Paths of Civilization II: Paths of Industrialization
- Location
- being near locations is my passion.
[X] Plan FREEDOM
-[X] [UH] 2 PW - Power of the purse
-[X] [LH] 4 PW - Minor lawmaking (+1 Temp Happiness)
-[X] [Assembly] 2 PW - Broad (+1 Happiness, Min. Consciousness from Education Increased by 1)
-[X] [Press] 2 PW - Free press (-1 Temp Happiness, Min. Consciousness from Education Increased by 1, Academic Freedom Provides Half Consciousness to Innovation)
-[X] [UH] 2 PW - Power of the purse
-[X] [LH] 4 PW - Minor lawmaking (+1 Temp Happiness)
-[X] [Assembly] 2 PW - Broad (+1 Happiness, Min. Consciousness from Education Increased by 1)
-[X] [Press] 2 PW - Free press (-1 Temp Happiness, Min. Consciousness from Education Increased by 1, Academic Freedom Provides Half Consciousness to Innovation)
Yes, I must say that the vibe I am getting here is "the more power you give up the better".
I think it sad, actually.
It is the same problem I had with the beginning of the new quest - with one wrong decision we seemed to have lost all the uniqueness of an Empire we built up over all the time, and landed in a nearly otl 18th century.
And now, it seems, we cannot even build up something new and unique, since all out capitalism and democracy seem the only "correct" way to go.
I would really be sad if this were the case, not because I dislike democracy, but because I dislike games with "the only correct" way to victory.
And because I actually play this quest as a way to get something new and not repeat the history of 19th century with new names.
Considering a bunch of other, tiny, nations would have outstripped us if they weren't constantly at war... Yeah.
It seems the Sketch have hit a system of government with all the benefits and no downsides.
Sounds reasonable
I mean, consider the British Empire. Same system as the sketch, emerged from the 19th century as the world's first superpower.
But I don't trust them with it. Not formally.
The Upper House don't have much of a power base in the population.
The Lower House currently lack the legal experience, or the backing of the mass franchise.
And I will point out that unelected Houses with the power of the purse are pretty thin on the ground atm.
Not sure how it worked in the 19th century; not an European history nerd.
Who said you won't have to?
I mean, it's one thing if you chose to do what you did with Minor Lawmaking, where they had it de facto but not in law.
Which allowed it to be rescinded at need.
EDIT
Basically, don't go too fast.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Yeah, like. I'm not against modernizing our government, what baffles me is how the Sketch apparently get all the benefits of a fully decentralized capitalist economy, and all the benefits of a centralized government, and none of the downsides of either.
I mean, apparently they can trivially afford to hemmorage a colossal amount of SoL and IC, while plundering their Education, and their Happiness is apparently still high enough (Despite what's apparently crushing levels of industrialization and work output, given how they're outproducing virtually everyone else combined on a tech base that is--at best--a generation ahead of their peers) that there's not so much as a peep out of their populace, and they're all perfectly happy to fall in line.
And they still have the time and energy to do that shit they pulled with the Nohon, while patting out their economy.
It's one thing for them to have twice the action economy and productivity of everyone else. It's another thing entirely to have that and the shock resistance of an autocratic, centralized state. This is basically the equivalent of the Great Depression coming and going in the course of a few months, and that's absurd. They were literally around ground zero of the collapse of the global economy, with what's been described as a government-type that prioritizes wealth and the accumulation thereof--and yet they could go against that trivially without any internal issues because apparently they had the discipline to save so many resources that they could pay off the depression and there was no significant internal dissent?
Like, what the hell?.
I mean, apparently they can trivially afford to hemmorage a colossal amount of SoL and IC, while plundering their Education, and their Happiness is apparently still high enough (Despite what's apparently crushing levels of industrialization and work output, given how they're outproducing virtually everyone else combined on a tech base that is--at best--a generation ahead of their peers) that there's not so much as a peep out of their populace, and they're all perfectly happy to fall in line.
And they still have the time and energy to do that shit they pulled with the Nohon, while patting out their economy.
It's one thing for them to have twice the action economy and productivity of everyone else. It's another thing entirely to have that and the shock resistance of an autocratic, centralized state. This is basically the equivalent of the Great Depression coming and going in the course of a few months, and that's absurd. They were literally around ground zero of the collapse of the global economy, with what's been described as a government-type that prioritizes wealth and the accumulation thereof--and yet they could go against that trivially without any internal issues because apparently they had the discipline to save so many resources that they could pay off the depression and there was no significant internal dissent?
Like, what the hell?.
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I honestly find it kinda sad too. I feel the new game format lost a lot of the customization that was one of the best parts about PoC. The game is still very good, but not the same.
Sadly that's the name of the game. Industrialise or die, and if you aren't industrialising fast enough? Probably going to die.
Sucks, but we'll have more room to customise things moving into the future.
Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
They had to gut their Education and make some concessions to their lower classes to ride it out. Then they helped bail themselves out further by selling to the Nohon, which made us, the runner-up power, pretty angry.
It wasn't exactly smooth sailing.
- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
Thiers also the fact that their colonies are going to be pissed for a while.
- Location
- Illinois
It's a matter of efficiency.
