From Stone to the Stars

Ghostdevil said:

That doesn't mean anything, Nomads are at a long term disadvantage barring high fantasy shenanigans, but even then Settled Civs have the long term advantage, since the high fantasy bs would also apply to them

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Do continue to ignore the fact that Quests are both stories and games, the QM wouldn't offer a option in Character Creation that's basically worse than everything else without explicitly telling their players.

Ghostdevil said:

Oh Please tell me these late game options, that don't lead to our collapse or subsumption into another culture? The Mongol Empire conquered a large amount of the world but they still fell, and settled civilization proved triumphant, its that very way of life that led to this forum, so its kinda obvious which path is the best overall. But seriously tell me these options, maybe they will change my mind, because i don't see them, since Real Life is telling me that Nomads don't exactly lead to success.

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That's pretty easy. We could just end up living like a horde of locusts, leaving nothing behind and scouring the earth before moving on to the next target. Eventually, when this planet is a empty husk, we look to the stars and claim them too. Think of us as a non-insectoid Tyranid. A Settlement can't leverage their long term advantage if we've burned them to the ground after all.

Hell, a Sci-Fi Fleet based Civilization of Raiders or Peaceful Traders would be a breath of fresh air compared to the hundreds of same-y Civ Quests out there. The problem here is that you seem to insist on what you know works in RL, completely ignoring the fact that a Quest doesn't actually have to follow RL conventions.

Hannz said:

Do continue to ignore the fact that Quests are both stories and games, the QM wouldn't offer a option in Character Creation that's basically worse than everything else without explicitly telling their players.

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Yes do continue to ignore the fact that the options can't be perfectly equal, that reality should tell you that one is Long Term Worse off than the others. The Nomad choice is Fine for a good long time; however the reason i call it bad is that it can't work if this quest is going to be anything that it indicates and it definitely can't work if were trying to reach the stars like the Title suggests, though i guess we can just ignore that w/e

Hannz said:

That's pretty easy. We could just end up living like a horde of locusts, leaving nothing behind and scouring the earth before moving on to the next target. Eventually, when this planet is a empty husk, we look to the stars and claim them too. Think of us as a non-insectoid Tyranid. A Settlement can't leverage their long term advantage if we've burned them to the ground after all.

Hell, a Sci-Fi Fleet based Civilization of Raiders or Peaceful Traders would be a breath of fresh air compared to the hundreds of same-y Civ Quests out there. The problem here is that you seem to insist on what you know works in RL, completely ignoring the fact that a Quest doesn't actually have to follow RL conventions.

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Before i say anything else, I doubt your going to convince anyone to be like a horde of locust and salt the earth.
Anyways, your ignoring the fact that Nomads will probably never reach space on their own. The only reason tech got so advanced is that a section of the population could dedicate itself to the sciences and philosophy, something that nomads will have little chance to do, since the entire population is required to hunt, defend, roam and invade. Theres ignoring rl conventions, then theres breaking SOD and the QM bullshitting things up.

Basically your entire argument relies on the QM throwing all realism out the window.

Ghostdevil said:

Yes do continue to ignore the fact that the options can't be perfectly equal, that reality should tell you that one is Long Term Worse off then the others. The Nomad choice is Fine for a good long time; however the reason i call it bad is that it can't work if this quest is going to be anything that it indicates and it definitely can't work if were trying to reach the starts like the Title suggests, though i guess we can just ignore that w/e

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If an option is unworkable, a QM would have no reason to put it there, but I guess we can just ignore that w/e.

Ghostdevil said:

Before i say anything else, I doubt your going to convince anyone to be like a horde of locust and salt the earth.
Anyways, your ignoring the fact that Nomads will probably never reach space on their own. The only reason tech got so advanced is that a section of the population could dedicate itself to the sciences and philosophy, something that nomads will have little chance to do, since the entire population is required to hunt, defend, roam and invade.

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Why not? If people are willing to vote for unconventional stuff, then I don't see what's stopping us from salting the earth given the proper motivation.

