The current holding system: that each barony be either a castle, city, temple, or tribe, controlled by, respectively, a feudal lord, a priest, a mayor, or a chieftan, has been ported over from CK2 to CK3 unchanged. It didn't work too well in CK2, and it works even less-well in CK3 with its physical baronies that occupy actual map space. In brief, the current holding system conflates the contents of a holding with its ownership. In consequence, holding ownership is grossly inflexible - once someone decides a holding ought to be owned by a clergyman, it will be owned by a clergyman until it is burned to the ground. It also is ahistoric -- historically clergy ran all sorts of land, from isolated monasteries and manors to entire cities. Noble ownership of towns, and the relationship between burghers and the nobility was also a contentious issue that the current holding system in no way adequately represents. It also locks the rest of the world into a basically European pattern of estate relations, even when that pattern doesn't make sense, such as much of the Muslim world during this time period, where the distinction between ecclesiastical and temporal was not necessarily as rigid as we imagine it was for the high medieval European society on which the current CK3 holding system is based. To speak nothing of estate relations for a hypothetical society with no organized religious hierarchy whatsoever.
A better system could be as follows:
Item 1: There is no longer a distinction between holding types when a new holding is organized. All holdings are holdings, much as all EU4 provinces are provinces, and all Stellaris planets are planets. The holdings are differentiated based on geography, development, and buildings, but not based on who owns them. Thus a holding's owner can encourage a holding to develop into a town, or discourage such development, or otherwise customize the holding, which can also develop on its own over time. The point however is that the holding's contents don't depend or change based on whether it's owned by a Catholic priest or is a charter town, or part of some feudal lord's personal domain. Ideally, CK3 should also add population and administrative efficiency variables for each province, because the current development variable is doing too much work -- there's a big difference between a populous and wealthy province ruled by a low-capacity liege, and a populous but poor one whose liege has the state capacity to extract the maximum possible resources from it, for example; state capacity during the CK3 time period allowed the Eastern Roman Empire to punch well above its weight, for example. It would also get rid of weirdness like Orkney being more-"developed" than Constantinople, while allowing a lord of Orkney to punch above their weight through improved administration and such. Also would make continued investment in good administration valuable. But that's a separate suggestion.
Item 2: Each character belongs to an estate; I haven't found a better term for the concept. In Northern Europe, we can go with four estates we've become used to: feudal, clergy, burgher, and tribe. But, as in history, priests can own towns, and feudal lords can be assigned undeveloped "tribal" land to settle, and so forth. A province becomes part of an estate after sixty years -- three generations. The estate then considers the province rightfully "theirs", and will get miffed if it is assigned to a member of another estate. To easily distinguish which estate owns which holding, can put a banner on top of the holding window, like the banner on top of Imperator provinces telling the player whether the province is a town, a city, or a metropolis. The province-holder's liege can change estate owners, unless the estate has been granted rights saying otherwise, such as a town holding a royal charter that it can pick its mayors or the Pope being allowed to pick ecclesiastical successors, but changing estates even when the liege has the right to do si will incur a penalty from all members of the state for giving away their estate to someone else. Of course, a well-developed and populous town might get rather miffed at having its charter rights taken away, and that should incur additional penalties to the provinces productivity, for example.
We are not limited to just four estates, and can be much more flexible with succession laws and assignments. We can have a cossack estate, or split out tribes as a distinct estate, and so forth. We can even eliminate the clergy as a land-owning estate for societies where this was not a thing, and ditch the CK2 band-aid of allowing temporal rulers to hold temples for certain religions. We can have a "royal" estate for lands the owner wants to give out for a character's lifetime, but have revert back to the crown on the holder's death, sort of like the various duchies and such assigned to various heirs and such in England. We can also have estate members band together against a liege who steals "their" land. And of course estates should want to maximize their rights, such as the Catholic clergy's right to pick successors, and this can drive a lot of interesting conflict. A ruler might well assign lots of land to priests, knowing that he can pick their successors, and this might seem like a good idea until the clergy decides it (or the Pope) should pick successors, or gets habituated to the idea that a particular province is always ruled by a priest and gets upset that it is handed out to some secular lord. Either way, this system should be a lot more dynamic and drive a lot more conflict than our current system of assigning ownership when a province is organized for the remainder of the game.
