Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

occipitallobe · Oct 2, 2020

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Humbaba · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

nothingtoseehere · May 19, 2021

TehChron said:
[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

@occipitallobe How would adding in the Flood Dragon half payment write in look, if inserting it into a plan?

Why bother with the half payment, when it will be less effective than saving up and just paying in full next turn? That's the point of only spending 14 wealth on trial prep after all.

Olivebirdy · May 19, 2021

Siual said:
Old Jingshen is planning something by cutting tariff prices and leaving his Clan's forts undefended. The hypothesis that he's stripping everything bare to squeeze out a third Nascent is irreconcilable with lowering his income flow, unless he's anticipating some sort of increased return very soon. Hitting your bottom line merely to make your enemy suspicious would be a terrible, terrible tradeoff for a clan whose entire existence and win condition is built around earning enough dosh. Yes, lashing out with disposable irregulars to destabilize them is a crude tool for a situation we're in the dark about, but doing it now has two very straightforward advantages.

It's quite possible that the new lands they just got are incredibly rich in stones, so they have more supply and can lower price so the righteous path buys more of them.

Would people be more willing to vote to flip the Great Scorpion Sect and Heavenly Bandit Kingdoms if I changed around the purchases? I think the caches are important so we don't have to spend a turn recovering, but I'm not married to the others.

If we can fortify their vassals against them, look at how much of their territory it denies them. Territory they need for supporting another Nascent.

nothingtoseehere · May 19, 2021

I just don't think anyone thinks flipping their vassals is as easy or valuable than you perceive it to be, especially on a trial turn. Also lecturing is Cool and Good.

Humbaba · May 19, 2021

Olivebirdy said:
It's quite possible that the new lands they just got are incredibly rich in stones, so they have more supply and can lower price so the righteous path buys more of them.

Would people be more willing to vote to flip the Great Scorpion Sect and Heavenly Bandit Kingdoms if I changed around the purchases? I think the caches are important so we don't have to spend a turn recovering, but I'm not married to the others.

The issue is that I don't think this attempt to flip their vassals will provides a great deal of value on a trial turn. Firstly, we're demonic and the Jingshen are righteous, which means their vassals are as well. That is actually a very steep divide to bridge. See the reaction of the Storkblood elder. So getting them to even think we might be better overlords is a huge ask.

Secondly, they've probably got at least 1 nascent down in their new lands to stomp on any trouble. Their 2 nascents are Old Jingshen, who is noted to be an old monster and so good at intrigue, and Jiao, their super diplomat. Both are in a good position to detect or crush such a scheme to forment discontent among their vassals.

By contrast, raiding the forts which have weakened defences due to the trial window offers the possibility of significant wealth gains and is very likley to force them to divert resources back to shore things up. Taking out the Grand spirit stone canon for example would force them to re-camp one of their nascents there if they don't want us to take the spirit stone mine next turn.

BadAtScreenNames · May 19, 2021

Hey @TehChron . Would you be willing to change your plan to incorporate the write-in discussed here : Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest] Original - Fantasy ? It would minimise the number of our own who'd go on the raids.

Unstorpable · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

Siual · May 19, 2021

Olivebirdy said:
It's quite possible that the new lands they just got are incredibly rich in stones, so they have more supply and can lower price so the righteous path buys more of them.

Well, if I'm understanding correctly there is essentially unlimited demand (in a sense, read on for a second) for spirit stones, which are perfectly fungible. The price for a spirit stone (which interestingly is probably paid in more specialist cultivation resources, and the interaction is therefore more accurately characterized as Jingshen buying cultivation resources at a discount, but that makes it more difficult to quantify) is essentially;

Base value of the stone + demand premium (everyone needs stones, not everyone needs the herbs, cores, pills etc the other powers are paying them with) + extraction and logistical costs + profit margin

The first three are essentially fixed (excepting small supply fluctuations as the region-wide availability of some cultivation resources changes for #2). The latter one is a measure of 'how much of your profit-squeezing are we willing to put up with before we come over there and take the mines for ourselves'. An allied power in good standing has more goodwill and can afford to have higher margins. Their profit margin will therefore already be as high as is tolerable to their allies, with a small margin for safety.

