AtEM DD 5: Dorwin Burghers

If you haven’t already read the previous DD I strongly recommend you do so before this one, as it covers Dorwinion’s basic premise. Today I’ll be covering the content associated with one of Dorwinion’s 4 political sub-factions: the Burghers. The Burghers are a collection of urban artisans, merchants, and politicians funded and organized by the guilds. They are generally commoners who value social mobility and meritocracy.

Let’s start with the guilds. Dorwinion has 4 of them: Baking, Carpentry, Smithing, and Tailory.

Each guild is represented as an Industrial Concern and, for Arms Against Tyranny owners, an MIO. These MIOs have fairly lackluster equipment bonuses, since the not-yet-implemented Noble House MIOs will focus more on military matters. Each Guild MIO does allow you to upgrade their Industrial Concern equivalent with powerful country modifiers, so it’s still a good idea to level up at least one of them. (For non AAT owners, focuses that normally buff the MIOs will instead directly upgrade the industrial concerns).

The Burghers’ ultimate goal is to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic. Their military consists entirely of defensive militias and rural peasants have little interest in their cause, so they intend to accomplish this by peacefully negotiating allies and building support. Their progress is represented via a balance of power between themselves and the noble Merchant Houses who comprise the other half of the Great Merchants’ powerbase.

The left side of the BoP grants efficiency growth while the right side buffs prosperity, resource extraction, and trade opinion. In addition to the modifiers, boosting the Burghers involves 3 narrative beats. At 50% support you successfully found a Senate. Every 5-7 months you’ll get one of 10 unique dilemmas that allow you to spend political power to rewards ranging from research bonuses to law changes to vineyards.

Description credit @Lady Zentlide. These dilemmas are rarely game changing, but serve as a nice PP sink in the late game. They also serve as a worrying sign of the common folks’ disregard for traditional authority, which is why, at 75% burger support…

As long as you’ve played your political game reasonably well the rebellion will be easily defeated. However, many of your best commanders hail from noble houses, and their loyalty will surely be torn between their country and their class. It may be worth spending resources to delay the plot long enough to disband it entirely.

And finally, all challenges dealt with, you arrive at 100% Burghers support, end the Great Merchants Factionalism, and found the Republic of Dorwinion.

Your Burgher-aligned political advisors will each campaign for election every 4 years. If elected they put aside their advisory duties and gain a powerful secondary trait for the duration of their term(s). You may notice that Thodria here (as well as Skaldir) has a third trait named ‘Revolutionary’-- so I should probably get into the focus tree.

The leftmost branch brings you closer to the Woodland Realm and the second from left helps you befriend & integrate Rinnavuld and Ruscovuld (which will be much more useful once I implement the Rhovanion alignment system). The rightmost buffs your guilds and economic research, while the second from right grants various military buffs themed around urban militias. These are all mostly unspectacular; the real magic happens in the middle.

The left branch extends your influence in Rhovanion while the main line focuses on internal politics. *There’s Good in this World* converts half of your Isolationism support into Liberator, *Investigate Reactionary Plot* grants more options for dealing with said crisis, and *The People’s Army* starts a mission that automatically decreases Demoralized Army by 1 level every 180 days. Most of the rest of the central focuses boost Liberator support, political power, or Burghers’ balance of power.

*Liberators of the People* makes the liberation peace conference demand cheaper and makes all newly occupied states start at 15% compliance. *Establish Sister Republics* requires you to have a Revolutionary leader. It unlocks a new wargoal, the ability to use it against anyone, and decisions to found sister republics in human nations with high compliance. These puppets aren’t particularly powerful BUT they have a suite of custom characters following Republican ideologies, which is helpful if you take *Home of the Revolution*:

And finally, *Establish the Celduinic Republic* unlocks once you’ve diplo annexed the Republic of Dale & the Republic of Rhovanion. It gives you all of their cores, plus changes your name, flag, and color.

I want the Burghers’ path– especially the revolutionary part– to be very unique compared to anything else in RfR; a good path that still focuses on aggressive expansion. It still needs a lot of work, both in terms of balance and design; you currently have very little time to revolutionize before The War even if you assassinate Hawin to start the second BoP faster, and there’s not much practical benefit to Sister Republics. I shall address these issues in time, do not worry, but for now everything I have presented is live on the Beta Branch. This path also fully updates to Arms Against Tyranny, alongside a host of other bugfixes and QoL changes. The next Beta update will finish the Celduin Trade system. Until then, Vive la révolution!