Post by Admin on May 9, 2016 17:17:50 GMT
State building is the process by which you may choose to develop a more sophisticated bureaucracy, in order to control more territory, tax your subjects, and maintain a professional army. This can be done through contact with Rome (secondary state building) or through the more difficult home-grown model (primary state building), and will usually require that you either pacify your nobles by undercutting their role in society and quashing their armed revolts, or appeasing your nobles by offering them a role in the new system which is to their advantage.
State Building Within Roman Territory
Having conquered Roman territory, it will be much easier for you to establish a tax-and-spend state with a functioning bureaucracy.
Numerius: The first step towards maintaining the Roman state you have seized is to hire a talented Numerius, a Roman accountant, as a councillor. This obviously requires the maintenance of some form of Roman aristocracy in your kingdom during settlement. A numerius allows a barbarian king to continue taxing his Roman subjects, as if nothing has changed. This does not allow tax increases, and changes in demographics can disrupt this. The income from the numerius can slowly decay over decades, as currency goes out of fashion in favour for payments in kind.
Your retinues can now include Roman-inspired legionaries and take on a more professional nature. If you need to increase your taxes to support this you must introduce Tax Farming. By granting licences to certain officials to raise taxes on your behalf, you can declare a total sum you wish to be collected, and they will raise it on your behalf. They will attempt to raise slightly more than requested in order to make their profit, and so the income cannot be quite as high as you'd expect from a fully functioning bureaucracy.
You may also become a Noble Kingdom by accommodating your nobles by granting them more say in government. They will be less resentful of state power if they share in it, and if they approve of a war can vote to provide a one-off large donation of funds to a well-liked king. A noble kingdom also provides more noble units as levies.
Royal Bureaucracy: A kingdom that relies on a large professional army, fuelled by high taxation, will by necessity change its ways. Either having to scale back its military, or to expand its very state apparatus to accommodate it. A Royal Bureaucracy allows for the recruitment of a full range of professional units as an army, but military service will no longer be considered a duty by your nobles and subjects. In order to establish a Royal Bureaucracy you must either appease or pacify your nobles. The increase in state power will likely be seen as tyranny and cause much rebellion and possibly civil war. A Royal Bureaucracy will be staffed largely by those of moderately high position, akin to knights or the educated middle classes, lawyers and petty landholders. You may choose to form a Noble Bureaucracy, where the bureaucracy is staffed not by the middling sort, but instead is used as a form of patronage for your greatest nobles - who expect their sons to be granted incomes and influential postings in the bureaucracy. The nobles will put up less resistance to the introduction of a centralised state if it is dominated by their own ranks.
Once you have a Royal Bureucracy you are open to establishing an Imperial Administration (described later).
State Building Outside of Empire:
The process of state building can be made easier through contact with the Roman world. Being a Roman client kingdom or providing foederati troops can increase the professionalism of your nobles and retinues alike. Likewise, sending your heir as a hostage to Rome will have him return with Roman education and a head start in state building.
1. Consolidation and Settlement
The first step towards a centralised imperial state is to settle in one place. Your tribal confederacy must be settled in its entirety. Any tribe owing allegiance to you must be settled in your kingdom or left to seek its own destiny. Once sedentary you will rely on levies in place of tribal warriors.
2. Introduce Taxes
In order to introduce taxes you must either appease or pacify your nobles. Becoming a Noble Kingdom will grant them control over levels of taxation, though grant you the opportunity to request large sums for wars, and to receive more noble cavalry in your levies. The new system will be done through tax farming, with the king specifying the amount to be raised and licensed officials attempting to raise enough to pay this while making some profit.
3. Establish Royal Bureaucracy
In order to establish a Bureaucracy, you must have the sophisticated society required to provide the literate men to run it. One option is to be a client or federate state of Rome, with a long-running history of providing foederati, and an heir educated in the Roman manner. Another option is to have an empowered church (pagan, Christian, Manichaean, etc. doesn't matter, although some churches already have a tradition of literacy and learning) with an organised hierarchy, literate clergy and good standard of learning; this can be through conversion to an imperial faith directly, the fostering of an independent Christian tradition in your state, or through painstaking reform. The church-unlocked bureaucracy is largely unavailable to polytheistic faiths which, outside of Rome and India, are largely illiterate and pluralistic, lacking the unity required to help centralise a state. For example, you can upgrade to Royal Bureaucracy if you are Orthodox Christian with an established clergy writing in Old Church Slavonic, or if you have allowed Latin clergy to make your kingdom their home until they become the dominant faith, but you cannot have a shaman that uses music and hallucinogens to communicate with Tengri the Thunderer establish a sophisticated governing machine for you.
Running a Royal Bureaucracy will be seen as tyrannical by proud nobles, and lead to rebellions by a class seeing their place in society eroded. Establishing a Noble Bureaucracy will make the new state apparatus the exclusive domain of the well-born, pacifying your nobles while maintaining their power.