"Probably" isn't never. This is a Fantasy Quest after all, reality need not apply. Nomads in fiction have a heavy connection with Nature/Ancestral Spirits/Gods whenever they aren't busy raiding and pillaging, so our equivalent of Tech Advancements could easily come from those. Fantasy in Space sounds like a novel idea, and Tech isn't the only way to reach the stars. It all depends on the setting and the writer at the end of the day.

Ghostdevil said:

That doesn't mean anything, Nomads are at a long term disadvantage barring high fantasy shenanigans, but even then Settled Civs have the long term advantage, since the high fantasy bs would also apply to them

Oh Please tell me these late game options, that don't lead to our collapse or subsumption into another culture? The Mongol Empire conquered a large amount of the world but they still fell, and settled civilization proved triumphant, its that very way of life that led to this forum, so its kinda obvious which path is the best overall. But seriously tell me these options, maybe they will change my mind, because i don't see them, since Real Life is telling me that Nomads don't exactly lead to success.

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Sure, most nomads eventually settled. So what? We can milk nomadism for the benefits and get off that train when it stops working so well, at which point we can choose to ape from whatever surrounding cultures seem to have the most admirable traits without having to carry as much of their baggage.

Look at all manner of Turkish states which have ruled out from Egypt to India, the Hungarians, Arabs, heck even the early Slavs and Germanics are thought to have had a nomadic lifestyle. Are they all living now differently than they were back in the times of their nomadic prime? Sure, but I'd say that most cultures even settled ones don't go unchanged for thousands of years.

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] East

Anyway, I want to encourage dogs because they're great and also to start moving around and look for any sweet spots. Prey animals seem like more consistent and sustainable types for consumption less liable to kill us dead and hinder our growth.

Ghostdevil said:

Oh Please tell me these late game options, that don't lead to our collapse or subsumption into another culture? The Mongol Empire conquered a large amount of the world but they still fell, and settled civilization proved triumphant, its that very way of life that led to this forum, so its kinda obvious which path is the best overall. But seriously tell me these options, maybe they will change my mind, because i don't see them, since Real Life is telling me that Nomads don't exactly lead to success.

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If Real Life is your guiding principal, then this quest is impossible. No civilization has lasted all of time. Not one. Most barely last a few hundred years, and most that lasted longer barely resemble the civilization that they started as.

So, either this quest is impossible, or it doesn't follow the strict guidelines of real life.

The obvious answer to this is successor states, which allow the player to continue playing, even if their civ changes a bit every time it happens. Nomad civs are fully capable of utilizing this mechanic, so even if we eventually develop a more sedentary lifestyle, we will have gone thousands of years as nomads, and we could easily come out stronger for it depending on how we play it and where we end up by utilizing our strong start effectively. Our position and values would be totally different in that situation, even if it really was impossible to maintain a nomadic lifestyle in the modern age. In this situation, it's about the journey, not the destination.

If this is not the case and we're expected to go the distance, then there's no reason we cannot put on our tryhard pants to maintain a cohesive culture while remaining nomadic, since apparently reality does not apply. We can choose to value the written word more once paper becomes a viable technology over tablets, allowing us to maintain a distinct identity and pantheon even when being exposed to new cultures. We can pursue science and trade to remain militarily relevant. We can use our record keeping to develop long term, sustainable migration and hunting patterns so as to not accidentally extinct things. Eventually, we may have to develop more permanent sites for things like industry, but that's not the same as going full agriculture. Que star harvesting nomad fleets that eat solar systems and move on.

Discarding nomadic cultures this early on simply because there's no nomadic cultures in modern times just makes no sense. We have no idea what the goals, mechanics and limitations of the game are, and they could have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

8bitBob said:

If Real Life is your guiding principal, then this quest is impossible. No civilization has lasted all of time. Not one. Most barely last a few hundred years, and most that lasted longer barely resemble the civilization that they started as.

So, either this quest is impossible, or it doesn't follow the strict guidelines of real life.

The obvious answer to this is successor states, which allow the player to continue playing, even if their civ changes a bit every time it happens. Nomad civs are fully capable of utilizing this mechanic, so even if we eventually develop a more sedentary lifestyle, we will have gone thousands of years as nomads, and we could easily come out stronger for it depending on how we play it and where we end up by utilizing our strong start effectively. Our position and values would be totally different in that situation, even if it really was impossible to maintain a nomadic lifestyle in the modern age. In this situation, it's about the journey, not the destination.

