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Paths of Civilization

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[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)

Okay guys, hear me out. We have word of god confirmation that we're dealing with a genius mystic, but based on text has horrible diplomacy. I think that by looking at the past records, this mystic has predicted a major catastrophe or otherwise dangerous event based on astronomy and I'm inclined to believe him.

Now heres the thing. I think that the prophecy solution is hogwash. It's something the priests came up with in order to save us from disaster. So I think we should take it.

The reason is Love of Wisdom. If we know something is coming and don't listen to the priests, then the narrative is that the gods punished us and we'll have to follow every prophecy.

If we do follow the prophecy and then the catastrophe happens, the narrative will be that the priests were wrong and that the best way to deal with it in the future is to simply prepare.

This whole thing is quite likely the result of us skipping prerequisites and going directly to predictive astronomy.
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
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McLuvin said:
And then we can force them to give us tribute when we kick their arse with one of our two mercenary companies and our Heavens Hawk march.

If we attack them we are being the aggressors in a war that barely benefits us. I don't want to fight the HK for revenge, I want to eliminate a constant threat. The TH are no threat, being too weak to hurt us and too far away from the core to crush us. It's not worth allowing the HK to live because the Khemetri gave us shitty Horoscopes and some random girl who only speaks in riddles thinks 'something bad will happen' and refuses to expand on that point.

Fuck Astrology, Fuck the HK
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So you admit then, that your own bias against the HK blinds you to any potential this alternative has. Alright. I believe I'm done here.
NewAgeOfPower said:
We are already administratively stressed hard by our current empire. More land is bad for us.

War missions resulting in land grab generate less for our civ than the same actions invested into building it up.

And yet, I still cry Highlander Kingdon Delenda Est. Think about it.
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Again, hate bias is clouding objective judgement of the situation. We aren't even at our province limit, let alone our subordinate limit. Our administrative stresses were long-corrected by the economic adjustment and kingdom type upgrade.
 
Somebodynobody10 said:
... Bah. Not worth it at all.
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It's completely worth it! Usually the most we ever lose in a single turn is 1 Stability. In this turn, for instance, we'd probably normally lose 1 Stability for dropping the Highlander CB, but the value cancels it out. This value will save us loads of actions in the future.

But that's not the half of it. When combined with refugees, it is bullshit good. It means we never take a Stability hit if we take the minimum option and taking the minimum+1 option has a chance of us not taking any Stability hit at all. Now that we have Pride in Acceptance, we can get truly magnificent amount of Econ from refugees and suffer little or nothing for it.
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)

I was going to vote for no, but Sivantic brought up a very important point. This is not just the study of the stars and relating it to what is happening on the ground. This is the study of history and learning from it to predict how people will act and events will play out. Yes, it's incredibly primitive, but we have to start somewhere, and this encourages our priest cast to keep large and accurate recordings of history, so that we may learn from it. That is of immense importance to education and having education dictate politics rather than politicians just ignoring others and claiming to know what is best.

We also need to work to protect our budding international community, which is incredibly vulnerable at this point. Maintaining friendly contact among multiple culture groups and showing to all others that there is good reason to do so is of great importance. Otherwise we risk losing members and losing the international community.
 
[X] No (???)

From the oft-quoted standpoint of "realism" I support ignoring the Mystic Genius' advice. 1) The TH are too distracted to attack us while we take out the HK. 2) Possessing their land is useful. 3) I don't really want to get involved in lowland squabbles until we've made the Cataract Dam and Lowland Canal.

@Academia Nut Okay, but what are the systems they used to find Tormulwyn?
And are her predictions rooted in the stars or in historical records?
 
Azel said:
Even if we assume that magic is real and there can be 100% accurate prophecies...

Why the heck should we believe a guy who just dazzled us with fancy math that the heavily impaired girl who can barely speak made a highly specific one?
This reeks of a con.

Let's play the old game of "where is the money?".

If we do this, we invest significant military power against the TH.
This will bind our attention and troops for quite a while and it's definitely the last campaign of our martial genius.
It means HK is de facto protected by divine decree. They would certainly like that, given their fear of us.
Worst case, we get bogged down with sorting out the TH, Swamp People quagmire for generations without really gaining anything, but having no military to spare for other campaigns.

I don't see any prosperity coming from this.
I do see many, many ways how this could prevent us from projecting military force, especially against HK, for a good long while.


