Epoch: A Grand-Strategy Quest

There are two more issues I would like to make comments on, that I don't think have been mentioned yet in the thread.

1. Birth Rate vs. Death Rate. We are currently at +0 yearly population change. Only means of getting more that come to mind are: stealing women and changing to male dominated polygamy/concubines, assimilating a foreign tribe, or lowering the Death Rate. The latter will have to be done in any case I think, but I'm not sure how. Maybe the Great Prophet or Jarrix will get a vision? In any case, getting a new settlement is going to take a while.


2. Tech research speed. After Astrology, we are getting all of Pottery, Animal Husbandry and Mining in max 30 years. Probably faster. Comments like "we need this rather than that" fail to take into account that we are going to have them all really soon. The better question is what order are we going to want them in, but even that is splitting hairs a bit, since 10 years here or there won't make that much of a difference.

Going for Religion quickly makes sense, since the deities are OP and can just give us the other techs or destroy us if they so choose. We can also use the faith in connection with Foreign Trade, helping with proselytizing and later assimilation. Arguably, being the first to start solidifying and spreading their religion is a lot more important in this quest than being the first to have 2 cities.

Paroni said:

There are two more issues I would like to make comments on, that I don't think have been mentioned yet in the thread.

1. Birth Rate vs. Death Rate. We are currently at +0 yearly population change. Only means of getting more that come to mind are: stealing women and changing to male dominated polygamy/concubines, assimilating a foreign tribe, or lowering the Death Rate. The latter will have to be done in any case I think, but I'm not sure how. Maybe the Great Prophet or Jarrix will get a vision? In any case, getting a new settlement is going to take a while.


2. Tech research speed. After Astrology, we are getting all of Pottery, Animal Husbandry and Mining in max 30 years. Probably faster. Comments like "we need this rather than that" fail to take into account that we are going to have them all really soon. The better question is what order are we going to want them in, but even that is splitting hairs a bit, since 10 years here or there won't make that much of a difference.

Going for Religion quickly makes sense, since the deities are OP and can just give us the other techs or destroy us if they so choose. We can also use the faith in connection with Foreign Trade, helping with proselytizing and later assimilation. Arguably, being the first to start solidifying and spreading their religion is a lot more important in this quest than being the first to have 2 cities.

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not much we can do about the first as that is almost pure rng, because we would likely enter combat for stealing woman/children which means hoping we get lucky and don´t lose to many people or we get lucky with the births/deaths ...

2. Tech research speed is important because ~10+ years per tech is a long time and we can lose our hero units in that time which means from that point research will take alot longer (say we lose Vshera in childbirth means we go from average of 218 to 108) which makes it extremly important what research we lock in and to behonest astrology is unlikely to be a tech that prevents damage or atleast gives a buffer like pottery or animal husbandry give (better ability to store food and more food in general also animals that can likely help out on the fields) in case the weather isn´t good or the gods are pissed at us for a year.
hoping for the gods giving us stuff is quite dangerous as that is pretty much pure rng.

Skjadir said:

not much we can do about the first as that is almost pure rng, because we would likely enter combat for stealing woman/children which means hoping we get lucky and don´t lose to many people or we get lucky with the births/deaths ...

2. Tech research speed is important because ~10+ years per tech is a long time and we can lose our hero units in that time which means our from that point research will take alot longer (say we lose Vshera in childbirth means we go from average of 218 to 108) which makes it extremly important what research we lock in and to behonest astrology is unlikely to be a tech that prevents damage or atleast gives a buffer like pottery or animal husbandry give (better ability to store food and more food in general also animals that can likely help out on the fields) in case the weather isn´t good or the gods are pissed at us for a year.
hoping for the gods giving us stuff is quite dangerous as that is pretty much pure rng.

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I have to utterly disagree with the premise of your second paragraph. You say that 10+ years is a long time to develop prehistoric tech? Preposterous! Developing Agriculture took thousands or tens of thousands of years, and we would have had it in 20 years even without the Queen, starting from scratch. Domesticating chicken took thousands of years after the first settlements, and cows took thousands more, yet you say that 10 years would be a lot?

Remember as well that these techs were not really developed by a single tribe with 100 people, but instead by tens of thousands of people and many tribes exchanging ideas and specializing over the centuries. How on earth would any of our tribe members actually have time or wisdom to start carefully researching mining from scratch, never mind to succeed in learning it in a couple of years?

