West Seaxe Campaign

[thabovii]

Hi I'm playing as wessex and was wondering whether at any time you can annex mierce into your kingdom

[st.aloysius]

when you claim their throne... On legendary, , you will be at war with them. If ever they are losing settlements from their enemies, they will become your vasal. As much possible don't make war with mierce

[thabovii]

Originally posted by st.aloysius:

when you claim their throne... On legendary, , you will be at war with them. If ever they are losing settlements from their enemies, they will become your vasal. As much possible don't make war with mierce

mierce is already my vassal. so the only way to gain their territories is to attack them?

[The Old Saxon]

I don't believe you can, unfortunately.

[Gerfreckle]

No, and CA continually refuse to allow us to annex our vassals, even though it's been one of the most frequently requested features for years. I brought it up on the official forum and the lead designer for the game, Jack, basically said it wasn't a priority for them to do that.

[thabovii]

Thanks

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

No, and CA continually refuse to allow us to annex our vassals, even though it's been one of the most frequently requested features for years. I brought it up on the official forum and the lead designer for the game, Jack, basically said it wasn't a priority for them to do that.

Annexing vassals as a regular diplomacy option wouldn't really make much sense though, at least not in the historical context of Thrones' setting.

European Early Medieval polities were not modern nation-states, or even states, period, in the true sense of the word, at least as far as we use the term in a modern legal understanding and political economy.

Everyone with power was a vassal or client of someone else, or at least had a reciprocal relationship with at least one other entity, patron or peer.

If you peacefully "annexed" another polity back then, it still meant that the regional and local power holders retained their positions. If a region had a king, even if that king assented to the overlordship of an over king, he didn't stop being king of his region.

It wasn't common for a distinct people who had a king already to just disestablish that kingship, peacefully, and to take another kingship, from another distinct people.

Because this was rare and took peculiar circumstances, I think the way it is handled, with events and dilemmas, makes sense: being able to just routinely incorporate distinct peoples and kingdoms, disestablishing their ruling houses and such, into a larger kingdom would be silly.

The Mercian situation is actually a good example. To incorporate Mercia in-game, without outright conquering, a claim for the Mercian throne has to be made, then assented to. That is actually completely in keeping with what you see historically happening with Medieval political and legal systems.

Mercia can retain its own kingship, but recognize the overlordship of another kingship, which is the in-game "Vassal" situation.

Disestablishing a kingship without worrying about working through a legal claim would simply be a claim through 'rights of conquest'...in other words, you fight them, conquer them, eliminate or otherwise drive out the old kingship, and that "settles" the issue.

William the Conqueror's situation is a good historical example of this stuff in practice.

Even though it came down to rights of conquest in the end, William still had to advance a legal claim to the throne. The fact that the English didn't (by and large anyway) assent to the claim, and that there was a third party also with claim, turned it into a matter to be settled by war.

On the other hand, if the "annex vassals" option was there, then William and Harold would have got to the table, made England a vassal, and then at some point deposed Harold or his successor...peacefully? As a routine diplomatic option?

The only reason Harold would've found himself as a vassal of William would be if he and William had reached an agreement; but that agreement would only have been binding and legal because Harold would be king of England, either by holding onto the kingship, or having the realm regranted to him. To have Harold assent to a vassalage, and then later have the option to just disestablish him or his successor, wouldn't be the kind of thing that was a typical, normal operation of politics, for obvious reasons. You would need a peculiar arrangement to have that happen, like an agreement that on Harold's death the realm went to William.

This type of arrangement was definitely done in the Medieval age; but because it happened in such a particular set of circumatances and always in context, it is handled better by events and dilemmas. It shouldn't be something you can just always, rotely do, like, "ok, I vassal this faction, then ten turns later incorporate them and disestablish them by asking them when they are at 'Very Friendly' relationship level," rinse-repeat.

[Gerfreckle]

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

No, and CA continually refuse to allow us to annex our vassals, even though it's been one of the most frequently requested features for years. I brought it up on the official forum and the lead designer for the game, Jack, basically said it wasn't a priority for them to do that.

