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Paths of Civilization

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[X] [RA] Increase debates to determine the truth (-2 to +2 Religious Authority based on success of debates, potential shift in Spiritual Values)
[X] [Low] Force them to follow the spirit of the law (Potential stability loss, potential war with vassal)
[X] [High] Extra tribute (+2 Prestige, +2 Wealth, probably completes this turn)
[X] [Refugee] Just those who come of their own initiative (Potential stab loss, +2 Econ)
[X] [RB] Deploy north to guard against nomads
 
@Academia Nut what impact will making Sacred Forest a Free City have on the religious debates? Will our priests and shamans have less time to devote to the debates and structuring arguments, due to needing to spend more time administratively? Will they have more/less respect in Sacred Forest and other areas as they are seen as fulfilling the role of governors? In short, how does the Spirit Chief think Free City and not Free City will synergize with RA?

[X] [City] Yes (Transfers 2 Econ + 2 Econ expansion, nulls cost of maintenance for Sacred Forest)
 
bluefur87 said:
I think that's what's going on here with Cent though. Something is getting folded in to centralization that shouldn't be, and that something is controlling our cap to some degree. If I had to take a guess I'd say 'connectivity' and 'government enforcement' are both taking up the cent stat now, when it should probably just be government enforcement. The weird sharing of a stat is causing some fundamental problems and we're likely to get something split off of cent by the end of this.
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So, hopefully improving our road and admin tech will allow us to see this second stat, and get an idea of what actually effects it. Good thing we're planning to do a lot of both in the near future.
 
NotAlwaysFanfic said:
@Academia Nut what impact will making Sacred Forest a Free City have on the religious debates? Will our priests and shamans have less time to devote to the debates and structuring arguments, due to needing to spend more time administratively? Will they have more/less respect in Sacred Forest and other areas as they are seen as fulfilling the role of governors? In short, how does the Spirit Chief think Free City and not Free City will synergize with RA?

[X] [City] Yes (Transfers 2 Econ + 2 Econ expansion, nulls cost of maintenance for Sacred Forest)
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No one knows, although giving the city more independence will likely increase its prestige and authority.
 
Glassware said:
So, hopefully improving our road and admin tech will allow us to see this second stat, and get an idea of what actually effects it. Good thing we're planning to do a lot of both in the near future.
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Oh, also poor management seems to be in stability. As much as we joke about the Ymaryn being that obsessed with management, it really shouldn't be there. Well, either that or general mood of the population shouldn't be there. Either way, they shouldn't share the same stat.

We may start seeing stability hits get transferred to legitimacy hits or cent hits, or to a new stat, as we get better admin tech. I suspect they should be different in general, though, as we quite often see those two very different problems that often require very different solutions popping up here. It's very much not a 'once in a while thing,' but often the sort of reliable differences that we can predict. Until then, well instead of trying to back track stuff...

@Academia Nut What do our advisers think the condition of the following are.
  • The current mood of the average Ymaryn as best they can tell and how confident they are in that?
  • The current effectiveness of our chiefs and how confident they are in that?
 
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TheDanishLord said:
Academia Nut can the debates led us to adopting the LM war-god
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if so, we don't want him- their war god is a bull demon that demands virgin sacrifices
Original - Paths of Civilization | Page 1160
Choxosyn - Head of a lion, body of a man, and legs of a bull, Choxosyn is the demon god of conquest who requires a steady supply of virgin maidens sent to him to keep him preoccupied with fulfilling his immediate lusts, so that he will not head out into the world to shake the ground with his passage or draw Thunderbird's ire. Enemy warriors can instead be sacrificed to him in order to gain his favour when on conquest
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TheDanishLord said:
I was thinking more into the way the ares was made in mars by the romans
Were to the greek we was war god the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war
But mars was Guardian of soldiers and farmers
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The mostly likely outcome of us winning the religion debate is rebranding their gods to be more in line with our values, so that's a possibility.
 