If this is not the case and we're expected to go the distance, then there's no reason we cannot put on our tryhard pants to maintain a cohesive culture while remaining nomadic, since apparently reality does not apply. We can choose to value the written word more once paper becomes a viable technology over tablets, allowing us to maintain a distinct identity and pantheon even when being exposed to new cultures. We can pursue science and trade to remain militarily relevant. We can use our record keeping to develop long term, sustainable migration and hunting patterns so as to not accidentally extinct things. Eventually, we may have to develop more permanent sites for things like industry, but that's not the same as going full agriculture. Que star harvesting nomad fleets that eat solar systems and move on.

Discarding nomadic cultures this early on simply because there's no nomadic cultures in modern times just makes no sense. We have no idea what the goals, mechanics and limitations of the game are, and they could have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

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Without agriculture it's impossible to maintain a large enough population base to be at the forefront of science. Hunting is inefficient and manpower intensive, and won't allow even a large percentage of a small population of nomads to pursue science. Even at their peak under the Mongols, they didn't have nearly the same level of population or technological advancement as civs like China did. The only thing they excelled at was military affairs. Nomads only survived as long as they did IRL because agriculture was unfeasible in the steppes. Otherwise more entrenched civs with large populations like China and Russia would have wiped them out even earlier than they were in real life by slowly colonizing the steppes. I agree that we don't know what the mechanics of this game are, but I think even though it's a game since it's a civ quest it will probably have at least some realism. I'm fine with being nomadic for a few centuries or even millennia before settling, but it's eventually necessary. As for successor states, I'm not so sure. The key weakness of nomadic societies is that while their military is strong, it tends to use all the men in their military efforts. We could end up like the Forhuch in Paths of Civilization getting wiped out completely due to a war that went poorly, whereas a settled civ would just lose their armies and become a vassal state.

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] East
Permanent settlements and agriculture is the way to go in the long run but starting farming is a lot of work getting better at hunting so we are larger and have more spare before we try is probably a good idea.

Personal game plan for Nomad Quest:
1) Early Game
-Discover Cargo Animals(low hanging fruit)
-Discover Herding(low hanging fruit)
-Discover Holy Sites and use them as cultural touchstones
-Encounter as many civilizations as possible while they are developing before they get a hateboner for Nomads.
-Trade ideas
-Develop Early Cartography

2) Mid Game
-Steal Chariots
-Develop supply point settlements or vassals. Basically we coopt minor settled civilizations into providing us tools and tech in exchange for protection.
-Steal writing
-Steal archery
-Steal boats

Nomadic civilizations have their strength in durability, where they don't really get wiped out by anyone until the gunpowder age. You can lose individual tribes, but your legacy is the impression you leave on the people you encounter.
Even if often the impression is a large boot.

Maybe we'd convert to settled down the line, but hey, people DO love the trader nomads and the rare treasures from distant lands.

Ghostdevil said:

Before i say anything else, I doubt your going to convince anyone to be like a horde of locust and salt the earth.

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I was convinced, seems like a jolly old time.

Also, you're forgetting one, big important fact. No IRL Civ is guided by an everchanging group of faceless gods(IE, us) to leverage all their pros and cons to advance them even further.

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] East

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] East

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] East

Well, my option isn't going to win, so let's go be proper nomads

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] No

Domesticating animals is huge, whether we end up nomadic or not; this seems like the best combination to ensure we do so, rather than trying to do so on the move. There's no indication that this area is being hunted out yet, so we can afford to wait a bit before moving on.

Personally, my choice course of action right now, with the initial result we got, would be to go semi-nomadic. A small handful of hub settlements that the hoard can always come back to and rely on to support the bulk of constantly moving civilization.

Hannz said:

That's pretty easy. We could just end up living like a horde of locusts, leaving nothing behind and scouring the earth before moving on to the next target. Eventually, when this planet is a empty husk, we look to the stars and claim them too.

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They'll still have to settle down temporarily on the now ravaged planet until they can actually get to said stars.

