Sea Zone Changes: Due to unknown reason’s the following sea zones, arrows, or island areas (only the water ways around the islands) are now hostile. In the Pacific: Island of Attu, Island of Kiska, Island of Adak, the sea arrows from Attu to Kiska, the sea arrows from Kiska to Adak, The Aleutian Sea.

Fundamentally, the HOT system attempts to automate the process of adding and removing MSP routes by following market demand.

Open Nations, Religious Primacies, Religious Orders and Secret Empires do not have to build transports to convert into MSP. Instead, when they open a new trade route, the system calculates a starting set of MSP for the route, based on the nation’s NMV, the size (Total Trade Value) of the route, and the free capacity at the port basing the route.

The trade partners on a given route are also now noted as to whether they can provide MSP for the route (a "Yes" or a "No" in the proper column of the trade route display). You can provide MSP for a route if you are able to Open the route with your current trade range and conduit setup.

Open trade routes for which you can assign MSP, which are based at a port with free MSP basing capacity, which are under-capacity for the whole route (a non-negative "FreeCap" number) will automatically accrue new MSP to "fill up" the route at the rate of:

NMV × FreeCap.

MSP are automatically added and removed by the program, depending on whether the route is under- or overcapacity and whether the base port is under- or over-capacity.

However an Open Nation, Primacy or Order can elect to shift MSP from route to route if the King/ Pope/ Grand-Master spends 6 AP to "Intervene in Mercantile Affaires." This represents the government taking a direct hand in the internal affairs of the dozens of merchant brokerages, financiers and investment companies. During this intervention any number of MSP can be shifted around from/ to any number of routes.

You may change the Base Port of the route, or Close the route, or open new routes. Note that changing the base port of a route may mean the route can accumulate more MSP and gain you more money. You are also free to attack the shipping of your trade partner (secretly, of course) to reduce their MSP allocation, thus allowing yours to grow and make you more money.

MSP may be removed from a HOT route, at the usual rate of 4GP per 4 MSP, which produces 1 HT unit.Help me out a little when you change your shipping. Do not give me orders like "collect all loose MSP and put them on trade route 101, 102, and 103. I will ignore that, I don’t have the time to do this for everyone. Instead give me any of the below:

Promoted Leaders: There is a 1 turn delay before any promoted princes or princesses is usable. Only Heirs are usable the same turn they are promoted.

National Flags: If you submit a national flag for the L7 Web page your nation will receive a +5% base tax-rate increase.

Leader names: Leaders with no name will receive a –1 AP per year penilty. Name ‘em will ya. If I give a name to a NPC there is a reason, and I have found a few nice web sights where I try to pull authentic names for the region this person is in.

Plagues: L7 has seen both the Small Pox on the new world and the Bubonic Plague world wide. Rejoice there are no more ‘natural occurring’ plagues out there to ravage the helpless nations of Lord 7.

Cost of turns: $3.00 a turn, currently the cheapest LOTE game I know of.

Is there Magic in L7: Official answer: huh? More detailed answer, not as you probably think. Our ancient ancestors where a superstitious lot, and as such I will from time to time include bits and hints to play that superstitious card. This does NOT mean that Cthulu will come over to dinner (nor am I saying he wont, I mean who knows what <it> likes to eat, or where for that matter). Keep in mind I am not using the standard L1 IL chart, and as such you ain’t gonna be finding no gates to distant lands.

DPing other nations friendly areas: Will have no effect, the only way to try to gain control of a region friendly to another nation is to pacify it, or Cause Mutiny, other more sneaky ways check with me and if they will work they will be added here.

Max Leaders: As per the new rules all nations have a maximum number of Tech Level + 5.  All Kings, Queens, Heirs, Allied Leaders, Lietenits, Feudal Allies and royal children.   Bishops that are loaned to you and Merc commanders do not count on against this cap.  On Turn 32 I will go through and remove any and all leaders above the cap, and I promise you they will not like you much when I do, so start getting ride of the leaders you don't want.

Colonization: Any region that is cultivated and is less then 2 GPV can be increased up to 2 GPV for the cost of 15GP and 15NFP per GPV. NOTE, this is a change, and you can not colonize it above 2 GPV, unless it is your homeland, which can be colonized to 3GPV at tech level 6.

Regional Cultivation: It appears the rules have changed (and I agree with it). As SOON as your done paying for a Regional Cultivation the region goes cultivate. You no longer have to wait the 50 year's to realize the change.

