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Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)

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[x] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should host them. They are the representatives of liberty, and do not wish to cause trouble besides. They have conducted themselves honorably, and present advantage to Eretria without creating a route to war.

[X] [Immigration] Talent. The city cannot waste its time searching for the barest and most boorish men. If the city is to become one of glory and renown among all Hellenes, then it must attract those who are made of finer stuff; artisans, professionals, intellectuals and playwrights who can make Eretria a true hub of culture [If successful, lower number of high-skill immigrants with the chance to eventually produce another luxury trade route].

[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.
[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.
[X] [Marriage] To place the Metic father at the same level as his citizen counterpart as unacceptable.
[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.
[X] [Juries] Allow Metics to appear on the city's juries if the situation involves their peers as defendant.
 
[X] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should host them.
[X] [Immigration] Manpower.

[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.
[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.
[X] [Marriage] To place the Metic father at the same level as his citizen counterpart as unacceptable.
[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.
[X] [Juries] Citizens are just as good a judge as metics, and there is no need to involve them.
Adhoc vote count started by Bulwark on May 20, 2019 at 7:51 PM, finished with 702 posts and 73 votes.
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The idea that allowing metics on juries to judge metics will eventually cause some kind of political fracas in a contentious case seems like alarmist kneejerking to me, I've got to be honest.

Also, if we're going to play that kind of SV Quester fearmongering game, it is obviously far more likely that we will have our own Metic Rodney King, where some egregious abuse of a Metic citizen gets past an all-citizen jury. Then we will find ourselves having to clean up the resulting shitstorm.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
The idea that allowing metics on juries to judge metics will eventually cause some kind of political fracas in a contentious case seems like alarmist kneejerking to me, I've got to be honest.
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What I'm trying to point out here is that there really is a two-tier citizenship structure going on here and since Ceteshwayo isn't going to go full ahistorical, that's not going to go away easily or quickly. Friction between citizens and metics is inevitable going forward, and being mindful of the exact forms it's likely to take is just common sense.

It's no more a case of "alarmist kneejerking" than it is to say "Uh yeah, the Tarentines or Corinthians are probably going to find some way to give us a good swift kick in the shorts one of these days."

Eretria has vulnerabilities and limitations; things will sometimes go wrong. It is not fearmongering to try to talk about these things rather than just shrugging and going "yeah, sure, what could go wrong?"

Also, if we're going to play that kind of SV Quester fearmongering game, it is obviously far more likely that we will have our own Metic Rodney King, where some egregious abuse of a Metic citizen gets past an all-citizen jury. Then we will find ourselves having to clean up the resulting shitstorm.
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I mean, yes, that's why I think we may have to bite the bullet and construct a special court for the metics that's actually designed to handle this shit, the way most Greek city-states did.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
The idea that allowing metics on juries to judge metics will eventually cause some kind of political fracas in a contentious case seems like alarmist kneejerking to me, I've got to be honest.

Also, if we're going to play that kind of SV Quester fearmongering game, it is obviously far more likely that we will have our own Metic Rodney King, where some egregious abuse of a Metic citizen gets past an all-citizen jury. Then we will find ourselves having to clean up the resulting shitstorm.
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This isn't about fair dude. It's not about equal rights, it's not about good or evil. Or even what we should do morally.

It's about the polity, and about trying to find a balance between satisfying the Metics so we can get back to things and start to potentially fix some problems later, and making sure we don't piss on the Ancient ideals of citizenship, ideals that could cause major tensions and discontent of handled improperly.

You have to compromise with the Citizens somewhere. You can't just state, 'I want all of these bits changed!' and expect them to be okay with that. The Greeks were dicks, selfish, smug, dicks.

So, you have to compromise with the main political body of the city somewhere. It's not gonna lead to stasis, but if we give the Metics literally everything they want, including intruding in several Citizen only rights, the citizens will get pissy and tensions and dissatisfaction will rise.

And this time we don't have an easy measurement so we know how far we can go before they do something we really wouldn't like. Which is really freaking me out because we relied on that a lot

So, for the sake of the city, for the sake of avoiding potentially raising tensions, please compromise on one thing that literally isn't a taboo so big people would be put to death for it. We need to be safe on this.
 
@Cetashwayo isn't putting it in as some kind of secret trap option. If the Antipatrids has won the first vote, it's entirely likely we'd have instituted it anyway. It's a minor reform.

Now of course, it's entirely valid to vote for whatever choice fits better with your narrative desires for Eretria, but either way isn't going to lead to some kind of catastrophe. The bus isn't going to explode. At worst a minority of our citizens will be kind of annoyed, then get over it. The goodwill of more than half of our (armed) populace is worth way more to me, personally.
 
A few links on the usage of "state capacity" as a term in the literature: here (paper on regionalism in modern China), here (World Bank blogpost) and here (journal paper on civil conflict).