Assuming said now admittedly ravaged planet can still even support a civilization actually making it not just to space, but to another planet capable of supporting their way of life as well.

Nah man, we just have to get fusion, rockets, and some sort of cryotech, and then we can rocket into the Great Void and pillage our way across the stars!

Space Jawa said:

Personally, my choice course of action right now, with the initial result we got, would be to go semi-nomadic. A small handful of hub settlements that the hoard can always come back to and rely on to support the bulk of constantly moving civilization.

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Need to find the good sites first. Seminomadic are more fragile than either one. You want your hubs and nodes to be on strategic resources.

KnownParadox said:

Nah man, we just have to get fusion, rockets, and some sort of cryotech, and then we can rocket into the Great Void and pillage our way across the stars!

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Right, but we'd still have to do that while surviving on a ravaged planet.

Ravaged planets tend not to be conducive to creating civilizations that are any good at scientifically advancing on their own.

8bitBob said:

If Real Life is your guiding principal, then this quest is impossible. No civilization has lasted all of time. Not one. Most barely last a few hundred years, and most that lasted longer barely resemble the civilization that they started as.

So, either this quest is impossible, or it doesn't follow the strict guidelines of real life.

The obvious answer to this is successor states, which allow the player to continue playing, even if their civ changes a bit every time it happens. Nomad civs are fully capable of utilizing this mechanic, so even if we eventually develop a more sedentary lifestyle, we will have gone thousands of years as nomads, and we could easily come out stronger for it depending on how we play it and where we end up by utilizing our strong start effectively. Our position and values would be totally different in that situation, even if it really was impossible to maintain a nomadic lifestyle in the modern age. In this situation, it's about the journey, not the destination.

If this is not the case and we're expected to go the distance, then there's no reason we cannot put on our tryhard pants to maintain a cohesive culture while remaining nomadic, since apparently reality does not apply. We can choose to value the written word more once paper becomes a viable technology over tablets, allowing us to maintain a distinct identity and pantheon even when being exposed to new cultures. We can pursue science and trade to remain militarily relevant. We can use our record keeping to develop long term, sustainable migration and hunting patterns so as to not accidentally extinct things. Eventually, we may have to develop more permanent sites for things like industry, but that's not the same as going full agriculture. Que star harvesting nomad fleets that eat solar systems and move on.

Discarding nomadic cultures this early on simply because there's no nomadic cultures in modern times just makes no sense. We have no idea what the goals, mechanics and limitations of the game are, and they could have absolutely nothing to do with reality.

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Successor states require them to be culturally similar, but nomads don't do so hot there, even the Mongol Empire can't really say they spread their culture in settled areas... the only place that really stuck with the nomadic thing was the Steppes, but were not in the steppes in this quest. Nomads don't advance tech real well either, so anyone thinking were gonna nomad our way to space are deluding themselves or thinking the QM is just going to hand us the victory through asspull.
Real Life has to be the guiding principal since its Worked, inleast you think that the qm is just going to ignore what actually works to make an unfeasible way of life do well in areas that it isn't possible, if reality doesn't apply to us then neither does it apply to the settled civs and we Lose anyways,

I'm still not sure why people are taking about space tbh.

Like, it would probably take irl years in order to get anywhere near the point that even a fully settled tech focused civ could get into space.

Instead of focusing on winning, it seems like a much better idea to focus on having fun and doing interesting things instead.

[x] [Food] Prey Animals
[x] [Action] Explore
[x] [Go] East

I am sure that by the time it starts mattering - if we even live that long - our starting traits will morph towards expansionist civilization or something that is only tangentially related to the concept of nomadic tribes. It's just we are at a point where it is hard to express 'wanderlust' in any other meaningful way.

Ghostdevil said:

Thats a given; however thats not looking into the inherent negatives of staying nomadic, while its useful and easy for a long while since tech won't reach the level to permanently put us down for a significant amount of time, eventually its going to mean a loss or us settling down either after conquest or after huge amounts of internal strife. Basically i am looking extremely long term and at the play style i want
Oh well, the waypoints are a good way to start the unbiasing of settling.