Here is the thing. We know that HK has spies in our lands and a Hero Intrigue king.
Using one of his agents among the clergy to fudge this prophecy together is childs play, given the girl is barely acknowledging the existence of other people and there is next to no one who could check her magic math.

This is enemy action. By HK.
Therefore, HK needs to be destroyed.

[X] No (???)
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AN just said that multiple priest were able to replicate her work, so unless you assume that the HK has somehow been able subvert the entirety of our priesthood this can in no way be an enemy action.

Plus, if it was, what would the HK gain from it? Them attacking us would just get them destroyed again because we still have a genius general.
Them getting us to not hate them anymore is good if they wish to start pursuing good relations, since it gives us an incentive to start diplo vassalizing them.

The HK have nothing to gain from this, so this "enemy action" nonsense is just that.
 
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
Quest said:
[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)

Okay guys, hear me out. We have word of god confirmation that we're dealing with a genius mystic, but based on text has horrible diplomacy. I think that by looking at the past records, this mystic has predicted a major catastrophe or otherwise dangerous event based on astronomy and I'm inclined to believe him.

Now heres the thing. I think that the prophecy solution is hogwash. It's something the priests came up with in order to save us from disaster. So I think we should take it.

The reason is Love of Wisdom. If we know something is coming and don't listen to the priests, then the narrative is that the gods punished us and we'll have to follow every prophecy.

If we do follow the prophecy and then the catastrophe happens, the narrative will be that the priests were wrong and that the best way to deal with it in the future is to simply prepare.

This whole thing is quite likely the result of us skipping prerequisites and going directly to predictive astronomy.
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Something truly awful happening is unlikely where as listening to the conman is habit-forming, just ask any poor fool that put too much stock in horoscopes and the like. LoW is not strong enough to do what you want it to.
 
DragonParadox said:
*Priests fiddle with records and argue semantics* actually we only promised a good century... see. A century is too wide a span and every aspect too wide a playing field to be subject to rigorous testing at our tech level.
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We have records. We are not going to accept them changing the narrative.
DragonParadox said:
Thanks for catching that... there you have it, utterly impossible to falsify.
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We already know exactly what those steps are. They're listed right in the update.

Romv said:
"But if we fail at performing a series of extremely careful steps" is pretty vague though. If we don't get the predicted century of prosperity, we must have simply failed at performing the careful steps; the prediction came true!
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Well, we've got a near-guaranteed Golden Age incoming. Especially since we were forcibly switched off of Megaproject Support so now we're generating stats like crazy. Our best option is a little good then a bunch of middling. Easiest solution IMO is start the golden age, then swap back to Megaproject Support while doing a bunch of kicks and taking the biggest Golden Age innovation options we have.

VoidZero said:
Perhaps you can chill? Go for a walk, read a good book, and go to bed.
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It's a pretty important thing that was only added in the comments. This has been a recurring thing, which is why a bunch of people want a moratorium.
 
Academia Nut said:
The priests are able to replicate her work using the same steps she uses, so its not just her, she's just able to see the patterns faster and do a tremendous amount of work on complex topics quickly, as well as knowing what to look for when stumped on something.
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So if the priests can retrace her calculations, i want to know exactly what data they used, what they calculated and how they calculated it. We can't make major decisions like this one based on a single line summary. Can the Spirit Chief give us that much?
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Timewinders on Aug 5, 2017 at 5:39 PM, finished with 95974 posts and 71 votes.
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Umi-san said:
Okay, but what are the systems they used to find Tormulwyn?
And are her predictions rooted in the stars or in historical records?
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Basically they reviewed how they were handling the spirit-touched, and now instead of necessarily trying to suppress whatever is going on or just giving them menial duties, they will actively see if they have any hidden aptitudes.

Her predictions are based off of review of the historical records, comparing the records to astrological observations and running through the processes of the Khemetri.
 
Guys, there's nothing to gain from intervening in the Swamp Folk and TH. We're not Team America: World Police. We're trying to live peacefully so long as we are left alone, only going to war to eliminate threats. We should continue to do that. War against the HK is justified because they have proven to be a consistent threat to us, stabbing us in the back at every opportunity, sabotaging us, and stealing our tech. The TH might be unfriendly, but they are not a consistent threat. There's no reason we couldn't make peace with the TH once their war is over.
 
Somebodynobody10 said:
Fuck you and your retarded predictions.
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Are you really sure that is the word you want to use?

