- We can see the effects of the last turn's choices here. Twythulmyn's been expanding the military, sending out trade missions and expanding the economy. It also looks like one of the sub-chiefs tried to send out some boats on an exploration mission and flubbed the roll
Remember Trade Missions are diplomacy rolls and we're using a Heroic Diplomacy leader, so botching the roll is very unlikely even if he's not directly in charge of it.
Also I'd highlight that our Diplomacy having a (+2?) indicates that we don't know the results yet, because Trade Missions pay out/return the next turn.
- We get notice that our information network isn't really good cause it's all third/fourth hand stuff. Maybe we could try sending more traders or Blackbirds down there later to get a clearer picture of what's going on
That's normal up until the semaphore. If you want a good information network you pretty much need better roads to your neighbors(i.e. open Badlands province) and route the trade through that.
[] Small (-1 Econ, chance of stability loss, ???) _ not worth risking stability to gain ???, depends on ???
The ??? here is probably a chance to gain some kind of unfazed trait, since it'd be the second time we chose to deal with spooky celestial event by shrugging and getting back to work.
I'd support this plan. Though honestly I expect the dice to completely screw up all our plans before we ever got that far.
Still, if we ever decide to build that dam, we can pretty much ruin the lives of everyone living downstream by blocking their precious water. Our people will make the Lowlands learn our peaceful farming ways - even if we have to kill them all to do it.
It's been pointed out before that the biggest hit the dam does to the lowlands is stopping the annual flooding/silt delivery. But
also, other Civs are not dumb AIs, they will adapt more quickly if challenged, and are likely to develop advanced irrigation methods(which actually benefit from a steadier river) within a few generations of that.
I don't get why y'all are like "the chance that the DP will get anything useful out of that [full and complete transferal of the ritual to others] after it's been through a game of [sending emissaries back and forth and kidnapping people and then torturing them for more information]." Like, the literal three things that need to be known are as follows: 1) this diseases from cowpoxes fights off the plague, 2) the disease looks like these sores on the cow, 3) if you get goo from the sores into people it infects them. 1 & 3 are easily transferred, only 2 is an issue.
Torturing information out of people is very unreliable even when you share their language and culture. When you don't...you'd be hard pressed to get the right answers to "The sky is red at sunset". You'd get something like "The above is shellfish at the shadow".
Case in point? No civilization has the same name for themselves as other people. Civilizations only share names for common neighbors if one introduced the other to them.
The Nomads called us the Hill Devils. Additionally, their term for us is the closest to our own term for ourselves in sound, but meaning completely different things.
The Spirit Talkers, despite contact with the Nomads, called us the Valley Workers
The Western Confederacy called us the Hill Folk
The Dead Priests called us the Beast Folk
The Metal Workers PROBABLY are calling us the Boat People.
Second, you're not conveying how the innoculation works given those three steps. Even step 1 is very unlikely to be taken on trust, because currently it looks like some kind of fuck you to get yourself infected(and when they test it on slaves without our shamans overseeing the procedure, they're likely to get the wrong one and conclude the guy they tortured is speaking nonsense and/or trying to kill them)
Centralization
What we know about Centralization is that it gives bonuses to collective actions. That is, the actions we choose for our civilization, at least the ones our King does, and gives us the ability to deal with crises better. This makes having higher Centralization a good thing in general, but I believe there is more to it than this. Centralization is the measure of how much our central government is, well, centralized.
Currently we have spent our first turn being under the number of provinces in difference between our hierarchy and centralization. That is, the difference between the two stats is 3 at the moment, where as we have 4 provinces. Coincidentally we have also actually had our first bit of information on what exactly one of our provinces is doing. As a result, I hold a high belief that we need centralization to be equal to or higher than hierarchy, in order to know what all our provinces are up to. At least for the current form of government.