Dutch said:
People often mischaracterize Roman landowners as parasites.

The actual situation of Roman agriculture varied drastically. When speaking about the early Imperial period; In Egypt and near-Asia the old Hellenistic system was maintained, in Italy and Greece there were lots of slave driven farms, Celtic areas maintained their old social order and in the border regions there were a lot of independent farmers.

Even "wealthy patricians owning everything leaving nothing for most others?" doesn't mean what you think it does. In most cases a patrician owned various pieces of land across the Empire or provinces, in order to isolate themselves from a bad harvest in a region, these areas were managed by a local representatives who hired workers, leased away land and managed the area. This allowed landowners to pursue intellectual or administrative careers. Of these landowners the Emperor himself was the biggest. The times when people were forced from their land were when a landowner decided it was cheaper to use slaves or wanted to grow luxury products that needed specialized workers to grow. These landowners of various sizes would then take the money they made from these crops and became the main financer of the craftsmen living in the city, who could be described (in most cases) as living a step above poverty.

80 to 90 percent of the population of the empire was at some point involved in the production and movement of agricultural products. The landowners left enough for other people to sustain themselves. Heck, being a farmer of any kind (baring a slave) was viewed as being better than being a minor trader or a regular craftsmen.

Serfdom itself stems from the reforms Diocletiánus (around 300 AD) made. After the period of the Barracks Emperors, he reformed and expanded the army. This required a new tax system, leading to a system based on the amount of land you had, the quality of the land and the amount of people that worked it. People in the cities had to pay taxes individually depending on their occupation, rather then it being based on land. In order to stop people from evading taxes by leaving land or switching occupation (and therefor evading taxes) the farmers were bound to the land, the city dwellers (hereditary) to their occupation and the ruling low level elite to their positions. For the record the up to this point the ruling elite also had to pay a deposit on the taxes they collected up front from their personal funds. Where in previous times these positions were a sign of prestige, they were now a crippling burden. This led to nobody wanting the positions and forced Diocletiánus to expand the the provincial and Imperial administration, drafting primarily from the army, militarizing the bureaucracy considerably. Aside from the army, Diocletiánus drew from the knights (Equites, Lower aristocrats) to man this expanded administration. Which in turn led to the major landowners, often senators, being excluded from both military positions and goverment positions (aside from the senate).

The way these taxes worked stimulated local governments and landowners to keep the best talented people for themselves while sending the "worst" of when the army came recruiting/drafting. This forced the army to rely more on cheap Germanic mercenaries. As a compromise the Emperor allowed the landowners to pay in money instead of manpower, since they could use the money to hire more mercenaries.

When Constantine the Great became emperor he expanded the army and bureaucracy again. Again this came coupled with new taxes and increases in old taxes. These taxes impoverished the lower classes of Roman Society, the craftsmen and minor merchants, and led to him issueing new obligations and rights to land owners. He ordered them to keep their tenants in line because these taxes were so high that they were abandoning their own land in masses. These immigrations happend primarily in the Western Empire and these new rights and obligations were the second step to serfdom.

Fast forward again, this time to the collapsing Western Empire and the transition period to the successor kingdoms. Due to the wealth differences in the east and west (and various other reasons), the eastern cities thrived and the western cities declined. Al the while Imperial authority in the west declined, allowing the landowners and army commanders to grow in influence. At some point it wasn't able to enforce the tax system on farmers and craftsmen, allowing them to leave their vocations and land, further hurting tax income. While this was going on the lower lever Aristocrats that ruled the cities and surrounding areas were being crushed by new taxes in order to make up for the taxes lost. This while they had to use their own funds to maintain the public facilities and the previously mentioned tax deposit.