For the difference between "city-states" and "nation-states," and how one is not necessarily more advanced than another, look at Singapore versus Cambodia. Singapore's a city-state with modern developed institutions; Cambodia is a nation-state -- the state of the Khmer nation. Singapore ranks 9th (out of 189) on Human Development Index metrics; Cambodia ranks 146th.

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Admiral Skippy said:
Perhaps in future it could lead to us selling them salt for cheese making, which given our coastal access and their herds, sounds like a match made on Olympus.
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One of the things I want to highlight:



Eretria knows this as Lake Salpi. It gets its name from the salt marsh, as does Salapia -- in Eretria's time, this area is known and fought over because of salt production.

Today, in 2019, we call it the Saline di Margherita di Savoia. The area is Italy's largest saltworks, and one of the largest in the EU; the area has been a site of continuous salt production since antiquity.

Eretria holds this territory, and we trade in neither salt nor salted products. Clearly, this is because the Drakonioi have been gouging us on garum for the last sixteen years. :p
 
Admiral Skippy said:
@Cetashwayo isn't putting it in as some kind of secret trap option. If the Antipatrids has won the first vote, it's entirely likely we'd have instituted it anyway. It's a minor reform.

Now of course, it's entirely valid to vote for whatever choice fits better with your narrative desires for Eretria, but either way isn't going to lead to some kind of catastrophe. The bus isn't going to explode. At worst a minority of our citizens will be kind of annoyed, then get over it. The goodwill of more than half of our (armed) populace is worth way more to me, personally.
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And so we ignore the part where in the first thread we continually did shit like this to the Aristoi until they nearly started a fight.

And we didn't even really see it coming, even with the numbers right in front of us. But it's cool, the fact one option outright equates passing it as elevating a Metic to their level in some way isn't a problem. Not yet, and not on it's own. I understand and admit that.

I also never said things would explode. In fact I outright stated Stasis wouldn't occur. But it will raise tensions, even if you play it down and try and brush it off as a 'trap option'. It's not, these are options we have to pick from, and we can push and see how far we can go, but not expecting push back when this is blatantly like the times we built Eretria law, and saw factions getting pissed or getting happy dependent on the result is kind of dismissive.

The citizens will adapt, but with the attitude being displayed, I doubt the player base will give the time, or ease up on the breaks, or give their factions the compromises they desire, long enough for it to settle and then to be appeased. We only did so in the first thread when we started to get IC warned just before some factions outright spoke about purges and such and when we had the numbers in our face to help guide us. Here we have our guts, and people have dismissed the idea of jealousy and aggravation to focus on morality and power structures, which are massively important, but not the only issue.

Overall, I don't want to repeat the slight missteps of the early first game, where we ignored a factions possible discontent because we wanted as much fairness as possible, and our lack of compromise led to tensions rising.
 
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Secretariat said:
A few links on the usage of "state capacity" as a term in the literature: here (paper on regionalism in modern China), here (World Bank blogpost) and here (journal paper on civil conflict).

For the difference between "city-states" and "nation-states," and how one is not necessarily more advanced than another, look at Singapore versus Cambodia. Singapore's a city-state with modern developed institutions; Cambodia is a nation-state -- the state of the Khmer nation. Singapore ranks 9th (out of 189) on Human Development Index metrics; Cambodia ranks 146th.

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One of the things I want to highlight:



Eretria knows this as Lake Salpi. It gets its name from the salt marsh, as does Salapia -- in Eretria's time, this area is known and fought over because of salt production.

Today, in 2019, we call it the Saline di Margherita di Savoia. The area is Italy's largest saltworks, and one of the largest in the EU; the area has been a site of continuous salt production since antiquity.

Eretria holds this territory, and we trade in neither salt nor salted products. Clearly, this is because the Drakonioi have been gouging us on garum for the last sixteen years. :p
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I remember us constructing the Salterns in the last game, and everyone being very pleased, although that was just to serve the city's needs. Presumably we produce enough for our own production of cheese and salted fish and so on, but not for export. Which I guess makes sense given we probably don't do produce salt much more efficiently than any of the other large coastal cities around the Med.

Building a great Saltworks at Salapia might make a pretty neat Great Work.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
I remember us constructing the Salterns in the last game, and everyone being very pleased, although that was just to serve the city's needs. Presumably we produce enough for our own production of cheese and salted fish and so on, but not for export. Which I guess makes sense given we probably don't do produce salt much more efficiently than any of the other large coastal cities around the Med.

Building a great Saltworks at Salapia might make a pretty neat Great Work.
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..The Salt must flow?
 