When I say that the deities give us the techs, I don't mean only the sort of gifts the Queen gave. I mean that the whole process of tech researching is clearly supernatural in origin.

Thus, researching astrology is only natural. I suspect it will do many things, the least of which is improving research speeds (it is a religion tech, and "gives" a Great Prophet). Also, developing our religion seems likely to lessen the amount of damage the supernatural can cause us, just the same as a granary would. The deities here have personalities, so being able to communicate with them better should naturally help.


I don't raise this issue to dunk on Skjadir. It is crucial to understand that this world is really different from the real world. The "tech speed compared to population growth speed" issue is alone more than enough to wash many old heuristics from PoC or Civilizations 1-6 down the toilet.

Paroni said:

I have to utterly disagree with the premise of your second paragraph. You say that 10+ years is a long time to develop prehistoric tech? Preposterous! Developing Agriculture took thousands or tens of thousands of years, and we would have had it in 20 years even without the Queen, starting from scratch. Domesticating chicken took thousands of years after the first settlements, and cows took thousands more, yet you say that 10 years would be a lot?

Remember as well that these techs were not really developed by a single tribe with 100 people, but instead by tens of thousands of people and many tribes exchanging ideas and specializing over the centuries. How on earth would any of our tribe members actually have time or wisdom to start carefully researching mining from scratch, never mind to succeed in learning it in a couple of years?

When I say that the deities give us the techs, I don't mean only the sort of gifts the Queen gave. I mean that the whole process of tech researching is clearly supernatural in origin.

Thus, researching astrology is only natural. I suspect it will do many things, the least of which is improving research speeds (it is a religion tech, and "gives" a Great Prophet). Also, developing our religion seems likely to lessen the amount of damage the supernatural can cause us, just the same as a granary would. The deities here have personalities, so being able to communicate with them better should naturally help.


I don't raise this issue to dunk on Skjadir. It is crucial to understand that this world is really different from the real world. The "tech speed compared to population growth speed" issue is alone more than enough to wash many old heuristics from PoC or Civilizations 1-6 down the toilet.

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... i don´t think you understand that we don´t operate on the civ scale for that time which is very important, but currently on a yearly scale that mean that 10 years are alot.
It also means that we invest the very limited amount of time that we have our hero units (Vshera being the more important one here), into developing said techs.
That means we need to focus on the techs that allow us to not get fucked by the dice first incase we lose her, because if she dies before we get said techs it becomes quite abit likely that we run into a bad end thanks to dice (hello yearly rolls) as we now will take atleast 2 times the amount of time to get it done if not more.

For astrology it only says that it unlocks the great prophet class not that we get one and as is we are increadibley lucky that we have two hero units.
There is also the case to be made that astrology won´t keep us safe from the supernatural nor that it is anything more then a pure religions tech for now, you are basicly trusting that the gods will safe us which in turn just seem to break down into hope we get lucky and don´t bad end.

Skjadir said:

... i don´t think you understand that we don´t operate on the civ scale for that time which is very important, but currently on a yearly scale that mean that 10 years are alot.
It also means that we invest the very limited amount of time that we have our hero units (Vshera being the more important one here), into developing said techs.
That means we need to focus on the techs that allow us to not get fucked by the dice first incase we lose her, because if she dies before we get said techs it becomes quite abit likely that we run into a bad end thanks to dice (hello yearly rolls) as we now will take atleast 2 times the amount of time to get it done if not more.

For astrology it only says that it unlocks the great prophet class not that we get one and as is we are increadibley lucky that we have two hero units.
There is also the case to be made that astrology won´t keep us safe from the supernatural nor that it is anything more then a pure religions tech for now, you are basicly trusting that the gods will safe us which in turn just seem to break down into hope we get lucky and don´t bad end.

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You make good arguments here, and I think it's worthy of our and the thread's time to hash this out a bit more.

Our most critical disagreement to me comes from a single different premise: the nature of deities. You seem to think that the deities are either mostly antagonistic or very arbitary (dice controlled). I disagree.

What we've seen so far indicates that the deities are rational agents with their own agendas, not just random dice controlled forces of nature. I'm not saying that there isn't dice involved at all, but that the deities are no more random than the human tribes surrounding us.

