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Paths of Civilization II

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Also since we have no real idea how far back we are in time, what are the chances that if we keep picking exploration options to just... leave Africa? Is there a chance we could just keep going East and either hit the coast and keep going into Indonesia? Or following the coast into the Americas?

Like we started in Africa...but so did everyone else :V
 
Sivantic said:
Also since we have no real idea how far back we are in time, what are the chances that if we keep picking exploration options to just... leave Africa? Is there a chance we could just keep going East and either hit the coast and keep going into Indonesia? Or following the coast into the Americas?

Like we started in Africa...but so did everyone else :V
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Is it even confirmed that we are on a planet which resembles Earth?
 
[X] Legacy of Ferocity

You have to be ferocious to fight through uncounted spirits, hostile strangers, and an increasingly alien world all in order to atone for your civ's collective karmic debt. What these people did is somewhat insane, so let's immortalize that.
 
The current setting is based on Africa but is distinctly not Africa since I am doing a bunch of other stuff.

Also, there are totally other civilizations growing. Domesticated animals were traded for and they came from downriver. If you want a rough time period then look up when cattle arrived in North Africa.
 
CollectiveRamble said:
While I'm hopeful Not!Africa is more "Not!" than the world map of last time, if HanEmpire's map and supposition is remotely accurate then it seems we've gone a hell of a long way and likely won't be in contact with any of the other derivative factions we could've been before the civs forget their common origin. We're the Lake Tehmingi (Victoria) people of Not!Uganda now it seems.

Also am I right in thinking that IRL the best place to eke out a living in Africa (obviously very generally speaking) is the coast by the Nile and lakes?
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One big difference we can see immediately in the trek is that this river seems to have four cataracts rather than six.

Downriver cataract > marsh > upriver cataract > upriver land > desert cataract > desert/barren land > grassland cataract > grassland and new herders > forest and then the split.

We also seem to have gone up the tributary that went east.
 
BungieONI said:
One big difference we can see immediately in the trek is that this river seems to have four cataracts rather than six.

Downriver cataract > marsh > upriver cataract > upriver land > desert cataract > desert/barren land > grassland cataract > grassland and new herders > forest and then the split.

We also seem to have gone up the tributary that went east.
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Point of note, you also don't know how many cataracts are downriver.
 
There is a lot of discussion, but I feel people are probably not recognizing the real goal of the vote here?

We're not voting for our primary means of interaction for the rest of history.
We're not voting for something that will have dramatic effects on what we can do in the future.

We're voting for a legacy, it colors our perception of how the world works, of the undertone behind behavior and possibly give a bit of flavor to our future decisions.

Exploration does not mean we range out all the time. Ferocity does not mean we will subjugate everyone we see.

At most, Diplomacy will perhaps slightly affect how others view us initially, or slightly turn the narration towards more peaceable language.
At most, Trade will perhaps mean we have slightly more low-level caravaneering and so get a little more/more accurate gossip in narration.

Nothing in this vote suggests to me that we are making a selection that will have a significant effect on our ability to pursue any path, they will just affect some of our traditions and give us minor twists in narrator behavior.
 
Powerofmind said:
There is a lot of discussion, but I feel people are probably not recognizing the real goal of the vote here?

We're not voting for our primary means of interaction for the rest of history.
We're not voting for something that will have dramatic effects on what we can do in the future.

We're voting for a legacy, it colors our perception of how the world works, of the undertone behind behavior and possibly give a bit of flavor to our future decisions.

Exploration does not mean we range out all the time. Ferocity does not mean we will subjugate everyone we see.

At most, Diplomacy will perhaps slightly affect how others view us initially, or slightly turn the narration towards more peaceable language.
At most, Trade will perhaps mean we have slightly more low-level caravaneering and so get a little more/more accurate gossip in narration.

