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Paths of Civilization

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So, I noticed a new tag "Highland Kingdom delende est" and out of curiosity I looked it up "must be destroyed". I figured we should talk about them - do we want to diplomance them again and reconcile or do we want to just destroy them and take them over as a conquered vassal like the Ruined Thunder Horse? What's our plan?
 
My preferences:
Try to maintain a maximum of 3 econ drain per turn (one secondary expand economy). If above 3 econ drain and all acceptable candidates have been converted into free cities, use City Support passive policies to keep the econ drain to manageable levels.

Each free city should use the vassal support policy. Not for gimmicks, but to ensure that they and other vassals stay loyal. Hopefully the ai passive policies will be useful at taking care of other small fires.

If there are any remaining policies, distribute between defense, forests, infrastructure, and innovation as desired.
 
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[X] [GA] Gain random genius (-15 Culture)
-[X] [GA] Specify: Admin genius (Additional -3 Culture)
[X] [FC] Just one FC
[X] [FC] Redhills
[X] [Diplo] Talk with the Trelli (Main Trade Mission - Trelli)
[X] [React] Continue work on the Place to the Stars (5/7-8 actions completed)
-[X] [React] Kick project (ISoO already triggered this turn)
 
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BlueFlamingWings said:
So, I noticed a new tag "Highland Kingdom delende est" and out of curiosity I looked it up "must be destroyed". I figured we should talk about them - do we want to diplomance them again and reconcile or do we want to just destroy them and take them over as a conquered vassal like the Ruined Thunder Horse? What's our plan?
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I am pretty sure the thread had given up destroying the Highlander at this point.
 
Umi-san said:
I want a consolidation era.
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I would definitely agree with you there. The problem is that a golden age isn't terribly conducive to that. We need to maintain a maxed stat and influencing drains all of the relevant ones. Maybe once we pop the golden age we can take two or three turns to main influence and integrate some chunks. Building the Dam and the lowland riverine trade network up would certainly help with this.

The other issue is that we are already rapidly approaching our province cap, which will pretty much limit us to influencing until we have a government upgrade. This isn't a bad situation, certainly. Western Western wall is, after all, still very much part of the empire even if they are essentially independent of our infrastructure. However, it is worrying.
 
Are people open to main road and double secondary support vassals (vassals only and non-directed)?

Txolla power level is concerning and TS & TH brother needs start drifting toward our cultural group.
 
Kiba said:
We do? I could see defense policy to prepare for the upcoming horde.



The rest of the known world should be transitioning to Iron Age polities pretty soon, and our agricultural technology should be adopted by our new vassals pretty rapidly.

The governments should be less fragile and they could look to us for help in dealing with climate change.

I am pretty confident about avoiding a Bronze Age Collapse scenario.
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I'm not sure about our agricultural techniques but lack of Bronze, while definitely a factor, was not the cause of the Bronze Age Collapse. What caused the Bronze Age collapse was steadily declining farm yields. Not enough to be noticeable, just enough that it was marked off as a rounding error every time the harvest was tallied up. Year after year ever so slightly less crops were being brought in until eventually there wasn't enough food to sustain the system.

If our Priests and Clerks haven't noticed a decrease in food supply or an increase in black soil use then we might already be too late to prevent it entirely. And even if the Khem and us survive unscathed plenty of other civilizations won't which will lead to immigration and eventually increased raids.

Edit: It's gonna be a huge party and everyone's invited!
 
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VoidZero said:
Are people open to main road and double secondary support vassals (vassals only and non-directed)?

Txolla power level is concerning and TS & TH brother needs start drifting toward our cultural group.
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No. We don't need a support vassal. That simply provides them resources so they are less dependent on us. The loyalty generated is less a matter of being like minded as being happy we took care of them. What we need is Influence Subordinate in order to change how they think in the first place. This will keep them in line with us regardless.
 
Somebodynobody10 said:
We really need the passives for everything else and trying to spam Vassal Support's is going to be less than optimal, it's going to be a heavy resource-loss.
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Vassal Support is NOT heavy resource-loss; it doesn't cost resources at all. None of our passive policies cost resources.

veekie said:
Counterpoint: Defense Policy has a terminus, which we can approach more quickly the more Defense policies are active. Once it reaches 100%, Defense passive policy would become obsolete, which allows us to pursue other policies without worrying too much about building new walls to go with settlements because walls would be integral to settlements.