Timewinders said:
Even the automation thing isn't set in stone by any means. For all we know there will be a nuclear war soon that prevents further research into AI for centuries. For all we know there will be a gamma ray burst and we will all go extinct. For all we know, for every single thing we learn to automate, we create ever more esoteric work that only humans are capable of.
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Are you arguing that conquering the Highlander will be fine because we could die in a gamma ray burst anyway?
You pretty much said all predictions for the future are not worth heeding. That there is a chance they could be wrong does only weakly support that statement.

Chronic said:
That is bullshit. That Automation is a challenge is something that rests on centuries of experience with automation as well as solid scientific research.

These predictions are based on a technology we have had for only a few years and rest on nothing but an autistic girls calculations.
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-The Khemetri gave us a ton, so we profit from them
-AN confirmed she is some savant like genius. She is just as much only an "autistic girl" as our dragon general was. Calling a grown up woman a girl just because you disagree with her is also pretty childish.
-We dont even know magic doesnt exist. We just had a character who could see ghost and predict deaths.
 
I just don't want the TH taking the SF espeically now that they have iron since the lowlands will start to fall to them. The HK are small and can not expand their armies in any way that we can't effectively respond to now that we have the Khemet on side. Besides if the HK attacks us again then nothing will stop us from pursuing the war with them all the way.
 
@Academia Nut, I have a question about the interplay between Pride in Acceptance and In Service to Order. If I had to guess, the first Econ boost we get is Stability-free because while we take a Stability drop from disruption, it's balanced out by a Stability gain from our people being happy from taking in refugees. Does In Service to Order mean that that hypothetical Stability drop doesn't happen, thus leaving us with the +1 Stability from taking in refugees?
 
Ian Drash said:
People should calm down and strip away the mystic mumbo-jumbo that is Ymaryn science. Because Ymaryn science is made up from actual science boxed into mystic mumbo-jumbo.

Ok, so the prediction seems fairly straightforward: if we don't do anything, the TH will soon eat the Swamp People and they will take a swing at us at the worst possible time. To avoid this, we must make sure our backs are more or less secure, guarantee the independence of the Swamp People and take a swing at the TH. If you strip off the astrology, that is a fairly sensible historical analysis. Now, is there a recurring celestial or meteorological event that could cause the aforementioned consequences?
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...
The Fracking Comet.

Fuck.

Goddammit. Fuck.

This Fucking Turn.

[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
Raichu1972 said:
AN just said that multiple priest were able to replicate her work, so unless you assume that the HK has somehow been able subvert the entirety of our priesthood this can in no way be an enemy action.

Plus, if it was, what would the HK gain from it? Them attacking us would just get them destroyed again because we still have a genius general.
Them getting us to not hate them anymore is good if they wish to start pursuing good relations, since it gives us an incentive to start diplo vassalizing them.

The HK have nothing to gain from this, so this "enemy action" nonsense is just that.
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He also said multiple times that they fear us. They have quite a lot of incentive to point the Ymeri war machine towards other goals.

I still don't understand how you want to derive such a complex prophecy from math without a lot of stuff being made up on the fly.

Smart people can be fooled too. A good conman can easily dazzle the other priests like they try to do with us.
 
wait... @Academia Nut i just realized something...do we not have our defensive passive policy anymore? its not on the policy effects bit... o_O

Academia Nut said:
Trelli, Swamp Folk, Khemetri, Metal Workers, the People.
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Ouch :/ Did we just roll really terribly, or was the speculation that having our own Games, being the host, and having Life of Arete would give us bonuses wrong? On the subject of prestige, should we have gotten 1 for hunting down the pirates?
Academia Nut said:
No.
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Man, we have the worst luck with forest studying...
Academia Nut said:
Not yet.
2 more turns on the treachery CB, Hertythyn will be in charge for 1-2 more turns. He's a lot more spry than anticipated.
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1. will stab hits still be listed normally in options, or will they not be listed when they'd be stopped by htat value?
2. oh, wow... the action sheet differences are going to be ridiculous aren't they? D=

Academia Nut said:
You do. Fuel consumption also went up... wait, let me check the numbers again.
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It seems right. 12/14 -> 13/16
We used one for the baths, if i remember your explanation for them right. We gained one from the main forest action during the midturn. We gained half of one from our policy, and we actually had 14.5 forests, not 14, so:
14.5 + 0.5 (policy) + 1 (Main forests) = 16
12 + 1 (Baths) = 13
 
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