Idea for playable "Oligarchic Republics"

[Eltener]

Was thinking about how inland republics like Florence, Switzerland and Cordoba could work dynastically in-game and had some ideas that I thought could be interesting.

Succession:
Succession would essentially work the same way as merchant republics, with a ruler elected from among several noble families and each family choosing a preferred head of the family.

Holdings:
Oligarchic Republic characters would be able to hold both city and barony holdings, reflecting the strong presence and influence of the feudal nobility even in the governing councils of republics like that of Florence.

Trade:
This is where things start to differ. Instead of trade posts, Oligarchic Republics would have "branch offices" that can be built in any county in diplomatic range. Branch offices wouldn't be as strong as trade posts in terms of raw tax and trade income, but would open up opportunities for a new mechanic: banking.

Banking:
Building a branch office in a county allows the holder of the county and their liege(s) to take loans of varying amounts from the branch office holder at at a fixed interest rate for a fixed duration of time. Branch office owners will also be able to offer loans. The city of Florence in particular made its fortune off of banking, with the Medici family becoming one of the most powerful in Europe through their time in the position of the Papal Bankers. When time comes for the loan to be repaid, the ruler will either pay back with interest, refuse to pay or offer alternate compensation.

If they renge on a loan:
The offending ruler is given a malus to general opinion, and a negative modifier to their income reflecting other merchants, traders and bankers' lack of trust in them. The loan provider also gains a casus belli. Should they declare war and win, they'll take significantly more gold than was originally owed. This casus belli will also apply to the heir of the renger after succession along with lesser versions of the opinion malus and income modifier.

If they offer alternate compensation:
Depending on the size of the loan, the loan provider will be able to demand an appropriate amount of land personally held by the ruler while also enforcing a truce or artifacts of value relating to the size of the loan. An option to sell useless artifacts would make this even better.

Bankruptcy
Rather than the current system where going into the negative starts giving you negative province modifiers, rulers in Oligarchic Republics would be spared of these in exchange for a bankruptcy timer of a couple years. Should they be unable to return to a positive treasury the game will end for a player and the family will be replaced with a new noble house.

Overall playstyle:
Oligarchic Republics would be high risk, high reward. Smaller, safer loans to counts in the HRE might give a steady source of income but offer England a large loan in a war with France and you could make a pretty penny or a surprise outbreak of smallpox might wreck their economy and leave you on the verge of bankruptcy. It would probabaly end up a more passive form of play but I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd enjoy it.


Would be glad to hear opinions and suggestions!!

 

[Will Steel]

Wonderful thing. Playable inland republics and playable baronies are technically the last few features that have not been implemented in CK2. Especially with Novgorod and Florence around.

I have six things to add to this, from my old inland-republic suggestion -

--------------------------------------------------

A) I think the number of families should be increased from 5 to 7-8.

This way, the republics will actually feel more alive, and actually have the problem of having to balance interests of various families and power shifts. Currently having only 5 families feel like elective monarchies with so few families.

Also, land republics are far larger than merchant republics. Novgorod was the size of a major kingdom, Florence and Milan were also very powerful later on. It doesn't make sense to scale them according to the size of some tiny Mediterranean mercantile city state.

I would've said 10 families, but I think that might be too much.

I also think members of these prominent families should be the only one able to be given vassal counties and duchies and kingdoms such. And only in the viceroyalty form, so their control reverts to the ruler of the republic every once in a while. It is too easy to keep randomly generate count-mayors as vassals like current MRs in my opinion. But it is all up to the suggestions of other players.

--------------------------------------------------

B) There should be a term timer, so that rulers serve for a limited time before an election is held again.

Republics don't mean anything if the ruler is going to rule for life. There were only a few republics (like Venice and Genoa) that elected people for life, and most others had the concept of terms and regular elections (even a lot of communes of Italy). Every few years, there should be an election held.

I think this can be made into a law that can be voted upon like all other laws. A good balance would be 5 year terms, 10 year terms, or life terms (which should require a lot of effort to get, essentially being lifelong dictatorships).

And this should be made moddable as well, so if a fantasy mod wants 1-year terms or 4-year terms or anything like that, they can implement them safely. Especially wanted this for restored United States in After the End mod and such.

There is no need for term limits, so anyone can keep getting elected as many times as they want.

Indian religion/culture oligarchic republics (the last of which actually died merely 15 years before the game's start) should always have rulers serve for life. I don't recall reading about Vedic and post-Vedic republics holding any regular elections, only that they were aristocratic in nature and most of them were becoming closer to elective monarchies over time.