Nothing in this vote suggests to me that we are making a selection that will have a significant effect on our ability to pursue any path, they will just affect some of our traditions and give us minor twists in narrator behavior.
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I think it's generally better to assume our choices will be impactful than not. That, plus the fact that this is the last choice of an era, leads me to believe that this will be a fairly meaningful choice in the civ's development.

That probably doesn't mean we won't be able to change paths later if we want, but maybe not for some time
 
Falliant said:
I think it's generally better to assume our choices will be impactful than not. That, plus the fact that this is the last choice of an era, leads me to believe that this will be a fairly meaningful choice in the civ's development.

That probably doesn't mean we won't be able to change paths later if we want, but maybe not for some time
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I think people are assuming our decision will be too meaningful, however. It would be incredibly limiting to have our decision basically lock us from and into engaging in certain behaviors for multiple turns.
 
Powerofmind said:
I think people are assuming our decision will be too meaningful, however. It would be incredibly limiting to have our decision basically lock us from and into engaging in certain behaviors for multiple turns.
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Choosing a legacy is choosing what the civ will value. What the civ values effects how they respond to the events of the turn, and thus what choices they present us.
If Exploration wins, I think we'll get a lot fewer isolationist choices, if ferocious wins than I think we'll get a lot fewer peaceful options. A lot fewer doesn't equal zero, and I'm guessing that if we choose against our legacy enough we'll be able to change or replace it, I just don't think it'll be easy.
Given that we seem to get legacies quite rarely, I'm assuming they'll be important
 
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Academia Nut said:
Point of note, you also don't know how many cataracts are downriver.
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We also don't know what it flows into, it should be pointed out.

An ever thirsty desert that simply sucks up all water? Maybe it flows under a mountain and never comes up, circling underground and only having parts forced above ground in geysers? Maybe it just flows off the side of the world onto another world bellow us and continues that way like some sort of world water fountain.

If we're going to entertain magic, we should not assume this world works in a normal way.

If you're still using the thread as inspiration I'm going to keep tossing out these outlandish ideas!
 
Falliant said:
Choosing a legacy is choosing what the civ will value. What the civ values effects how they respond to the events of the turn, and thus what choices they present us.
If Exploration wins, I think we'll get a lot fewer isolationist choices, if ferocious wins than I think we'll get a lot fewer peaceful options. A lot fewer doesn't equal zero, and I'm guessing that if we choose against our legacy enough we'll be able to change or replace it, I just don't think it'll be easy.
Given that we seem to get legacies quite rarely, I'm assuming they'll be important
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Here's where I disagree. I think the biggest effect of the legacy is in how AN presents things to us, in part through our POVs, but also in terms of how he rolls his dice. Ferociousness as a legacy colors those perceptions just like any other, it 'taints' for lack of a more neutral synonym, our POVs. Given we're still holding fast to the concept of Mana, I suspect ferocity will primarily manifest as a tendency towards assertive, struggle-oriented, or otherwise generally competitive behavior, which will color what he does with his hidden dice and how he shows what we ended up with. Perhaps our traders or diplomats or explorers will have that tendency to dominate in their sphere, either with words, goods, or in being the best of the field. Yeah, it might make us kind of annoying, but that competitive flavor I view as an interesting driver for social progress.

Yes, it will probably end up with a few more crises and uppity, striving people that like to make semi-independent cities or what have you, but I view that as also not necessarily a bad thing.