Salt In ancient Greece it was so valuable that the slave trade involved an exchange of salt for a slave and gave rise to the expression, "not worth his salt.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
I'm now imagining the ending scene of Scarface, except replace Al Pacino with the leader of the Demos Drakonia, the hitmen with hoplites, and he is just snorting huge piles of pure white salt
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Not only is it a resource as lucrative as Athens' silver mines - salt was traded ounce for ounce with gold on the trans-Saharan routes - it's better long-term for state development, both because it's very easy to tax and because it forces us to build institutions to extract that tax.

It's easy to forget how many empires were built on the salt tax -- either directly (Imperial China, Ancien Regime France, both the British East India Company and the following Raj) or on the trade of salt/salt fish (Mali, Venice, the Dutch.) The extractive institutions we build to collect the salt tax are going to be a solid foundation for a fiscal-military state, if that's the route we choose to go down.

...of course, everybody fuckin' hates the salt tax -- the gabelle was so hated it caused the French Revolution and the big moment we remember about Gandhi was his march to the sea to make salt -- but that's a problem we solve never later
 
Thule said:
you know i think the city needs a moat, with the walls the city should impossible for Barbarians to take the city by land and very hard for other greeks
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Expensive and pointless in an era where siege engines are incredibly rudimentary.

Secretariat said:
salt was traded ounce for ounce with gold on the trans-Saharan routes
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A misinterpretation of the practice of silent bartering. Salt was not really equal in value to gold, but it was such an important commodity in a time before refrigeration, where everyone needed salt, that it was extremely lucrative simply because everyone needed salt. It's an excellent bulk commodity good.

However, Lake Salpi's salt fields have not been exploited because a barbarian frontier where the Dauni endanger any attempt at large-scale production is not good for business.

Secretariat said:
...of course, everybody fuckin' hates the salt tax -- the gabelle was so hated it caused the French Revolution and the big moment we remember about Gandhi was his march to the sea to make salt -- but that's a problem we solve never later
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Heavily taxing access to salt is impossible in a system where the people whom the burden would fall on hardest have control of the tax-creating body.
 
Cetashwayo said:
A misinterpretation of the practice of silent bartering. Salt was not really equal in value to gold, but it was such an important commodity in a time before refrigeration, where everyone needed salt, that it was extremely lucrative simply because everyone needed salt. It's an excellent bulk commodity good.

However, Lake Salpi's salt fields have not been exploited because a barbarian frontier where the Dauni endanger any attempt at large-scale production is not good for business.
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Cetashwayo said:
However, Lake Salpi's salt fields have not been exploited because a barbarian frontier where the Dauni endanger any attempt at large-scale production is not good for business.
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Cetashwayo said:
the Dauni endanger any attempt at large-scale production
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the Dauni's lease on life just got a whole lot shorter lol
 
YOU WIN THIS ROUND, DEMOCRACY
Adhoc vote count started by Admiral Skippy on May 20, 2019 at 10:30 PM, finished with 720 posts and 73 votes.
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Metic rights! Are they not men? Do they not bleed for us? Do they not sweat?
 
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Are we sure the quest isn't already salty enough?

But yeah the Dauni just saw their personal doomsday clock advance a few minutes closer to midnight.
 
Well, how convenient that our foreign policy includes Dauni investigations, which sounds like a good lead up to making them bend the knee. The salt must flow! That is going to be a huge resource gain for us once we can secure and exploit it.
 
[x] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should host them. They are the representatives of liberty, and do not wish to cause trouble besides. They have conducted themselves honorably, and present advantage to Eretria without creating a route to war.

[X] [Immigration] Talent. The city cannot waste its time searching for the barest and most boorish men. If the city is to become one of glory and renown among all Hellenes, then it must attract those who are made of finer stuff; artisans, professionals, intellectuals and playwrights who can make Eretria a true hub of culture [If successful, lower number of high-skill immigrants with the chance to eventually produce another luxury trade route].

[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.
[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.
[X] [Marriage] To place the Metic father at the same level as his citizen counterpart as unacceptable.
[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.
[X] [Juries] Allow Metics to appear on the city's juries if the situation involves their peers as defendant.
Adhoc vote count started by Admiral Skippy on May 21, 2019 at 8:02 AM, finished with 736 posts and 77 votes.
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[X] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should host them. They are the representatives of liberty, and do not wish to cause trouble besides. They have conducted themselves honorably, and present advantage to Eretria without creating a route to war.

[X] [Immigration] Talent. The city cannot waste its time searching for the barest and most boorish men. If the city is to become one of glory and renown among all Hellenes, then it must attract those who are made of finer stuff; artisans, professionals, intellectuals and playwrights who can make Eretria a true hub of culture [If successful, lower number of high-skill immigrants with the chance to eventually produce another luxury trade route].

[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.
[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.
[X] [Marriage] Reform the laws so the Metic Father has the same rights in the marriage of his daughter.
[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.
[X] [Juries] Allow Metics to appear on the city's juries if the situation involves their peers as defendent.
 
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