Chronicles of Nations - Civ Quest

[Marlin]

2) Urth is a planner and thanks to being immortal, they will spend a few updates putting together a plan and take multiple actions over multiple updates before making their play. When she stole Morbyn's body? That took multiple turns and actions to set up where Urth infiltrated the Maradysh to learn about them and the Arthwyd, came up with counter-measures needed to successfully take the body of one of the royal family and steal the blessings and get away before finally committing once they had finished preparing, which including preparing a trap for the inevitable follow-up attack by the Arthwyd. Creating their own blessing? Spent multiple turns and actions both acquiring examples of foreign magics in addition to studying magic to under the foreign magics so he could integrate them with his own magic to create her blessing. Sending the peace offer? Spend a turn setting things up in the Maradysh and the lowlands so that if you rejected her offer, she could do what she did, including setting things to both take advantage of the Maradysh taboo and then break it before it caused her troubles. If you had accepted the offer, then she would have had friendly relations with the lowlanders and Maradysh to make use of, including the groundwork to break the Maradysh taboo regarding the lowlands.

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4 turns from the point Urth died in Epic to the stolen arthwyd body, 2 turns after body theft, this is 3rd turn after body theft now? Or end of 2 turn after body theft?

 

[10ebbor10]

No.

First of all, she didn't to it all at once. It was started in the update that while the Arthwyd didn't notice until now, Urth almost certainly began planning it this and laying the groundwork for it before now. I expected the players to figure out that yes, she had preparing for it as it should be clear by now that Urth is a planner type of ruler.


1) The half which paid lip service while the half which has properly converted to the Arthrynite pantheon is firmly against Urth.
2) Those values were already there. Urth just took advantage of them using a couple turns of diplomacy. =
3) It was never relevant before and nobody has asked about the Maradysh values except in the discord. I can't put every last bit of detail into the updates. If you want to know stuff like the values of your vassals or allies, you need to ask for this extra info like some have. It got mentioned in the discord because it got asked there and if you want it to be brought up in the thread, you need to ask about this stuff in the thread.
4) She only did it for half of them and that was via using diplomacy and facts to eliminate a fragile taboo that was based on superstitions lacked factual basis. You would have had to have done the same thing yourself when you tried to explore or trade with the lowlands. As for not killing them because they came from the south, it is because they came from the west instead because Urth knew about their taboo.
5) That as an alliance formed between two friendly states against a mutual enemy. Urth just engineering the friendliness and the hostilities.
6) The Maradysh taboo has been brought up before when @KlinkerKing asked me about why the Maradysh hadn't explored the lowlands. It has been a thing since the Maradysh formed since it was the debilitating belief that their culture formed around. However the players never asked about that sort of thing except in the discord so it didn't come up in the thread until it was relevant, which is to say now when Urth exploited it to her benefit.

Furthermore, if you predicted that Urth would exploit the Maradysh culture to turn at least some of them against the Arthwyd if you rejected her peace offer, why did you voted for that outcome. You claim that you were one of the posters that figured out that this would happen and yet you never mentioned during the previous vote




As already noted in the thread, Urth has a Diplo Hero who is immortal. She has had her for a trio of updates now and while there are concerns about her being too overpowered and me not nerfing immortal heroes, but I would like to point out that I already did the nerfing a few update ago when Urth got her.

This is because I already realised the concerns expressed by the thread after this update regarding immortal Heroes back then and have already nerfed immortal Heroes so that they aren't too overpowered and result in the civ automatically just rolling over all opposition over time.



1) You never considered sending scouts to the south.
2) You never actually send an army to the south of the Maradysh, just to the south of your own territory.
3) Urth's Daughters arrived from the west because Urth knew about the taboo from when she infiltrated the Maradysh.
4 & 5) The Caradysh are located in the Cursed Forest, which may be to the south of the Arthwyd, but it is also to the west of the Maradysh (as shown in the last map).

As I mention above in the post, this

debilitating belief ​

regarding the lowlands is one of the oldest parts of the Maradysh. It just never come up before in the updates until now and no one has asked about it apart from in the discord and none of the players in the discord bothered to mention it in the thread or raise the subject in the thread.

I cannot put every last detail in the update so I mainly keep to what is relevant to the update when it comes to the details. If you want to know other stuff such as what you know of your vassal's culture or what sort or relationships your vassals have or what they think of other foreign entities, then you need to ask about those things and if you want that information in the thread, then ask about them in the thread and not the discord or get the people in the discord to share answers they get in the discord with the rest of the thread.

