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Paths of Civilization

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Can the thunder horse even reach the village before the Highlanders get there? I mean I shouldn't be in the currently contested area at all if it's in the hills...
 
Man. This is fantastic. The option everyone seems to be voting for has a very high chance of making the HK go to war, and even if we do evacuate before then- we're probably condemning an entire village to slaughter and slavery. I for one admit this can't possibly be anything less than the utmost act of justice and Good- a laudable deed we should inscribe in our temples- replete with TH warriors raping and pillaging as our soldiers come home!

NotAlwaysFanfic said:
If we decide to bring our warriors in, what will happen to the villagers of the city? Will we take them with us so that they aren't defenseless or leave them behind because they aren't ours?
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If we take the villagers with us, the HK will likely assume that we specifically raided the village to subjugate its population.
 
pblur said:
That concern is about TH raiders; the HK response should be adequate to see them off.
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The point was that that concern still exists if we send blackbirds to bring everyone back. Pulling our guys out before the HK show up is running a big risk for the village. On the other hand, if the TH kill and enslave everyone there before reinforcements show up for HK then we are basically off the hook.
 
Karugus said:
probably condemning an entire village to slaughter and slavery.
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'Probably'? Really? We don't even know there are TH raiders in the area, and the window between our occupation and HKs arrival will probably be too small for effective slaving and slaughtering. These things take time.
 
pblur said:
'Probably'? Really? We don't even know there are TH raiders in the area, and the window between our occupation and HKs arrival will probably be too small for effective slaving and slaughtering. These things take time.
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Our trading mission went from peaceful to overrun town pretty fast. A good old fashioned massacre doesn't take that much time if you are already in the area, and at least some of our warriors are worried that the TH are already close enough, or they would have withdrawn and reported in.

I'm not saying it is probable that the place will be hit, but it is definitely possible.
 
mc2rpg said:
That still leaves the civilian population ready to be slaughtered and enslaved.
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Sneak the blackbirds in at night, have them start figuring out what the hell happened while also keeping a watch for the HK vanguard, and then they pull back once the HK are close enough.
VoidZero said:
Not when the villagers exist and the village is without forest cover due to being in lowland, I think. And chariots are faster than Blackbirds in plains. (I know Blackbirds can ride chariots but then someone needs to park it.)
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Blackbirds managed to sneak through the lowlands back in the past fairly easily, so I don't see why they couldn't do it now as long as they travel at night. Plus, the idea would always be to run well before the HK could attack, but to pull out the warriors without them ever noticing the reinforcements. The blackbirds would thus be our best bet.

Then again, I may just be overestimating our ninjas.
Karugus said:
Man. This is fantastic. The option everyone seems to be voting for has a very high chance of making the HK go to war, and even if we do evacuate before then- we're probably condemning an entire village to slaughter and slavery. I for one admit this can't possibly be anything less than the utmost act of justice and Good- a laudable deed we should inscribe in our temples- replete with TH warriors raping and pillaging as our soldiers come home!


If we take the villagers with us, the HK will likely assume that we specifically raided the village to subjugate its population.
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Uh, yes, and? We all know that we are pretty fucked no matter what we pick. But the winning option is us owning up to our mistakes and desperately trying to fix it rather than just going 'oh well, just kill all the HK and take their stuff while we have the chance.' That's what people like about it, not that it is the 'best' answer in a situation that really has no correct one.

And we risk war with literally every option, so that doesn't really enter into the equation for most of us I'd say.

It's not the situation we want to be in, but there is literally no better option here, other than saying 'fuck it' and just going full militant conqueror and trying to take as much of the HK as we can.
 
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mc2rpg said:
Our trading mission went from peaceful to overrun town pretty fast. A good old fashioned massacre doesn't take that much time if you are already in the area, and at least some of our warriors are worried that the TH are already close enough, or they would have withdrawn and reported in.

I'm not saying it is probable that the place will be hit, but it is definitely possible.
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Considering travel times, the initial conflict was probably at least 6 months ago.
 
Karugus said:
Man. This is fantastic. The option everyone seems to be voting for has a very high chance of making the HK go to war, and even if we do evacuate before then- we're probably condemning an entire village to slaughter and slavery. I for one admit this can't possibly be anything less than the utmost act of justice and Good- a laudable deed we should inscribe in our temples- replete with TH warriors raping and pillaging as our soldiers come home!
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It's likely our people will take this incident as a lesson depending on how it goes belly up. If we leave the people behind and they get captured and enslaved by the TH, we'll likely evolve Protective Justice into a 'protect those who cannot' type value. AKA, we'll get a casus beli for the lowlands because every tries to use and abuse them, so we should come in and give them some good protection.
 
>HK shows up
>Finds Ymaryn warriors brandishing starmetal.
>"Oh thank goodness, you're here! Now we can go home. Pack it in guys, we're going home!"
>???
 
pbluekan said:
So, I was talking militarism in general. My whole thing is that this empire building you want to do, can be done quite well without conquering our way through our neighbors. We have the tech, infrastructure, and defensive advantage to outlast them entirely. Eventually they fail. We've seen every civ around us detonate internally, and mind you that was always caused by excessive conflict. What we are seeing now? It's just a little preview of what happens.

The nomads are a great example. They literally are full martial and can barely hold a coherent civ together, and require heroic units to unite them. It's only after they let go of some of their martial traits that they actually built the empire they've got now. The Spirit Talkers? The Dead Priests? The first literally couldn't stop attackig or they'd destroy their civ, and by continuing to attack, destroyed their civ. The Dead Priests forged an empire for a while but had to let go of many of their raiding traits to actually make the empire worth anything.

