The Ymaryn: Succession

[X] The Murderer
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Open the Royal Exams to female Patricians

Parzival95 said:

Edit: After rereading that our king only got 6.5 out of 10 and how that was near some of the highest scores ever known, perhaps condensation or slackening might be helpful after all. If it's so difficult as to be nigh impossible to get even an 8, then maybe it's too much.

@Redium can you clarify on these two options, as to what exactly we'd be cutting from education?

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Slackening standards means that instead of the top 40% graduating, you graduate the top 60% or even the top 70%. There would still be a cut off because not everyone can accomplish the job required, but it would be more permissive of 'incompetents'. It doesn't really change the nature of what Patricians are.

Condensing the curriculum means you simply stop teaching some things and push students through the Academy as fast as possible to try and harvest a bumper crop. A lot of the stuff that's going to get cut out are probably military theory and physical education, social sciences, and natural philosophy. You'd focus on a more central curriculum of mathematics, law and diplomacy, paring patricians as far back as possible. This focuses on their central duties of administration, but it also removes a lot of their broad base of knowledge. It will make Patricians a lot more vulnerable to being bullshit by 'experts' and increase dependency on advisors in general. It also means shortening the exam, but that's incidental to the underlying nature of the change.

Going to an absolute standard would mean that instead of the top 40% graduating, everyone who manages to score 33/100 (about the 60th percentile) will pass instead. It theoretically uncaps the number of graduates if you can think of some way to get them over the finish line.

[X] The Murderer
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Open the Royal Exams to female Patricians

Redium said:

Slackening standards means that instead of the top 40% graduating, you graduate the top 60% or even the top 70%. There would still be a cut off because not everyone can accomplish the job required, but it would be more permissive of 'incompetents'. It doesn't really change the nature of what Patricians are.

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Going to an absolute standard would mean that instead of the top 40% graduating, everyone who manages to score 33/100 (about the 60th percentile) will pass instead. It theoretically uncaps the number of graduates if you can think of some way to get them over the finish line.

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What exactly happens if we combine these two? What would that look like?

Alright, so after that I prefer slackening standards over condensing the curriculum, and probably not both at the same time, that seems like a bad idea.

Still not sure if it's better in combination with absolute standards then letting women in.

[X] The Murderer
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Open the Royal Exams to female Patricians

Anyway, a few thoughts.

1) First of all, we have to consider that since the Ymarin education takes nearly 20 years (7-25) any new group we introduce will by definition be unprepared. The new groups come in with the knowledge they have.
For women, that means the following :

Redium said:

As a whole, the Ymaryn are performative workers. Your values push people to make their careers as complicated and difficult as possible. By taking on immense, crushing workloads and then succeeding, it demonstrates your ability (and your worth) as a human being. This is of course insane and unsustainable; eventually tasks will become so complex that they can't be accomplished by one person. Thus, into that breach steps the Ymaryn wife. Working alongside her husband, a good Ymaryn woman is expected to take up a portion of her husband's duties because what's expected of him is impossible. Thus, Ymaryn women have gained increasing power, prominence, and education by plugging this festering problem. While they aren't allowed to study in the Academies, a large portion of Patrician women do receive education from either retired Academy instructors or recent near-failures of the Royal Exam. The quality isn't as good, but the curriculum can be a lot more focused since there's an expectation they should only help fulfil their future husband's duties, not be theoretically capable of taking ever single possible job a Patrician could be asked to accomplish.

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So I fear that unless we condense the curriculum, most women are by default going to fail. There will be major parts of the exam on which they have never gotten a formal education.
That doesn't mean this won't increase the number of graduates though. Because there are more people in the classes, the relative portion who gets to pass increases. It's just that initially you'll see more men passing because they're superior over the women.

2) We have to consider that education is itself an institution which is under threat. As noted here, the large portion of patrician women who get their education recieve it from retirees or recent near failures. That means that if we call on the retired patricians, we risk damaging women's education. It also means we can not expand education that much.

3) While a lower absolute score might seem beneficial, we have to consider other elements as well. Our entire patrician system is build upon the idea of "best of the best". So, a "good enough" approach may not be accepted.

The lower absolute score is the only one that adresses the core issue, that the old system is designed to fail people. It's a curve, based on the highest scorers performance, so it's literally impossible to expand the patricians without massively expanding how many people take the tests.

Parzival95 said:

The lower absolute score is the only one that adresses the core issue, that the old system is designed to fail people. It's a curve, based on the highest scorers performance, so it's literally impossible to expand the patricians without massively expanding how many people take the tests.

