That's why we are building the canals, one of the lessons of globalization that has not aged poorly is that the places that are notoriously poor are ripe for a boom if you can provide the conditions for it.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
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Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
That's why we are building the canals, one of the lessons of globalization that has not aged poorly is that the places that are notoriously poor are ripe for a boom if you can provide the conditions for it.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
I am not sure they are going to work at all actually. They might but I am not convinced that they will have enough draw to actually replace any one of the existing waystones or won't ,you know, fall over and stop working during the first storm of magic or if a stiff breeze doesn't push them over first.
Also they would need wizards' help since Hans the local mason cannot in fact talk to spirits to keep them placated... Oh did I say wizard? I meant the people with the same soul structure that bind themselves to culturally acceptable aetheric entities as part of organized cults, those totally-not-wizards.
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It'd be really convenient if there was a way to instantly fix all of that and then also build up the economic infrastructure that could exist there in the absence of their waystone-related issues with the stroke of a pen the way nigh-eliminating Ulthuan's support of marienburg's monopoly could be, yeah.
But there isn't, so that's not the comparison. We're also not arguing over waystones or no waystones, nor was the Ulthuan deal a choice between waystones or no waystones. This is about speed, and Marienburg was the fastest way to beef up the war effort because that's nearly instant while there is no possible design or deployment of waystones that will not take decades to restore and then reap comparable economic benefits from restoring Sylvania, or Mullison, or the Drakenwalk or the Blackwater.
Restoration that will go faster if we can use riverine transmission I might add, since that lets us deploy it at population centers without building out the network towards them first.
So should I assume that you don't know what marginal gains means, or that you're just choosing not to accurately represent what that choice actually meant?
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[X] Plan Building A Better Future
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
[X] Plan Simple and Functional
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
[X] Plan Near-Original+
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Riverine)
--[X] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
[X] Plan Simple and Functional
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] [Expensive] Runed
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
[X] Plan Near-Original+
-[X] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
-[X] [RUNE] Dwarven
-[X] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
-[X] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
-[X] [TRANSMISSION] Both (specify which Riverine)
--[X] [TRANSMISSION] Riverine (Spirit)
The fact that the pot is growing doesn't mean it isn't a problem, as the real issue isn't the cost, it's the opportunity cost.
Just making some numbers up for illustrative purposes.
Let's say the Empire has an infrastructure budget of 100.
Waystone Design A costs 5 and any plausible number can be made per year
Waystone Design B costs 1 and up to ten can be made a year because of skill constraints
Building a castle costs 10 and any plausible number can be made a year
Assume Waystone A & B are functionally identical
The Empire has to choose which it prefers. It can:
Build 20 Waystone As and 0 castles
...
Build 14 Waystone Bs and 3 castles
...
Build 10 Waystone As and 5 castles
Build 10 Waystone Bs and 9 castles
Build 0 Waystones and 10 castles
Clearly, if you want some castles, under a scenario where you have a limited budget dpending on how much you relatively value castles and Waystones, at some point it's better to select Waystone B than A, as the opportunity cost in turns of castles not built is much lower with Waystone B. Even as economic output increases there are points where that remains the same, depending on how important castles are. There's a trade off between castles and Waystones until the budget grows to be enormous or the cost of Waystones shrinks to be insignificant in terms of the overall budget.
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I'm voting for an option that has Riverine transmission, just not bespoke storage that takes a Von Tarnus to work and maybe in several decades less than that.
Dwarf waystones don't absorb magic, they just carry it along. Their waystones are also entire mountains. Their waystone network obviously works a bit differently than the waystones that dot the Old World. That and even normal disconnected waystones can be told to stop sending magic forward. But finding and attaching to a new waystone is obviously a much more complicated instruction than "stop."
It certainly won't be!
Kislev isn't that poor. Erengrad is a rich port. Boris offered all the moneys as the tsarevich. Kislev should be able to afford the costs. Stirland is a lot less poor than you might think, due to the new canals and the reforms.
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According to WFRP Companion regular people can talk to river spirits, there are several examples of people doing so, including quotes from the (non-magical) scholar who interviewed two of the Empire's naiads.
If cost is no object then why has Boney included it as one of the three relevant factors for choosing each option though?
Presumably when an options says it has a high cost it means the cost is high on the scale of the states that would be paying it, and also that the difference between something of low cost and high cost makes a meaningful difference to them.
It could just be flavour text, I suppose, but my assumption was it was there because cost is a constraint we should take account of.
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Well, that's nice. Still means the marginal benefits of being slightly faster aren't worth sacrificing their long-term effectiveness though. OG transmission is just better when it's available.
Long term, really long term you can just build more stones to get the same storage along the line. In the meantime I want to see something like Sylvania get fixed or at least started in a timespan we actually see in this quest. If that is too much for your sense of efficiency I'm sorry but even if you did have the hard numbers for how your idea was optimized over 800 years or something I still would not change my vote.