The others I view similarly. Exploration is a legacy of wanting to know for the sake of it, not unlike Tehme himself. Obviously the color here will be a trend towards being inquisitive and questioning, as well as a populace that has internalized a desire for wanderlust. I'd argue that this is both the best and worst for developing society and philosophy this early in civilization, since it gives the whole population that little bit of philosopher groundwork I desperately want, but I'm ultimately holding onto ferocity because I've become more interested in AN's portrayal of it.
Diplomacy is in keeping the peace and being cooperative, internally and externally, I dislike it primarily because it strays somewhat closer to that uniquely Ymaryn brand of collectivism, even though we'd probably have to go hard at it to end up with Fire is Warm and KILL NOMADS BUTTON again. It's what it is in progress development, but I'm not here to optimize.
Trade is evolutionary to the initial gift-giving behavior, it seems to me a sort of desire for things and status. It's similar to ferocity, but has a different tone than the struggle and strive I feel from that, it's more cooperative, but not as cooperative as Diplomacy. It's usually pretty good at staying ahead of the curve in terms of development.
Finally Craft, is that classic if you build it they will come thing. It's all about a people that venerate awesome displays, because craft is not just things, it's also skills. To me it tastes of a best-of-the-best attitude, of arete and merit. Interesting, but I feel it gets most of it's impetus to raise the peak externally rather than internally.
 
Exploration has a good enough lead that I will call it here.

Adhoc vote count started by DkArthas on May 1, 2022 at 5:21 PM, finished with 141 posts and 98 votes.
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Interlude, Era I Recap
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    • Interlude, Era I Recap

    1

    So, what was going on with the sunset people? Well, basically their destruction of that village was the culmination of a series of retaliations. The not!Sahara was drying out and they were facing increasing pressure on their hunting grounds, pushing in towards overlapping with the more sedentary village. This led to skirmishes and other fighting, which eventually led to an ambiguous situation wherein the hunter-gathers lost a chieftain figure. They would say that it was in a cowardly ambush while trying to reach out to solve the problem, the villagers would have said that it was because they were attacked first. It doesn't really matter who started it, what happened was that the weaker hunter-gatherers were backed into a corner and elected to resort to extreme violence while they could still strike out.

    So by electing to go for overawing them you were supposed to find out more about the situation, which could have led to gaining access to new trade routes and the like, and take steps towards developing a gift economy. Only, I am using RNG to keep things a bit unpredictable, and the roll failed. But instead of it just turning into a fight, I decided to lean into it. The attacking tribe had completed their objective and ran when they saw you coming, and thus you never got to find out what was really going on, and learned a somewhat shittier and more selfish version of gift economy basics.

    If you see something weird happen, start assuming that I am working with fail forward mechanics. It's a lot more fun once I get the hang of it.

    2

    So if the rolls here had gone well, the individual village would have come to dominate the region. Instead, they went kind of shitty again and thus the ideas about "farm at home, hunt abroad" spread out and stabilized into a nasty little equilibrium. Again, by taking a fail forward ethos the situation went from one village dominating the others to creating a regional culture group in competition with each other. Instead of having it be "Well, you tried and it didn't work" I just moved forward and turned things not going great into a new set of problems to solve.

    3

    And here's the big one! What you should know here is that vote weighting causes in-universe effects. Sometimes this means that one interest group overthrows another. Sometimes this will mean the peasants rise up and then get massacred by the knights. Basically what happened here was that the Tastes Changed vote didn't enough in comparison to the Humans Can Be Prey vote for the Prey idea to not take hold in the hunters. This means that everyone else ends up fighting back against the hunters for their idea to ultimately win.

    Also, Prey wasn't about cannibalism (yet), it was about headhunting and raiding. It would have massively militarized the culture and lead towards more aggressive and warlike options.

    4

    Okay, so, just to clear things up, Grain and Stone were fairly trade oriented, just in different ways. Blood however was kind of "Blood, sweat, and tears". It made hard work more valued, as well as having lots of friends to kill the shit out of people who pissed you off.

    By this chapter I was also committed towards a Crisis occurring in the next chapter, and it was originally going to be sparked off by the introduction of livestock causing tensions. However, when I rolled the dice I got two crit successes, and then I decided to roll again for a random innovation. The innovation roll crit failed, but under a fail forward philosophy I decided that I would give a really good tech that the society couldn't handle.