By lowering their margins they're not augmenting demand (every stone they're selling already has a buyer), they are purchasing goodwill. Old Jingshen would be a terrible, terrible merchant if he didn't expect the value of that goodwill to exceed what he loses in terms of raw profit. Considering the state of the Plains, there would be many takers for a small discount now in return for a big favor later. That's what concerns me.

TehChron · May 19, 2021

nothingtoseehere said:
Why bother with the half payment, when it will be less effective than saving up and just paying in full next turn? That's the point of only spending 14 wealth on trial prep after all.

I don't disagree, but people are gonna want the option regardless

Just because I'm not gonna vote for it doesnt mean it shouldn't be asked for imo

BadAtScreenNames said:
Would you be willing to change your plan to incorporate the write-in discussed here

No. I went with the write in that I did because the casualties are reflective of the investment of forces, which the presence of at least three Core Formations in the area kinda necessitates if we want this to succeed.

Better we overkill it and succeed than risk committing too little and failing

wrecksalot · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

Going with this one so we can pay the flood dragons in full next turn.

Garlak · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

Is there currently a "Scorpionquistion + 7 wealth to flood dragons" plan right now?

nothingtoseehere said:
Why bother with the half payment, when it will be less effective than saving up and just paying in full next turn? That's the point of only spending 14 wealth on trial prep after all.

Well, because it's going to cost more to rebuild the Flood Dragon Gang if we do it on Turn 10 or Turn 11.

occipitallobe said:
[ ] Refound the Flood Dragon Gang (15 Wealth)

"Archegetes, let's siphon off a lot of our wealth and give it to Lady Yao. I know it's expensive, but with sufficient Spirit Stones she could easily refound the Gang, or at least a small part of it. A lot of them would come from people who love the Clan, and I suspect we might be able to lure her in to our orbit much more closely. I suspect she'll do so in the long-term anyway. I know you might not want to do it now, and there's certainly merit to doing it in the future, though it'd cost more simply because once she's recovered and gained some reparations from the Righteous Powers she'll need more money to be impressed."

It won't cost 15 Wealth to get the same effect -- I suspect it'll cost 20 probably.

Mostly I suspect the reason the number will be 20, is if we have 20-21 wealth in our bank come end of Turn 10, because that's how occipitallobe tempts us.

So, it'll be the exact same temptation of "I really want this shiny, but dammit that is a lot of money!" and position that we'll be in.

Of course if we spend all our wealth now, we'll only have 13 wealth come next turn... ... But then again, that's still 13 wealth we'll have. We can spend it on recovery, or on recovering the Flood Dragon Gang fully, or on doing something to counter the Jingshen, or improving ourselves somehow, or etc.

I suspect if we pay 7 Wealth now, and wind up with 13 wealth next turn (since 13 is how much wealth we make per turn) that the FDG payment will be 10 wealth probably. >< So that we'll be tempted to spend 10 of our 13 wealth on the Flood Dragons. I suspect the overall impact of 7+10 would be the same as "pay 15 now", but the difference is that we can't afford to both pay 15 now and pay for our Trial prep.

Of course full disclaimer, all of these things are my own thoughts and theories. I think that the FDG will go up to 20 Wealth on Turn 10 or 11 (or 25 on 11, if we've gotten a lot of wealth). And I think the FDG will be 10 or 15 wealth if we pay 7 wealth now. But I am fully and totally guesstimating here and I admit it.

