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Paths of Civilization

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Academia Nut said:
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.
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But all that wealth being paid will go back into the market? Making the economy starting to run again, making the cities spread markets around...
 
[X] [Dam] Make it as big and impressive as possible (2 Wealth and 2 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 3 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)
 
Academia Nut said:
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.
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Not that I'm an economist or even all that economically knowledgeable, but wouldn't that stimulate the economy by giving the lowest class spending money? It'd be more costly, but wouldn't it pay out more through things like the market or luxuries after awhile?

Or is there an issue that prevents pre-industrialized societies from doing so?
 
Oh no...
Welp, time to try to fight the bandwagon.

[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)

I don't think we can afford to rework the half-exile system yet. I fear the wealth costs will be too big of a burden for us to be able to handle and could cause us to collapse. And no, I don't think collapsing is worth it as long as we fix the system. It could make things even worse. If trying to redefine the half exile system is what gets us killed, I wouldn't be surprised if our successor civ goes the complete opposite direction and decides to take up slavery instead seeing the entire process as the problem and simply sticking with the tried and true method that all the other civs are using. Slavery.

Even if taking this option does not cause us to collapse, doubling all our wealth costs is going to hurt. Bad. Really bad. Adding wealth problems to our already unstable situation could very well be the straw the breaks the camel's back. I mean what happens the next time one of our enemies attack us? Will we be able to pull through while still juggling all these new costs? What about our subordinates? What if they decide that dealing with these new demands is far too costly and break off from us to do their own thing? Will we be able to stop them?

I would much rather change one of our values now and try to fix the half exile system when we are more advanced and can afford to do so without such insane costs. If modifying our justice value is all we need to do to get out of this, count me in. Besides, our "Greater Good" value could use some updating anyway. Hell, I would rather risk breaking the puritans than reforming the half-exiles. At least that way there is a good chance we could get out of it alright. Even if we did lose our prohibition on slavery I think we could still fight back against the changes and fix it. Our religion and culture hate it enough to allow us to fight it back in exchange for some social upheaval.

[X] [PP] Diplomacy (+1 Diplo/turn)
[X] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
[X] [PP] Trade (+1 Wealth/turn)
[X] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
(Not sure about what to vote for here, but I will go with these for now.)
 
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Academia Nut said:
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.
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any chance we could shift the system closer to the original intent of half exiles?
 
Citino said:
Not that I'm an economist or even all that economically knowledgeable, but wouldn't that stimulate the economy by giving the lowest class spending money? It'd be more costly, but wouldn't it pay out more through things like the market or luxuries after awhile?

Or is there an issue that prevents pre-industrialized societies from doing so?
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Maybe it will just be a temporary debuff?? Or we'll get some form of increased wealth income?

 
Malevolo said:
But all that wealth being paid will go back into the market? Making the economy starting to run again, making the cities spread markets around...
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That's still effort spent on things that aren't food.

E: Which doesn't really address lack of Wealth generation from it on second thought. What might is that a patrician building up a warehouse of goods that are then taxed can be leveraged in a way that those goods can't be if they're distributed and used up by a thousand different people instead. Wealth being more spread out means less for the state to use.
 
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[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)
[] [Purity] Some hypocrisy is acceptable (Greater Justice modified)
[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)
[] [Purity] Look to the heavens for a sign (Random, could be all good results from above options, could be all bad results from above options, likely a mix)

[X] [PP] Skullduggery (+1 Intrigue/turn, -2 Diplo)
[X] [PP] Special: Vassal Support (+1 Subordinate while active, increases Loyalty while active at less than full subordinates)
[X] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn)
 
Citino said:
Not that I'm an economist or even all that economically knowledgeable, but wouldn't that stimulate the economy by giving the lowest class spending money? It'd be more costly, but wouldn't it pay out more through things like the market or luxuries after awhile?

Or is there an issue that prevents pre-industrialized societies from doing so?
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Pretty much this.
While I am not a specialist as well, but this effect was made responsible for development of economy in socieeties abolishing slavery in the articles I read about such developments.

I suspect we will be able to reform our economy in couple of turns' time to reduce the strain on our economy.
 
PrimalShadow said:
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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Fair enough. Agree to disagree it is then. I will note that my position seems to generate more fun and less stress than yours, but some of that may also be possible to ascribe to differences in temperament/investment level, so it's far from an ironclad argument in favor of switching priors for game purposes. Just putting it out there though - try it, you might like it.
 
tenchifew said:
Pretty much this.
While I am not a specialist as well, but this effect was made responsible for development of economy in socieeties abolishing slavery in the articles I read about such developments.

I suspect we will be able to reform our economy in couple of turns' time to reduce the strain on our economy.
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If there weren't heavy costs to ending slavery then civilization would have gotten rid of it quickly (well relatively to a span of civilizations) as the non slaves stimulate the economy, since that literally never happened its obvious that it isn't true.
 
065tdsa said:
Except as we're currently seeing, people want unpaid labor, a lot. It'll degenerate back if we keep it.
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yeah, but it's likely that whatever other choice we pick will, too. Except for executions.
Just look at the prison system.
You need to fight to keep injustice at bay; burn to keep the cold away; etc.

Ghostdevil said:
If there weren't heavy costs to ending slavery then civilization would have gotten rid of it quickly (well relatively to a span of civilizations) as the non slaves stimulate the economy, since that literally never happened its obvious that it isn't true.
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The reasoning behind the persistence of slavery as due to short-term advantages of a slave/plantation system v the long-term benefits of a more costly freeman system have been debated before.

 
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TotallyNotEvil said:
We could at least have picked a non-imaginary hill to die on.
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What's any more imaginary about this hill than the ones among which the Ymaryn live? The quest is a work of fiction. Why are fictional ideals worth less than fictional land, or wealth, or whatever other cause you'd rather we sacrifice for? They all have only the value we give to them.
Ghostdevil said:
If there weren't heavy costs to ending slavery then civilization would have gotten rid of it quickly (well relatively to a span of civilizations) as the non slaves stimulate the economy, since that literally never happened its obvious that it isn't true.
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Human society is not an efficient optimization mechanism. The costs associated with ending slavery may or may not pay for themselves save in moral superiority, but either way, this argument is not a sound way to defend the latter position.
 
[X] [Dam] Make it as big and impressive as possible (2 Wealth and 2 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 3 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)

[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] Trade (+1 Wealth/turn)​
[X] [PP] Trade (+1 Wealth/turn)​
 
Current tally is 44 for the Half-Exile Rework, to 12 for the next highest alternative.
~~~~


I want to say some bad things about ~80% of thread's voters.
In the interest of civility, I won't.


Instead, I'll just leave you with one thought. Everything that comes of this will be on YOUR head.

In the rather optimistic case that this reform goes through successfully and we eventually manage to recover from the more grueling of the costs, that will be your achievement. But is our western territories leave the Ymaryn over this? If our factions revolt over this? If we end up getting killed by negative wealth income in a crisis, or screwed by the huge wealth costs of various actions, or if the reform is messed up and we end up with a worse form of slavery then the half-exile system we have now?

It's on you.
 
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Wiadi said:
Human society is not an efficient optimization mechanism. The costs associated with ending slavery may or may not pay for themselves save in moral superiority, but either way, this argument is not a sound way to defend the latter position.
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It is a good argument on the position that they would stimulate the economy, but if it was benefitual in that way then at least one civilization large enough to be remembered would have no slaves and show that having no slaves would be extremely helpful, this isn't the case. Other than that then yes this isn't a good argument only for that one point.
 
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