And Infrastructure policies govern the growth rate of cities. The more Infrastructure policies, the more Policies we'd get sooner. This means the mid to long term optima for policies would always be to have a large proportion of Infrastructure policies.
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Defense has a terminus, sure - but that terminus is 15 turns away even with us doing two policies on defense, and will get be further away as we integrate subordinates. Wait - no - that is just for Significant Walls. For massive walls, it is something like 25 turns away on defense policy.

Infrastructure Policy only governs the growth rate of cities if your assumption about cities building Governor's Palaces and Colossal Walls actually holds. Even then, I don't feel like rushing to get more cities now is a good idea; five cities is plenty for the moment, and I think the narrative consequences of trying for more would outweigh the mechanical gains of doing so. I'd maybe be tempted to get one more to go for the 3-true-cities legacy, but other than that I don't think we want to be rushing those any further. (Also. Do note that we ALREADY have a large proportion of Infrastructure Policies. Of our 5 player-chosen policies, we have 3 that are on infrastructure. If we choose vassal support x2 next, that would put us at 3/7, which remains a strong plurality.)
 
pbluekan said:
No. We don't need a support vassal. That simply provides them resources so they are less dependent on us. The loyalty generated is less a matter of being like minded as being happy we took care of them. What we need is Influence Subordinate in order to change how they think in the first place. This will keep them in line with us regardless.
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Doesn't support vassal also send our people to them? If not then double influence subordinates targeting vassals. =w=
 
pbluekan said:
I would definitely agree with you there. The problem is that a golden age isn't terribly conducive to that. We need to maintain a maxed stat and influencing drains all of the relevant ones. Maybe once we pop the golden age we can take two or three turns to main influence and integrate some chunks. Building the Dam and the lowland riverine trade network up would certainly help with this.

The other issue is that we are already rapidly approaching our province cap, which will pretty much limit us to influencing until we have a government upgrade. This isn't a bad situation, certainly. Western Western wall is, after all, still very much part of the empire even if they are essentially independent of our infrastructure. However, it is worrying.
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A GA is perfectly suited for passive vassal influence, road building, and integration. Maintaining a GA over the long haul disincentivizes subordinates from leaving us and obliges us to be quite steady in our expenditures. It pushes us to have a slower view which lets passive policies recognizably kick in. Roads and integration are relatively low cost.

True with the provinces. We have 3 more. I'd probably prefer to integrate part of the Txolla and then the TS tbh. The TS offer a nice natural wonder and are the most likely to split off.
 
Concho117 said:
I'm not sure about our agricultural techniques but lack of Bronze, while definitely a factor, was not the cause of the Bronze Age Collapse. What caused the Bronze Age collapse was steadily declining farm yields. Not enough to be noticeable, just enough that it was marked off as a rounding error every time the harvest was tallied up. Year after year ever so slightly less crops were being brought in until eventually there wasn't enough food to sustain the system.

If our Priests and Clerks haven't noticed a decrease in food supply or an increase in black soil use then we might already be too late to prevent it entirely. And even if the Khem and us survive unscathed plenty of other civilizations won't which will lead to immigration and eventually increased raids.
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Wiki didn't say anything about steadily declining crop yield. Reason for the collapse is probably related to climate change triggering cascade failure leading to system collapse.

Also, I am not talking about simply Iron versus Bronze, but the economic system that characterized the Bronze Age. The palace economy was simply too inefficient to cope with natural disasters.

So an Iron Age government should be able to handle environmental changes more easily due to a more advanced form of social organization, not simply because they have iron tools.
 
pbluekan said:
And we have since learned that it would be so slow as to be useless in the short to mid term or even long term.
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Except that isn't true? Two policies on Vassal Support would do the equivalent of a secondary Influence Subordinate distributed mostly among our more problematic subordinates. I think that is absolutely worth a pair of policies, both narratively and mechanically.

Somebodynobody10 said:
We simply don't have enough slots to accrue enough to actually be enough to do it by themselves. We are going to need to use actions anyway - It will be better to use passives to plug holes we are going to leave while we focus on rebuilding them and our Mega-projects and whatever else our heroes/geniuses concoct in their brains.
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We should instead use Vassal Support to plug holes in the Influence Subordinate actions that we do take. And there are unquestionably going to be holes; at 18 stats per main, we simply can't afford to use Influence Subordinate everywhere it needs to be used.
 
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