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The problem is that that isn't a core issue, it's a core feature.

Like apparently the patricians have far more children than the lower classes, so that there exist far more applicants than there are jobs available. It seems that according to records, the lower classes or bachelor had trouble finding positions at all.

Redium said:

One-in-four of these Patrician sons would be appropriately winnowed before ever becoming eligible for the exam. Slightly less than two-in-four would then fail. It meant that there was often a slight abundance of lower-class Bachelors who struggled to find work, but they often managed to find a position eventually either because a higher placed classmate perished or other exceptional circumstances.

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The problem now is that there exists a single, temporary large depletion that needs to be remedied, but over the long term we're still going to see the same excess nobility issue.

10ebbor10 said:

The problem is that that isn't a core issue, it's a core feature.

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We... want more patricians to graduate? They died in droves, and so we need droves of replacements. This will of course result in us eventually having the old problem again: too many patricians for too few jobs.

But I don't know how to address this contradiction. Short term we need the administrators, long term we need to resolve having enough patricians without having so many that they can't find work.

I don't know how to address this problem. We haven't even solved this problem in modern society, it may not actually have a permanent solution.

Parzival95 said:

We... want more patricians to graduate? They died in droves, and so we need droves of replacements. This will of course result in us eventually having the old problem again: too many patricians for too few jobs.

But I don't know how to address this contradiction. Short term we need the administrators, long term we need to resolve having enough patricians without having so many that they can't find work.

I don't know how to address this problem. We haven't even solved this problem in modern society, it may not actually have a permanent solution.

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There's a few options :

1) We can extend the current ranking system with sub-bachelor categories, so that when there's no one better, they will do, but in normal they get pushed out.

2) We can shift to the absolute system, but also do categories, so that once again when there's no one better, they will do, but in normal times they get pushed out.

3) Make it socially acceptable for patricians to take guild jobs and shove all of them off to the ciivlian economy

The big difference between relative and absolute qualifications is that the relative qualification has much more control over numbers ( if you have 1000 applicants, set the curve at 1:10 to get 100 candidates) whereas the absolute qualification provides a fair standard. I guess that if we use absolute numbers, people will be more willing to accept new members, because there's no fear that those new members will "weaken the institution by bringing down the curve" or "steal my spot".

[X] The Murderer
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Accept non-Patricians with on-the-job administrative experience as Patricians

Going with this.

@Redium can't believe I'm just asking this but what are our advisors opinions? Specifically, the professors?

Random Member said:

What exactly happens if we combine these two? What would that look like?

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Slackening standards and going to an absolute system would simply mean that anyone who scores above, say 28/100 points would graduate.

Right now, to graduate, the average person must score in the area of 33/100 to get a Bachelor, 3rd Class. The score fluctuates each year because some years test better or worse than others, but it's all measured relatively. Each 'tier' above that would be able 3 points on average above the previous up to Philosophers at 45/100.

10ebbor10 said:

Like apparently the patricians have far more children than the lower classes, so that there exist far more applicants than there are jobs available. It seems that according to records, the lower classes or bachelor had trouble finding positions at all.

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Lower classes still have a lot of children too, it's just more common among Patricians. The average peasant will have six children and the average Patrician eight. Urban residents are similar to peasants, but Guilds are similar to Patricians, or even higher. The only thing that's different is that Guild and Patrician women have less physically damaging lives so they're able to have more pregnancies. Now, not all of these children survive to adulthood, but most do. Most families are like Ydrys' and will lose 1-2 children before they reach adulthood. It's sadly high, but compared to historical civilizations is unbelievably low; most places lost up to two thirds of their children before adulthood where in the Kingdom, they only lose a quarter or less.

Compared to the relevant Medieval period, this level of fertility is staggering. The average Ymaryn peasant couple probably has 5 adult children on average compared to not!France which has 3.5 on average.

The only reason that it isn't considered more of a problem is because no one in power cares as much about peasants. They aren't tracked as closely and don't have to performatively demonstrate their worth to even remotely near the same degree. This is a problem, but one easier to solve.

This is definitely going to come up in the future.

Parzival95 said:

@Redium can't believe I'm just asking this but what are our advisors opinions? Specifically, the professors?

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Before I give you their opinions, I will preference this by saying that all of your advisors strongly emulate a great strength about the Ymaryn people, but also one of their great weaknesses. Some of this is informed by your explicit Values, but also thread culture.