Trading changes: Ok a few changes coming up that you should all know about. First off I have been a bit lenient on the rule that you can have up to 20x the GPV of the city. Which means in for have a level 1 city you can only have 20 MSP (total, not per trade route) of trade. The following list is of what type of transports and how many MSP they have, this is a change for some people

1LT has 2MSP
1T has 3MSP
1HT has 4MSP

Tithe Income: If you're paying a tithe to a Religious Primate and the rate of the tithe is less than 5% then there is no effect to you; you do not lose any money. If the rate of the Tithe is greater than 5%, then you lose 1% of Tax Rate for each percentage point of the tithe over 5.

Elite troops: They are available to be built/trained when you achieve tech level 5 or greater, this represents how well your troops are versed in combat

Slaves on ships: After some thought and discussions there is a change on slaves and their movements. While on Transports or warships, the ships will move their normal BAC a turn, instead of the 2 BAC that slave’s get.

Religious Orders:I have been holding off on the subject of religious orders thinking that what I can find on them puts their formations in the early to mid 1100's. However with the recent events in L7 (the holy war's, the near constant battles for the Christian holy city of Jeruslam) mirroring the events that in L0 caused the formation of these Religious Orders I have decided to allow a limited amount of them to be able to be formed.

Any Religion that has held a holy war around Jeruslam now have the ability for form an RO. These religions are: Sunni, Orthodox Christian (Eastern Orthodox), Coptic's, and Norse Christians.

Other religions will need to wait until 1150AD, or have some sort of a "Crisis of Faith", which could included a Holy War, a sacking of a Holy City by non-believers, a schism in the church, or other major issue arise.

In some games RO's have caused an imbalance in the game, so as I implement them I will also be implementing the MAXTAX rule. What MAXTAX does is limit the amount of gold you can squeeze out of the local population. I will set the MAXTAX limit at 2.0, so the most ALL combined nations (excluding SE's) can pull from a region/city will be it's (GPV x 2) + (PBW x 2).

Example: The city of Cow, a level 10 city with 100 PBW. The nation of Cowboy has it at F, his Primate <United Church of the Bovine> has declared that Moocow is the holy city. Since both nations are receiving 100% of the income (110 GP's) they are at the 2.0 MAXTAX limit. If the new RO <Holy Order of the Charging Bull's> tried to build it's Fortress there (the Fortress is the main holding of an Order, and would net the order 50% tax rate of the region/city) the combined total of the 3 nations would be at 250%, over the MAXTAX limit of 2.0 (200%) the net result is all three of them would drop their income in Cow.

For those who are not aware of how RO's form let me point you to the section in the 5.10 version of the Players Book on Thornworld. 9.7 is the section that begins discussion on the RO's, and begins on Page 77.

Treaties / Alliances:

As many old time players remember I used to have some rules about these, and I am re-implementing them with some new rules and guidelines.

Making them: All it takes is a note in all parties turn saying you sign them. Private or secret ones do not need a conceal fact to keep them secret, but it will help keep it that way.

Supporting them: If you have a mutual defense pact and the other member is attacked you really should honor your treaties. If you don’t, bad things can happen to you. Your minor noble’s and peasants will try to hold you accountable for your actions, and inaction. There are modifiers of course (like if a massive horde is attacking your ally you will get a modifier to stay out, or if there have been rumors that your ally has been doing bad things against you you’ll catch a break)

Breaking them: Like I said above, your minor lords and peasants will try to pressure you to keep your word, or rise up against you should you dishonor it. If the other nation has taken actions against your nation you can break the treaty with minimal issues.

Types of Treaties

There are many types, here is a list of the three most common, and what benefit you can receive from them:

• Non-Aggression Act – Nations agree to not attack each other, this may, or may not include intel acts
• Mutual defense – Nations agree to send troops and leaders to support each other in the time of need
• Alliance – Nations agree to be best friends working together for the betterment of each other (ie Tree hugging hippie crap)

There are others of course, things as simple as Sphere of Influence agreements where both nations agree to leave each other alone in the spheres. I am sure you can draw up more should you want to.

Example:

The Mighty Swedish Empire has had an Alliance with the lowly Danes for 50 years. King Grunt K884 of the Swedes decided it was time to expand and attacked the Danes. He spends 10 AP’s to bolster his reason. So we have 2 (for 10 AP’s) – 5 (for 50 years) – 5 (no solid proof) + 4 (for his Charisma) = -4 roll, looks like there will some uprising against King Grunt’s war.