The Ascendancy has a monarchy, and heralds to keep track of towns as they map the country, but it doesn’t seem to have much control over the cities. See the herald’s joke about how there aren’t any taxes.
I have yet to play Rayya’s Children to the next tier, but it was my impression so far that they’re pretty loosely tied together through their trading company, rather than a more top-down government. I certainly might be wrong about this now that they’ve added more.
Were the Ascendancy any larger, I could see them becoming a proper Empire. Then, the rulers of the most powerful cities might very well call themselves kings. They seem like the type to call themselves royalty.
Get some Hearthling with decent stats, rename them to have the word “King”, “Chieftain”, etc in front of their normal name. And then assign them to a bed in a nice house/possible palace, mayor’s office, so on.
I actually like having a queen unit. As others have said, it would be for general buffs for trade or war, the downside would be if the queen hasn’t been within range of another unit for a set period would have a “Forgotten” or “neglected” debuff to productivity/speed etc…
I think it would be an interesting unit, I would place as a tier 3 unit, limit to one, with hefty requirements, but the buffs are worthwhile…
I am a political economist so I thought I might give my input on this. The mainstream theory is that the origin of statehood/rulership is in the need for a monopoly on violence. When populations were organized in small kin based tribes most of the rule was based on unanimous votes and there was no hierarchy except maybe elder patriarchs. When societies grew enough, the accumulated wealth made it worthwhile for some tribes to stop productive activities and instead live off raiding.
They became roving bandits. Because they were moving around and never stayed at any place for long enough and thus had a very short time horizon, their revenue maximizing strategy was to extract as much as possible from the area and then move on. This kept on going until one of these roving bandit figured out that by settling down and extending its time horizon, it would give incentives for the local populace to invest in the productive activities (because they no longer feared losing everything every season) and this new stationary bandit could extract more on the long run then by just short term raiding the land.
This new stationary bandit could maximize his revenue by using his monopoly of violence to prevent raiding by other bandits and also by guaranteeing property rights within the land. These two main functions: foreign relations and justice (acting as a judge and contract enforcer), are thus based on violence. A third form of function you could expect from a ruler is to use his monopoly on violence to solve the collective action and provide public goods.
So going back to Stonehearth, based on this if you want to justify a mayor/king in game mechanics you need to give him a job where he has to do one of these things. I dont think there is a collective action problem because the hearthlings are already controlled by the player. As long as they don’t have some form of personal greed or autonomy thats not a problem. On the foreign relation side, having a mayor could make sense if that opened diplomacy options (for the ascendency, maybe claiming independence to the monarch or brokering peace with other factions). At the justice level, if there was crime in the village or event that required the authority of a judge then it would make sense.
One such case where I think an authority fits well in the game is due to the new traits that hearthlings have. Imagine you’re mid-game, and a new hearthling arrives but he’s way subpar. For example, he just wants to be a crafter but has poor stats leading him to be grumpy all the time and drag down the morale of your town. Promoting a mayor could give you the option of banishing him.
Well yeah that would save the populace the discomfort of having someone kill over. “Hello new guy I see your stats are 1/1/1 and you want to be a Knight…YOU GOT IT! Now go take on this camp of goblins alone and see how well ya do. Best of luck!!” pray the replacement that happens to show up the next day doesn’t suffer the same delusion and admire your decorative new tombstone
Ahah I have pity for them, I usually just reload if the new recruit is too awful, I don’t mind having a few grunts but at some point if you cant be a crafter or a soldier you’re no good to me.
Uhh, don’t we have a Queen we are under Rule by anyway? I guess we could have a King/Queen, but as a Class? If my Understanding of the Feudal System is up to date, we would just be a kingdom, ruled by a kingdom! But yeah, we are many Classes Behind, with The Geomancer and others still needing implementing, if we did want a king, and it worked, we would be Alpha stages behind, like 10, or even Beta stages with all the Ideas they currently want.
You know, to solve all this, someone could just make it a mod so it was optional instead of having all this debate… @Genex, or what he said…
That actually sounds ideal, except I run vanilla stonehearth, and have no idea how to go about mods or adding them, so my wanting it implemented is a little biased
From the modding side it could be like this
An experienced knight lvl 6 maybe can be promoted to the royal class (unique class, 1 male + 1 female) they both can be alone. At level 0 these people could be chief of clan, at lvl 2 Chief of tribe and so on until lvl 6 they become king or queen.
Every level up is only possible if a quest is fullfilled and other requirements like armor, wealth and happiness are met for all hearthlings.
And for all the effort to level up our royals tjey get town buffs like better fine crafting, better selling prices and so on.
The quests should be as hard as possible and the other requirements truly time filling to achieve because you just do this once.
Last but not least there should be a special bonus if you have a king and a queen
British Empire where xd That’s called canada mate.