What constitutes an estate is, of course a thorny issue -- are two different heretic nobles members of the"nobility", or do they form separate estates? But I am sure Paradox can figure it out.
A better system could be as follows:
Item 1: There is no longer a distinction between holding types when a new holding is organized. All holdings are holdings, much as all EU4 provinces are provinces, and all Stellaris planets are planets. The holdings are differentiated based on geography, development, and buildings, but not based on who owns them. Thus a holding's owner can encourage a holding to develop into a town, or discourage such development, or otherwise customize the holding, which can also develop on its own over time. The point however is that the holding's contents don't depend or change based on whether it's owned by a Catholic priest or is a charter town, or part of some feudal lord's personal domain. Ideally, CK3 should also add population and administrative efficiency variables for each province, because the current development variable is doing too much work -- there's a big difference between a populous and wealthy province ruled by a low-capacity liege, and a populous but poor one whose liege has the state capacity to extract the maximum possible resources from it, for example; state capacity during the CK3 time period allowed the Eastern Roman Empire to punch well above its weight, for example. It would also get rid of weirdness like Orkney being more-"developed" than Constantinople, while allowing a lord of Orkney to punch above their weight through improved administration and such. Also would make continued investment in good administration valuable. But that's a separate suggestion.
Item 2: Each character belongs to an estate; I haven't found a better term for the concept. In Northern Europe, we can go with four estates we've become used to: feudal, clergy, burgher, and tribe. But, as in history, priests can own towns, and feudal lords can be assigned undeveloped "tribal" land to settle, and so forth. A province becomes part of an estate after sixty years -- three generations. The estate then considers the province rightfully "theirs", and will get miffed if it is assigned to a member of another estate. To easily distinguish which estate owns which holding, can put a banner on top of the holding window, like the banner on top of Imperator provinces telling the player whether the province is a town, a city, or a metropolis. The province-holder's liege can change estate owners, unless the estate has been granted rights saying otherwise, such as a town holding a royal charter that it can pick its mayors or the Pope being allowed to pick ecclesiastical successors, but changing estates even when the liege has the right to do si will incur a penalty from all members of the state for giving away their estate to someone else. Of course, a well-developed and populous town might get rather miffed at having its charter rights taken away, and that should incur additional penalties to the provinces productivity, for example.
We are not limited to just four estates, and can be much more flexible with succession laws and assignments. We can have a cossack estate, or split out tribes as a distinct estate, and so forth. We can even eliminate the clergy as a land-owning estate for societies where this was not a thing, and ditch the CK2 band-aid of allowing temporal rulers to hold temples for certain religions. We can have a "royal" estate for lands the owner wants to give out for a character's lifetime, but have revert back to the crown on the holder's death, sort of like the various duchies and such assigned to various heirs and such in England. We can also have estate members band together against a liege who steals "their" land. And of course estates should want to maximize their rights, such as the Catholic clergy's right to pick successors, and this can drive a lot of interesting conflict. A ruler might well assign lots of land to priests, knowing that he can pick their successors, and this might seem like a good idea until the clergy decides it (or the Pope) should pick successors, or gets habituated to the idea that a particular province is always ruled by a priest and gets upset that it is handed out to some secular lord. Either way, this system should be a lot more dynamic and drive a lot more conflict than our current system of assigning ownership when a province is organized for the remainder of the game.
What constitutes an estate is, of course a thorny issue -- are two different heretic nobles members of the"nobility", or do they form separate estates? But I am sure Paradox can figure it out.
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