As to their motives? We have already been told that they absolutely need us. That means that they have zero incentive in destroying us, and should only want to help us thrive and remember to worship them properly. Deities of enemy tribes are probably antagonistic, but only those.

Thus, when you accuse me of trusting that the gods will save us, you are basically correct. I do believe that our eventually chosen gods will protect us by granting us tech and other blessings. However, unlike you, I think there is very little luck involved in this process. I admit this is not knowledge, but only educated guesswork. Still, I think my argument holds water.


Following the above reasoning, you seem to assume that us having Jarrix and Vshera is from being lucky. I don't think this is true. More likely every tribe has one person that is blessed by their gods, or every deity blesses one person at a time, or something like that. I don't really believe that hero mechanics are mainly based on luck in this quest. This guess directly follows from the arguments above.


Other issues are more straightforward.

First, you seem to assume that the yearly rolls can destroy us if we don't follow a specific tech route. I think this just can't be right. Demanding us to obey a certain tech route right from the start or automatically die ten turns later just from rolling badly is just really bad game planning. Any bad consequences should come as a combination of many choices and strategic errors, not just "you took settle, but you didn't take pottery or animal husbandry immediately after it, which means that you have a 1/20 chance to lose every turn".

Second, you are arguing that it isn't guaranteed that astrology will give us anything good. This is also not likely in my view. A tech in the same tier than animal husbandry or mining can't be a complete trap tech like that, for at the very least game planning reasons. If it says that we unlock Great Prophets, we actually do get Great Prophets, if maybe not right the following turn. And the shrine building won't be just a decoration mechanically.

Regarding time, i've been debating this and the discussion basically confirmed it for me.

Once you complete all the level 1 technologies there will be a time skip. Nothing drastic. 1,000 years at most and you will have updates within that period where you can guide and direct your Civilization, but not as indepth as it is now. After reach the end of the jumps, you'll likely work on level 2 techs similarly to how we did level one with much more control.

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman

[x] [Gender] Boy
[x] [Name] Gino
[x] [Spirits] Force Hortho and Glort to move.
[x] [Path] Epic Shaman
Because we have already gotten a feel for Hero and Leader. Let's check out shaman.
[X] [Units] Galley

[x] [Gender] Boy
[x] [Name] Gino
[x] [Spirits] Force Hortho and Glort to move.
[x] [Path] Epic Leader
[X] [Units] Galley

[x] [Gender] Boy
[x] [Name] Gino
[x] [Spirits] Force Hortho and Glort to move.
[x] [Path] Epic Leader
[X] [Units] Galley

[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman

[x] [Gender] Boy
[x] [Name] Rhashun
[x] [Spirits] Force Hortho and Glort to move.
[x] [Path] Epic Shaman
[X] [Units] Galley

[x] [Gender] Boy
[x] [Name] Gino
[x] [Spirits] Force Hortho and Glort to move.
[x] [Path] Epic Shaman
[X] [Units] Galley

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman

Y'all, we have a Great leader for prolly another 20-30 years.

I don't see how doubling up is going to be a good thing. Plus, you'll notice our culture is lagging. I imagine a shaman is good for that.

[X] [Gender] Boy
[X] [Name] Laal
Beloved, Dear one
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman
[X] [Units] Galley

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman
[X] [Units] Galley

Where are you guys getting Gino from??? Italian naming conventions are way off of what we've done so far. And I'm Gino, that feels weird.

So glad we picked water, first great naval power here we come.

Gino said:

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman
[X] [Units] Galley

Where are you guys getting Gino from??? Italian naming conventions are way off of what we've done so far.

So glad we picked water, first great naval power here we come.

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You've had some good comments. I wanted to honor you

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman

We need to learn to appease spirits regardless. They volunteered for testing.

Well thanks I guess. I think Varrix will win, but I'll put my hat in for first philosopher later.

And yes, those two should really have known better than to volunteer.

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman

[X] [Gender] Girl
[X] [Name] Varrix
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman

[X] [Gender] Boy
[X] [Name] Laal
[X] [Spirits] Experiment with how to appease the spirits
[X] [Path] Epic Shaman
[X] [Units] Galley

Really when they discovered they were agitating the spirits, you'd think they'd, I don't know, move? I wonder if it's because it's made of stone?