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Paths of Civilization

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pbluekan said:
lolwut. Do you realize how long it took for slavery to Ben abolished IRL. It is one of the most difficult things to get rid of as a cultural practice because it is so attractive to the freedmen of a society. Not to mention the effects it has on the society as a whole. Productivity, wealth disparity, disease; all of these get worse with slavery.
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It came when it was reasonable to get rid of it, I do realize how long it took because it would be fucking dumb to do otherwise, but AN is being nice to us and letting us break the fact that all Societies used Slavery or slave-like labour, HELL our current Civ does to
 
Raichu1972 said:
Yes, things will be harder with the doubled Wealth cost.
Yes, there is no benefit to be gained mechanically from this action.
Even narratively, reforming the Half Exiles pisses off the most important and influential people in our Society.

Yet, it is still the right thing to do.
It is something that has been a long time coming, that has been a stain upon the Ymaryn for centuries.
This is our chance to set things right.
This is our chance to point things in the right direction.

It will be hard, but I believe the Ymaryn shall persevere, and become better for it.
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To be fair we might collapse into an age of barbarism and inhumanity that makes the half-exile system smell like roses from this. Social collapse is not good for those at the bottom of the pyramid.
 
[] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)

Forgot to consider this; note that these are all fairly likely to cost Wealth to complete, so we're fairly likely to fail them. And we'll probably be failing the current Guild and Trader quests as well under this effect. The Guild quest was already going to be a headache to pass; this Wealth cost effect would leave us without time to consider it. The Trader quest becomes more or less uncompletable from where we stand. That would leave us facing two spite quest failure penalties.
 
[X] [Dam] Move to the bigger but more useful proposal (1 Wealth and 1 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 2 actions to complete)
[X] [Purity] Some hypocrisy is acceptable (Greater Justice modified)

[X] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
[X] [PP] Trade (+1 Wealth/turn)
[X] [PP] Defence (+1 significant walls/turn)
[X] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
[X] [PP] Special: Vassal Support (+1 Subordinate while active, increases Loyalty while active at less than full subordinates)
 
pbluekan said:
[X] [PP] Special: Forestry (+1 Sustainable Forest and -1 Econ Expansion/2 turns)
[X] [PP] Special: Forestry (+1 Sustainable Forest and -1 Econ Expansion/2 turns) X2

We need to get our forestry chain moving again, especially with crisis mode incoming. The less we actually have to deal with, the better. This also goes for the vassal loyalty situation, though we are in a far better situation there now.
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We're getting Repeated Actions for Forests next turn, which is the single action nearly everyone agrees is priority number one. This seems pointless and wasteful.
 
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Andres110 said:
This is wrong. When we were first choosing who gets to mine, we chose the option that makes mining a skilled job. It is the job of specialists, not half-exiles. Let me go find the quote.
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Yeah, we've carefully squeezed out a lot of jobs that would normally require brute labor in this era with our focus on worker safety and high compensation. It means we don't necessarily get the massive wealth booms other civilizations might get from such actions, but it also has steadily moved us towards this point where we can actually potentially deal with the corruption in our forced labor system.
 
DragonParadox said:
To be fair we might collapse into an age of barbarism and inhumanity that makes the half-exile system smell like roses from this. Social collapse is not good for those at the bottom of the pyramid.
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We might.
Collapsing is always a possibility.

But I think we can still make it out on the other side without sloughing off all of our morals, personally.
 
[X] [Dam] Move to the bigger but more useful proposal (1 Wealth and 1 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 2 actions to complete)
[X] [Purity] Some hypocrisy is acceptable (Greater Justice modified)

[X] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
[X] [PP] Trade (+1 Wealth/turn)
[X] [PP] Defence (+1 significant walls/turn)
[X] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
[X] [PP] Special: Vassal Support (+1 Subordinate while active, increases Loyalty while active at less than full subordinates)
As much as I want to see our Civilization burn to temporarily satisfy the thread's morality boner lets not mmkay?
 
We can't force uneconomical decisions to be moral and not expect a giant reactionary backlash. Even modern day governments use prison labour. All we will do is force our civ to find another similar insitution to it. We should be endeavoring to fixing the half exiles practise so its more prison labour than a caste system.
 
George said:
Forgot to consider this; note that these are all fairly likely to cost Wealth to complete, so we're fairly likely to fail them. And we'll probably be failing the current Guild and Trader quests as well under this effect. The Guild quest was already going to be a headache to pass; this Wealth cost effect would leave us without time to consider it. The Trader quest becomes more or less uncompletable from where we stand. That would leave us facing two spite quest failure penalties.
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Division of power is so great.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Not sure that'll work. Who works in the Gold mines? Half Exiles.
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Andres110 said:
This is wrong. When we were first choosing who gets to mine, we chose the option that makes mining a skilled job. It is the job of specialists, not half-exiles. Let me go find the quote.
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Couldn't find the quote. I'm sure that this was the case, but it's a big quest and after looking through several updates I haven't been able to find the one where we made the choice.
 