Mods seriously need a term timer feature. So far only Game of Thrones mod has successfully implemented this, with events that unseat and regularly elect rulers for Triarchy of Volantis.

--------------------------------------------------

C) Make it so that council votes are actually powerful, because republics should work like republics.

While feudal rulers in the game can ignore their council's vote most of the time at the cost of tyranny, in republics the ruler shouldn't be able to do that at all. For example - you want to declare war but 3 out of 5 people on your council reject it -

> As a feudal lord or with current MR mechanisms - you simply get -10 tyranny hit and can still declare it nonetheless. You are the lord after all.
> As a Consul of oligarchic republic - the declare war button is disabled until majority of the council agrees. This is a republic and there are consequences.

Secondly, family heads and council members should be able to propose laws on their own, without requiring any favour from the current ruler. Remember, this is a republic and you are just one of the many families. They don't need your permission to participate in the government.

The rest of this feature has already existed for 3 years in the game now: someone proposes to change something --> it proceeds to council votes --> council can vote to accept or reject the change. And you can add a simple veto feature at the end of the process that counts as 2 votes, to reject a change in the law.

Also, council votes should be mandatory, and absolute rule law (which disables the council votes) should be greyed-out unless you take over and rule for life and have a chosen heir, essentially making you a dictator. So if you are a regular Consul trying to imprison someone, the council's vote strictly applies, but once you are a ruler for life, you can roll back laws like you already can and get the ability to imprison anybody freely without council meddling just like a monarchy.

And finally, every oligarchic republic should get a "advisor"-like empty council title for free with only family heads eligible for appointment, so that there is are more voters in the council. 1 for count rank, 2 for dukes, 3 for king, 4 for empire rank and such. Even better if it is automated and mot prominent family heads automatically take that position.

--------------------------------------------------

D) Republics should produce more adventurers, and I think families should also have special CBs to take power like feudal lords do in elective monarchies.

That way, republics would be more stable under good rulers, but have troubles under bad rulers.

Also, enacting "elected for life" law should destabilize the realm, give some relations penalties and possibly cause civil wars with other families for a while. They should try to preserve their rights by protecting the republic. If you manage to defeat them...well, the republic is yours.

--------------------------------------------------

E) Elections need a systematic rework -

Age shouldn't be taken into account that much in oligarchic republics (it makes republics run like seniority succession in MRs). Sure, advanced age should have a small boost but it should just be a small thing and shouldn't be the defining factor of who gets elected.

There should be a better way to elect people than "campaign funds", as honestly that feature made MRs too easy to cheese. It should be avoided here.

Instead, traits, prestige, piety, reputation etc. should be taken into account. Power of the families (their lands, troops, total income etc.) should be taken into account.

Now for optional stuff:

- Candidates for rulership must not always be family heads I think (there should be a candidate nomination button like elective monarchies and tribes), but that is up to the devs. I'd personally prefer that over the old MR system where the next guy predicted to become Doge is always a family head or current Doge's son. But as I said, it's up to the devs.

- I don't know about a minimum age requirement feature (most republics elected only people above 30, but not always), so that is up to further suggestions and dev ideas.

--------------------------------------------------

F) Finally, make converting governments to and from republics possible. And smooth.

If you successfully become the ruler for life, and manage to make your family's chosen heir the next potential candidate by a big margin, and have unanimous council support, and have certain amount of prestige etc...you should be allowed to take over the republic by turning it into a regular feudal realm. A lot of republics collapsed because their rulers simply became hereditary dukes and kings, Florence is famous for it.

In the opposite direction, if your capital holding is a city and you are a count or duke (and no more), you should be allowed to convert your feudal realm into a small oligarchic republic via decision (with loads of requirements and some penalties). Current noble courtiers and a few vassal dynasties should become families, and new ones should be generated for more like usual. This is what Italians did with historical republican communes anyway.

Anything larger than a duke, or a duke with more than one duchy, should be unable to even see that decision in the list. If you want a king-tier republic, you should start as a duke-level republic and then conquer lands and stuff to form kingdoms and empires.

If your republic is on a coast, you should be able to convert between merchant republic and oligarchic republic via decision (only once every century or 50 years at least). There is great benefits to both, so it is automatically balanced out well (merchant republics are wealthy as shit, while oligarchic ones are focused on nobility and are more powerful militarily). You give up one thing to gain the other.

Tribes should be able to convert into oligarchic republics as well when they reform and civilize. Feature is already fully in the game with MRs.

--------------------------------------------------

Republics were rare but very interesting things in the medieval age. They never got the true dynamics, features and representation they deserved in CK2 because their DLC was one of the very early ones.

Now is a good time to revisit them and add the final few features remaining from this game.