The thing is the players seem to be against both getting more information or sharing what information you do have. I don't just mean in-universe where you don't explore or trade or otherwise try to get more information on the lands around you, but the players rarely ask for more information in the thread as they seem to just go with the directly relevant information in the updates. Some people do ask questions in the discord and I answer them there, but those posters then decide not to share that information in the thread itself.

Frankly, it comes off to me that you and others can't be bothered to actually care enough about this information to try and find it out and would rather complain that when it comes up in a negative fashion. Neither you nor anyone else in the thread have never asked about what the Maradysh think of the lowlands or why they haven't explored the lowlands. If you had done that, you would have know beforehand. But hey, it is easier to complain that the QM is being unfair and inconsistent and retconning things so why not just do that instead.

And this idea is stupid as not only it is trying to blame the QM for player actions, but it also ignores the fact that multiple posters actually predicted this outcome if you rejected the peace offer and yet the thread voted for rejecting peace and continuing the war.

Some posters figured out from the clues that I left that Urth would try to turn the Maradysh against you by exploiting their culture if you decided to continue the war (through only @Somebodynobody10 actually mentioned it in the thread and not just the discord). And look at what Urth did. She did exactly as some posters were able to figure out on their own during the previous vote and somehow that is authorial fiat to screw over the players because clearly a predictable negative result of a choice made by the players is the QM's fault and not the majority of posters voting for outcome that had this negative consequences that some players were able to figure out.

Since the majority of the players are incapable of figuring this out on their own and just want to complain when things don't go their way. I'm going to explain it to you guys.

1) The Caradysh are bigger than the Arthwyd as they have a similar culture to the lowlanders and like the lowlanders, they have chosen to build wide and not tall. Because of this, they have been able to do more than you.
2) Urth is a planner and thanks to being immortal, they will spend a few updates putting together a plan and take multiple actions over multiple updates before making their play. When she stole Morbyn's body? That took multiple turns and actions to set up where Urth infiltrated the Maradysh to learn about them and the Arthwyd, came up with counter-measures needed to successfully take the body of one of the royal family and steal the blessings and get away before finally committing once they had finished preparing, which including preparing a trap for the inevitable follow-up attack by the Arthwyd. Creating their own blessing? Spent multiple turns and actions both acquiring examples of foreign magics in addition to studying magic to under the foreign magics so he could integrate them with his own magic to create her blessing. Sending the peace offer? Spend a turn setting things up in the Maradysh and the lowlands so that if you rejected her offer, she could do what she did, including setting things to both take advantage of the Maradysh taboo and then break it before it caused her troubles. If you had accepted the offer, then she would have had friendly relations with the lowlanders and Maradysh to make use of, including the groundwork to break the Maradysh taboo regarding the lowlands.
3) Urth is thrown off by the unexpected and needs time to prepare their plans. Urth is at their most dangerous when they do things on their own terms as only make their move when they got everything ready. Catch them by surprise or force their hand while they are still preparing and Urth isn't nearly as competent. So far, you have been dealing with Urth on her terms and only reacting to her once she has gotten everything ready and her triggered events on terms favourable to her.
4) You don't ask for information except in the discord. I don't put everything in the updates as that would be too much work for me. You want to know stuff that I haven't mentioned in the updates, you need to ask me for it if you want to know it before it becomes relevant. I will happily answer questions in either the thread or the discord, but if I do in the discord, it is up to your fellow posters to share the information in the thread.
5) You don't know anything about the Caradysh. You don't know the size of the Caradysh or what sort are like or what their defences are like or what sort of relations they have with other civs. You don't know their relationships with the lowlands such as how many allies they have or how much of the lowlands they directly rule over or what sort of enemies they have down there.
6) The Arthwyd are unreliable narrators and have biased perspectives. They think they are superior to the 'barbarians' around them regardless of whether that is actually the case. They view Urth and the Caradysh as super-evil beyond the norm, but other civs may not share that same viewpoint. They think of themselves as kind and benevolent, but don't consider the fact that they may not be from the perspective of another culture
7) Stop making assumptions about things. People have assumed that the Arthwyd dealt the Caradysh heavy damage and have left them weak so that is why they are suing for peace. People have assumed that the Caradysh would approach the Maradysh from the south and not the west. People have assumed the Maradysh taboo about the lowlands was hard to break when its very nature meant it was brittle and would break quickly once you started to crack it.
8) To get more actions, you need to either expand or reach the Bronze Age to upgrade your government type. I didn't want to say this outright, but nobody has gotten my hints so here we are. ​

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This is a massive mess to respond to, so I'll counter a few of your arguments.

1 Information Chaos is the fault of the thread

To say it with a quote :

"But the plans were on display…"
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard."

