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Paths of Civilization

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BungieONI said:
Well, I'm more concerned about causing damage to Sacred Warding because it is harder to repair.
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What makes you say that? We have the protocols literally written down. They're not going away.

This is probably some form of bias.
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Yea pretty much. If we fail sacred warding the effects will be fairly immediate and very obvious. As in: A smallpox epidemic. Bad, yes. But we have sanitary procedures and quarantine management. Also, our shamans are pretty good with the medical side of things, so... Fixable, yes. We also will have the knowledge to fix it in a readily available form. It's written down, at least the basics of it.

If we fail sacred forest, we won't see the damage for a century or more, and by then nobody will know what the fuck happened and how to fix it. They won't even remember that we really had a sacred forest belief.
 
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NotteBoy97 said:
So @veekie what kind of actions are you going to take if your plan wins, because the actions to challenge sacred forests seem rather obvious e.g. study and expand forest. Like study health seems like an idea but it is the only action that I can think of that will actually help with challenging sacred herds since expand pastures was subsumed by expand econ.
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We are managing our forests for nearly a millennium.
They won't get blight easily, and even less easily noticeable one.

It would probably literally take at least a century if not more.

To prove that a group of not inoculated people will get pox is comparatively far easier.
 
pbluekan said:
What makes you say that? We have the protocols literally written down. They're not going away.
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I mean, one, the whole point of challenging the belief is to determine if we should still do it anymore, though? So if our people can't find evidence that it helps (say the test group is all lucky and don't actually catch smallpox, or something), then they will stop doing it because its pointless. Two, i'm almost certain we don't actually have them written down; @Academia Nut has said that most things our shamans know are still passed down orally
 
[X] Send missions to the chief belligerents (Secondary Trade missions to Highlanders and Thunder Horse)
[X] Main provinces (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)
[X] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Warding (???)
 
[X] Remind the lowlands of your wealth and power (Main Salt Gift)
[X] Main provinces (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)
[X] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Warding (???)
 
[X] Send missions to the chief belligerents (Secondary Trade missions to Highlanders and Thunder Horse)
[X] Main provinces (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)
[X] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Warding (???)

I'm less confident in trade missions gathering evidence for Sacred Warding and more of the desire to play mediator to the lowland fight. We are known for being moderates who have had good relations with all the players involved.
 
[X] Look around for more reasonable people (Main Sailing Mission)
[X] Main provinces (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)
[X] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Forest (???)
 
VoidZero said:


Dispensing suppressants before mods got paged. Forest for life!
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Hey! Bringing in pics of cute animals is my job! Get off my turf! Hissss.

Guile said:
Okay, that's the star axe explained logically.

Then, the ten years of evil weather directed at the lowlands that broke the Dead Priest empire, and the giant talking earth-mouth?
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We had heard rumors of the Spirit Talkers getting the spirits to send divine punishment on the Lowlanders for their transgressions. What we got was a cycle of floods and droughts that hurt not just the people in the lowlands, but everywhere else as well. Only reason we survived was because we had taken to storing food, while the ST had been stocking up for a while. The 'earth-mouth' struck pretty much every note of stage magic, although the ST likely bought into it as well. Sitting in a specific spot, perfect for the echoes to bounce back in a specific way. Smoke from the burning incense was causing mild hallucinogenic effects. The sun setting at just the right angle to cast its light into the cavern. Caves only form in limestone, which tends to form very fang-like stalactite and stalagmite formations, especially around new tunnels. Most of the thread has decided that magic probably isn't real, but AN has been coy and never directly shown us something that we can be one hundred percent assured is or isn't.

Anyway, here's my vote.

[X] Send missions to the chief belligerents (Secondary Trade missions to Highlanders and Thunder Horse)
[X] Main provinces (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)
[X] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Warding (???)
 
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Sivantic said:
I'm less confident in trade missions gathering evidence for Sacred Warding and more of the desire to play mediator to the lowland fight. We are known for being moderates who have had good relations with all the players involved.
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Didn't we withdraw from all contact with everyone for like a generation?
 
Abby Normal said:
I mean, one, the whole point of challenging the belief is to determine if we should still do it anymore, though? So if our people can't find evidence that it helps (say the test group is all lucky and don't actually catch smallpox, or something), then they will stop doing it because its pointless. Two, i'm almost certain we don't actually have them written down; @Academia Nut has said that most things our shamans know are still passed down orally
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So, you're telling me that one of the most important beliefs of the people, a belief that was established after writing became widespread among the shamans, is not written down? Somewhere?

Also, yes it is possible for our test group to 'get lucky' but read this abstract:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249962585_The_Infectious_Dose_of_Variola_Smallpox_Virus

What this basically says is that a single viral particle can cause an infection. Smallpox is rediculously infectious. The likelihood of someone not catching the virus if they've never been inoculated with vaccinia or haven't had a booster in a long time is extremely low.
 