I am basing my estimates and guesses on two things:
*One, the GM said in-update via Kleisthenes Sarantapechos that the price will go up.
*Two, pattern recognition of how the GM likes to tempt us with shinies. If we have 21 wealth at end of Turn 10, I suspect we'll see a 20-wealth big-shiny. If we have 13 wealth at end of Turn 10, I suspect we'll see a 10-wealth shiny... or a 15-wealth shiny that will tempt us with a "Surely we can take the Economic Action action and make up for this, right?"
*... Also, if we have 20 wealth on Turn 10, you just know that Destasia is going to come up with something crazy and 20-wealth taking. XD

EDIT:

wrecksalot said:
[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

Going with this one so we can pay the flood dragons in full next turn.

I don't think we're going to be able to do that, because I suspect it'll be like a 20-wealth purchase. And we'll only have 20 wealth total.

nothingtoseehere · May 19, 2021

Yes, I also expect the FDG will be a 20 wealth purchase next turn. That will be true regardless is we pay 20 then, or 7 wealth now and 13 next. That is why I'm supporting a plan with 14 Wealth of Trial Prep, because then we *can* afford it next turn. "But there might be other things to spend 20 wealth on!" isn't a counterargument - it's true there will be, but unless they have the same capacity to possibly gain us a Early Nascent over the long term, the case for investing in the Flood Dragon Gang will be as strong as ever. And if we do spend it on something else, it will be because people think the other purchase is *more* valuable than the Flood Dragon Gang. In the mean time, we need to spend money now to survive the trials in a better state than the last trials, which is why we're not buying the FDG this turn.

TehChron · May 19, 2021

Sometimes we lose opportunities because we had to take other ones that were competing at the time

That's just a fact of life for this quest lol

Falconis · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan Buckle The Hell Down

Garlak · May 19, 2021

True, true. It's not like I'm not voting for Plan Scorpion after all.

Just, if it really is 7 now and 13 later, or 0 now and 20 later then... That's the same amount of money anyway, right? But it probably does matter when we spend it; for instance, if we give Yao 7 wealth immediately, even before the Trials, that'll probably have narrative or emotional effects on things too. On the Flood Dragons I mean. It's saying "Okay, we'll pay what we can immediately, even if it's not enough and all that you need right now. But we'll pay immediately."

Part of the difference is that people might not be willing to spend 20 wealth on the Flood Dragons. Which, yeah, as you said "then that would mean that people wanted to buy something else" which is true.

However, this way, we would at least have paid 7 wealth to the Flood Dragons even if we later chose not to make the big-purchase in the end. Whereas if we get stuck with a 20-wealth Flood Dragon option and decide "eh, too pricey for my blood" then that would mean we didn't pay the flood dragons at all, not even 7 wealth, so.

((Although I guess we also could write-in to pay partial amounts of money to them then, but... who knows.))

I guess I'll just have to vote for the 20-wealth FDG purchase, and try to convince people to go for it, when the time comes.

(Main argument will probably be: "Guys. This is a 2-point Boon we picked at character creation. Boons and Banes are incredibly potent and powerful. Do not fail to secure our Boon. Don't think of this as just spending a lot of wealth. Think of this as the support of a 2-point Shiny that it is.")

In the meanwhile... I forget, does this quest allow for voting for 2 plans or not? Or do you have to vote for just 1 plan? I kinda want to make a "Scoprions, plus 7 wealth Flood Dragons" fork off of TehChron's and vote for both TehChron's plan and the forked plan if that's okay, but...

LordEdric · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan Buckle The Hell Down

TehChron · May 19, 2021

So I see that theres a lot of support behind Buckle the Hell Down, and something I want to ask about its support.

Occis confirmed that the 20 Wealth wed be sinking into the Forts is only useful for this specific Trial.

Do you still think its worthwhile?

Because if it's getting us up to speed more quickly that you're after, the 10 Wealth cache action does something similar for about half the cost.

Shaper47 · May 19, 2021

TehChron said:
Question for those voting for this option.

Why are you all cool with debuffing our defenses and screwing over Qi Condensation?

