Sacral Kingship = Tribal Kingship?

[riadach]

I wonder could we introduce something like this to give tribals more flavour?

Sacral kingship is the idea that kingship itself, through a divine connection to the land, improved prosperity security and fertility of a kingdom. Where a king failed to achieve such, i.e. should his kingdom suffer famine, pestilence or invasion, he would be deposed or challenged, and in some societies, sacrificed to atone for his poor performance.

Such a king had to be divinely favoured and thus possess "truth". A king's truth could be determined by his physical appearance. In Ireland, a mutilated person could not be king. Blind, maimed or blemished individuals were automatically disqualified from kingship. If a king acquired such a blemish while in office, he could be challenged and deposed by a more fitting candidate. Such a challenge could be made at a tribal assembly where laws were promulgated, a fair was held, games were played and a truce was made between all the participants on pain of death.

So how could you implement this in game?

1. A Tribal assembly for counts and upwards. We have this already to an extent, but only for pagans. It should be open to all tribals, with different religions having their peculiar flavour. Tribal assemblies boost relations with vassals. Failure to hold tribal assemblies regularly (every three years?) increase unrest in provinces and prevents you from raising the tribal levy.
2. Laws passed since the previous tribal assembly are only implemented on holding the next one.
3. Candidates who are maimed or disfigured cannot become kings in such governments.
4. Kings who have become maimed or disfigured, or who lack prestige, engage in tyranny, suffer famine or plague or loss in prosperity, make arbitrary vs just judgements gain opinion maluses and an increased likelihood of overthrow factions. They may be challenged to a duel at the tribal assembly by a suitable pretender. Winning the duel, however, re-establishes divine favour.
5. Should a king be deposed, in certain realms, he can be sacrificed.

This may seem a bit cumbersome, but I think it could genuinely give Tribal kingdoms much-desired flavour.

 

[Rags17]

Last year I messed around with new government types and finalised two - Hunter-Gatherer and Imperial. To get them started in the game I made a simple "on_start" event that made all west_african_pagan and finnish_pagan areas start as Hunter-Gatherer while all Greek areas started as Imperial.

HG is basically a variation of Tribal that has near 100% gender equality, from what I've read of HG societies women even help out in the hunt in some societies. I also gave HG's the ability to move their capital every 6 months (being effectively foot nomadic) and to raise a 300 man HG army using prestige, similar to the much larger man Tribal army but made up almost exclusively of light infantry and archers.

Finally, I gave HG's the ability to raze any Tribal village that they control to the ground in return for prestige, combined with making cheap armies for prestige it gives them the ability to burn their own villages to create a small quick raiding force, they then rebuild those villages after the war is over with the prestige they gained from the war. And if they lose the war then you end up with lots of empty provinces, which is kind of neat.

Imperial governments are variations of Feudal, but with the ability for barons to hold cities as well as a baronies. There are in fact a few Imperial government mods out there none of which use this mechanic, I decided to go this route because a) it seems to line up with what i have read about Imperial (ie Byzantine) interference in domestic economics, and b) it creates a unique government mechanic that is actually kind of fun to play. Combined with a massive vassal malus you get a society that has great power (ie control of both high levy and high tax holdings) and yet highly unstable (high vassal malus and high income / high levy vassals makes for a bad combination !).

I was working on two other government types called Germanic Kingship (ie pre-feudal European) and Samanta (pre-feudal Indian) which were going to be the pre-feudal variations of Feudal that I was going to place on the map for the 769 and 867 starts. I never finished working them out though and still have to finish them off. Calling Germanic Kingship Sacral Tribal instead sounds like a nice option !

If you want to work on this together then PM me and I'll drag out my old files.

 

[riadach]

Sounds like an idea. But wouldn't be at all good at coding.