Annexing vassals as a regular diplomacy option wouldn't really make much sense though, at least not in the historical context of Thrones' setting.

European Early Medieval polities were not modern nation-states, or even states, period, in the true sense of the word, at least as far as we use the term in a modern legal understanding and political economy.

Everyone with power was a vassal or client of someone else, or at least had a reciprocal relationship with at least one other entity, patron or peer.

If you peacefully "annexed" another polity back then, it still meant that the regional and local power holders retained their positions. If a region had a king, even if that king assented to the overlordship of an over king, he didn't stop being king of his region.

It wasn't common for a distinct people who had a king already to just disestablish that kingship, peacefully, and to take another kingship, from another distinct people.

Because this was rare and took peculiar circumstances, I think the way it is handled, with events and dilemmas, makes sense: being able to just routinely incorporate distinct peoples and kingdoms, disestablishing their ruling houses and such, into a larger kingdom would be silly.

The Mercian situation is actually a good example. To incorporate Mercia in-game, without outright conquering, a claim for the Mercian throne has to be made, then assented to. That is actually completely in keeping with what you see historically happening with Medieval political and legal systems.

Mercia can retain its own kingship, but recognize the overlordship of another kingship, which is the in-game "Vassal" situation.

Disestablishing a kingship without worrying about working through a legal claim would simply be a claim through 'rights of conquest'...in other words, you fight them, conquer them, eliminate or otherwise drive out the old kingship, and that "settles" the issue.

William the Conqueror's situation is a good historical example of this stuff in practice.

Even though it came down to rights of conquest in the end, William still had to advance a legal claim to the throne. The fact that the English didn't (by and large anyway) assent to the claim, and that there was a third party also with claim, turned it into a matter to be settled by war.

On the other hand, if the "annex vassals" option was there, then William and Harold would have got to the table, made England a vassal, and then at some point deposed Harold or his successor...peacefully? As a routine diplomatic option?

The only reason Harold would've found himself as a vassal of William would be if he and William had reached an agreement; but that agreement would only have been binding and legal because Harold would be king of England, either by holding onto the kingship, or having the realm regranted to him. To have Harold assent to a vassalage, and then later have the option to just disestablish him or his successor, wouldn't be the kind of thing that was a typical, normal operation of politics, for obvious reasons. You would need a peculiar arrangement to have that happen, like an agreement that on Harold's death the realm went to William.

This type of arrangement was definitely done in the Medieval age; but because it happened in such a particular set of circumatances and always in context, it is handled better by events and dilemmas. It shouldn't be something you can just always, rotely do, like, "ok, I vassal this faction, then ten turns later incorporate them and disestablish them by asking them when they are at 'Very Friendly' relationship level," rinse-repeat.

I don't need a long-winded history lesson on the medieval feudal structure, I'm well aware of it. But it's absurd that your vassals can take land that belonged to you only one or two turns ago that was taken by an enemy and you can do absolutely nothing about it because there's no annexation or region swapping mechanics. It's also a bit dumb that even when you complete the mission requirements and change your faction name to 'England' that there's still an ugly, ungainly patchwork of your vassals all over the place, and that their name doesn't change at all and still looks completely seperate to you. The logical solution would be to auto-annex them when you reach the final kingdom formation event. After all, England in the 10th century - when it was finally unified - did not look like England did in the 7th or 8th centuries, with a bunch of mini-kingdoms like Kent and Devon and Cornwall scattered about the place.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

I don't need a long-winded history lesson on the medieval feudal structure, I'm well aware of it. But it's absurd that your vassals can take land that belonged to you only one or two turns ago that was taken by an enemy and you can do absolutely nothing about it because there's no annexation or region swapping mechanics.

Region trading is another topic though. I would like to see a return of some type of region trading, not to mention the inheritance/escheat type of stuff from Shogun 1 and MTW.

