I would like to define a new Association type, that describes the relationship between a “lordship” and a “servant”. However there have been - especially in Germany - a plethora of different relationships that fall in this overall category. A “Untertan” is not the same as a “Hausdiener” and not the same as a “Leibeigener” - and all those are not “slaves” etc. Let alone the divers relationships that existed in other areas of the world, mirroring the specific ecconomical and political circumstances. Do I have to create different Associations for each and every different relationship? This would become rather unwieldy. Is it not possible to create a relationship that can be fine-tuned? Like you have a general “Servitute”-relationship, but you can specify “Gutsherr - Untertan” or “Enslaver - Enslaved” or whatever really fits the circumstance? In the end, we want to map real history and not slot the past into made-up general categories, right?
The answer to your first question is ‘yes’ you have to manually create them if you want varying degrees of servitude.
Your second question is ‘no’ it is not possible to create one association that can be tweaked as needed. Keep in mind that Associations are new to RM. We don’t yet know where or even if this is going to be more deeply developed.
As for mapping real history and not slotting it into made-up general categories…there is absolutely no way that any program will every be able to be written in a manner that allows it to flex for every possible need that a userbase could possibly want. There are probably as many different wants and needs as there are people in the world and if a program could be written to anticipate and flex to everyone one of those needs, you most certainly wouldn’t be getting it for only $39.95.
What you are asking for is provided to some degree by the Shared Events feature. You could have a custom “Servitute” fact type with roles “Gutsherr”, “Untertan”, etc. The Principal person cannot be assigned one of these roles but the Description field might help to make it explicit.
However, neither Shared Events nor Associations is fully developed in RM9 so they will come up short one way or another. You might have better luck with another program.