Estates should go.

[vini_lessa]

Hi folks. Got the game recently and after 2 campaigns with distinct factions, I don't see the point of the "Estates" feature. It's simply not fun to engage, because there's no meaningful gameplay involved in it: You just check loyalty for everyone after each new province conquered and, if someone is losing it, then give Estates. That's it. After the 20th or something occupied province it becomes a chore, like paperwork.

This feature should be replaced by something more integral to gameplay. Perhaps something in the line of Attila's "offices", where you assign companions to them, they gain influence, and you gain varying bonuses, but it generates attritions and conflicts of egos between themselves and you, etc. Anyway, I digress. As a fan of Bernard Cornwell books, this game is a dream come true to me. And I find it has a bunch of really good ideas (characters more dynamic in personality and trait gaining, food and army supplies, allegiances, etc) but I feel this feature really detracts from the game.

Anyone else think Estates should go?

[Iustus]

Estates start to work when you gain opportunity to build aristocratic estates. Then it becomes a tool with which you can play with influence of your leader and your subordinates. Before that though, estates are absolutely pointless, yeah.

[Daruwind]

Yup, in order to build estates you have to sacrifice the building slot instead of better building. And actually you have both estates and a few offices. Not so large office system as in Attila. In ToB you can run into troubles if you lose some provincies quickly and thus the estates, in Attila it is mostly stable system. The dynamic system where you can build more estates seems like good idea but i would laso like a few more offices but then the estates would feel without proper impact. In Attila you have 13? offices? In ToB 3 + like 10 governors, plus king for each like 3 estates...

Ideal system probably would be like a few offices + option to create new one by building a building or a few specific buildings in province in order to unlock new such office (offices like tax office -> tax collector, big abbey -> bishop, town hall -> judge...or like town hall + castle + farm -> new feudal office). But this system would be proably way to hard with limited building slots so this estate is close to it in my opinion..