I dont see the trade off

Preventing Jingshen from being able to bribe a Righteous power Nascent soul though goodwill brought by the Clan's best Array-Engineers to the Great Battlefield is quite important.

Having the Flood Dragon Gang as even closer allies pretty much gains us another Nascent soul.

Qi Condensation juniors are easy to replace.

TehChron · May 19, 2021

Shaper47 said:
Preventing Jingshen from being able to bribe a Righteous power Nascent soul though goodwill brought by the Clan's best Array-Engineers to the Great Battlefield is quite important

And why is that important?

Shaper47 said:
Having the Flood Dragon Gang as even closer allies pretty much gains us another Nascent soul.

And how does it do that? Do you envision it as us getting to use Yao'ers actions the same way Manuel does? Or what?

Shaper47 said:
Qi Condensation juniors are easy to replace

Sure. I suppose I can see the 4reasoning behind taking only what we can afford for bigger gains and leaving the rest to rot. Not a fan of doing it without a decent payoff though, and I'm still not seeing it with your plan.

Garlak · May 19, 2021

Keeping the Jingshen from bribing the Plains War Righteous Powers is unimportant though -- we're not at threat from the Righteous Powers, we're at threat from the Jingshen.

And sending our Array engineers away at the same time that you want to build up the Mortal Broadcasting Array is a bad idea -- because guess what is going to be needed to make those changes? Those same array engineers, who we just sent over to the Plains. =/

Buckle The Hell Down on the other hand... Gah, can somebody explain to me -- exactly how much of an effect does "Train the clan for war" have on the Trials? Obviously it has some effect, but how much? That's just me fretting a bit due to not having something spelt out, but... Anyway.

... Anyway though. I disagree with it because... well, because if we spend 20 wealth on forts, then we can't get the Flood Dragon Gang any time soon at all. We simply won't have the money. We'd have to wait 2 turns to get enough wealth, and that's 2 turns of shinies and emergencies and other priorities that might interrupt that.

And because Buckle The Hell Down does not launch a probe at the Jingshen -- something that I've been convinced is very necessary, that we really really need to learn what the hell the status of the Jingshen is, because we need to know what the Doomclock is looking like. If it's 3 turns of 6 turns or 10 or what, is important. And also, the Righteous Powers are distracted as hell by what just happened, so we can afford to take a small swing at Jingshen right now. So we should, especially if it has the chance of revealing to us how things are going.

Shaper47 · May 19, 2021

TehChron said:
And why is that important?

Because if Jingshen can go to the Elder of Day and hire him for 20 wealth to have him assist it beating us up we are totally screwed. Having the Strength Purity Sect tell their Righteous allies that the Golden Devils have been helping so don't fuck with them to much stops that from happening.

TehChron said:
And how does it do that? Do you envision it as us getting to use Yao'ers actions the same way Manuel does? Or what?

Now your just taking it out of context. By granting us another Nascent I'm talking more about how the Righteous Alliance has lots of Nascent souls working for them. I'm seeing it as an option to be able to call in Yao for some wealth when we need too so if we need another Nascent soul in a battle she makes herself available to assist.

Simon_Jester · May 19, 2021

TehChron said:
Question for those voting for this option.

Why are you all cool with debuffing our defenses and screwing over Qi Condensation?

I dont see the trade off

This choice of language prejudices me to vote against the forts. Recasting a "let's not do the maximal thing for X" plan as a "why do you want to cripple X" plan immediately rings my alarm bells. I will now vote against the forts.

nothingtoseehere said:
Why bother with the half payment, when it will be less effective than saving up and just paying in full next turn? That's the point of only spending 14 wealth on trial prep after all.

Because it probably won't be less effective. Paying a 15-wealth lump sum next turn isn't going to have as good an effect as spending 15 wealth this turn, as @occipitallobe already told us. Sort of like how the Ten Million Forts are going to cost more to build all at once now than they would have cost if we'd started construction last turn and finished this turn.