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veekie said:
Uh, guys, Salt Gift is great for stats, but we need fresh samples of smallpox via trade for the challenge.
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I mean, yeah, trade is good for this situation and all...

But doesn't salt gift also include sending trade caravans to all the major players? Only instead of haggling over dyes and salt, we just hand out salt like candy.

The mingling with lowlanders part still applies
 
pbluekan said:
So, you're telling me that one of the most important beliefs of the people, a belief that was established after writing became widespread among the shamans, is not written down?
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Of course it isn't. After all, everything important gets told orally, that way every has access to it and can check and reference each other for discrepancies, right?

Thing is, the legitimacy of this just took a major blow, as oral tradition was how Weapons of the Gods was remembered and passed down among our people. Taking the Library right after/during this challenge is likely to have some synergy to this because people will be looking for new surefire ways to keep records that don't turn out to be poppycock later. After all, if we have hundreds of years worth of records of our Shamans talking about doing a certain thing and why we do that, it must be true right?

That will be a problem further down the line, as anyone who understands history knows. The Iron is Evil faction would have had a stronger argument if they had direct, past records of previous generations to point to instead of simple 'he said she said.'
 
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If the salt gift is going everywhere(even the Haythn) shouldn't we pick that option so our test subjects are exposed to as many people with small pox as possible rather then three areas? It'll also force us to have a larger pool of test subjects as well.
 
Academia Nut said:
Not really. Much of writing is basically tax records, with the shaman writing being more about keep track of stars and omens, with some historical warnings of "Don't do this, we did it and it didn't turn out well". The big issue is that storytelling and oral traditions remain the big method of passing on information for the majority of people, so since the shamans need to memorize the stories and plays to tell them anyway they tend not to write them down because everyone knows them and remembers them so they would correct each other if anything was wrong, right?
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pbluekan said:
So, you're telling me that one of the most important beliefs of the people, a belief that was established after writing became widespread among the shamans, is not written down? Somewhere?

Also, yes it is possible for our test group to 'get lucky' but read this abstract:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249962585_The_Infectious_Dose_of_Variola_Smallpox_Virus

What this basically says is that a single viral particle can cause an infection. Smallpox is rediculously infectious. The likelihood of someone not catching the virus if they've never been inoculated with vaccinia or haven't had a booster in a long time is extremely low.
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The quote above is what I'd been going off of, though I'd misremembered it slightly. I'm not sure whether the warding would count as an omen to be recorded, or as something that every shaman has to know anyway, so why write it down? So I could see either way on that front. But yeah, the big issue is the "if we fail the belief check", which your and other posts have made me much less worried about, but is still likely at least possible on a crit fail; I'll probably switch my vote over in the morning to warding anyway, I just wanted to point out that the (seemingly unlikely but possible) fail state was worse than (if i understood you right) you were saying
 
Guile said:
Didn't we withdraw from all contact with everyone for like a generation?
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Yes. However we did so to remain neutral and while they disliked the lack of assistance, they understood that it meant their enemies weren't receiving assistance either

We haven't had negative relations with the Lowlanders in centuries, and have largely kept out. We are a neutral party
ETA50M said:
If the salt gift is going everywhere(even the Haythn) shouldn't we pick that option so our test subjects are exposed to as many people with small pox as possible rather then three areas? It'll also force us to have a larger pool of test subjects as well.
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It isn't, read the choice again
[] Remind the lowlands of your wealth and power (Main Salt Gift)
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Only into the Lowlands.
 
[X] Send missions to the chief belligerents (Secondary Trade missions to Highlanders and Thunder Horse)
[X] Main provinces (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)
[X] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Warding (???)
 
Sivantic said:
Yes. However we did so to remain neutral and while they disliked the lack of assistance, they understood that it meant their enemies weren't receiving assistance either

We haven't had negative relations with the Lowlanders in centuries, and have largely kept out. We are a neutral party

It isn't, read the choice again

Only into the Lowlands.
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Actually AN said the Salt gift would go to everyone even our hated enemies.
Academia Nut said:
The salt will generally go to everybody. I mean, theoretically you could do a salt mission entirely to your worst enemy just for the purposes of fucking with them. The two trade missions are a bit more targeted than doing the Bronze Age international relations equivalent of making it rain.
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[X] Look around for more reasonable people (Main Sailing Mission)
[X] Stallion Tribes
[] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Warding (???)
[] Challenge the validity of the Sacred Forest (???)

I really want to have more opportunities for diplo. The other preferable option would just be the salt gift, as it's less.... commit-y than actual trade missions.

Stallion Tribes because they could use the increase in Econ and we don't seem to want to integrate them soon.

@Academia Nut Is there an increased risk of betrayal if we send the nomads to the ST, or will their word-is-bond trait keep them honest members of our population?
 
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