will require a castle be built in Innsbruck first.

*********************************************************

We really should start putting posts like this one of mine in the OOC thread and devoting this thread only to orders.

[Tamur]

(moving my reply to the ooc thread)

[Strappy Horse]

On the other hand, I could see the benefit of adding another column that just says "Last Turns Expenditures" with a total of that player's spent florins from the last turn.

That's what I meant, for the dukes, I think it's useful to see in one overview, 'this my income, these were my expenses, and this is what I have left' I agree with Econ21 though that the dukes can also show their expenses in their orders post.

[Tamur]

Duke Leopold's Orders for Turn 2:

Contract 1: Duke Leopold offers Duke Otto 600 florins for one unit of mounted sergeants, to be trained immediately.

Contract 2: Duke Leopold offers Duke Otto a gift of 400 florins to encourage the building of roads and/or farmland in Innsbruck.

Total expenditure: 1000 florins

[econ21]

Duke Otto's orders for turn 2

Contract 1: Accepted with thanks.

Order 1: Duke Otto to be moved just outside of Innsbruck.[1]

Order 2: In accordance with contract 1, one unit of mounted sergeants to be recruited. Once they appear in turn 3, they will be under the control and upkeep of Duke Leopold.

Total expenditure: TBC (once I check the game tonight)


[1]OOC: some folk saying being in a settlement with normal taxes on the turn something is built can give bad vices.

[TinCow]

Due to the previous status of my lands as Imperial property, the monies available to me are not entirely clear. However, assuming the same 200 florin tax is assessed on Nuremburg as on the other Ducal cities, that would leave me with 611 florins for the year. Assuming this is correct, my orders are as follows.

Duke Maximillian's Orders for Turn 2

Order 1: Taxes in Nuremburg are to be raised to Very High. Taxes may be lowered there without my permission if there is a serious (red) threat of civil disorder.

Order 2: Construction is to begin on a Grain Exchange (600 Florins)

Total expenditure: 600 Florins