Regardless, if you lose regions to rebels or an enemy faction, and then your vassal takes them, that isn't necessarily unrealistic/unhistorical either.

This goes back to what I was writing earlier. The king did not own all the land of his realm, not even remotely...he had overlordship of lands, but only ownership of a very, very small number of lands.

In the game, your faction regions are all "yours," in the sense that you are guiding that faction; but in historical reality those faction provinces would consist of dozens, if not hundreds, of minor lords.

So if you lose a region to rebels or an enemy stack, the king isn't directly losing ownership of that region: he has lost overlordship of the region. If your vassal takes the region from the enemy, your king as now reasserted overlordship of the region. This is basically how it would've worked irl. Of course, irl there would be a lot more nuances, like an exiled lord(s) could return to his/their lands, but for gameplay, you can see where this could get way too complicated, really quick. So if the region comes back into your fold by your vassal taking it, you can look at this in terms of assuming the original lords are dead, had turned traitor to the enemy, etc., and the new lords are going to be made up of those who receive grants from the conquering host, which, in game, would be the vassal who actually took the region.

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

It's also a bit dumb that even when you complete the mission requirements and change your faction name to 'England' that there's still an ugly, ungainly patchwork of your vassals all over the place, and that their name doesn't change at all and still looks completely seperate to you. The logical solution would be to auto-annex them when you reach the final kingdom formation event. After all, England in the 10th century - when it was finally unified - did not look like England did in the 7th or 8th centuries, with a bunch of mini-kingdoms like Kent and Devon and Cornwall scattered about the place.

These were "mini-kingdoms" though, or a system of autonomous and semi-autnomous lordships, and in the case of the Cornish, yes, there actually were those who styled themselves and were recognized as kings in Cornish lands.

In the case of Kent, it was only a few years before ToB begins that it has ceased to be a seperate polity. And the nature of overlordship afterwards was irregular (which of course means it can be even more wild in-game, considering the sandbox aspect).

This comes back to what I was saying in the last post: real, historical 'England' around 930 would've been a patchwork. England wasn't a unitary, modern state: it was an Early Medieval lordship. Political unification consisted in certain perogatives of the king, and other kings submitting to him. But this was very much personally rooted and not insitutionalized into a bureacratic, state machinery, or something like that. And it was fleeting and irregular in this period.

I think the best proof of this last point is how quickly the "unified state" of Athelstan started falling apart after he was gone. This devolution indicates how the systematization that many people seem to think of simply wasn't there, and where there were systems, these were built on personal agreements amongst ruling peers, not on state insitutions as have today.

The type of unification you seem to be thinking about begins more with the Norman conquest, but even then, the facts on the ground kinda speak for themselves, that it wasn't neat, monolithic, or a unitary state.

The Norman English lords interacted with other peoples, the Cornish and Kentish in addition to Welsh and others, very much as distinct groups, as others had done before them: the fact that the English throne went to William didn't result in all regions abstractly referred to as "England" coming de facto with that throne, assenting to his overlordship; nor did it result in systematized, cohesive operation of those peoples amongst themselves in opposition to the Normans. It was a very patchwork landscape, not a modern state with unitary, statute law and stuff like that.

Even a quick glance at Wikipedia is going to highlight how the political identity of these places was distinct for quite some time into the period, and the irregular nature of unification from Alfred onward, which is a testament to the decentralization of power structures and the retaining of distinct, regional heirarchies.

Regards Cornwall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cornwall#Relationship_with_Wessex

A struggle for dominance of warring elites more or less aligned with eastern 'Germanic' and western 'Romano-Celtic' cultures and peoples.[22] Atlantic Brythons were often recorded in alliance with Scandinavian forces such as the Danes, or Normans in Brittany, up to the period of the Norman Conquest.[23]

...

