Guilds, Factions, Religions In the game
Three kinds of player organisation: guilds to trade and win, factions for shared sight and routes, religions for a deity. Each has its own HQ to build, defend and lose.
Status
In the game now: founding a guild at its Guildhall, guild wars and deals, the inner market, the shipyard and its ship tiers, unit pools. Factions, religions and the parts tagged First proposal are still the design; their numbers will change with balancing.
At a glance First proposal
| Guild | Faction | Religion | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Members | 1 to 25 | 25 to 150 | 25 to 150 |
| Founded by | a finished Guildhall (town hall 5, Middle Age): choose a 3-letter tag, a name of up to 25 letters, a logo and the governance | promoting a full guild of 25 | promoting a full guild whose 25 members all worship one deity |
| Governance | Democracy (recall votes) or Oligarchy (no recall, no leave) | the same | the same |
| Tax and upkeep | no tax on inner trade; members share the HQ upkeep and pay their own shipping | a 1 % trade tax on faction routes + a share of the Capital's upkeep | a 5 % tithe of members' offerings + a share of the temple's upkeep |
| Diplomacy | shared: war, ally and neutral belong to the guild; nobody can war a guildmate | own treaties; the faction's friends and foes are shown | own treaties; shown |
| Vision | everything: members' discoveries, their land and units live, the inside view of their towns | all members' discoveries and owned land | members' capitals, holy sites and the temple |
| Bonuses | the inner market, a guild doctrine, an extra trade route at HQ stage 3, the HQ garrison | shared vision, no port fee and cheaper crews on faction routes, a faction doctrine | favour +25 % with the deity, its essence +10 %, a religion doctrine, the god unit |
| Victory | the only organisation that can win (full-year members' share of the world's output) | never | never |
| Leave | Democracy: free, one change a world month. Oligarchy: only when kicked, the HQ is razed, the HQ is conquered or the world ends | the same | the same |
Life cycle In the game
- Build the Guildhall
A Middle Age building (town hall 5). Its owner is the host: the realm whose province holds the HQ.
- Found the guild
Tag (3 letters), name, logo and governance, shown on the join card. Players join by invitation; an invite always needs the player's yes.
- Grow to 25
Members trade on the inner market, pool units, plan HQ stages and share their sight of the world.
- Promote
The guild master opens a vote; it passes with 13 yes of 25. The same organisation becomes a faction, or a religion when all 25 worship one deity. The members' guild slots free up, and the Guildhall becomes the core of the new HQ.
- End
An organisation ends only when its HQ is razed or its last member leaves. A conquered HQ changes hands instead (seize). The host can leave only by demolishing the HQ, on a countdown everyone sees.
The HQ buildings First proposal
| Guildhall | Faction Capital | Grand Temple | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stages | S1 Hall (12 x 12 m), S2 Court + curtain wall, S3 Gatehouse + 4 towers, S4 Great Hall (40 x 40 m) | S5 Inner ward, S6 Chancery tower, S7 Arsenal, S8 Palace (64 x 64 m) | S5 Nave, S6 Bell tower, S7 Choir, S8 Sanctuary, S9 Spire |
| Materials | dressed stone, lime mortar, timber frame; then iron, glass, bronze, tapestry | dressed stone + marble, glass or bronze | dressed stone + glass, bronze or gold leaf |
| Core hit points | 2,000 / 3,000 / 4,500 / 6,000 | 12,000 | 9,000 |
| Garrison | 20 / 40 / 80 men from S2; siege stores 3 / 6 / 12 months | 160; 12 months | 120; 9 months |
| Stage bonus | S2 guild doctrine stronger, S3 +1 trade route a member, S4 market timers -25 % | S6 +1 faction route a member, S7 unit pools +50 %, S8 sight one province further around every member | S6 favour +10 %, S7 rite capacity +25 %, S9 a stronger god |
Sieges
- Only an army of a realm at war with the organisation can attack an HQ; raiders never besiege.
- When a wall or the gate is breached, the HQ turns Reinforced for 24 hours: the core takes no damage, and every member and ally is alerted.
- After that the core takes damage only inside the guild master's daily 4-hour window, and only while the garrison is empty.
- At 0 the attacker chooses: Raze (the organisation dissolves, members are released, pooled units go home) or Seize (the conqueror becomes guild master; members get a free exit window).
- A conqueror never takes a member's realm, stock or unpooled units.
Roles and departments
| Role | What it does | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Guild master | everything: names the vice-master and department heads, governance, dues, timers, quotas, deals, the promotion vote, kicks | heads change once a month; a member can be kicked at most once a month; recall in a democracy |
| Vice-master | as the guild master, except governance, promotion and kicking the master; takes over after 72 hours without the master | |
| Support | sees every open request; adopts requests, forwards offers, builds ships for members | 8 adopted requests at once |
| Defense | commands the defense pool: garrison, patrols, alarms inside guild land | never attacks a realm the guild is not at war with |
| War | commands the war pool against war targets; drafts a war declaration | the master or vice-master approves a declaration |
| Politics | drafts treaties with the guild as a party; once every 5 world years may push a deal as an ultimatum | every deal and push needs approval |
| Food | sees members' food; redistributes surplus to members under 2 months of food; can drive a member's farms for a month | only with that member's food mandate |
| Infrastructure | plans HQ stages, guild roads, port and post links | |
| Trade | market rules: timers, priorities, blocked goods; assigns shippers | |
| Knowledge | shares research: a topic known by 3 members costs the others 10 % less | |
| Faith | offerings, holy sites and temple stages (a religion's core) | spends no member's goods without the faith mandate |
| Intelligence | commands the scout pool; reports and marks foes | no sabotage |
A department reaches into a member's realm only through a mandate the member gives: on by default in a guild, off in a faction or religion, locked on in an oligarchy. The join card says which.