Meanwhile local farmers had enough of the ever increasing taxes and organized themselves underneath the local landowners, be they big or small. These landowners supported by dicontent farmers started to ignore the local governments and because of their relative wealth and food production these landowners could afford to hire their own guards. Due to the declining situation in the cities, whom lost the economy they were dependent on, high taxes and a collapse in central authority more and more people would flee to these villae-islands where there was work, people could survive and they were safe from bandits and tax collectors. In return for their safety they often renounced their citizenship and the rights thay it gave them, which shows how willing they were to get away from the cities and their taxes. Over time this cooperation degrade into a more master-servant relation.

Cities declined further, with the few remaining rich leaving and the necessary public facilities falling in disrepair. In the end these shells would be absorbed into the administration of the local landowners or bishops. Fun fact, local resistance to the invading tribes was low because they were asking less taxes than the old Emperors and used what was left of the old Roman institutions.

The fall of the Roman system followed a very specific series of events, so I find saying that it will lead to feudalism a bit dishonest. if we end up facing a similar breakdown as the Roman state did I expect us to be even worse of than feudalism really, given how dependent every part of our society is on the state.

As people might have noticed from my last post on the Romans, generalizations surrounding their collapse are a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

Sources:

Een Kennismaking met de Oude Wereld (An introduction to the Old World), L. de Blois.
A Short History of the Middle Ages, B. Rosenwein
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Hello Dutch. I just realized I never followed up on my reply like I said I would. Do you still want me to or is that conversation over?
 
bluefur87 said:
So the answer to this question seems to be no, and looking back at the earlier actions this seems to be rather nightmarish to do, so...

One thing I am noticing, though, is that one of our stability losses was because our chiefs didn't listen to us. By all means this should have been a legitimacy loss, but we didn't have legitimacy yet. We also tend to take stability hits to multiple areas, and tend to focus on broad solutions... on a completely coincidental level, ironically.

I think that's what's going on here with Cent though. Something is getting folded in to centralization that shouldn't be, and that something is controlling our cap to some degree. If I had to take a guess I'd say 'connectivity' and 'government enforcement' are both taking up the cent stat now, when it should probably just be government enforcement. The weird sharing of a stat is causing some fundamental problems and we're likely to get something split off of cent by the end of this.
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Yeah, all I have are our choices and stats. That would be enough to pinpoint where the stab drops occured, but cataloging them would indeed be tedious.

If I get frustrated enough about crocodillians, maybe I'll take a crack at it.
 
[X] [City] Yes (Transfers 2 Econ + 2 Econ expansion, nulls cost of maintenance for Sacred Forest)
I think all the other things i want are winning, so just changing my mind and vote on the free city
 
pblur said:
In crisis mode I don't think we should volunteer for social disruptions without a countervailing narrative benefit.
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Here's mine: we are at war with everyone, and we know per WoAN that our Econ drain has disrupted our neighbors' plans before, and we suspect that several of them have traits like ours that use Econ to boost Martial. So that should make all our war missions a bit more successful (narratively, all their yeoman are belong to us).

The HK would likely be the hardest hit, which would put extra pressure on them.

ETA Of course, tech advancements and trait evolution would be awesome, but they're probably more associated with the really high options (???).
 
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[X] [RA] Increase debates to determine the truth (-2 to +2 Religious Authority based on success of debates, potential shift in Spiritual Values)
[X] [Low] Force them to follow the spirit of the law (Potential stability loss, potential war with vassal)
[X] [Low] Introduce black soil to improve their conditions (Teaches black soil to vassal)
[X] [Low] Introduce mill technology to improve their conditions (Teaches water mill to vassal)
[X] [Low] Send over assistance (Transfer 1 Econ + 1 Martial)
[X] [High] Extra tribute (+2 Prestige, +2 Wealth, probably completes this turn)
[X] [RB] Deploy against Highlanders from Valleyhome
[X] [React] Main Improve Annual Festival
[X] [City] No
[X] [Refugee] Bring in a bit more than usual (-1 Stab, potential further loss, +4-5 Econ)
 
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