We have forged an empire that has so far outlasted all the others with almost no instances of civil unrest. If you recall, the others broke apart Andrew reformed multiple times. We have a higher population, a better tech base, and a better infrastructure base than anyone. We aren't going away. What we have done for the last 80 turns has worked, and worked well. Changing it for a strategy that has been shown not to work is patently foolish.

So, when you say we should capitalize on our advantage, I'm going to say that we already are, to a massive degree. This temple? The Palace? Our rediculous ability to basically buy whatever we want because we have such high Econ? The tech advancements in chariots, roads, medicine, boatbuilding(soon), metallurgy, even warfare, were all made possible by iron. This is how we are leveraging that advantage. Doing it through conquest is pretty boring, honestly. That advantage isn't going away either. Eventually, sure other civs will have iron working, but when they do, we will have our built and our grown them so far it won't make a difference. Iron isn't the be all end all. We are literally out econning them, and it works.

As for Iron working, of course I supported Iron working, but supporting iron has no direct relation to militarism. It makes superior tools and is a branch point for hundreds of technologies. I'm a little confused as to why you seem to think supporting iron means going a more militaristic route, especially when I and most of the rest of this thread voted to build tools first, rather than weapons.


By the way, a couple things in your post:

Shouldn't have*


Pretty sure you meant capitalizing
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I'm on a cell, so forgive minor mistakes (shouldn't have of vs. shouldn't have was actually something I mentally debated). As for your points about other civs that stands even if you lay the blame on their Martial endeavors it has to be more complicated than that - we do not have a POV inside their civs. Still, they were all more militaristically active than the People and all eventually collapsed. But that only shows that you shouldn't be monofocused on anything (remember the Spirit Talkers were banking on the northern nomads to recognize their spiritual might and stop attacking because they couldn't stop them militarily).

And the ST weren't the only civ that was conquered militarily, the Metal Workers were taken over as well. Turtling up will not stop problems from coming.

That's not to say that we should conquer indiscriminately with no regard to having peaceful, diplomatic relations. I think we should only sparingly go to war against specific foes. There is no empires right now. It's still early.
 
Well if we do get in a fight with the HK we might be able to negotiate peace easier than other powers since our Carrion Eaters allow us to heal enemy warriors, usually for interrogation, meaning we can ransom them to try and sue for peace.
 
NotteBoy97 said:
Well if we do get in a fight with the HK we might be able to negotiate peace easier than other powers since our Carrion Eaters allow us to heal enemy warriors, usually for interrogation, meaning we can ransom them to try and sue for peace.
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I don't know; is ransoming common soldiers even possible in this day and age?
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by pblur on May 28, 2017 at 11:18 PM, finished with 42815 posts and 95 votes.
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Karugus said:
Man. This is fantastic. The option everyone seems to be voting for has a very high chance of making the HK go to war, and even if we do evacuate before then- we're probably condemning an entire village to slaughter and slavery. I for one admit this can't possibly be anything less than the utmost act of justice and Good- a laudable deed we should inscribe in our temples- replete with TH warriors raping and pillaging as our soldiers come home!

If we take the villagers with us, the HK will likely assume that we specifically raided the village to subjugate its population.
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It sounds like their warriors attacked our trader- if that's the case then fuck them, we had every right to defend ourselves. But allowing our warriors to seize that village isn't a precedent I think we can afford to set, because it suggests any glory-seeking asshole can go out and 'liberate' a village. Don't mistake me though- I really have no sympathy for the Highland Kingdom in this matter- it sounds like they provoked the bull and got the horns.

It might be a bit of shame that this left them short-handed, but it's not really our responsibility to defend everyone in the world from everyone else. If they want to toddle on back to the Ymaryn lands and become one of ours, we'll treat them well, otherwise they need to depend on their own leaders- a sudden dearth of warriors to defend the village is far from the worst possible fate that could happen to them.

I would actually not be shocked if this was a put-up job by our trader- go to the village he knows has an asshole chief and ornery young warriors and provoke a fight for a variety of economic and/or idealistic reasons. If so, their guys still take the responsibility for going after the bait
 
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pblur said:
I don't know; is ransoming common soldiers even possible in this day and age?
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People buying/selling is quite the norm within DP's area, so it is likely for HK and TH to pickup the habit if that is profitable. Everyone knows we are rich, so nabbing our guys and gals for salt is likely.
 
pblur said:
'Probably'? Really? We don't even know there are TH raiders in the area, and the window between our occupation and HKs arrival will probably be too small for effective slaving and slaughtering. These things take time.
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SpeckofStardust said:
Can the thunder horse even reach the village before the Highlanders get there? I mean I shouldn't be in the currently contested area at all if it's in the hills...
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Considering the TH are a heavily nomad-influenced culture with tons of chariots and a raiding culture. Yeah. There's a ton of relatively small warbands raiding and wandering about right now.

There's definitely a non-negligible chance especially if the raiders might simply be waiting for the foreign warriors (us) to leave before striking which is entirely possible.

I'll be the first to admit my spiel there wasn't serious and was in fact hyperbole, but that was mostly intended to voice my frustration with people earlier insisting on justice and Goodness.
 
pblur said:
I don't know; is ransoming common soldiers even possible in this day and age?
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Well if it doesn't hopefully we'll invent because we don't want to go to war and people are less angry at you if you didn't murder their father causing you go on an epic adventure and make a Princess Bride reference:lol.
 
[X] Attempt to capture the errant warriors and then make amends with the Highlanders (-5 Diplomacy, probable war with Highlanders)
 
Tally time :p
Adhoc vote count started by Ghostdevil on May 28, 2017 at 11:37 PM, finished with 42825 posts and 98 votes.
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