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Discord is a terrible layout to evaluate and search. Major information, especially stuff that could change entire wars, that we by all rights should now, should be revealed automatically, not relying on someone to ask the question on a service that the majority of the quest doesn't use.

2 The Maradysh infiltration

I suspected it, and mentioned. The problem is that I made the logical assumption that in peace Urth would have even more opportunity to manipulate the Maradysh than in war.

So, what you see as a logical reason for peace, I saw as a logical reason for war.

In addition, we really should demand that Urth and his progeny be exiled from all our territory. Because otherwise it's near certain that he'll maneuver one of his daughters to take over the Maradysh.

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3 On the OP-ness of immortal heroes

How did you nerf them? They still seem incredibly powerful.

4 On Urth's planning

We know, because of the timeline, that Urth had at most 1 turn to prepare the Maradysh. Before that, his children weren't old enough yet. Are you saying that we could take over half of a civ which was previously devoutly loyal to our enemy in a single turn?

5 On the map and the Maradysh

As far as I can see, the latest map shows Urth to the South, on the same lattitude as the Lowlanders. In addition, any turn where we had the opportunity to send a trade/Scout mission to the South is one where we should have been informed that the Maradysh would act up if we did it.

Lastly, the winning option for peace was getting animals from the Lowlands. So,

Chronicles of Nations - Civ Quest - Original | Page 201

 

[Cariyaga]

The thing is the players seem to be against both getting more information or sharing what information you do have. I don't just mean in-universe where you don't explore or trade or otherwise try to get more information on the lands around you, but the players rarely ask for more information in the thread as they seem to just go with the directly relevant information in the updates. Some people do ask questions in the discord and I answer them there, but those posters then decide not to share that information in the thread itself.

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Regarding the exploration thing, in civ quests in general I've seen the tendency to ignore it as an option because it doesn't increase numbers or anything. Regardless of how narrative-driven something is, people see something that says -X econ and doesn't give immediate or guaranteed shinies and just pass it off. I'm not sure there's an easy solution other than maybe giving a better read on how much information one has or doesn't have. For instance, Knowledge: Lowlands (low) or something like that. Not sure, it's a difficult problem.

 

[Killer_Whale]

[X] [MAIN] Sacred Forest

 

[10ebbor10]

4 turns from the point Urth died in Epic to the stolen arthwyd body, 2 turns after body theft, this is 3rd turn after body theft now? Or end of 2 turn after body theft?

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Neolithic Epic Age V : [Mid] Urth Dies
Neolithic Epic Age VI [Main]
Ungrateful Barbarians [Mid]
The Cadlon of the Maradysh [Main] [Maradysh secede]
Correcting Past Mistakes [Mid]
Royal Seduction [Main]
Bronwyn the Beautiful [Mid] [Maradysh in PU]
Divine Royal Family[Main] [Divine Royal Family created]
Appeasing Arthryn [Mid]
The Grand Temple [Main]
Uniting the People[Mid]
Urth Strikes Back[Main]

The GM's timeline doesn't make any sense.

The claim is that Urth spend multiple turns infiltrating and planning the kidnapping, and then multiple turns more preparing to figure out how re-engineer the royal blessing.

But there simply isn't enough time for that. There's only 2 main turns between the creation of the divine Royal Family and Urth's attack. And he has to use 1 of those turns to launch the attack. There's no place to put multiple turns of plotting and planning.

 

[Marlin]

Regarding the exploration thing, in civ quests in general I've seen the tendency to ignore it as an option because it doesn't increase numbers or anything. Regardless of how narrative-driven something is, people see something that says -X econ and doesn't give immediate or guaranteed shinies and just pass it off. I'm not sure there's an easy solution other than maybe giving a better read on how much information one has or doesn't have. For instance, Knowledge: Lowlands (low) or something like that. Not sure, it's a difficult problem.

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Exploring is not a free action, we are action locked due to few requirements met to increase action limit.

Edit: Double post, sorry.

The GM's timeline doesn't make any sense.

The claim is that urth spend multiple turns infiltrating and planning the kidnapping, and then multiple turns more preparing to figure out how re-engineer the blessing.

But there simply isn't enough time for that. There's only 2 main turns between the creation of the divine Royal Family and Urth's attack.

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Assume urth has 3 to 5 actions each turn. And the qm made urth take every 'correct' action as needed.​

 

[Cariyaga]

Exploring is not a free action, we are action locked due to few requirements met to increase action limit.

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Yeah, that's part of the problem. Without a distinct reward for exploring, it's easy to put off in favor of infrastructure, wonders, whatever.