Ianto: would prefer the Student, hands down. The Ymaryn military is the greatest in the world and he strongly believes a military academy would cover most of the People's deficits.

Rhys: his first choice would be the Mercenary, the second the Privateer. Rhys is driven most strongly by the idea that the Ymaryn are rotting internally without stimulation from foreign cultures so he tends to be the most radical in his recommendations.

Haul: has only lukewarm preferences, but would advise against the Murderer. He hates cloak and dagger. He likes the Bodyguard's straightforwardness and likes the skill and reputation he's cultivated. Tools are only as effective as the ones who use them and he'd like to see the Bodyguard's superhuman skill be considered more widely.

Prydyer: is in favour of either the Murderer or the Cavalier. He's the most strongly religious of your counselors and tends towards soft traditionalism. Holy Order members have been used in the past as advisors and they are more than qualified.

Aderyn: has an opinion, but doesn't yet know you well enough to feel comfortable sharing.

During the update, I had wanted to give Aderyn more of a central focus, but it didn't work out. Between setting up Ydrys and Rhys, elaborating on the relationship between the Splinter Lords and Ydrys so I could demonstrate that with Gylyes and touching on Ymaryn gift-giving culture and communitarian nature, there just wasn't space. She'll definitely feature more in the second half of Turn 3, potentially along with Ianto depending on how the education vote goes.

I think as it sits, Prydyer has gotten short-charged the most out of all of your councillors.

[X] The Mercenary
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Accept non-Patricians with on-the-job administrative experience as Patricians


Rhys ain't wrong, so switching.

[X] The Student

[X] Slacken standards, make the exam easier
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement

Redium said:

Lower classes still have a lot of children too, it's just more common among Patricians. The average peasant will have six children and the average Patrician eight. Urban residents are similar to peasants, but Guilds are similar to Patricians, or even higher. The only thing that's different is that Guild and Patrician women have less physically damaging lives so they're able to have more pregnancies. Now, not all of these children survive to adulthood, but most do. Most families are like Ydrys' and will lose 1-2 children before they reach adulthood. It's sadly high, but compared to historical civilizations is unbelievably low; most places lost up to two thirds of their children before adulthood where in the Kingdom, they only lose a quarter or less.

Compared to the relevant Medieval period, this level of fertility is staggering. The average Ymaryn peasant couple probably has 5 adult children on average compared to not!France which has 3.5 on average.

The only reason that it isn't considered more of a problem is because no one in power cares as much about peasants. They aren't tracked as closely and don't have to performatively demonstrate their worth to even remotely near the same degree. This is a problem, but one easier to solve.

This is definitely going to come up in the future.

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That points at a staggeringly big population growth. We'd probably need the extra patricians just so that management does not decay.

[X] The Mercenary
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Accept non-Patricians with on-the-job administrative experience as Patricians

[X] Open the Royal Exams to female Patricians

I don't think that using non-patricians is a good idea, for a pretty simple reason. If these people have on-the-job experience, then that's because they're already managing something. So, accepting them and making them manage something else does nothing to stop the shortage, it's just throwing people around and (worst case) promoting them beyond their level of competence.

10ebbor10 said:

That points at a staggeringly big population growth. We'd probably need the extra patricians just so that management does not decay.

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It absolutely does suggest major population growth. However, as best you can determine from old census records, the Ymaryn population peaked at about 160 million about 200 years ago and did not increase past that point.

[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] The Cavalier
[X] Slacken standards, make the exam easier

[X] The Mercenary
[X] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[X] Open the Royal Exams to female Patricians

[x] The Mercenary
[x] Switch graduation criteria to a lower absolute score instead of relative placement
[x] Open the Royal Exams to female Patricians

Redium said:

It absolutely does suggest major population growth. However, as best you can determine from old census records, the Ymaryn population peaked at about 160 million about 200 years ago and did not increase past that point.

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Okay, that means there's something seriously weird and bad going on with the records.

Or something is seriously bad and killing of peasants and patricians alike.

10ebbor10 said:

Okay, that means there's something seriously weird and bad going on with the records.

Or something is seriously bad and killing of peasants and patricians alike.

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Alternatively we hit our food point and just cannot feed more people that translates into a stigma to not have more than 6-8 kids

Also our people are overworking themselves to death, both literally and figuratively. We have stigmas against being a burden and suicide is not uncommon. When the job market is saturated by skilled workers, what happens to the mediocre?

So I do not think it is something new, but just the reality of trying to force a Meritocracy in a medieval setting.