In 814 King Egbert of Wessex ravaged Cornwall "from the east to the west", and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 825 the Cornish fought the men of Devon. In 838 the Cornish in alliance with Vikings were defeated by the West Saxons at the Battle of Hingston Down.[26] This was the last recorded battle between Cornwall and Wessex, and possibly resulted in the loss of Cornish independence.[27] In 875, the Annales Cambriae record that king Dungarth of Cornwall drowned, yet Alfred the Great had been able to go hunting in Cornwall a decade earlier suggesting Dungarth was likely an under-king.

William of Malmesbury, writing around 1120, says that in about 927 King Æthelstan of England expelled the Cornish from Exeter and fixed Cornwall's eastern boundary at the River Tamar.

...

Although English kings granted land in the eastern part in the ninth century, no grants are recorded in the western half until the mid-tenth century.[27]

...

In 1013 Wessex was conquered by a Danish army under the leadership of the Viking leader and King of Denmark Sweyn Forkbeard. Sweyn annexed Wessex to his Viking empire which included Denmark and Norway. He did not, however, annex Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, allowing these "client nations" self-rule in return for an annual payment of tribute or "danegeld".

...

The chronology of English expansion into Cornwall is unclear, but it had been absorbed into England by the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066), when it apparently formed part of Godwin's and later Harold's earldom of Wessex.

Regarding Kent, : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kent

...

In the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning "undefeated" or "unconquered". This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy.

...


Kent became a semi-autonomous County Palatine under William's half-brother Odo of Bayeux, with the special powers otherwise reserved for counties bordering Wales and Scotland.[6]

County Palatine:

In England, a county palatine or palatinate[1] was an area ruled by a hereditary nobleman enjoying special authority and autonomy from the rest of a kingdom or empire. The name derives from the Latin adjective palātīnus, "relating to the palace", from the noun palātium, "palace".[2][3] It thus implies the exercise of a quasi-royal prerogative within a county, that is to say a jurisdiction ruled by an earl...The nobleman swore allegiance to the king yet had the power to rule the county largely independently of the king. It should therefore be distinguished from the feudal barony, held from the king, which possessed no such independent authority. Rulers of counties palatine did however create their own feudal baronies, to be held directly from them in capite...County palatine jurisdictions were created in England under the rule of the Norman dynasty. On continental Europe, they have an earlier date.

[Gerfreckle]

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

I don't need a long-winded history lesson on the medieval feudal structure, I'm well aware of it. But it's absurd that your vassals can take land that belonged to you only one or two turns ago that was taken by an enemy and you can do absolutely nothing about it because there's no annexation or region swapping mechanics.

Region trading is another topic though. I would like to see a return of some type of region trading, not to mention the inheritance/escheat type of stuff from Shogun 1 and MTW.

Regardless, if you lose regions to rebels or an enemy faction, and then your vassal takes them, that isn't necessarily unrealistic/unhistorical either.

This goes back to what I was writing earlier. The king did not own all the land of his realm, not even remotely...he had overlordship of lands, but only ownership of a very, very small number of lands.

In the game, your faction regions are all "yours," in the sense that you are guiding that faction; but in historical reality those faction provinces would consist of dozens, if not hundreds, of minor lords.

So if you lose a region to rebels or an enemy stack, the king isn't directly losing ownership of that region: he has lost overlordship of the region. If your vassal takes the region from the enemy, your king as now reasserted overlordship of the region. This is basically how it would've worked irl. Of course, irl there would be a lot more nuances, like an exiled lord(s) could return to his/their lands, but for gameplay, you can see where this could get way too complicated, really quick. So if the region comes back into your fold by your vassal taking it, you can look at this in terms of assuming the original lords are dead, had turned traitor to the enemy, etc., and the new lords are going to be made up of those who receive grants from the conquering host, which, in game, would be the vassal who actually took the region.

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

It's also a bit dumb that even when you complete the mission requirements and change your faction name to 'England' that there's still an ugly, ungainly patchwork of your vassals all over the place, and that their name doesn't change at all and still looks completely seperate to you. The logical solution would be to auto-annex them when you reach the final kingdom formation event. After all, England in the 10th century - when it was finally unified - did not look like England did in the 7th or 8th centuries, with a bunch of mini-kingdoms like Kent and Devon and Cornwall scattered about the place.