The question is, how vital is this? While not immediately important, it does represent our provinces acting unchecked from government authority, which is a very large problem long run, and can run into significant more problems down the line. So it's not vital, but we should be ticking away at every other turn.
I'd note that AN also stated explicit drawbacks to high Centralization:
-It was one of the reasons the Spirit Talkers died off, they simply couldn' compete, as a Centralized Economy is a Planned Economy, and really poor at taking advantage of opportunities under the barrier of "everything has to go through the boss".
-It triggers different, more dramatic events when Stability falls. We've seen that Western Confederacy's really poor centralization also meant that they get little done when Stability falls, but no one arguing party has the power to change the overall situation. High centralization means concentrated power, which in turn means dissatisfied parties are likely to be able to wield said power to enact change. It's how you get Autocracies, rebelling chiefs or, with high Hierarchy, rebelling provinces.
In fact, the only combination of Centralization and Hierarchy that explicitly
doesn't spawn nasty events is having them both at moderate levels rather than high. Bad events are just the cost of operating with their advantages.
Stability
While there isn't much to be said about Stability that isn't already known, or making it's importance blatantly obvious with the current sequence of events, it does bare some repeating. Thanks to our Land of Opportunity trait we are in a situation where we can tank our Stability at pretty much any given time. Furthermore, having positive Stability tends to act as both a general boost to our society, and a safety net for when things go wrong.
I thoroughly believe we should push rather hard and increase Stability by 1 a turn until we get to +1 whenever we are bellow it. Stability is important and we would not be facing nearly the same problems if we had it higher here.
Given our action options, we'd probably find it easier to keep Stability at +2/+3 than to keep it at +1. If its at +3, we're one Econ-free Main action away from solving anything less than a -3 hit . If it's at +1, we're going to need at least one secondary, one main and some Econ.
Expansion
Expansion is somewhat unique in several ways. While it is not vital, it is an increasingly shrinking opportunity. While there is no truly linear path we need to take it, there are a couple of things we ideally want before heavily pursuing it. It is something that we can't ignore, just as much as it is something we can't immediately take.
Let's start with those things we really do want before we start expanding. Martial is one. With better Martial, we can much more easily defend our expansions, and considering our current martial will only easily win inside our lands, this is rather important for expanding outside of them. We also need better Centralization, because we really do not want our Centralization to drop at any moment more than we can avoid. Thirdly, we want copper tools.
A huge portion of the projects involved in expanding involve construction ventures. Building a settlement, building walls, establishing farms, new trails, these are all construction projects. Copper tools give us a more reliable set of tools that do not need to constantly be replaced, thus giving a very large advantage to these actions. While we will probably not be able to afford copper tools before we take any expansion action, getting them sooner rather than latter, is important.
I'd highlight that in the wake of the plague is likely the best opportunity to expand into the Badlands. All other parties are weakened, giving us the opportunity to grab the land and fortify it in the next 2-3 generations without major interference, depending on how we emerge from this mess.
These are the two actions we can take to increase Centralization. Enforce Authority is much more effective, however it will require a risk of losing one stability and should therefore only be done at 1 or above stability. While this would be 'optimal,' especially since it doesn't cost any econ, compared to new trails, we shouldn't underestimate the power of new trails or the background effects it will have. We also shouldn't underestimate the general need for Centralization on the immediate level.
Enforce Authority and Restore Harmony are kind of a killer combo if we have Stability at +2. A major shift at minor cost.
These are the only actions that can increase Mysticism. Now, while main new settlement may look tempting, it is also putting a main action towards gaining only 1 mysticism. Sure, we gain econ, but that is what our provinces and expansion actions are for. It should thus not be considered a Mysticism boost action, but an expansion action that can get a little bit of extra done.
In the end, it would be better to spend the 1 econ to gain 1 mysticism or suck it up and spend 2 econ in hopes of gaining an expansion to the holy sites. While Econ is a concern here, our bottleneck is closer to action economy and we should try not to take needless actions when we don't need to.