    Thus, instead of having a discussion about what to do with the new herds of animals, I had the development of cash crops in an economy that couldn't handle it. The linothorax is an amazing tech for the age, but it is also super calorie intensive for a just above subsistence economy, and when everyone feels that the best way to be part of the community is to one-up everyone around them it is incredibly toxic. The perfect set up for the End of Era Crisis.

    Also, while not a "trap" option per se, choosing to point the blame at the farmers for planting too much flax was kind of a trap for the people who think that hierarchy is bad, because it would involve a fairly top down imposition of rule upon people. It's just even funnier that people basically went "How about all options at once for maximum chaos?"

    The Crisis here was long planned as the Hierarchy Crisis. Basically, there aren't enough resources for everyone to compete on even footing, but there are also more than enough resources that inequality develops. You can either make it so that only some people can compete for status, or you can lower the amount of resources. Any society that does the latter gets overrun by those that do the former. The question is of course over who gets the status and authority and why.

    5

    Not gonna lie, I had dreams of you lot picking Mother Knows Best because spoilers, but Spirits know best is also pretty cool. Run For the Hills was there because it made sense with the system I have crafted, but it was definitely my least favorite option because it was kind of surrendering all advantages built up. Bull Leads and Father Knows Best were both fairly typical in terms of next steps, being "Violent Patriarchy" and "Controlling Patriarchy" respectively, but the violence would have been fun to write about.

    I was also tempted to just give the Legacy options at this point and craft a full narrative story after, but I now have a pretty sweet idea of how to do the opening chapter of Era II, wherein I reveal exactly what was discovered from the eyes of a local going about their day.
     
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    • Academia Nut said:
    By this chapter I was also committed towards a Crisis occurring in the next chapter, and it was originally going to be sparked off by the introduction of livestock causing tensions. However, when I rolled the dice I got two crit successes, and then I decided to roll again for a random innovation. The innovation roll crit failed, but under a fail forward philosophy I decided that I would give a really good tech that the society couldn't handle.
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    To be honest, I completely underestimated the significance of our linen armor during that update---it felt, at best, like a background event that only exacerbated the problems caused by the river going bad, and not the instigating force.

    I guess I gotta be more careful not to take even innocuous narrative bits for granted, ey?

    Academia Nut said:
    Okay, so, just to clear things up, Grain and Stone were fairly trade oriented, just in different ways. Blood however was kind of "Blood, sweat, and tears". It made hard work more valued, as well as having lots of friends to kill the shit out of people who pissed you off.
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    Ahah! I thought it was going to be something like that, as opposed to something more devious and foreboding. That would have been an interesting cultural idea for the farming class to develop, though I'm not sure if that would have assuaged or exacerbated the toxic one-up-manship we had going on in our society.

    Out of curiosity @Academia Nut , what would have happened if we'd have chosen the other two options for Chapter II? I was especially interested about the "let them figure it out themselves" option. I assume this probably would have involved rolls, but, like... can you give us an idea of what spectrum of outcomes could have resulted from it?
     
    LuciDreamer said:
    To be honest, I completely underestimated the significance of our linen armor during that update---it felt, at best, like a background event that only exacerbated the problems caused by the river going bad, and not the instigating force.
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    Droughts have happened and been ridden out before, but this was the first time the culture was hit by a particularly bad one while they were growing prestige crops. Like, there are plenty of issues over generations that aren't worth mentioning because they don't cause major decision points.

    LuciDreamer said:
    Out of curiosity @Academia Nut , what would have happened if we'd have chosen the other two options for Chapter II? I was especially interested about the "let them figure it out themselves" option. I assume this probably would have involved rolls, but, like... can you give us an idea of what spectrum of outcomes could have resulted from it?
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    Letting bored men figure things out for themselves would have been on a spectrum from 'absolute chaos' to 'emergence of skilled artisans'. Forcing some men to stay home and farm would have accelerated the transition from Hunters to Warriors as the Hunters become a distinct class who specialize in violence.
     
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