These were "mini-kingdoms" though, or a system of autonomous and semi-autnomous lordships, and in the case of the Cornish, yes, there actually were those who styled themselves and were recognized as kings in Cornish lands.

In the case of Kent, it was only a few years before ToB begins that it has ceased to be a seperate polity. And the nature of overlordship afterwards was irregular (which of course means it can be even more wild in-game, considering the sandbox aspect).

This comes back to what I was saying in the last post: real, historical 'England' around 930 would've been a patchwork. England wasn't a unitary, modern state: it was an Early Medieval lordship. Political unification consisted in certain perogatives of the king, and other kings submitting to him. But this was very much personally rooted and not insitutionalized into a bureacratic, state machinery, or something like that. And it was fleeting and irregular in this period.

I think the best proof of this last point is how quickly the "unified state" of Athelstan started falling apart after he was gone. This devolution indicates how the systematization that many people seem to think of simply wasn't there, and where there were systems, these were built on personal agreements amongst ruling peers, not on state insitutions as have today.

The type of unification you seem to be thinking about begins more with the Norman conquest, but even then, the facts on the ground kinda speak for themselves, that it wasn't neat, monolithic, or a unitary state.

The Norman English lords interacted with other peoples, the Cornish and Kentish in addition to Welsh and others, very much as distinct groups, as others had done before them: the fact that the English throne went to William didn't result in all regions abstractly referred to as "England" coming de facto with that throne, assenting to his overlordship; nor did it result in systematized, cohesive operation of those peoples amongst themselves in opposition to the Normans. It was a very patchwork landscape, not a modern state with unitary, statute law and stuff like that.

Even a quick glance at Wikipedia is going to highlight how the political identity of these places was distinct for quite some time into the period, and the irregular nature of unification from Alfred onward, which is a testament to the decentralization of power structures and the retaining of distinct, regional heirarchies.

Regards Cornwall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cornwall#Relationship_with_Wessex

A struggle for dominance of warring elites more or less aligned with eastern 'Germanic' and western 'Romano-Celtic' cultures and peoples.[22] Atlantic Brythons were often recorded in alliance with Scandinavian forces such as the Danes, or Normans in Brittany, up to the period of the Norman Conquest.[23]

...

In 814 King Egbert of Wessex ravaged Cornwall "from the east to the west", and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 825 the Cornish fought the men of Devon. In 838 the Cornish in alliance with Vikings were defeated by the West Saxons at the Battle of Hingston Down.[26] This was the last recorded battle between Cornwall and Wessex, and possibly resulted in the loss of Cornish independence.[27] In 875, the Annales Cambriae record that king Dungarth of Cornwall drowned, yet Alfred the Great had been able to go hunting in Cornwall a decade earlier suggesting Dungarth was likely an under-king.

William of Malmesbury, writing around 1120, says that in about 927 King Æthelstan of England expelled the Cornish from Exeter and fixed Cornwall's eastern boundary at the River Tamar.

...

Although English kings granted land in the eastern part in the ninth century, no grants are recorded in the western half until the mid-tenth century.[27]

...

In 1013 Wessex was conquered by a Danish army under the leadership of the Viking leader and King of Denmark Sweyn Forkbeard. Sweyn annexed Wessex to his Viking empire which included Denmark and Norway. He did not, however, annex Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, allowing these "client nations" self-rule in return for an annual payment of tribute or "danegeld".

...

The chronology of English expansion into Cornwall is unclear, but it had been absorbed into England by the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066), when it apparently formed part of Godwin's and later Harold's earldom of Wessex.

Regarding Kent, : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kent

...

In the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning "undefeated" or "unconquered". This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy.

...


