Zenofex wrote:Your example is completely wrong, are you sure that you understand the concept of "payment" at all? Payment doesn't necessarily mean money in general sense. When people perform some task, they incorporate their labour into value, which then can be traded against another portion of labour incorporated into value. Money just make this easier. It's perfectly possible to have an economy without any money or with only partial use of money (you gave an example about the feudal economy yourself), it will just not function (at least not exactly) as the nowadays system. If nobody gets paid for his/her labour - as I mentioned, not necessarily with hard currency - there will be no society as there will be no exchange.
I think we are really pushing the moderators with this prolonged semi-off-topic though...
You have misunderstood what I am saying to a very great extent. I am not suggesting that the system works on the basis of social coercion (sense of duty) combined with legal coercion (prison, execution, flogging), not because the people get paid to do said work.
Essentially instead of paying taxes to the government/rent to your landlord, you have to do work to support them rather than or in addition to paying money you have earned. That no direct exchange of anything is made, this is one key difference between the Capitalist society and the Feudal society.
Historically in real-life medieval feudal economies, the wealth produced by the peasants and extracted by said lords through the process of feudal duties was then traded to armor-makers, the production of armor took place as part of the capitalist element of the society, that element based upon exchange. Thus the "cost" of the armor was a very serious impediment, thus restricting it's use.
This situation suited the lords well because it meant they controlled a monopoly of effective force in the local area due to the cost of armor and the armorers as well as it guaranteed great profits for them. This situation is how it evidently is in Heroes V.
But in the few cases rather than extracting for the sake of exchange to pay for things, the feudal lords have utilized the labor for the sake of public works, the results have been that staggeringly labour-intensive projects become possible, for instance the Egyptian Pyramids. They are affordable because they cost *nothing* but the food and drink required to sustain the laboring army, which the state has collected in rents.
If you extract your taxes and rents in labor rather than money, you can invert the relationship, so instead of the question is no longer can *you* afford it, but can *they* afford it.
she'll probably work with the 'fallen' arch angel in a quest for world domination).