Also, having no townleader is beyond stupid if you think about it properly. Take every angle in consideration.
Even tribes have 1 townleader who answers to a tribesleader.
Towns have counsils
Cities have Mayors
States have Elected Officials
Countries have Elected Officials and/or Royals
Underdevelopped countries have regional leaders
Everything has a leader except our settlements.
We need leaders, preferably kings who then don’t really fight unless you force them to. A unit that merely buffs stuff like a knight who’s lazy.
Bonus Courage lvl 1
Bonus Happiness lvl 2
etc
etc.
It should not be easy to get one in the first place and you must level them to 6 to make them an actual King/Emperor. This way you can achieve things with your own name on your leader. Conversations could be between monsters and ur king in shiny gold armor/casual goldthread robes.
Well, I suggest re-titling this to leader instead of king. The chain of command is found in every organised structure, even in a three man expedition to catalog leafs for a school project, where one is a leader. A leader naturally emerges within any group of any living species with a capacity to do something other than eat and grow and reproduce.
Ants, have Queens, Wolves have an Alpha and so to Apes. Man has various titles for leaders, such as chief, leader, lord, earl, emperor, king, general, captain, admiral, overseer, wise-men, etc.
Hearthlings could have… Captain of the Expedition, someone who would have a buff and maybe excels at all tasks and has high strength, mind and spirit. On the other hand, it could be funded by some noble lord, who might send a son, a lesser noble or something to go an found an outpost or colony. Maybe they were a gang of adventurers and simply went together and have a chief. Maybe then there may be a council of hierarchy, with 3 leaders who decide together, who would be possessing, one of good spirit, one of good min and one of good strength.
It would had a increased layer of depth I feel, especially with better stats for the leader/s which is better than just renaming them and giving a nickname.
This is what in Europe we would call a Burcht (germanic language) where a building is meant to be a castle but isn’t built like one. Usually inside a lake or dug into a wall of dirt. I love the design however and would love to see a more “palace” like structure from you if possible.
On a sidenote @LordGovernorGeneral is saying pretty much what I said and even better so. The point is you could hardly go anywhere else than a King if you want a developed city but nothing too modern.
Upgrade a lvl 6 knight to a Leader Class Title with a Basic Crown (tool item)
Every level should give a bonus and title change according to your king’s character.
His XP is based upon all the XP gathered in your city by your hearthlings as a collective.
His XP levels will be insanely high but nonetheless can profficiently be worked up.
His armor can only be made when 3 lvl 6 crafters combine their strenght to make a crown and outfit for each level.
Weaver, Blacksmith and Jeweler. Currently the jeweler is a mod but should probably be in the real game as it’s one of the last civilized jobs that existed since forever.
Every level you gain better and more “luxurious” looking options to craft.
The leader can never do work/haul, his only job is to rule,inspire and lead your army if you choose so. Thus making the balance for the role inherent to the promotion. You can not ever use the leader class to survive anything this way. He can not rescue units, he can not haul, he can not mine or build. His job is to be comfortable and inspire/rule.
If your hearthlings please their king, the king in return will give happiness back upon his people in the form of [have not figured this bonus out yet]
The king if died in a fight can be rescued but his body should take double damage. Enemies can attack him if he is down on the floor, giving a no mercy bonus to any unit that could “slay a king”. If this happens you will need to substitute your leader as soon as possible as you may dip down into sadness and chaos.
This forces strategy over a Leader, it forces balance and you can choose if you want to use it or not much like a cleric archer or knight. You could always have 10 footman and 2 clerics or 5 archers with perfect walls and gates. For the same reason you can level without a leader but it will have it’s advantages.
In part to the point @MaddyGrand said of upgrading a hearthling to a king, a brand new updated 100% working mod is out now, but unfortunately or fortunately, does little more than give bragging rights to the citizen and looks cool, and further to the castle of @Fornjotr, it looks epic and would look awesome in game, if you could terraform it that way in a game. Such structure, albeit not castles but fortifications, can be seen in the littered throughout the fortifications of Malta, where they are literally built into and with the Coralline Limestone of the area, quite cool and effective against a solid cannon shot, which would do little on impact to these fortifications as they would simply chip the rock off, while exploding shells would take chunks of the rock instead of the wall out
I used the Terrain color mod to build it and together with Brunos new king mod, all can have something along the lines of this thread, even though the king has no use.
I urge again the developers to tell the players their stand on this topic.
Well lets see if i get around to it one of the days. But all my designs follow some rules where this castle was created from.
Now go take on this camp of goblins alone and see how well ya do. Best of luck!!” pray the replacement that happens to show up the next day doesn’t suffer the same delusion and admire your decorative new tombstone
so my wanting it implemented is a little biased