[X] [Dam] Move to the bigger but more useful proposal (1 Wealth and 1 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 2 actions to complete)
[X] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)
Andres110 said:
Couldn't find the quote. I'm sure that this was the case, but it's a big quest and after looking through several updates I haven't been able to find the one where we made the choice.
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you're definitely right, it was a big deal
 
Thomasfoolery said:
We have a huge amount of half exiles actually, I can't remember the exact number but last it was mentioned it was around 25% I think.
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Except that's impossible. For one thing, we don't let Half exiles be farmers. We never would, it's not consistent with our society's tenets (PSN) and the societal position they are supposed to occupy. For another we don't let them be miners (specialist miners) or crafters (guilds) or soldiers (yeomen and patricians and holy orders). They perform a subset of tasks that is highly necessary, that is to say waste disposal, black soil, and probably some general amount of shitty work like digging and such, but they plain aren't allowed to do most professions. We can't sustain 25%, we'd be starving just from feeding all this unproductive people.
 
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ETA50M said:
We can't force uneconomical decisions to be moral and not expect a giant reactionary backlash. Even modern day governments use prison labour. All we will do is force our civ to find another similar insitution to it. We should be endeavoring to fixing the half exiles practise so its more prison labour than a caste system.
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That's what we're doing. AN says this doesn't remove the system, it reforms it so it's less horribly corrupt.
 
Voting for the most expensive dam is voting for us to stop progress altogether, and all for very little gain if we ever do complete it.

We are not going to be able to afford it, given the likely outcome of the other vote. In addition, the expensive dam isn't actually a big upgrade in efficacy, it is mostly dickwaving and frills.

Please, please, please stop voting for the expensive dam.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Not sure that'll work. Who works in the Gold mines? Half Exiles.

Which leads me to a very weird piece of gameplay and story segregation. Naratively, this is us paying half exiles more. But in practice, it's paying more for labor saving and elite stuff, and not paying extra for manpower using actions.

Hence, as such I must conclude that this reform will destroy itself through narrative.

The extra wealth cost will force us to use manpower intensive actions. Those actions will create demand for a cheap and exploitable laborsource.
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No.
From the very beginning we voted mining to be a skilled profession, making mines more expensive, by the way.
 
[X] [Dam] Move to the bigger but more useful proposal (1 Wealth and 1 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 2 actions to complete)
[X] [Purity] Some hypocrisy is acceptable (Greater Justice modified)
[X] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn)
[X] [PP] Diplomacy (+1 Diplo/turn)
[X] [PP] Special: Vassal Support (+1 Subordinate while active, increases Loyalty while active at less than full subordinates)
 
[X] [Dam] Move to the bigger but more useful proposal (1 Wealth and 1 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 2 actions to complete)
[X] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)
 
Glassware said:
That's what we're doing. AN says this doesn't remove the system, it reforms it so it's less horribly corrupt.
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The reforms I meant were more Govenror palaces, roads and priests so the system is similar to the cities. So people can air out the abuses they are suffering. This option sounds like it's removing it compeltely.
 
I'd like everyone to take a moment to consider that trade seems to be crashing down fairly regularly and it currently accounts for 7 of our per turn wealth. If that were to be halved or go away then we'd go into negative wealth gain and be fairly fucked. Setting aside the fact that for some reason that it'd make Academies wildly impractical.
 
George said:
[] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)

Forgot to consider this; note that these are all fairly likely to cost Wealth to complete, so we're fairly likely to fail them. And we'll probably be failing the current Guild and Trader quests as well under this effect. The Guild quest was already going to be a headache to pass; this Wealth cost effect would leave us without time to consider it. The Trader quest becomes more or less uncompletable from where we stand. That would leave us facing two spite quest failure penalties.
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Division of Power (PiA Linked)
By preventing the accumulation of power into any single person or faction, the damage of someone throwing a tantrum is mitigated... although it also makes breaking up widespread support harder.
Pros: Faction quest failures have a free negation, requiring two completed quests or Support Faction actions to reset. Unsuppressible failure states become Suppressible
Cons: Addition -1 Stability when suppressing factions.

Patrician and guild currently have a free negation each.

Traders are somewhat harder, but they are only one completed quest (requiring a support faction next turn, then the navy the following turn) or one failed quest followed by a support action away from their free negation. The spite quests are more of an opportunity cost than anything else.
 
[X] [Dam] Move to the bigger but more useful proposal (1 Wealth and 1 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 2 actions to complete)

[X] [Purity] The Puritans broke (Lose the Purity trait, possible loss of the prohibition on slavery)
[X] [Purity] While their vigilante violence was wrong, maybe they have a point here (Pride in Acceptance downgraded to Cosmopolitan Acceptance)
[X] [Purity] Some hypocrisy is acceptable (Greater Justicemodified)
[X] [Purity] Look to the heavens for a sign (Random, could be all good results from above options, could be all bad results from aboveoptions, likely a mix)
 
Look at those tags! Look at them!

"We used to be hippy elves"

We used to be an egalitarian society when everyone else around has already had hereditary power.
We used to see female leaders and warriors as something that might happen statistically less often than their male counterparts, but was also not even worth a special mention.
We used to amaze everyone around us with how we have terraformed our land, having spent our energy on that, instead on war or aggrandizement of our leaders.

We have lost all of that. For centuries now, our society has decayed more and more and more. Now, nothing about us special. We're not really better anymore than the peoples surrounding us, and that is the cold hard truth. And for centuries, we had no way to do anything about this.

Until now.

Doubling wealth means we effectively can't be a great power anymore. But if that means having an ancient society actually free of slaves - then that achievement, and it IS an achievement, is worth it! Empires rise and fall, who cares how much clay we have. But being special, being better than those around us, that is what counts.
 
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