We're not boosting the Honored Elite value. Ever. Fuck the patricians.
I promised I would come back to his after work and here we are.
Now, stratification, where did it start? It's best to look at the epitome of stratification first: the King. For history, he (usually given human sexism, although, Poland did have a female King) was the end all and be all of temporal authority. His word was law and was often either inherently divine (God-Kings) or divinely inspired (Divine Right of Kings). The king held authority of life and death. If you trace the word "king" all the way back to its origins, you find it in the first city-states: Ur, Uruk, Babylon, etc. To them, King was merely a word that meant "Big Man".
So what's a Big Man? This is something that I think AcademiaNut misunderstood and misused in his game. In our game, for example, you've already had four of these Big Men: Alvar, Feodor, Lucjan, and Tymon. A Big Man is an informal position that some bands/tribes had. A Big Man had no official power. They couldn't censure people, they couldn't give orders, they couldn't punish; the only thing they could do was talk. They could bribe and cajole, but their only way of getting things done was by convincing people. This is a form of hierarchy that I'm pretty sure everyone (even Anarchists) is comfortable with.
So how did
that end up creating Kings? It was a slow process. But an inevitable one.
Big Men constantly jockeyed for position against each other. Human bands and tribes often had multiple Big Men, all of whom were ambitious and charismatic and existed in parallel with equivalent 'authority'. You gained in prestige and authority as you managed to convince more people to follow you. This often involved making sure your people's needs were met (this meant not only food but sexual partners for the smaller men who followed the Big Man) and that everyone was kept safe. The system is intensely meritocratic. It's also extremely unstable.
Eventually, over time, the system tends to collapse. Big Men are suborned by other Big Men who in turn give their allegiance to bigger men. Having informal sway over a large portion of the population allows you to turn that into even more and more influence. Knowing people allows you to get more done. Interpersonal connections were the real currency of the Neolithic Age. This creates a runaway feedback loop. Even if all Big Men were equally skilled, simple chance would propel some to the top while others crash. The system if inherently unstable. It cannot persist.
So how do you force the Big Man system to self-propagate against its inherent collapse? Well, the easiest way is to start murdering each and every Hero you get. They're Big Men who won. Then you want to stamp our every hint of ambition. Someone wants to better their situation? Heresy. Someone makes the entire tribe laugh with funny jokes? Rip out their tongue. They could turn the positive feeling of humour into interpersonal connections almost immediately and eventually into kingship. Having too many friends is a sign that someone's becoming a Big Man. The very act of having friends makes you powerful. Chairman Mao said 'All political authority descends from the barrel of a gun;' he's not completely wrong. Power is the act of being able to mobilize people. If you have friends, getting them to do you a favour is easy. You can then leverage this as a broker of favours to get more friends and more favours. We are social animals and we are literally wired to do this.
This is literally how your in-game economy currently works.
People also naturally teach their children and pass down their social connections. Friends will likely have children that can grow up knowing each other and then eventually becomes friends on their own. Social connections (and thus power) are naturally transmitted down generational lines. Sure, education can help, but unless you're a moron education is something that any one can succeed at until you get to the highest levels of intellectual ability.
If you want to prevent this, the inquisition that destroys all interpersonal relationships will have to be run by somebody. Even if it's only an informal, ad-hoc council convincing the tribe to ostracize and murder outcast members. Hmm... this position sounds in no way like one that would attract an ambitious, powerful, and charismatic man. Stalin would cry tears of jealousy at the amount of authoritarian power necessary to do thus.
So now that we've established that Big Men are inherent in human societies and that these social systems tend to collapse inevitably into one with a single Big Man on top, how does that get us to Kingship? That's actually relatively easy. A system will one Big Men will probably have a number of Middle Men. These are all powerful, connected, and influential people, but they lost out the race for the top spot. If there's a dozen of them, then it's trivial for the Big Man on top to engineer disagreements and fights between the Middle Men. These Middle Men are then forced to jockey for the Big Man's favour in order to compete against the rivals. If the Middle Men all ganged up, they would trivially overthrow the Big Man, but none of them do.
Why not? This gets back to human psychology. People who have to compete against each other for resources will grow to hate each other. It fosters enmity and prevents them all from working together. There's also an element of risk assessment involved. Sure, if you flip the table, you could end up in charge, but you could also end up dead. That's a lot of risk for minimal gain. After all, as a Middle Man, you're not top dog, but you are very near the top. If you're playing blackjack, are you going to ask for another card when you're sitting at 20? Sure, you could do better, but it's extremely likely that you'll bust instead and lose everything.
Thus, the Middle Men are deadlocked against each other and the Big Man's position starts to calcify. Even if the Big Man is outmaneuvered, the one most likely to replace them is a Middle Man, the situation doesn't change much. This new system begins to stabilize at the top.
So what happens if a Little Man wanted to replace a Middle Man? That might happen. If the Little Man can defeat the Middle Man and then present himself as a replacement as a fait accompli. Since the Little Man won and became a Middle Man, the Big Man is likely to accept it. After all, he doesn't care about who the Middle Men are as long as they're divided and not all working against him. In fact, it can be beneficial for a Little Man to be promoted since they're likely weakened by their struggles and will need to rely on the Big Man for support. The new system begins to stabilize in the middle
For a Tiny Man, the situation is pretty different. The Tiny Man is really low on the totem pole. If he wants to try and replace the Little Man, he's trivial to crush. The Big Man can do this fairly easily on his own. Thus, very few of the Little Men will be replaced by Tiny Men. Even a Middle Man could easily crush a Tiny Man. They're likely even good to do so. After all, if a Tiny Man tries to beat a Little Man, what's to say they won't grow to try and beat a Middle Man? Thus, the top of the system manages to keep the bottom of the system in line. This system inherently stabilizes at the bottom.
Now it's possible for all of the Tiny Men to team up (i.e. the Baron's War and the Magna Carta) but there are likely a lot of Tiny Men. How are they going to all team up?
Over time the system will continue to calcify, becoming more and more like a noble-run society. I mean, the language just changes: Big Man = King, Middle Man = Duke, Little Man = Count/Marquis, Tiny Man = Baron. This system is inherently stabilizing at every level. It's basically evolution; a stable system is better at propagating itself than an unstable system. There's no way to escape it. Trying to fight the system is exactly as fruitless and impossible as trying to fight evolution (descent with modification over time).
If anything, having an Elite trait line
helps with the (likely unstated) goal of being meritocratic. If people have to be the best they can be, they can be demoted for incompetence faster. If no one cares about competence, then Big, Middle, or Little Men tend to drift along without being challenged as seriously. If you don't have an Elite trait, social stratification will continue to develop. It's unavoidable. If you fight it, eventually your civilization will explode under the strain. All of the survivors will then automatically pick up additional stratification after they crawl out of the Dark Age you caused. Hierarchy gained in that way is likely to be extremely harsh compared to that which arises naturally.
Even in the modern day, social stratification exists. Perhaps more so than many people think and, arguably, to a greater degree than any time in history.
(Sorry for anyone who thought this alert would be an update.)
@Redium Can we have confirmation? Is there are Palisade at the Fingers settlement or was that burned down?
The Fingers palisade burned down with the rest of the Fingers settlement.
Also, could people clean up their votes? Elected Representatives is technically winning, but Plan Consolidate has 2 extra votes that aren't counted with it. Correcting the vote will change who wins.