4. Establish Imperial Administration
See below.
Imperial Administration:
Once you have a professional army and taxing state, you may think you have it all. However, a centralised state is limited in its size and unlike a Feudal power, cannot stretch much beyond one province (i.e. Gallia would be the limit of a centralised bureaucracy). The most advanced form of government is an Imperial Administration along the lines of the Roman emperors. This unlocks various offices to allow the proper administration of far wider areas, such as Satraps and Praetorian Prefects, as well as allowing for more field armies and unlocking court factions. An Imperial Administration concentrates power in a single man, worthy of the rank of emperor, around whom swirls a maelstrom of talent and ambition. With the aristocracy's wings clipped the entire state serves one man, and all wish to be that man. This form of government is powerful but hotly contested, as the stakes are so high for those who wish to be emperor.
In order to adequately increase the power of the emperor to the point where he may be truly paramount in the state, you must operate a bureaucracy that can exclude all noble contenders and be loyal only to the emperor. Options are:
Adopt Eunuch administration: A barbaric practice outlawed in civilised society, castration can create a class of kin-less and skilled administrators who could never form a dynasty and never hope to be crowned. A eunuch belongs to the family of his master, and by having a bureaucracy largely staffed with imperial eunuchs, the entire state could be said to be loyal to emperor as father and lord.
Freedmen and Foreigners: The lowest of the low, educated slaves, freedmen and those from outside the empire may be relied upon as a politically neutral body by which to govern the realm. If you free a man, he takes your name and owes you a debt of gratitude. We may also recruit from subject peoples or resident aliens, and train them from a young age to manage the bureaucracy, to keep the aristocracy far away from the reigns of power.
Civilian Aristocracy: You can make it illegal to bear arms at court and to raise private armies. Turn the aristocracy in to soft-living landlords more fond of poetry and praying than the use of the sword. If we separate the martial tradition from noble birth then we may employ the former warriors of our society as the future bureaucrats, moving them from barbed steeds and bloody battlefields to a quiet office in the imperial palace.
Any valid innovations will also be allowed, if fitting.
To become an imperial administration you must have sophisticated education and have a kingdom that spans multiple regions, or controls one region entirely. You also require skilled administrators with years of experience in governing.
Feudal Vassals:
You may find that throughout the course of the game you acquire Feudal Vassals. This will allow you indirect control of a greater area. Instead of directly levying troops for areas controlled by a vassal you simply call up the vassal, and his levies will join your army. You should get more noble units in this way, as great magnates create local aristocracies and often have their own mini-courts. Vassals can rebel, of course, but are a way of incorporating vassal kings effectively. As your power grows, a settled kingdom may incorporate a subject king into his own kingdom, with the sub-king having to accept an officially subservient role, becoming instead a Dux or Ealdorman for instance, and holding his lands in fief. Although his lands will still pass through the formerly royal family you no longer need to worry about establishing your dominance every generation or sub-kings drifting in their allegiances.
Feudal vassals provide military service and equip men in return for the rights to the lands they control. Once you introduce taxation you may choose to introduce a form of scutage, demanding payment in lieu of soldiers, providing funds for you to recruit your own army. When you introduce a Royal Bureaucracy you can introduce your new taxation system throughout all feudal lands within your primary region, but introducing it outside of this core area will be difficult and make your tax raising less effective and be fiercely resisted. You can grant exemptions to certain vassals to keep them happy if you so desire. Once a feudal vassal is subject to central taxation it will be fully integrated into your kingdom but its feudal lord will remain as a powerful and influential figure, with a great deal of local power.
In some cases a ruler with a feudal realm stretching over multiple rulers may adopt the title of Emperor (or Kaiser etc.) with the support of a sufficiently influential religious figure and in the absence of imperial power. As well as the obvious Holy Roman Empire example, you could be ruling a Slavic Empire ruling Illyricum and Macedonia and successfully conquer the Ostrogothic Kingdom situated in Thrace. Now having control of the city of Constantinople and coming to an agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarch you can arrange to be crowned as Emperor of the East. The rank of emperor does not grant Imperial Administration, but rather bears a great deal of prestige that will make it easier to hold together your realm. A Feudal Empire will be presented with fewer of the problems faced by a Kingdom trying to hold multiple regions together. However, if a Feudal Emperor starts to centralise his realm then it will only effect his core territory and will undermine the loose control he holds over the rest of his empire. A Royal Bureaucracy introduced by a Feudal Emperor will make him the ruler of a centralised state, but will not be extended over his empire. To centralise your feudal empire more along Roman lines will be an arduous process, as much of the empire will seek to retain their traditional rights and freedoms by supporting an opposing emperor, likely backed by the Church.
