If you buy an army using your Wealth, do you need to buy Rank too?

[Anthony]

There's a part of me that wants to treat rank and status as just limited wealth -- an officer in charge of a thousand men might have a personal wealth level of Comfortable, but he's in charge of an organization with a combined budget that is probably Multimillionaire 1, so when acting within the limits of his job he functions as a higher wealth level.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There's a part of me that wants to treat rank and status as just limited wealth -- an officer in charge of a thousand men might have a personal wealth level of Comfortable, but he's in charge of an organization with a combined budget that is probably Multimillionaire 1, so when acting within the limits of his job he functions as a higher wealth level.

Petraeus, I believe, suggested AO commanders be given a discretionary fund for what is essentially native relations. In his case presumably he believed officers could be trusted not to mooch on it.

That would be kind of like what you are saying.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Petraeus, I believe, suggested AO commanders be given a discretionary fund for what is essentially native relations. In his case presumably he believed officers could be trusted not to mooch on it.

That would be kind of like what you are saying.

Wealth levels don't have to be about cash. If there's a resource that you can direct (which may have its own budget) you're making use of the organization's wealth. Most such wealth is going to be heavily discounted because there are substantial restrictions on what you're permitted to do with it, at least in a modern context (prior to modern communications, troop commanders often had quite wide discretionary powers), but it still fills many of the same functions as wealth.