Federations, or Economic Empires

[Talez]

This was born out of a Reddit comment suggesting that having a load of tributaries should allow a character to ascend to emperor status.

This would take the form of a new decision, available only to ambitious tribal or republic dukes and kings, with the following requirements:

• Have at least 5 tributaries
• Have a minimum number of holdings across all tributaries (50? 100?)
• Have a boatload of money (5 - 10 years' income, capped at 2000)
• Have 1k prestige
• Be at peace

Flavor text: "The [primary_title_level] of [title] has asserted itself as the dominant economic power of its region, it's time to formalize this and bring all my tributaries together under a formal union"

The decision creates a Custom Empire, called Federation of [primary_title], with no De Jure vassals.

• Succession is changed to elective,
• All tributaries are annexed. If any of them has an Empire title, it is destroyed,
• Council authority is changed to full,
• Centralization (& crown authority if Conclave is disabled) is changed to minimum,
• Obligations are tax-focused,
• Vassals have to be called to arms. (don't know how you would tie this to a title rather than a form of government, might require a specific "Federation" government form for this decision)

This would encourage players to engage with the tributary mechanic more and provide a new RP opportunity. The "no de jure vassals" part should allow all vassals to form and join "independence" factions, making the early history of any federation unstable, but allowing ambitious players to centralize power over time and maybe create a proper Empire.

If a custom government form were made for federations, there could be special requirements to allow players to adopt feudalism, such as reduced council power, increased centralization and having maintained the federation for a long time.

 

[Tryvenyal]

3 more requirements:
- Current top-tier title is Kingdom(we don't want to go DUKE-> EMPIRE in one go and we don't want empires to fire it)
- Current gov - form is Feudal/IQTA.(Maybe it´s not an issue but isn't this an quite easy expansion path if this is allowed for MR´s? Tribal's are to low in income to qualify)
- Tributaries are Tribal/Feudal/IQTA.(Mainly to disallow you to dismantle Special Govform BYZ and/or Western Protectorate or a Nomad empire with one click)

 

[Talez]

Singling out the greeks or the nomads feels wrong, at that point i'd see it making more sense if characters can only make federations if no tributary has a rank higher than theirs (kings can only make federations out of counts, dukes and kings, while dukes only get dukes and counts), or just no tributary has the empire rank.

I have no idea how MR's play so I have no idea if giving them this tool would be game-breaking for them.

It could be made to work like the "create custom X" decisions, where dukes make kingdom-tier federations and kings make emperor-tier federations.

 

[Almaron]

Maybe something like this could be used to represent 'High Kings' and the like? There was another thread talking about that a while back...

 

[Tryvenyal]

Singling out the greeks or the nomads feels wrong, at that point i'd see it making more sense if characters can only make federations if no tributary has a rank higher than theirs (kings can only make federations out of counts, dukes and kings, while dukes only get dukes and counts), or just no tributary has the empire rank.

It could be made to work like the "create custom X" decisions, where dukes make kingdom-tier federations and kings make emperor-tier federations

Well, you are singling them out here anyway.. by disallowing it when having empire tributaries. I just see no point to shatter unique empires - with so much features built in to them - with a single decision just for being a tributary..
For Nomads, it would likely dissolve them, giving you their lands empty lands. They can't be vassals of anything other than a Nomad Khagan as king- tier. So crewting a king- tier federation with nomads would definitely dissolve them.