[X] [End] Anger
[X] [War] Continue to strangle Arrow Lake's food supply.
[X] [War] Continue to strangle Arrow Lake's food supply.
From Stone to the Stars
- Thread starter Redium
- Start date
- Original Alt. History
- Location
- Canada
So how have our dogs been doing? Do we get to choose any more desired traits out of them? After all, I dont want inbred dogs to happen, FYI that leads to "purebreds"which just means inbreeding them till they start showing different physical traits that normally wont be beneficial at all.
I really really want to avoid that, want the people to view their canine companions as friends rather then be experiments to be mocked and laughed at for their freakish appearance and failing body and vastly shorten lifespans.
I really really want to avoid that, want the people to view their canine companions as friends rather then be experiments to be mocked and laughed at for their freakish appearance and failing body and vastly shorten lifespans.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We're not just playing the leader, but we definitely aren't in control of the whole civilization, because if we were we wouldn't have issues with not being able to see problems in the lower hierarchies(because we'd be controlling them too). I always thought of it as akin to EU4, where you play a vague collection of people in power diffuse enough that you can occasionally force monarchs to abdicate but separate/specific enough to offend both the people as a whole and factions within them, plus a bunch of specific events that can be from the perspective of individual rulers or figures of note.
The fanatical warriors of the peace builders are great for war. In peacetime, they forced the development of two different values (protective justice, speaking circle) and an entire Order of culture conversion bards just to end the insane cyclical bloodbath that the tribes in their area were trapped in by their grudge and persistence values.
Keeping a people for whom anger is a glorious thing happy is a full-time job for a society, and we don't have any of the stability focused values or groups that they do. The closest we have is blood brothers/familialism to stop the warriors from murdering eachother.
Also, I don't really know your perspective because you never said much about resignation. You've spent all the posts replying to me making points against regret.
(To be fair, I need to make some better specific arguments against regret myself, which I'll attempt after someone replies after this post and the morning coffee kicks in. After the first post where I made points against both I've mostly argued against anger more just because you responded to me and no-one from the other side has)
This is a reasonable argument against anger too though. If we are often wrong, then we should avoid options with higher potential for problems because any arguments about how we could avoid those problems might be missing something, and anger has some pretty high potential to go wrong. (So does regret,I say, but again, waiting for full coffee activation first before wading into an argument with the grand observer of all quests)
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Sol Zagato
senseless brute
[X][End] Regret
[X] [War] Continue to strangle Arrow Lake's food supply.
[X] [War] Continue to strangle Arrow Lake's food supply.
- Location
- USA
Their specific set of fanatical warriors, yes. However, the caveat seems to be that their values are different from our values, meaning any fanatical warriors that we develop are not necessarily going to necessitate the same requirements in regards to handling. Familialism likely helps us on this front, as well as our more ordered and religiously adept society.
Either way the point I was trying to make was that having warriors who use anger as a motivation is not a civilization breaking trait.
I think we have enough safeguards in place with familialism, aristocracy as our government style, and our firm religious leaders to avert a catastrophe with this option.
As for my perspective, most of my argument is focused on anger being the better choice both in the long term and short term. In the short term, anger will at least fuel our troops to keep on fighting until the end. Losing a leader is a huge blow to morale, while we did well this turn against Arrow Lake, Priit's death could swing the momentum of the war back against us unless we have another martial hero in the wings.
In my view, Regret being the essential moral of Priits story will make it so that our warriors will likely doubt their own choices in life, such as fighting in this war and becoming a warrior in the first place. Indecision is deadly on the battlefield. Resignation, I think is in the middle as while being resigned to fighting won't help, it won't hurt too much in the immediate term either.
In the long term I feel anger is not as bad as people are making it to be. Anger is one of the six basic recognized emotions. Anger obviously is a negative emotion as it creates a sense of hostility and aggression within a person. However, anger by itself is not a bad thing. Anger has to be directed, it has to have a target. It also has to have a direction of sorts. In my view I think Priit becoming a War God of Righteous Anger is something that is good. It will tell our warriors to fight fiercely for our causes, against the injustices and sleights dealt against us, even if the task seems impossible, for was not Priit's legend one of a man fighting against powerful forces and winning?
That's my view in any case.
Personally speaking, anger is the option here which I feel conversely is the easiest one to understand, is the least complex option, and therefore one of the easier ones to predict and not to misconstrue over time. That is why I feel anger works better than regret. For as we have seen, stories and legends morph over time, and I would rather have Priit's legend be morphed to a god like Ares, than be seen as a tragic figure like say Orpheus.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Anyway, the promised argument of regret vs resigned.