Taking the action economy on the Main action, I think it needs to be considered in the light of expanding Econ sites.
Main settlement is advantageous for Mysticism when:
-It adds Econ slots to provinces which are low on Econ slots/it relieves overcrowding(currently this is the same thing)
-It takes advantage of a special resource
-It eases a megaproject
-It creates a new province
Otherwise, yeah, just suck it up and expand the Holy Sites
Well, this list is rather long. Many of these things are one off parts that are tied to specific conditions, such as New Settlement creating a new province to our east and New Trails gaining us a province to the northwest. There are some important things here. Expanding Black Soil production will let us settle inhospitable land, so if we intend to go anywhere as such we should definitely take it beforehand. Build Walls and Expand Forest are both defensive maneuvers, that should both be done after we have secured an area, to further secure said area. Build Walls should even arguably be done as we are securing an area.
The important thing here is Study Rocks. Short of gaining a rapidly closing window (which is quite possible), we need to get that out before we move on to any other expansion project. It allows for easier construction of trails, walls, various buildings for settlements, and rapid farming. However, it also has an unknown development time behind it, which makes putting off things too much very dangerous. The action of Study Rocks, however, should definitely be mained, as it is both cheaper and we can not afford to simply fail at the knowledge check.
I'd note that the last update mentioned that we can extend the window on Study Rocks by sending another trade mission to the Metal Workers. This should be doable even if we had to do Restore Harmony and Festivals.
Centralization
This is how well our leader can act and extend his power over the entirety of the country. It also represents how well our countries disparate parts communicate with the center and each other. Having it higher will probably give us more actions, at least secondaries and it will tell us more about what our Provinces are doing with themselves.
Having it lower means we become more disorganized, which is not totally bad. It's very much a double or three edged sword to have it low. The benefits I'm thinking having it low might give is that our lower chiefs start getting more actions to themselves and take actions that might on average improve our civ without our direction. They might not take the actions we really want them to though so having this high but not extreme is probably really damn good.
This falling to 0 or negative is probably lethal in some fashion at least with our current form of governance.
Bolded is explicitly wrong. Low Centralization polities get more actions, but less control over actions. High Centralization allows for more
focused actions, which is great for achieving breakthroughs and megaprojects via Main or Double Main actions, but really poor for growth.
Diplomacy
How much good reputation we have to spend, is what this seems to be. We also spend it as a way to make or break ties. We have generally always had this high, I think. having it low would have uncertain but probably bad consequences. Among other things the other polities around us might start becoming really obstinate and dickish to us. Even more than they are now. Having it high though means we can make a lot of friends and diplo annex lesser minor tribes.
Economy
How much valuable stuff we have. In this age without real forms of currency and a barter system valuable things are; Food, Fancy dyed clothing, Cows, Dye, Colorful rocks, and a few other luxury items. We spend this like water. A very large portion of actions take some kind of Econ cost. We can get this with Trade Missions and by finding valuable things like the snails and the blue stone.
Others already answered this, but Diplomacy is based on Luxuries, Trade and symbols of power. Dyed clothing, tattoos, artwork, etc.
Economy is pure manpower and food to feed said manpower.
[][Main] Study Rocks
[][Secondary] Expand Warriors
[][Secondary] Build War Carts
This takes -3 Econ, gives a greater chance of metal insights, gives +2 Martial and a chance for improving War Cart design. The nudging to copper weapons seems unlikely, but the war cart design might improve and that way leads to using metal in the design. Armoring?
Clearing up three misconceptions:
-Copper weapons are pretty shitty even compared to bone and flint. They're easier to repair, but overall a terrible use for weapons(you would really rather have a weapon which breaks less often rather than a weapon which can be easily fixed if broken, as weapons breaking in a fight kills you)
-War carts have no value in armoring, as they are not attacked and provide no cover to the rider. Innovations have been to make carts lighter and lighter, while adding metal is only good for ornamentation as a result.