 

[Random Member]

Neolithic Epic Age V : Urth Dies
Neolithic Epic Age VI [Main]
Ungrateful Barbarians [Mid]
The Cadlon of the Maradysh [Main] [Maradysh secede]
Correcting Past Mistakes [Mid]
Royal Seduction [Main]
Bronwyn the Beautiful [Mid] [Maradysh in PU]
Divine Royal Family[Main] [Divine Royal Family created]
Appeasing Arthryn [Mid]
The Grand Temple [Main]
Uniting the People[Mid]
Urth Strikes Back[Main]

The GM's timeline doesn't make any sense.

The claim is that Urth spend multiple turns infiltrating and planning the kidnapping, and then multiple turns more preparing to figure out how re-engineer the royal blessing.

But there simply isn't enough time for that. There's only 2 main turns between the creation of the divine Royal Family and Urth's attack. There's no place to put multiple turns of plotting and planning.

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Or he started infiltrating us beforehand (say, around Royal Seduction, maybe even The Cadlon of the Maradysh), noticed that we suddenly got a Divine Royal Family with an even better Blessing than the average Arthwyd and then spend the next 2 turns on infiltrating us even further with the express purpose of kidnapping such a Royal.

 

[Dakini]

How many turns did Urth take to come back to life?

 

[10ebbor10]

Or he started infiltrating us beforehand (say, around Royal Seduction, maybe even The Cadlon of the Maradysh), noticed that we suddenly got a Divine Royal Family with an even better Blessing than the average Arthwyd and then spend the next 2 turns on infiltrating us even further with the express purpose of kidnapping such a Royal.

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He didn't have the two turns. He only had one, as he has to launch the attack in the other.

Doing the infiltration earlier wouldn't have worked because our relations with the Maradysh were completely unstable at that point. We went from vassals to near war to PU in just a few turns there.

How many turns did Urth take to come back to life?

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Unknown.

I suspect he got back immediatly. I mean, he did other stuff than just attacking us, which ought to have taken time.

 

[Marlin]

Or he started infiltrating us beforehand (say, around Royal Seduction, maybe even The Cadlon of the Maradysh), noticed that we suddenly got a Divine Royal Family with an even better Blessing than the average Arthwyd and then spend the next 2 turns on infiltrating us even further with the express purpose of kidnapping such a Royal.

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Explain the extremly fast reverse engineering of the blessing. Was it 2 turns? Or 7 turns?

Don't forget, urth needed time to make his diplo attack, so 1 turn?

 

[10ebbor10]

Don't forget, urth needed time to make his diplo attack, so 1 turn?

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The Diplo attack was after the events in my timeline. It must have been, because it relied on the presence of the Daughters.

 

[Random Member]

He doesn't have the two turns. He only has one, as he has to launch the attack in the other.

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Main - Royal Seduction: Urth starts to infiltrate us
Main - Divine Royal Family: Urth's infiltrators notice we got Divine Royal Family, because that's pretty noticeable
Mid - Appeasing Arthryn: Urth reacts to this by infiltrating us further
Main - The Grand Temple: Urth spends another action on infiltrating us further
Mid - Uniting the People: Maybe another action to infiltrate us further? Who knows?
Main - Urth Strikes Back: Urth applies the finishing touches to his plan and attacks

 

[Star]

I mean judging from it Urth is set to become a god no matter what we do, even if we conquer his civ he can just get followers in lowlands thanks to his daughters that are diplo hero's and immortal.
Basically like Red Lady's from GoT combined with undead army spreading faith of their god.
I really see no point in fighting him to stop it since it is impossible anyway .

 

[10ebbor10]

Main - Royal Seduction: Urth starts to infiltrate us
Main - Divine Royal Family: Urth's infiltrators notice we got Divine Royal Family, because that's pretty noticeable
Mid - Appeasing Arthryn: Urth reacts to this by infiltrating us further
Main - The Grand Temple: Urth spends another action on infiltrating us further
Mid - Uniting the People: Maybe another action to infiltrate us further? Who knows?
Main - Urth Strikes Back: Urth applies the finishing touches to his plan and attacks

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The attack in Urth strikes back happens at the start of the turn, so that turn doesn't count. If you do count it you end up double counting some turns. You also forgot to add one midturn, which is confusing.

If fixed, your timeline gives Urth 3 turns for his entire infiltration, kidnapping, reverse engineering, battle preparation, and so on scheme. Most of what's done in the early turn would be rendered useless by the rapidly changing political situation of that turn.

I really see no point in fighting him anymore as we won't get anything from it.

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Kind of agree.

