Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sure, lowering the standard of living would decrease the Wealth costs. Is the option still worth taking if that's what we do, though?
- Location
- Canada
Hey man look at the votes we don't have much of a choice here. In fact we can wait until we get attacked and we can't raise our martial enough then be forced with a slaving civ. Either way we don't have much of a choice here.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The accuracy of this argument depends on your moral priors. There is a perspective which holds that actions have an intrinsic morality independent their results - for example, doing our utmost to end the abuses of the half-exile system is a morally good act, even if it risks collapse and replacement with a worse third option. You obviously do not share this perspective but I will be surprised and impressed if you can muster an objection to it that does not rest on unshared priors regarding moral basis for actions.
Full disclosure: this is not the moral system I use in daily life either. However, it is an ideologically coherent one which I find interesting and enjoyable to explore in the harmless context of a game, especially where it creates engaging moments of self-imposed challenge - the only sort this quest actually has, as it lacks official success or failure states other than ceasing to entertain the audience/QM enough to be worth maintaining. As such:
[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)
(building larger dams is not a moral imperative)
- Location
- Brazil
[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] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
This makes me unbelivably sad. That was one of, if not the, greatest feats of engineering in, well, ever. A symbol of unity and prosperity and the might of Ymaryn.
[X] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
@Academia Nut We've... Lost the memory of the Stone Age Canal?
This makes me unbelivably sad. That was one of, if not the, greatest feats of engineering in, well, ever. A symbol of unity and prosperity and the might of Ymaryn.
Umi-san
Procrastinating.
- Location
- ꙮ
R.e. the Extra Big Dam tm, I just want the biggest dam possible and I don't give a dam what it takes.
Imagine just having a giant dam, covering everything, displaying the sheer power and grandeur of our civilization.
Imagine never needing to make a bigger dam when we get better tech because we made the biggest, bestest dam ever and it made our dam-making skillz damn good.
Do you get what I mean? Dam it!
R.e. "Should we fight da slavery or sort of wiggle out of it" like... higher wealth costs r whatever & tbh spite quests might not be that bad. Just endure them, basically.
Remember that we can ignore 1 bad quest per faction, afaik regardless of how many occur in a single turn. So at least for the patricians and traders we don't need to care, iirc.
Imagine just having a giant dam, covering everything, displaying the sheer power and grandeur of our civilization.
Imagine never needing to make a bigger dam when we get better tech because we made the biggest, bestest dam ever and it made our dam-making skillz damn good.
Do you get what I mean? Dam it!
R.e. "Should we fight da slavery or sort of wiggle out of it" like... higher wealth costs r whatever & tbh spite quests might not be that bad. Just endure them, basically.
Remember that we can ignore 1 bad quest per faction, afaik regardless of how many occur in a single turn. So at least for the patricians and traders we don't need to care, iirc.
Didn't we decide that ppl in the aqueduct & black soil industries should be skilled workers?
The great river is literally just the river we're building the dam on. Not the canal at all.
Motoko
Herald of Iron to The People
- Location
- Canada, ontario
Really? What post did we discover it in?
Also:
[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)
[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)
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
So, two thoughts I had.
First, the way we deal with a rise in labor costs thanks to de facto slavery going away is by a combination of a) having a large and growing population, thus ensuring a labor surplus and b) increasing our money supply by shifting towards a fiat currency for internal use, backed by the assurance that where other nations fall the Ymaryn do not and therefore the government will still be around to enforce payment. The first is essentially us duplicating China, the second is going to let us start sucking hard currency out of all of our neighbors as well when they have to exchange their gold and silver for promissory notes only good in Ymaryn lands when they come to buy our stuff.
Second, we can take the mind of the populace off the social stresses of getting rid of half-exile abuse by rallying them around giving the Highland Kingdom its long-deferred reckoning. If we want to make it even more of a sure thing, wait until the Highlanders are firmly stuck in with the Harmurri before shanking them in their weakened border garrisons.
First, the way we deal with a rise in labor costs thanks to de facto slavery going away is by a combination of a) having a large and growing population, thus ensuring a labor surplus and b) increasing our money supply by shifting towards a fiat currency for internal use, backed by the assurance that where other nations fall the Ymaryn do not and therefore the government will still be around to enforce payment. The first is essentially us duplicating China, the second is going to let us start sucking hard currency out of all of our neighbors as well when they have to exchange their gold and silver for promissory notes only good in Ymaryn lands when they come to buy our stuff.
Second, we can take the mind of the populace off the social stresses of getting rid of half-exile abuse by rallying them around giving the Highland Kingdom its long-deferred reckoning. If we want to make it even more of a sure thing, wait until the Highlanders are firmly stuck in with the Harmurri before shanking them in their weakened border garrisons.
Ok, let's plan this out assuming we get all wealth costs doubled.
[Main] Great Dam
[Secondary] New Settlement (Need LTE for Cash Crops)
[Secondary] Enforce Justice
[Secondary] Proclaim Glory
[Secondary] Expand Economy
[Secondary] Found Free City - Blackmouth
[Secondary] Palace Annex - Grand Hall
[Guild] Plant Cash Crops - Textiles
[Guild] Salterns (Now a guild action!)
[Guild Secondary] Efficient Charcoal Kilns
edit: Free City replaced with Palace Annex because we need the quest completion.