Spreading out power means more people to handle specific parts. An absolute king can do any one thing very well if he's a skilled king, but a kingdom is too complex for one man to hold together, even with advisors. Hell, even an absolute king has to delegate, and Nokly is considered brillant because he can delegate so well.
Spreading the power out by giving Parliament time to form budgets and laws means that you have dozens of people, each with a different background and perception, the power to look over and institute changes to improve (or 'improve' in some cases) various aspects.
A hundred people with power can utilize that power over a wider scale than one person with power. This hasn't changed from PoC, where we grew incredibly slow but steadily due to our high Cent.
But that method doesn't work here, because slow and steady leaves you eating dust, and then getting your face kicked in when you fall too far behind to fight off the vultures.
Well yeah but if we were at least allowed to make our own political system that'd be fun. In the first thread there were a great many hoops to jump to get the Ymaryn organized just how we wanted them, many sub-optimal or risky choices, but at least it was viable.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Except they can just buy their education back up, with the apparently nigh infinite amount of SoL and PW they generate, meaning it wasn't actually a sacrifice at all?
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Capitalism has it's downsides. It's just that we've been negating it for the Sketch.
If we want to curtail the Sketch, we need for them to crash often.
Speaking of which, I wonder if we can manipulate food prices, bought up loans and some simpleespionage to get them into a double dip.
- Location
- Illinois
Tbf, we don't see the downsides they have from our position, likely. No Keep Tabs or DOs have been spent on them, after all. AN mentioned that their factions had pretty much a free hand, so a lot of their actions are probably spent managing those factions, rather than doing all the things.
It's just that our combo of Slow Government + Slow Economy means that we fall behind fast.
It's a matter of time for AN sadly. If the quest was being run by dozens of economists and historians, that could probably work, but one man, who isn't being paid for it? There's only so much a guy can do, even one as intelligent as AN.
- Location
- Brazil
Yeah, this.
No downsides, no consequences. An "obviously better" route.
Considering they can bounce off a massive crisis just like that, even though that should be their weakness, the downsides we don't see are pretty tiny.
Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
They're running a different system than us. Yes, they crash harder, but the flip side of that is they usually bail themselves out of those crashes faster too. Of course they can buy back what they lose in their crashes and then some. That's not a gamebreaking bug, that's their system working as intended.
- Location
- Voidbetweenstars
who?
The only reason they have been able to do this is because we specifically been letting them (keeping food prices low for instance)
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
Except that their current model allowed things to get so out of control that this shit happened. Just doing more doesn't always help. Hell, we usually aren't limited by PW if you haven't noticed. We are limited more by our other stats.
They will continue to boom and bust. It's how their model of government and economy works. They're the hare, we're the turtle. Notice that we aren't even falling behind? We've been catching up steadily for years. Cool your jets.
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We fed Sketch's stupid tea addiction, and then we bought bad debts and bailed out Kielmyr.
Basically, every time Sketch do something stupid, they don't learn, because we kept subsidizing their bad behaviors.
- Location
- Illinois
We don't know what happened at all to them, tbh
1. We don't know exactly how much they had to spend to save themselves
2. We don't know what reforms they were forced to make (Assuming they were all pros is a bad idea, imo)
3. We don't know how many died from this, what infrastructure might have been destroyed/lost, or even if they lost a ton of research.
The Sketch likely are still pattng out the fire, and after that will have to see what they lost in all. For all we know, the Sketch's nearly completed ironclad designs went up in the fires of the riots, and now they're back to square 1.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Pretty much.
The really annoying thing though is that this works so well that not becoming a clone of the Sketch means that we lose, because everyone who does become a clone of the sketch gets functionally infinite actions and zero-consequence industrialization.
Better governments should lead to greater efficiency. But every form of government has weaknesses, and so far, the Sketch haven't shown it off--they've shrugged off a crisis that even the modern day would struggle with in the space of a few months with a fraction of the communication technology and ability to go "Don't make me come over there", and are more powerful than ever.
Like, communism? Has problems with motivating your population unless you do a good job riding herd on the middle management. Capitalism? Tends to catch fire and turn into oligarchy if not carefully managed. Autocracy? Shock resistant as long as you can maintain a monopoly of force, but loses out on agility compared to a more distributed government style. The Sketch basically ran into the Weak Point of proto-capitalism, with no institutional experience grappling with a crash on that level, and shrugged it off completely. That's the absurd part. Something like that should have very much resulted in them having to make some serious governmental reforms to control their economy--which would fuck their long term prospects because they'd need to do things like impose actually reasonable work hours or denial of sending children to work in the factories and mines, or people rising up and literally eating the rich. Not just shuffling some numbers around and weathering it with no serious consequences.
Recovering from an economic crash as a capitalist economy should be the work of years, not months. Because recovering from shocks is exactly what autocracy should be good at.
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keenscythe
No longer NEET
- Location
- WA, USA
Honestly although I loathed the Lightning Rounds should we just start another round of them?
Not much point playing this quest if we are just fighting for at best second place against the Sketch who are apparently too industrialized and democratic to fail at this point.
Skipping a century until we can actually win at anything might be prudent.
Not much point playing this quest if we are just fighting for at best second place against the Sketch who are apparently too industrialized and democratic to fail at this point.
Skipping a century until we can actually win at anything might be prudent.