The central matter of economics at this time was essentially "who owns a certain piece of land". During this era boundaries were a complex mess of overlapping claims, causing a lot of confusion, and I wouldn't really want to model that whole system in the game. But I would argue that the EU4 system of crown and estate owned land worked rather well at representing some of this dynamic. Land meant wealth, rental income, control of production. But one matter that is not at all represented in EU4's system is the matter of the commons.
Land in this time was generally divided up into estates or manors, some part of which was sectioned off as "commons" to support the lives of the peasants of the manor who were obliged to labor on the lord's land in order to support a warrior. The control of lands was massive political issue, monastic orders, for instance, owned a good section of land, but didn't provide warriors to the defense of the realm. So I'm a little split on this in my mind, the peasants/commoners did have rights associated with the commons that were a kind of "property" even though it was all a part of a noble's or clergyman's manor/parish. On the subject of land ownership, the yeoman and landed gentry were important categories at the time, I wonder how they might be distinguished from tenant farmer/peasant.
I didn't see mention of estate landholding in the dev diary, and while the design may not be finished, I'm worried that such a mechanic isn't in the game at all. It absolutely mattered what the distribution of landholding was. I did see that there was a "wealth level" for each estate, but I've taken that to mean taxable wealth, something that you, as king can have them give you.
And of course different styles of land ownership varried from country to country. Spain had it's encomienda system, China, I'm sure, arranged things differently.
Land in this time was generally divided up into estates or manors, some part of which was sectioned off as "commons" to support the lives of the peasants of the manor who were obliged to labor on the lord's land in order to support a warrior. The control of lands was massive political issue, monastic orders, for instance, owned a good section of land, but didn't provide warriors to the defense of the realm. So I'm a little split on this in my mind, the peasants/commoners did have rights associated with the commons that were a kind of "property" even though it was all a part of a noble's or clergyman's manor/parish. On the subject of land ownership, the yeoman and landed gentry were important categories at the time, I wonder how they might be distinguished from tenant farmer/peasant.
I didn't see mention of estate landholding in the dev diary, and while the design may not be finished, I'm worried that such a mechanic isn't in the game at all. It absolutely mattered what the distribution of landholding was. I did see that there was a "wealth level" for each estate, but I've taken that to mean taxable wealth, something that you, as king can have them give you.
And of course different styles of land ownership varried from country to country. Spain had it's encomienda system, China, I'm sure, arranged things differently.
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