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Basically everyone is semi-Nomadic at this point in time. People are only starting to transition to early agriculture because the land is 'filling up' and is slowly going over its carrying capacity for nomadic hunter-gatherers. Nobody wanted to settle down and found agricultural civilizations, Nomadic existence was simply superior.

Cariyaga said:

@Redium Does voting No on [Go] proc against Wanderlust?

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It would be a percentile roll, but supremely unlikely at this point. The area is still 'new' and largely unexplored. Of course, there are outright benefits to moving; those give you a free Explore action in whichever direction you move.

JamesShazbond said:

I don't suppose you could tell us what the other options would have given us?

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Seeking Resources would have gotten you Pioneering Spirit, where when you take a Stability hit, you gain Econ at the cost of Centralization.

Pleasing Spirits would've gotten you Appease the Unseen which would've doubled your benefits for spirit 'chosen' actions and doubled penalties for 'displeasing' actions. It would essentially double the effects of climate, miracle, and disaster dice. Anything that coincides with good climate would give better gains, but you would quickly get locked out of things that you happened to do around times of bad climate. If you had taken this, it was very close to smiting you this turn; your Climate rolls were only middling.

Escaping Violence or Fleeing Disaster would've given you variations of Flight Before Fight that encourages you to cut and run when encountering difficulties, violence or disasters. It would, however, have mitigated disaster rolls. Each option would've focused on different aspects of disaster avoidance. Escaping Violence would've likely evolved into either a value centered on fleeing or getting backed into a corner and lashing out. Fleeing Disaster would've evolved into some type of resiliency virtue.

Ghostdevil said:

The biggest reason is that settled life is fundamental better? Its the path that leads to not shitty living and improved culture. Nomads do not stand the test of time, even the most successful ones.
I do know that Early settled is super shit compared to nomads, but its a matter of time before nomads cannot compare.

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You have to remember the latter point you made. No one wants to become a settled society. Everyone on your continent will actually fight settling down as much as possible because it's such a shitty life.

As for Nomads not standing the test of time: the Hungarians, the Turks, the Germanic people; a lot of successful Nomadic peoples go on to conquer their own little corner of heaven. Sure, they don't remain Nomadic forever, but saying that the French, Germans, and Turks didn't have an enormous influence on modern history is simply not true.

Hannz said:

Basic Facts don't neccessarily hold true in a Fantasy Setting. Besides, at the end of the day, a Quest is both a Narrative and a Game. Options are supposed to be balanced, and making the impossible possible is the entire point of some stories.

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Fantasy setting? Who said anything about that?

Dessard said:

Domesticating animals is huge, whether we end up nomadic or not; this seems like the best combination to ensure we do so, rather than trying to do so on the move. There's no indication that this area is being hunted out yet, so we can afford to wait a bit before moving on.

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An area being 'hunted out' is basically not a concern. You simply don't kill enough animals for the number taken to be meaningful against the size of the population. It's only when you start becoming a settled civilization, taming the forests and doing agriculture that animals start becoming rarer. Even then, hunting is a major source of food up until the Bronze Age; we're not likely to hit the point where it's even a possibility for at least six months IRL.

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] South-East

Wolves are cool. Prey animals are likely to develop better hunting skills than Safe Game and provide more food than Prize Game, though I would note that Safe Game might lead to domesticated herds.

Need to go somewhere because we don't like to stay.

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] East

I didn't vote Wanderlust, but I dig it.
Also, DOOGS.

[X] [Food] Prey Animals
[X] [Action] Expand Wolfpacks
[X] [Go] No

@Redium

What do the people know of the lands to the east, since folks wanna go that way, it'd Pay to know what they know.

MrGazzer said:

@Redium

What do the people know of the lands to the east, since folks wanna go that way, it'd Pay to know what they know.

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The People's tales tell that the Land of the Dead lies in that direction. A place so frozen and so hellish that nearly every soul to cross it is damned. It is a place of profound mortal peril that few others can compare. An orker's charge is less implacable than the death you would find there. To go in that direction is madness! Madness I say!

(The map shows that there's a small, narrow forested lowlands area in between impassible hilly land to the south and to the north. A river leads to a series of large lakes down the centre of the lowlands. The river does continue on, past the lakes, but beyond that, your people know nothing. They're not certain where the river ends.)