Kent became a semi-autonomous County Palatine under William's half-brother Odo of Bayeux, with the special powers otherwise reserved for counties bordering Wales and Scotland.[6]

County Palatine:

Okay, it's obvious that you're not interested in discussing actual game mechanics and how to make it a more enjoyable and efficient gameplay experience, but rather showing off your knowledge of the historical era. I'm not interested in writing hundreds of words about the history of the era, so there's no point in me continuing this discussion.

Seriously, you need to learn how to condense your walls of text and stay on topic and not digress into long-winded historical lectures.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

The logical solution would be to auto-annex them when you reach the final kingdom formation event. After all, England in the 10th century - when it was finally unified - did not look like England did in the 7th or 8th centuries, with a bunch of mini-kingdoms like Kent and Devon and Cornwall scattered about the place.

[Mile pro Libertate]

As far as coming at it purely from a gameplay perspective, I talked about that back in the first post:

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

It wasn't common for a distinct people who had a king already to just disestablish that kingship, peacefully, and to take another kingship, from another distinct people.

Because this was rare and took peculiar circumstances, I think the way it is handled, with events and dilemmas, makes sense: being able to just routinely incorporate distinct peoples and kingdoms, disestablishing their ruling houses and such, into a larger kingdom would be silly.

...

On the other hand, if the "annex vassals" option was there, then William and Harold would have got to the table, made England a vassal, and then at some point deposed Harold or his successor...peacefully? As a routine diplomatic option?

...

To have Harold assent to a vassalage, and then later have the option to just disestablish him or his successor, wouldn't be the kind of thing that was a typical, normal operation of politics, for obvious reasons. You would need a peculiar arrangement to have that happen, like an agreement that on Harold's death the realm went to William.

This type of arrangement was definitely done in the Medieval age; but because it happened in such a particular set of circumatances and always in context, it is handled better by events and dilemmas.

It shouldn't be something you can just always, rotely do, like, "ok, I vassal this faction, then ten turns later incorporate them and disestablish them by asking them when they are at 'Very Friendly' relationship level," rinse-repeat.

And the second post:

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Region trading is another topic though. I would like to see a return of some type of region trading, not to mention the inheritance/escheat type of stuff from Shogun 1 and MTW.

...

If your vassal takes the region from the enemy, your king as now reasserted overlordship of the region. This is basically how it would've worked irl. Of course, irl there would be a lot more nuances, like an exiled lord(s) could return to his/their lands, but for gameplay, you can see where this could get way too complicated, really quick.

PS: And these are games that take place in a historical context, afterall.

It's unavoidable that if there is a question as to how they are going to do certain things, like define what factions exist, their relationships with each other at campaign start, treaties at game start, faction leaders, etc, that history is going to come into the discussion, because these are historical questions.

[The Old Saxon]

Originally posted by Gerfreckle:

Originally posted by Mile pro Libertate:

Region trading is another topic though. I would like to see a return of some type of region trading, not to mention the inheritance/escheat type of stuff from Shogun 1 and MTW.

Regardless, if you lose regions to rebels or an enemy faction, and then your vassal takes them, that isn't necessarily unrealistic/unhistorical either.

This goes back to what I was writing earlier. The king did not own all the land of his realm, not even remotely...he had overlordship of lands, but only ownership of a very, very small number of lands.

In the game, your faction regions are all "yours," in the sense that you are guiding that faction; but in historical reality those faction provinces would consist of dozens, if not hundreds, of minor lords.

So if you lose a region to rebels or an enemy stack, the king isn't directly losing ownership of that region: he has lost overlordship of the region. If your vassal takes the region from the enemy, your king as now reasserted overlordship of the region. This is basically how it would've worked irl. Of course, irl there would be a lot more nuances, like an exiled lord(s) could return to his/their lands, but for gameplay, you can see where this could get way too complicated, really quick. So if the region comes back into your fold by your vassal taking it, you can look at this in terms of assuming the original lords are dead, had turned traitor to the enemy, etc., and the new lords are going to be made up of those who receive grants from the conquering host, which, in game, would be the vassal who actually took the region.