Complete List of Government Forms:
Tribe
Tribal Confederation
Kingdom
Noble Kingdom
Royal Bureaucracy
Noble Bureaucracy
Feudal Kingdom (a kingdom with a large number of feudal vassals)
Imperial Administration
Feudal Empire
State Building Within Roman Territory
Having conquered Roman territory, it will be much easier for you to establish a tax-and-spend state with a functioning bureaucracy.
Numerius: The first step towards maintaining the Roman state you have seized is to hire a talented Numerius, a Roman accountant, as a councillor. This obviously requires the maintenance of some form of Roman aristocracy in your kingdom during settlement. A numerius allows a barbarian king to continue taxing his Roman subjects, as if nothing has changed. This does not allow tax increases, and changes in demographics can disrupt this. The income from the numerius can slowly decay over decades, as currency goes out of fashion in favour for payments in kind.
Your retinues can now include Roman-inspired legionaries and take on a more professional nature. If you need to increase your taxes to support this you must introduce Tax Farming. By granting licences to certain officials to raise taxes on your behalf, you can declare a total sum you wish to be collected, and they will raise it on your behalf. They will attempt to raise slightly more than requested in order to make their profit, and so the income cannot be quite as high as you'd expect from a fully functioning bureaucracy.
You may also become a Noble Kingdom by accommodating your nobles by granting them more say in government. They will be less resentful of state power if they share in it, and if they approve of a war can vote to provide a one-off large donation of funds to a well-liked king. A noble kingdom also provides more noble units as levies.
Royal Bureaucracy: A kingdom that relies on a large professional army, fuelled by high taxation, will by necessity change its ways. Either having to scale back its military, or to expand its very state apparatus to accommodate it. A Royal Bureaucracy allows for the recruitment of a full range of professional units as an army, but military service will no longer be considered a duty by your nobles and subjects. In order to establish a Royal Bureaucracy you must either appease or pacify your nobles. The increase in state power will likely be seen as tyranny and cause much rebellion and possibly civil war. A Royal Bureaucracy will be staffed largely by those of moderately high position, akin to knights or the educated middle classes, lawyers and petty landholders. You may choose to form a Noble Bureaucracy, where the bureaucracy is staffed not by the middling sort, but instead is used as a form of patronage for your greatest nobles - who expect their sons to be granted incomes and influential postings in the bureaucracy. The nobles will put up less resistance to the introduction of a centralised state if it is dominated by their own ranks.
Once you have a Royal Bureucracy you are open to establishing an Imperial Administration (described later).
State Building Outside of Empire:
The process of state building can be made easier through contact with the Roman world. Being a Roman client kingdom or providing foederati troops can increase the professionalism of your nobles and retinues alike. Likewise, sending your heir as a hostage to Rome will have him return with Roman education and a head start in state building.
1. Consolidation and Settlement
The first step towards a centralised imperial state is to settle in one place. Your tribal confederacy must be settled in its entirety. Any tribe owing allegiance to you must be settled in your kingdom or left to seek its own destiny. Once sedentary you will rely on levies in place of tribal warriors.
2. Introduce Taxes
In order to introduce taxes you must either appease or pacify your nobles. Becoming a Noble Kingdom will grant them control over levels of taxation, though grant you the opportunity to request large sums for wars, and to receive more noble cavalry in your levies. The new system will be done through tax farming, with the king specifying the amount to be raised and licensed officials attempting to raise enough to pay this while making some profit.
3. Establish Royal Bureaucracy
In order to establish a Bureaucracy, you must have the sophisticated society required to provide the literate men to run it. One option is to be a client or federate state of Rome, with a long-running history of providing foederati, and an heir educated in the Roman manner. Another option is to have an empowered church (pagan, Christian, Manichaean, etc. doesn't matter, although some churches already have a tradition of literacy and learning) with an organised hierarchy, literate clergy and good standard of learning; this can be through conversion to an imperial faith directly, the fostering of an independent Christian tradition in your state, or through painstaking reform. The church-unlocked bureaucracy is largely unavailable to polytheistic faiths which, outside of Rome and India, are largely illiterate and pluralistic, lacking the unity required to help centralise a state. For example, you can upgrade to Royal Bureaucracy if you are Orthodox Christian with an established clergy writing in Old Church Slavonic, or if you have allowed Latin clergy to make your kingdom their home until they become the dominant faith, but you cannot have a shaman that uses music and hallucinogens to communicate with Tengri the Thunderer establish a sophisticated governing machine for you.
Running a Royal Bureaucracy will be seen as tyrannical by proud nobles, and lead to rebellions by a class seeing their place in society eroded. Establishing a Noble Bureaucracy will make the new state apparatus the exclusive domain of the well-born, pacifying your nobles while maintaining their power.
4. Establish Imperial Administration
See below.