We spend -2 Wealth on the Dam and -2 Wealth on the Kilns, leaving the provinces with 3 Wealth to spend as they need. We then get +7 Wealth from the Cash Crops, +? from the Salterns (2 IIRC) and +2 from our income. This still leaves us very low, but as the market income starts kicking in we should be in a much better position over the next couple turns.
[Main] Great Dam
[Secondary] New Settlement (Need LTE for Cash Crops)
[Secondary] Enforce Justice
[Secondary] Proclaim Glory
[Secondary] Expand Economy
[Secondary] Found Free City - Blackmouth
[Secondary] Palace Annex - Grand Hall
[Guild] Plant Cash Crops - Textiles
[Guild] Salterns (Now a guild action!)
[Guild Secondary] Efficient Charcoal Kilns
edit: Free City replaced with Palace Annex because we need the quest completion.
We spend -2 Wealth on the Dam and -2 Wealth on the Kilns, leaving the provinces with 3 Wealth to spend as they need. We then get +7 Wealth from the Cash Crops, +? from the Salterns (2 IIRC) and +2 from our income. This still leaves us very low, but as the market income starts kicking in we should be in a much better position over the next couple turns.
We can't now, because the double wealth cost will hit concrete production hard.
Luckily we know the actual direct mechanical effects and can calculate them to the point where we know what we have to pay. We're going to lose out on all those nice fancy Concrete advancements and make half our guild actions impossible to use, but aside from that we should be good.
We can't afford the expensive dam and the doubled wealth costs. Choose one or the other please, otherwise we have no spare wealth next turn to do anything.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
If bad enough, it will disrupt internal trade, like with the Horseman Plague.
The priests have become split on the issue. Some are puritanical and disliked, some believe that there is philosophically a point that slavery can't be that bad. Some are even of the opinion that by embracing slavery they can cleanse the sins of those outside the People by enforcing the half-exile ethic upon them.
Most half exiles are expected to farm to grow their own food as needed, they just don't get the best land, or if they do work food agricultural land that is good, it is so that the free farmers can grow cash crops, which half-exiles generally aren't supposed to be growing (but depending on who is administering them, will tend to do anyway). Only in the cities are they full time manure movers.
The surveyors have noted that there are different kinds of rock, and the area where they want looks like a giant finger was dragged through wet clay despite it being the hardest rock around.
It will still happen, but be more expensive as it will have to be paid (mostly through corvee labour, but that is still deferred taxation).
- Location
- Staring into the void
Which was Iron Age Eye of the Storm - The update just before this one.
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I won't argue that such a perspective in inherently inconsistant - but not being inconsistent does not make something a moral prerogative. I would argue that most people playing this thread are in fact working off of consequentialist priors of some flavor or another - and for those people, overhauling the system is NOT the morally correct choice.
If you happen to have more deontological priors, then I can only say that argument I quoted is not directed at you.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's like a hundred miles from the site currently being discussed. Although yes, how exactly the Stone Age Canal got made has become obscured. At its most humanistic, most people think a semi-divine hero figure was behind it, if not just direct divine intervention.
- Location
- Canada
We need a secondary for a single Great Hall annex to finish the government reform and get ten more passive policies we can throw at trade to gain wealth.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Literally the previous update before this one so not even one full turn ago.
Alright, but that still doesn't explain how we have so many of them, and why they'd cause such an effect on all actions when they aren't actually part of most of them aside from a strictly peripheral role.
In terms of expanding blacksoil will we run out a good source of corvee labor quickly or nowhere in the foreseeable future?
We may not be able to do this if we reform Half-Exiles. Raising Armies simply becomes too expensive for us to realistically consider and we might as well give up on ever doing Light Cavalry since they cost 12-14. We'd have to go on Levy Policy if we want any hope of winning the war since we basically can't generate Martial otherwise. Then, if we can't crush them in two turns, we'd be fucked since our lack of ability to generate Econ would catch up to us and we starve because of all of the actions we're forced to take and we starve.
I'm personally going to strongly suggest that we go on Agriculture policy. I don't believe that's banned by Levy Policy so we should be able to get a trickle of usable Econ.
[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] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn) x3
[X] [PP] Agriculture (+3 Econ, -3 Econ Expansion, -1 Tech/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn) x2
[X] [PP] Defence (+1 significant walls/turn)
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Umi-san
Procrastinating.
- Location
- ꙮ
Why would we do anything other than the Dam & war missions?!
These are the only things that matter!!
Also, I'm voting for the "[dice vult]" option, not the doubled wealth costs option.
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
[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] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
[X] [PP] Agriculture (+3 Econ, -3 Econ Expansion, -1 Tech/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn) x2
[X] [PP] Defence (+1 significant walls/turn)
[X] [Purity] The Puritans broke (Lose the Purity trait, possible loss of the prohibition on slavery)
[X] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
[X] [PP] Agriculture (+3 Econ, -3 Econ Expansion, -1 Tech/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn) x2
[X] [PP] Defence (+1 significant walls/turn)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Basically, at this level of development, suddenly having to pay 10-15% of your labour force something instead of nothing means that suddenly all the little tasks that you could shunt off on them for free needs you to pay somebody, so the price of labour goes up, so the price of goods goes up, and so on and so forth, rippling through society. Basically the harsh cost represent the fact that you aren't at a level of development where you can't have unfree labour that no one wants to do of some sort.
@ManusDomine can we see about getting a "sad" rating in here?
I agree. But on the bright side this is really going to mess with some scientists in the far future.