Birthright:

That makes abundant sense to me. There is only so much you can carry away, so 1 GB/Unit on the raid that successfully completes the raid.

Which also puts a practical limit on how many units you're sending, given the total amount of GB's you can get from raiding already.

I like it.

I think it is fine. It's not really THAT complicated to adjudicate. I mean, you are pretty much guaranteed to steal 1GB or 1 Resource early game, but that's probably fine. You are spending an action to do that, so it's not really that great.

The naval raid rules in the war and naval thread seem simple enough, though they've been there a while.

'Raiding is going to be limited to ship-movement provinces away as well, as it is essentially:
1. Move to location
2. Battle (if defenders)- 3 battle rounds, if you have not defeated the defenders in that time frame, raid fails.
3. Move to home.'

Capping raids to 1 GB per unit seems ridiculous considering units cost 1 GB/turn to upkeep. It's as if they're just foraging.

I guess that's fine if raiding is only supposed to be done when a poor realm has a large army, not as an active strategy.

And if the units aren't used in a raid, they cost 1 GB each. So if you keep a sizable army and aren't raiding, you better have deep coffers.

Seems very reasonable to limit the amount able to be carried off in a single action which doesn't trigger the auto-response of allowing warfare to escalate without an actual action being used on the part of the defender.

I definitely prefer the limits to be risk and randomness, the (estimable) wealth of the target province, and the (inestimable) wealth of the target regents. That makes it a gamble but not a desperate measure, and it allows it to be a wash or a coup instead of just treading water.

Randomness is still there, no telling if they actually have the money.

You send in 8 units and they don't have 8 GBs and only have 3 GBs accessie, you just came up significantly short on your plan.

And a wash would mean you end with what you began. Treading water would be the same in this case.

For illustration, the rules we had coming in would allow a regent to raid an adjacent level 1 province, at a cost of 3 GB (for minimal mustering and maintenance of two units, including their starting unit) with approximately a 25% chance of failure, a 25% chance of a small loss, a 25% chance of a small gain, and a 25% chance of a large gain (6 GB, most of the target's wealth taken, half of which ends up being the effective profit). The target could counter-raid or (riskily) counter-invade. If they were defenseless, they could be forced to surrender by multiple raids, but then, they could have been knocked out by an invasion, instead.

For a naval raid, if the target has no ship to defend them, the attacker's one unit and one ship would move over and be able to raid for 2.33 GB (since naval transport costs money, plus the maintenance cost). They'd have a 25% chance of failure, 25% chance of recouping less than half their investment, a 25% chance of a small loss, and a 25% chance of gaining two thirds of one GB. Bleurgh.

If units suffer attrition chance while raiding, that'd be another limiting factor. I'm not seeing this as overpowering. Another way to keep it under control would be to limit the maximum that can be raided from one target province in a single turn, which makes a lot of sense. If you take everything that's not nailed down, what are you going back for?

If you raid a level 1 province with 3 units, rarely if ever should you come away with a lot. A raid should at no time provide more than what severe taxation provides (which is why regents don't use severe taxation a lot without risking revolt).

Since there can be province fortifications and holding fortifications in a province, do they all lump together for the fortification level part of the DC?

Personally, I would think province level fortifications would count fully and holding fortification count .5, especially since it takes half the GB to build holding fortifications vs province fortifications.

The raid doesn't just target the poor. The raiders would know that's a waste of time, and go for the temples, the guilders, the armouries, bringing back the wealth of the realm. Occupiers don't get to take that wealth unless they pillage, and pillaging destroys holdings rather than hitting a regent's treasury directly. So raiding is more like a large-scale, militarized version of the Theft espionage action, one that doesn't discriminate and is limited by the target province.

Speaking of which... the Theft espionage action can have the exact same results as a raid (minus the loyalty damage), it's just even more random.