-However, copper does make good wires, which allows for different contruction methods, as they're stronger than twine. Still, too costly to be anything but prestige at present.
Art is described as 'third kind' work, work that pleases and gives happiness. Generally, that would mean it is used to depict stories, events, and porn (is it really a surprise?). High Art is liable to kick off a philosophical golden era (at least in stone age terms of a golden era) as more and more ways of describing or depicting an event promotes a number of practices such as codified histories and more specific forms of pictography. Especially low and negative art values would represent major losses of historical knowledge or especially uniform art practices leading to a major cultural slump.
Also noting that higher art might help trigger another language innovation. Might.
Prestige is like a grab-bag of small boosts to things other statistics already do. It makes us appear more opulent and rich (Economy also does this, which is a negative thing as it means we need a higher Military rating to deter aggressive neighbors). It... makes us appear more opulent and powerful (Diplomacy, leveraged correctly, also does this, and makes us appear more appealing as an ally to others, assuming we don't appear more appealing as a target instead). It shows off the grand-mindedness of our leaders, which inspires the populace (something stability also does, but likely does much better than prestige). Overall, high or low prestige doesn't have an instant ooomph impact that we've seen.
It's apparently one of the next-tier stats like art used to be. There's ways to spend it that AN mentioned, and he cited EU/CK game modes.
Maybe spent to establish national identity or the like?
About Econ not being changed by dyes and similar luxuries I thought there were instances where we found valuable things like the blue stone and our Econ went up? *shrug* Either way thanks for clarifying all of that.
Nope, never happened unless we built a settlement there(and then our economy goes up because settlements up economy)
I did straight up forget about the badlands settlement. I think it got filed in my mental map as being to our east towards where the ST used to be. One of my variants for the "Invading the Lowlands" Action Path has us going down into the Lowlands and making a settlement using two secondary actions. Mostly to recover from the Econ cost of previous actions. I do seem to remember reading that the Badlands Settlement will require a Main action to do but will be treated as a Secondary action because of the harsh environment.
That's uh...where it is. Yellow triangle on the map I posted a while back.
Tbh I don't care much about the cow pop. ratio, it doesn't seem to matter in the long run.
But that was
the biggest challenge for the project, because only a small proportion of a herd is sick with cowpox at a time, sometimes none, unless it's a very large herd(we needed
three pastures worth of cows, enough for a village dedicated entirely to breeding cows).
You cannot conduct the rituals without infected cows at all.
There's no need to infect people with "just" cowpox, all that matters is that a) they get infected with cowpox, b) whatever else they get infected with is better than the plague. If people already know that untreated punctures are likely to get infected they'll know to wash the site. Hygiene taboos are an unnecessarily high requirement, which is why I said "even minimal hygiene." Hygiene can be a custom, a habit, an etc., not just a taboo.
Please read the Warding project again. We had some deadly plagues emerge from that which was only stopped by hasty quarantines. It's one of the reasons that we went for a specialized sick cow production facility that makes sure it's cowpox ONLY.
And minimal hygiene is not normal in the stone age. Water takes effort to carry, and is much more valuable for drinking. Many people do not wash more than seasonally unless they had direct access to a river(the Nomads probably consider our people smelling unmanly due to cleanliness taboos), and then only when they're stuck with something particularly foul smelling.
This is from way back, but this isn't a comet, at least I'm fairly sure it's not. It's probably a supernova - there's been instances of that happening in history, and it lasted about a month or two IIRC. So sacrificing our king would be seen to have an effect, assuming I'm right. Even if it turns out to be a comet making a close pass, the effect itself will fade soon, so the sacrifice will end up going down in legend.
I dunno if it's winning or not and I'm not gonna find out, just wanted to blurb.
It has twin tails and the meteor shower from the trail, it's a comet. Probably a long cycle one though.
*shiny eyes* *whispers* Megaprojectttsss