Investing money sooner rather than later often has multiplier effects in its own right, so making a down payment on Miss Messy Flood Gang Nascent Soul's loyalty sooner rather than later is helpful.

Siual said:
Well, if I'm understanding correctly there is essentially unlimited demand (in a sense, read on for a second) for spirit stones, which are perfectly fungible. The price for a spirit stone (which interestingly is probably paid in more specialist cultivation resources, and the interaction is therefore more accurately characterized as Jingshen buying cultivation resources at a discount, but that makes it more difficult to quantify) is essentially;

Base value of the stone + demand premium (everyone needs stones, not everyone needs the herbs, cores, pills etc the other powers are paying them with) + extraction and logistical costs + profit margin

The first three are essentially fixed (excepting small supply fluctuations as the region-wide availability of some cultivation resources changes for #2). The latter one is a measure of 'how much of your profit-squeezing are we willing to put up with before we come over there and take the mines for ourselves'. An allied power in good standing has more goodwill and can afford to have higher margins. Their profit margin will therefore already be a high as is tolerable to their allies, with a small margin for safety.

By lowering their margins they're not augmenting demand (every stone they're selling already has a buyer), they are purchasing goodwill. Old Jingshen would be a terrible, terrible merchant if he didn't expect the value of that goodwill to exceed what he loses in terms of raw profit. Considering the state of the Plains, there would be many takers for a small discount now in return for a big favor later. That's what concerns me.

Hmm. A few things Old Jingshen might be trying to do this way.

1) He might be engaged in a long-term barter for treasures relevant for the ascension of a Nascent Soul. Treasures that will accelerate the cultivation of an advanced Core Formation Elder, or help a Nascent Soul survive their tribulations, would be very valuable. If Old Jingshen is trying to purchase them, he'd probably have to do it over an extended period of time where his whole clan effectively dumps spirit stones at below-market prices to help the various Righteous powers fend off the current onslaught, in exchange for getting the actual treasure some decades down the line.

2) Ominously, he may be buying the goodwill of other Righteous powers that might not be happy about the Jingshen Clan conquering the Bronze Devils outright and taking over the entirety of the desert's spirit stone production, if only because Jingshen would predictably jack up the price of spirit stones after that. Cutting prices now as a gesture of good faith would then be a medium-term move laying groundwork for the assault on us that they'd have planned after getting their third Nascent Soul.

Prospalz · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

will408914 · May 19, 2021

[X] Plan The Scorpionquisition is Always Unexpected

TehChron · May 19, 2021

Shaper47 said:
Because if Jingshen can go to the Elder of Day and hire him for 20 wealth to have him assist it beating us up we are totally screwed. Having the Strength Purity Sect tell their Righteous allies that the Golden Devils have been helping so don't fuck with them to much stops that from happening.

Why would Old Jingshen hire the dude that almost had his daughter killed and most recently backstabbed the entirety of the Righteous powers in the middle of a Nascent level fight to save his own Sect?

Why would Old Jingshen assume that the same thing wouldnt happen again, this time to his own detriment?

The word of the Divine Saber Palace is less than trash right now.

Shaper47 said:
Now your just taking it out of context. By granting us another Nascent I'm talking more about how the Righteous Alliance has lots of Nascent souls working for them. I'm seeing it as an option to be able to call in Yao for some wealth when we need too so if we need another Nascent soul in a battle she makes herself available to assist.

???

How am I taking it out of context by literally asking you for that very context? You said we'd basically get another Nascent soul, I asked you what you thought that looked like.

So what you're saying is that you expect to be able to call her as a pocket mercenary if we get her deep enough into her pocket?

I dont see that happening, based on what we've seen of her thought process.

Simon_Jester said:
Because it probably won't be less effective

No, it will

I think someone got that clarified via discord.

Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

mook.

Killed a man in Reno just to watch him die

Temp Banned

(slouching towards bethlehem)