 

[Random Member]

I really see no point in fighting him to stop it since it is impossible anyway .

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Should've voted for peace then. But now that it appears like we won't win, people suddenly have buyer's remorse...

 

[Marlin]

All-Seerist Divine Magic
Detect Undead
Future Seeing

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Osha can you please remove future seeing from this sheet. It seems to be useless. It didn't get brought up when urth attacked for her body, or the expedition to attack urth was doomed.

 

[Lukepop]

There is no remorse, through Arthryn we will preserve ourselves and those who would seek to follow her words. Word of God Urth is a planner, so we need to do something unlikely. Doing a [MAIN] War party is probably pretty dumb this turn, but something like that may be good. Who knows. We need to do something weird, but not stupid.

The line between genius and idoicy is thin.


Also Oshha, what do we know of the culture of the Arthwyd Maradysh? You want us to ask, fair enough, here's me asking.

 

[Star]

Should've voted for peace then. But now that it appears like we won't win, people suddenly have buyer's remorse...

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It isn't that, basically system is set that Urth wins. Basically QM says he needs time to become a god, and look at it rebellion happen's while our people magically blame us for it. Basically another crisis is being prepared anyway for us.
He has immortal heros, while we need to train our army he only needs to revive more undead , whatever we do there is some sort of reason that it fails or a new crisis and who can argue?
Oshha is QM and if he wishes for Urth to be god he will be.
Us spending actions in it is really useless in this case.

Let's just ignore Urth and be done with it.

 

[10ebbor10]

On a side note, since I went over the turns anyway, I noticed this interesting thing. These are our actions :

[X][SEC] Sunrise Mountain Passage
[X][SEC] Support Subordinate = Maradysh

Arthwyd = [SEC] Sunrise Mountain Passage, [SEC] More Farming (Hero override)

[X][SEC] Sunrise Mountain Passage
[X][SEC] Study Metal.

[X][SEC] More Farming
[X][SEC] Temple

We've been criticized for not exploring enough, but this is the list of when we had the opportunity to do so. Basically, we only had 2 free actions. One immediately after Urth's death (so we wouldn't have noticed him), and then the Study Metal action.

Beyond that, we've basically been on a rail.

There is no remorse, through Arthryn we will preserve ourselves and those who would seek to follow her words. Word of God Urth is a planner, so we need to do something unlikely. Doing a [MAIN] War party is probably pretty dumb this turn, but something like that may be good. Who knows. We need to do something weird, but not stupid.

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I would have considered us figuring out not only where Urth's secret base is, but following him there and sending a large force to smash his troops quite unlikely, but apparently that was all part of Urth's plan.

The problem with genius planners who only fail when all their plans are exhausted, is that they only run out of plans when the GM decides that happens. Since Urth is reactionary to our actions, he always has a plan because he gets to act second.

 

[Star]

One immediately after Urth's death (so we wouldn't have noticed him), and then the Study Metal action.

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Actually study metal and attack Urth had same number of votes.

 

[10ebbor10]

Here's a plan that shouldn't be among Urth's expectations. Treason.

Send a peace expedition with "tribute to Urth", then murder him when we get close enough.

[X] [SEC] Trade Expedition = (Urth)S: -1 Temp Econ, +1 Temp Diplo, Chance of increased relationship, more knowledge about the outside world,
[X] [SEC] War Party = (Urth) S: -1 Temp Econ, +1 Temp Martial, Chance of damaging target, Chance of losing Temp Martial,

Actually study metal and attack Urth had same number of votes.

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Different study metal action. I was referring to the one in Bronwyn the Beautiful.

 

[Lukepop]

We can't do that ebbor, but it's a good idea for next turn. We need to settle Greenbay this turn or we'll get a crisis.

 

[10ebbor10]

We can't do that ebbor, but it's a good idea for next turn. We need to settle Greenbay this turn or we'll get a crisis.

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Unfortunately, I have revealed that the action exists, so therefore next turn Urth will have had a turn to prepare for it.

 

[Random Member]

It isn't that, basically system is set that Urth wins. Basically QM says he needs time to become a god, and look at it rebellion happen's while our people magically blame us for it. Basically another crisis is being prepared anyway for us.
He has immortal heros, while we need to train our army he only needs to revive more undead , whatever we do there is some sort of reason that it fails or a new crisis and who can argue?
Oshha is QM and if he wishes for Urth to be god he will be.
Us spending actions in it is really useless in this case.

Let's just ignore Urth and be done with it.

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"Urth needed time so he came up with a plan that would buy him time." That's not the nasty QM making you fail everything you do, that's NPCs actually having a level of competence.