Nobles

Nobles are a whiny bunch. They come in 4 flavors:

All Nobles live on Estates, which are separated from the "Rabble" by a wall. If they are promoted/demoted, they demand that a new Estate be constructed for them (except in the case of Baron/ess being demoted back to commoner. All Nobles will need Servants, Guards, and plenty of room to entertain guests.

Nobility--Lords both Famous and Infamous

Great Lords

The Great Lords can be Land Lords, Crime Lords, or a mix of both. The main thing you need to know is that the Great Lords are the ones who hold the power. Most of the time, you and those in your employ are considered Great Lords. Very rarely are there any other cases of other Great Lords appearing than those that you appoint.

The Land Lords

There are two sides to the Nobility coin. On the one side, there are the Land Lords. These Lords and Ladies have huge estates, live garishly, eat and dress luxuriously, and use far more resources than the common man. They do this for no better reason than because they were born well/rich, or have married/become well-born/rich through marriage or hard work. They have wealth and love to flaunt it. Their wealth is nearly always directly "earned" from the common man, who is just trying to make it through his life. The well-trained mercenary armies that are kept on retainer by the Land Lords can often be formidable, and sometimes a threat to peace, if enough Land Lords join forces against their liege Lords. Land Lords derive most of their income from renting out Apartments to citizenry in need.

They gain their power and influence from Citizens living in Apartments that they control.

The Crime Lords

The flip side of the Nobility coin are the infamous Nobles. These Crime Lords and Ladies tend to operate in the shadows amongst the Slums, living just as vicariously as the famous Nobles, but in general by illegal and often immoral means. Smugglers, drug lords, assassins, thieves, and more--these Crime Lords control the Slums of the land with an iron fist, and their "armies" of beggars and thieves can sometimes be an impressive threat to even a well-trained army.

Crime Lords find recruits for their nefarious ways in the Slums that they control.

Apartments

Land, and space to build on that land, is becoming increasingly rare and precious. Because of this, your advisors have come up with the idea to stop building individual Houses for every person and/or family, and instead build Apartment Buildings that can generally house twice the population in roughly the same space. In general, the Nobles run the Apartment complexes, and recieve rent from everyone that lives in their Apartment Buildings.

For every House replaced with Apartments, you must build 2 Apartments. These new Nobles are above and beyond the Nobles that are required to move to town because of the Stage.

These Totals are not cumulative. For example, if you have 30 Houses and all are replaced by Apartments, you could have 6 Baron/esses. Or a Duke/Duchess and a Count/ess. As long as the total amount of Houses replaced with Apartments matches this list, you may pick and choose any variety of Nobles that you wish.

Ranks of the Land Lords and their Estate Requirements

Baron or Baroness

The Baron/ess is a noble who is either new to Nobility or haven't really impressed any of the people in charge. They live on an Estate that is dwarfed by every other Noble, but they are quite proud of what they have.

Count or Countess

Count/ess is moving to your City.

Marquis or Marquess

Marquess/Marquis moves into your Capital