Pot holes

Are potholes only governed by poor relief payments or are there other aspects affecting this?

I'll be asking my advisors for input, but wondering if I've overlooked anything in the rules as I know somethings have changed over the various editions.

Marshal Bombast wrote:Are potholes only governed by poor relief payments or are there other aspects affecting this?

I'll be asking my advisors for input, but wondering if I've overlooked anything in the rules as I know somethings have changed over the various editions.

Think you can use any labour/cash to fill in potholes but English style poor laws in which poor relief was given in return for able bodied poor doing work for the community such as repairing the roads was fairly standard in many places.

In Russia, France and the Ottoman Empire taxes included a labour levee in which as part of its tax liability a community had to provide so many days labour to upkeep the Royal Highway, Bridges etc. I suspect that richer members of the community sent a servant, younger son and poor hired labourer to do the required labour so end result was a bit like English communities raising a poor rate and paying poor people to do the work.

Oddly in South America a community a labour levee existed from Inca times to upkeep the Inca Roads and work mines etc. Unfortunately with the arrival of small pox with the Spanish many communities lost a lot of labour so struggled to provide the traditional labour levee as well as get in their crops etc. This resulted in communities buying African Slaves to do their labour duties/taxes. Which is a might like extreme version of English councils throwing "vagrants" into the work house and providing them with shelter/food/work on roads if they wanted it or not! Bad luck if you got picked by by the Navy press, then after getting demobilized and trying to get home you got grabbed by the Parish Constables as a "Sturdy begger" and got too fill in lots of pot holes for really poor wages!

In some areas like Siberia and parts of North America communities were so small and distances so great that road upkeep via the poor laws etc was pretty much impossible. In these locations roads were often built and maintained by the Army which had lots of able bodies with nothing much too do in peace time and a vested interest in roads. Most people and their livestock happy to walk round even really deep holes.....siege trains had more problems.

Currently in G9 most of the Sultan's Navy along with Labour levee's and slaves are busy helping to build the Red Sea canal and his Elite Engineers are busy trying to make the Iron Gates fit for navigation. Proof positive that either the Sultan is a peace loving old softy who can not think what to do with his military. Or he has spent too much time using the Legions to build bridges in Rome is Burning and has noticed that one of the Sultan many titles is "Ceasar".

Probably only a matter of time before he shows up in Rome and his Harem start to unroll his favourite carpets in St Peters and he demands a meeting with the Senate to discuss the shocking state of the roads/pot holes in the Papal States. Plus how the Tiber needs more bridges over it.