LordPanther14
The Definition of Insanity
- Location
- Land of the Free
[x] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
[x] Plan: Repairing The Network First
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Both (Jade Riverine)
[x] Plan: Repairing The Network First
- [x] [CAPSTONE] Stone Flower
- [x] [RUNE] Dwarven
- [x] [STORAGE] Reverse-engineered
- [x] [FOUNDATION] Grey Lord
- [x] [TRANSMISSION] Leyline
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Huh? The difference in speed is nowhere near that significant. Both will be fast enough for us to see it happen in quest, or neither will be.
It's also rather hard to convince a local elector to pay to upgrade their waystone that's working good enough for them for the nebulous benefit of, say, 800 years down the line.
I wasn't saying that cost is no concern, I was objecting to Kislev and Stirland being portrayed as notoriously poor. Obviously even rich polities would be able to afford more cheaper waystones than expensive waystones.
On another note, when does the Project end? Boney suggested that rebuilding nexuses won't happen. That to me says that there aren't reasons to recruit a Damsel onto the Project. We already have the components. The most we have to do are deploying tributaries, designing other waystones, deploying new waystones, mapping the nexuses, investigating nexuses, and reclaiming fallen nexuses. Bretonnia probably would be able to help at least a bit with reclaiming the Forest of Shadows. Maybe get them to help with the Marcher Fortress (lmao). But the Damsels can't help with the other parts. I would assume deploying waystones in their lands would include them signing the Bohka Palace Accords. And while I'd love to get Damsel takes on the Belthani and Scythian tributaries, that's not a lot to justify their participation in the Project. I guess there's Athel Loren at least.
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We are talking about a paradigm shift in imperial enchanting, I think it will be and there are no hard numbers on that so there's not much debate to be had on that.
But I think Kislev and Stirland at this point are particularly poor (and we've just asked Boris to do a major infrastructure project that may take a long time to turn a profit in Kislev), and so cost is a greater concern for them than it possibly is for other places, meaning that the price of Waystones might be a more important factor in how many they can afford to buy, given they also have other important things to spend their limited funds on.
That would raise the relevance of the cost factor compared to others if we're particularly concerned about deploying Waystones there. A limited supply of cheaper Waystones may be more useful to them than a larger supply of expensive ones which richer regions may prefer.
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Parabola
Divided Loyalties Librarian
- Location
- The Destination of Fate
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Beyond those things, I feel like the furthest our attention could stretch the Project is poking Athel Loren's or Nehekhara's networks and seeing what diplomatic overtures we could make.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
So here is a question, once we got the Waystones functional where will be the priority for setting them up? Like Kislev (specifically Praag) or Sylvania would be obvious but what other places are secure enough for this yet Dhar tainted enough?
Yeah cost is a greater concern for Kislev and Stirland than, say, Ulthuan or Reikland. But that doesn't mean they are notoriously poor, which to me would indicate that even if it was cheap it would be a problem. My exact words were "Kislev isn't that poor" and "Stirland is a lot less poor than you might think". The indication of both of those statements is that while both of them are poor, they aren't impoverished.
The Damsels could help with Athel Loren. I'm just surprised that the Project seems like it could be done in four or so turns. Of the nexuses I really only want to poke the Forest of Shadows (Brass Keep, Blood Fane, Tower of Melkhior) and Mordheim. I'd like to investigate all of the networks, but that is a lot of AP.
Deploying the waystones and tributaries will probably take a lot of AP.
- Location
- Earth
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
My goal for the project is to learn how to hook New Holds up to the Karaz Ankor's network. It's a shame that it turns out that building new nexuses is outside any reasonable level of achievement (that had not been clear before the QM post, so I greatly appreciate the clarification from Mathilde's IC knowledge base), but we can definitely reclaim or at least investigate some. But I am really hoping that the Karaz Ankor investigation this turn goes well and we can figure out ways to interface with it (perhaps with the aid of our KaK Runesmiths Boon).
Our job might be based in Laurelorn for this arc, but as far as I'm concerned, this is still a dwarf quest, and this is my attitude:
Our job might be based in Laurelorn for this arc, but as far as I'm concerned, this is still a dwarf quest, and this is my attitude:
Aliya
Someone I might become
- Location
- Kazakhstan
- Pronouns
- They/She/It
The natural next step of the project is to make a waystone that is compatible with Kislev and Karaz Ankor networks, cause ominous Boney comments make me think they are special and need their own solution.
Also, argument about costs convinced me:
[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
Also, argument about costs convinced me:
[X] Plan Building A Better Future (With reverse engineering)
The problem is that we don't know the scaling for the cost. For all we know a single relatively cheap Waystone could consume a meaningful fraction of Stirland's discretionary funds for a year, while a particularly expensive one would be something they'd never be able to justify in the face of all the other demands on the Treasury.
For example, is the opportunity cost difference between a cheap and expensive Waystone design measured in whole castles not built or cities' walls not repaired, or in much smaller currency?
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