Quote Originally Posted by Gazius
Er. Actually, while you may get the joke, I think my question and answer has still gone missed. I've been speculating on your very last line myself, without the involvement of any existing company. My main question right now is the balance between player in a individual system and state, and where the player fits in that model. Perhaps I'll put up a website on the matter. I need to practice HTML anyways.
There's a great little discursus on the "position" of the player in a game in the rulebook of a Totaler Krieg. TK was/is a magnificent WW2 Europe corps level epic board game (with hex map, counters, dice and cards). In the notes one of the designers (I forget which, they were two quite bright fellas who fell out in the end) ponders "who is the player playing? Is he Hitler? is he the Chief of staff? or the corps level commanders? The answer is all of them, at different times.

Its the same in RTW. I see the player as a sort of immortal vampire/prime minister/power behind the throne with ESP. Sometimes you're the faction leader, except when he dies in battle, then you're his 2IC. Sometimes you're the merchant class, making economic choices. Sometimes you're the priesthood, deciding matters of faith. Its all good for gameplay, if highly unrealistic. Who wants to play a merchant, when your decision making is limited to "Pay War Tax (yes/no)?"

Of course a game where you're a Macedonian (or even a Norman) warrior king battling your own nobles and suspecting your own family could be fun. RTS, with messengers sent from you current location with suggestions or commands for your AI-controlled allies and lackeys. Each spring a pile of wheat lands in your granary and you dole it out to your hangers-on. A reliable gold mine would be, well, a gold mine!

I like the idea you could grant some noble a tract of land, and hope that he comes to your summons in time of war, instead of click-building a fuedal knight in your MIC and paying his upkeep like he's a salaryman.