Imperial Administration:
Once you have a professional army and taxing state, you may think you have it all. However, a centralised state is limited in its size and unlike a Feudal power, cannot stretch much beyond one province (i.e. Gallia would be the limit of a centralised bureaucracy). The most advanced form of government is an Imperial Administration along the lines of the Roman emperors. This unlocks various offices to allow the proper administration of far wider areas, such as Satraps and Praetorian Prefects, as well as allowing for more field armies and unlocking court factions. An Imperial Administration concentrates power in a single man, worthy of the rank of emperor, around whom swirls a maelstrom of talent and ambition. With the aristocracy's wings clipped the entire state serves one man, and all wish to be that man. This form of government is powerful but hotly contested, as the stakes are so high for those who wish to be emperor.
In order to adequately increase the power of the emperor to the point where he may be truly paramount in the state, you must operate a bureaucracy that can exclude all noble contenders and be loyal only to the emperor. Options are:
Adopt Eunuch administration: A barbaric practice outlawed in civilised society, castration can create a class of kin-less and skilled administrators who could never form a dynasty and never hope to be crowned. A eunuch belongs to the family of his master, and by having a bureaucracy largely staffed with imperial eunuchs, the entire state could be said to be loyal to emperor as father and lord.
Freedmen and Foreigners: The lowest of the low, educated slaves, freedmen and those from outside the empire may be relied upon as a politically neutral body by which to govern the realm. If you free a man, he takes your name and owes you a debt of gratitude. We may also recruit from subject peoples or resident aliens, and train them from a young age to manage the bureaucracy, to keep the aristocracy far away from the reigns of power.
Civilian Aristocracy: You can make it illegal to bear arms at court and to raise private armies. Turn the aristocracy in to soft-living landlords more fond of poetry and praying than the use of the sword. If we separate the martial tradition from noble birth then we may employ the former warriors of our society as the future bureaucrats, moving them from barbed steeds and bloody battlefields to a quiet office in the imperial palace.
Any valid innovations will also be allowed, if fitting.
To become an imperial administration you must have sophisticated education and have a kingdom that spans multiple regions, or controls one region entirely. You also require skilled administrators with years of experience in governing.
Feudal Vassals:
You may find that throughout the course of the game you acquire Feudal Vassals. This will allow you indirect control of a greater area. Instead of directly levying troops for areas controlled by a vassal you simply call up the vassal, and his levies will join your army. You should get more noble units in this way, as great magnates create local aristocracies and often have their own mini-courts. Vassals can rebel, of course, but are a way of incorporating vassal kings effectively. As your power grows, a settled kingdom may incorporate a subject king into his own kingdom, with the sub-king having to accept an officially subservient role, becoming instead a Dux or Ealdorman for instance, and holding his lands in fief. Although his lands will still pass through the formerly royal family you no longer need to worry about establishing your dominance every generation or sub-kings drifting in their allegiances.
Feudal vassals provide military service and equip men in return for the rights to the lands they control. Once you introduce taxation you may choose to introduce a form of scutage, demanding payment in lieu of soldiers, providing funds for you to recruit your own army. When you introduce a Royal Bureaucracy you can introduce your new taxation system throughout all feudal lands within your primary region, but introducing it outside of this core area will be difficult and make your tax raising less effective and be fiercely resisted. You can grant exemptions to certain vassals to keep them happy if you so desire. Once a feudal vassal is subject to central taxation it will be fully integrated into your kingdom but its feudal lord will remain as a powerful and influential figure, with a great deal of local power.
In some cases a ruler with a feudal realm stretching over multiple rulers may adopt the title of Emperor (or Kaiser etc.) with the support of a sufficiently influential religious figure and in the absence of imperial power. As well as the obvious Holy Roman Empire example, you could be ruling a Slavic Empire ruling Illyricum and Macedonia and successfully conquer the Ostrogothic Kingdom situated in Thrace. Now having control of the city of Constantinople and coming to an agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarch you can arrange to be crowned as Emperor of the East. The rank of emperor does not grant Imperial Administration, but rather bears a great deal of prestige that will make it easier to hold together your realm. A Feudal Empire will be presented with fewer of the problems faced by a Kingdom trying to hold multiple regions together. However, if a Feudal Emperor starts to centralise his realm then it will only effect his core territory and will undermine the loose control he holds over the rest of his empire. A Royal Bureaucracy introduced by a Feudal Emperor will make him the ruler of a centralised state, but will not be extended over his empire. To centralise your feudal empire more along Roman lines will be an arduous process, as much of the empire will seek to retain their traditional rights and freedoms by supporting an opposing emperor, likely backed by the Church.
Complete List of Government Forms:
Tribe
Tribal Confederation
Kingdom
Noble Kingdom
Royal Bureaucracy
Noble Bureaucracy
Feudal Kingdom (a kingdom with a large number of feudal vassals)
Imperial Administration
Feudal Empire