These were "mini-kingdoms" though, or a system of autonomous and semi-autnomous lordships, and in the case of the Cornish, yes, there actually were those who styled themselves and were recognized as kings in Cornish lands.

In the case of Kent, it was only a few years before ToB begins that it has ceased to be a seperate polity. And the nature of overlordship afterwards was irregular (which of course means it can be even more wild in-game, considering the sandbox aspect).

This comes back to what I was saying in the last post: real, historical 'England' around 930 would've been a patchwork. England wasn't a unitary, modern state: it was an Early Medieval lordship. Political unification consisted in certain perogatives of the king, and other kings submitting to him. But this was very much personally rooted and not insitutionalized into a bureacratic, state machinery, or something like that. And it was fleeting and irregular in this period.

I think the best proof of this last point is how quickly the "unified state" of Athelstan started falling apart after he was gone. This devolution indicates how the systematization that many people seem to think of simply wasn't there, and where there were systems, these were built on personal agreements amongst ruling peers, not on state insitutions as have today.

The type of unification you seem to be thinking about begins more with the Norman conquest, but even then, the facts on the ground kinda speak for themselves, that it wasn't neat, monolithic, or a unitary state.

The Norman English lords interacted with other peoples, the Cornish and Kentish in addition to Welsh and others, very much as distinct groups, as others had done before them: the fact that the English throne went to William didn't result in all regions abstractly referred to as "England" coming de facto with that throne, assenting to his overlordship; nor did it result in systematized, cohesive operation of those peoples amongst themselves in opposition to the Normans. It was a very patchwork landscape, not a modern state with unitary, statute law and stuff like that.

Even a quick glance at Wikipedia is going to highlight how the political identity of these places was distinct for quite some time into the period, and the irregular nature of unification from Alfred onward, which is a testament to the decentralization of power structures and the retaining of distinct, regional heirarchies.

Regards Cornwall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cornwall#Relationship_with_Wessex



Regarding Kent, : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kent



Okay, it's obvious that you're not interested in discussing actual game mechanics and how to make it a more enjoyable and efficient gameplay experience, but rather showing off your knowledge of the historical era. I'm not interested in writing hundreds of words about the history of the era, so there's no point in me continuing this discussion.

Seriously, you need to learn how to condense your walls of text and stay on topic and not digress into long-winded historical lectures.

Personally, I have found this 'long-winded historical lecture' by our friend very informative- though I do agree that being able to annex Mercia would make sense historically, as its existence as a seperate state from Wessex was effectively ended in 918, when it was annexed by Alfred's son Edward the Elder.

[thabovii]

Thanks for the replies and the history lesson. That's a lot of stuff that i didn't know

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Wolf Surge:

Personally, I have found this 'long-winded historical lecture' by our friend very informative- though I do agree that being able to annex Mercia would make sense historically, as its existence as a seperate state from Wessex was effectively ended in 918, when it was annexed by Alfred's son Edward the Elder.

Thanks Wolf Surge. I don't want to be long winded, but these are tough topics, for me anyway, to just communicate in a couple of sentences.

I'll try to be as brief as possible regards 918:

Context is very important. You have the Lady of the Mercians preceding this, and then her daughter becomes heir around 918. Having two, successive female rulers of Mercia was not as legally or culturally viable at the time as simply having the realm escheat to the King of England was.

TW is strongly about sandbox play. If one or several things had been different in history, disestablishing the Mercian house would not have necessarily happened as it did. It comes down to context and very particular circumstances, and for the game starting in 878, being able to annex and disestablish around 890 or so, based on a very particular train of events and people that leads to something historically 40 years after game's start, still doesn't seem necessary imo.

[Tom]

Originally posted by blackie:

Originally posted by st.aloysius:

when you claim their throne... On legendary, , you will be at war with them. If ever they are losing settlements from their enemies, they will become your vasal. As much possible don't make war with mierce

mierce is already my vassal. so the only way to gain their territories is to attack them?

they need to re add gift cities into the game like they did in rome 1 and napoleon tw