The inner market In the game
- Each member sets, per good (up to 16), the most he offers and the least he keeps. Only the surplus between them can leave his town.
- A request names a good and an amount. The world picks the provider (most surplus, then the shortest route). He approves, sends part or declines within 2 world months; silence means the goods depart.
- A demand (from the master, vice-master, the food or support head, or a member short of food) runs on a quarter of that timer and can be refused only through the keep amount.
- No tax and no fee inside a guild: the requester pays only the shipper's crew wages, hull wear and provisions (grain in the Dark Age, coin in the Middle Age). A member who carries goods in his own hull earns that fee.
- Members need a Trading Post (land) or a harbour tied to the guild's network, and for boats their own Shipyard beside the harbour.
Shipyard: tiers 1 to 10 In the game
| Tier | Hull | Water | Hold | Crew | Pace (m a month) | Hit points | Needs | Build |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Skiff | river, coast | 40 | 2 | 1,800 | 60 | town hall 1 | 20 Wood |
| 2 | River Barge | river, lake | 100 | 2 | 1,200 | 90 | town hall 2 | 40 Wood |
| 3 | Knarr | coast | 160 | 3 | 1,900 | 140 | town hall 3 | 60 Wood, 10 Yarn, 10 Clothes |
| 4 | Cog | coast, sea | 300 | 4 | 2,160 | 220 | town hall 4 | 90 Wood |
| 5 | Hulk | sea | 450 | 6 | 2,300 | 300 | town hall 5 | 140 Wood, 30 Yarn, 30 Clothes, 20 Iron |
| 6 | Great Cog | sea | 650 | 8 | 2,500 | 400 | town hall 6 | 200 Wood, 40 Yarn, 40 Clothes, 30 Iron |
| 7 | Carrack | sea | 900 | 12 | 2,800 | 520 | town hall 7 | 300 Wood, 60 Yarn, 60 Clothes, 40 Iron |
| 8 | Merchant Galley | coast, sea | 600 | 24 | 3,600 | 450 | town hall 8 | 220 Wood, 60 Yarn, 30 Clothes, 40 Iron |
| 9 | Great Carrack | sea | 1,400 | 18 | 3,000 | 700 | town hall 9 | 450 Wood, 90 Yarn, 90 Clothes, 60 Iron |
| 10 | Argosy | sea | 2,000 | 24 | 3,200 | 900 | town hall 10 | 600 Wood, 120 Yarn, 120 Clothes, 80 Iron, 10 Copper |
One blueprint card a tier: tiers 1 to 3 in the Dark Age, tier n from town hall n. The shipyard (levels 1 to 10) slots ship cards up to its level and the town hall. Hulls cost pitch, rope and canvas upkeep a month at sea, crew wages on top. Over land: handcart 30, ox wagon 60, horse wagon 80 load; a guild road is 30 % faster.
Unit pools In the game
- Defense and War pools per guild or faction, a Scout pool for intelligence, a Temple guard for a religion.
- Each member sets what share of each new unit kind goes to defense and to war (0 % by default). The master may ask a minimum quota of up to 50 %, shown on the join card.
- The owner stays the owner (upkeep, losses); the pool only gets the right to give orders.
- The owner can reclaim a unit at any time; it walks home after any running battle.
- The master can seize pooled units and reassign them; the owner's reclaim then waits a month. In a democracy that opens a recall motion at once.
- Every member sees every pooled unit, its owner and who controls it.
Discord (opt-in)
- Everything Discord is opt-in: link your Discord account in Settings, then switch Discord on. Off by default.
- The guild master turns the guild's Discord space on. A member gets access only when linked and switched on; the window shows how many members are on Discord.
- A private text thread bridged both ways with the in-game guild chat, an on-demand voice room, and a join link for players not yet on the server.
- Voice presence shows who is in the room. No Discord id or e-mail ever reaches another player or a link.
- On promotion the space is renamed and keeps its history; on dissolution it locks read-only; on conquest the old thread stays with the old members and a new one opens.
Open decisions
Defaults the design assumes until they are decided:
- Oligarchy: no leave at all, or a 3-month notice exit?
- The push: an ultimatum, or simply one guild-wide deal every 5 years?
- Religion: 25 worshippers replace the holy-site founding rule; the temple becomes the main holy site, and razing it dissolves the religion.
- A promoted guild frees its members' guild slots, so a faction can hold several guilds; only guilds can win.
- Unit quota: 0 % by default, at most 50 %; seizing every unit only in an oligarchy.
- HQ siege: 24-hour reinforcement plus a daily 4-hour window chosen by the master.
- A conqueror can only invite; nobody is forced into an organisation.
- Every power over a member's buildings needs his mandate.
- Discord text: a private thread, or a real channel per guild?
- Speaking indicators need Discord's approval; presence only until then.