Honestly, these two are fairly similar, but I feel like resigned serves marginally better against both external and internal conflict. Against external foes, having less enthused warriors is a pretty clear straight debuff, one that will only get worse when we eventually drop/morph Might Makes Right. Anger's benefit is likely the reverse here, a morale buff, and all the other options are fairly neutral. (except maybe bitter. I don't see any reason why we should chose bitter)
Meanwhile against internal conflict, I don't feel like regret would be that effective at actually stopping it. The warrior clans may be sad that they have to fight, but with our shiny new government the ones most likely to draw the battle lines are nobles, not warrior clans, and familialism means that many of those clans are probably locking into one side of the fight or the other. In this case, the leaders being regretful (or apathetic) about it will change little because they can't stop it or remain neutral; bitterness and anger will make things worse (anger by deepening divides and dragging the fight on, bitterness by a general morale hit as everyone curses the spirits), while resigned is the best mindset for accepting the potential for violence while not demanding that it occur.
I am not objective enough on my own vote to say how to misconstrue resignation. If anyone could do it for me it would be appreciated.
Honestly, these two are fairly similar, but I feel like resigned serves marginally better against both external and internal conflict. Against external foes, having less enthused warriors is a pretty clear straight debuff, one that will only get worse when we eventually drop/morph Might Makes Right. Anger's benefit is likely the reverse here, a morale buff, and all the other options are fairly neutral. (except maybe bitter. I don't see any reason why we should chose bitter)
Meanwhile against internal conflict, I don't feel like regret would be that effective at actually stopping it. The warrior clans may be sad that they have to fight, but with our shiny new government the ones most likely to draw the battle lines are nobles, not warrior clans, and familialism means that many of those clans are probably locking into one side of the fight or the other. In this case, the leaders being regretful (or apathetic) about it will change little because they can't stop it or remain neutral; bitterness and anger will make things worse (anger by deepening divides and dragging the fight on, bitterness by a general morale hit as everyone curses the spirits), while resigned is the best mindset for accepting the potential for violence while not demanding that it occur.
Familialism helps keep unity within cliques, but also promotes the formation of said cliques. Aristocracy generates conflicts between large power blocs, not to mention it is literally the opposite of the ideals of speaking circle (most people are unworthy of getting a say by default). Not to mention, their problem values were OHCF (a grudge value very similar to retributive justice) and Do or die (a stubbornness creating value, though more focused than Ordeal/TBF). These are not the values for avoiding internal conflict. So when internal conflict does break out (like with Pritt's faction vs Avea), their image of the ideal warrior will greatly influence how they feel about the prospect of fighting their own people, and how they see the potential foe. Resignation is almost as good as regret and far better than anger at allowing things to be smoothed over.
The one least likely to be misconstrued is almost certainly reget. What does the archetypical warrior regret? Fighting, because that's what the archetypical warrior does. The most it could vary would be in regretting starting a fight and regretting joining a fight/becoming a warrior. Anger is, as you say, one of the most basic emotions; it can be applied to anything. Is The Blacksword angry at his foe? His corrupt leaders? The world as a whole? The civilians who don't understand what war is like? These details will change easily as Pritt is reinterpreted, to the convenience of the reinterpreter.
I am not objective enough on my own vote to say how to misconstrue resignation. If anyone could do it for me it would be appreciated.
Sol Zagato
senseless brute
Resignation leads into the concepts of fate or doom (predestination), and the Elect (those favored by destiny).
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- Location
- USA
Reading Familialism as a whole, social cohesion is listed as a benefit of it, even though elites in general benefit more from it.
Furthermore, aristocracy as a strait promotes governmental and cultural stability, which also helps alleviate some of the burdens caused by warriors who see anger as a positive value.
I do not doubt that the anger choice here will aggravate or even spur on some inter-tribal conflict. However as a whole I believe we have the tools necessary to reign in the dangers of internal strife.
When I look at our geography, and look at the history of our civilization it is far more likely for us to get into wars with our neighbors than it is for us to have great internal strife, which is why I view the negatives of choosing anger as worth it. Because to me it is. Every value has its detriments, and right now I believe out of all them, the one for anger is arguably better for us.
In the context of which I was speaking, I believe regret could be misconstrued a number of ways. Sure, if you break things down into the simple view of the archetypical warrior, their likely regrets would included meting out violence, failing to mete out violence, failing to do so correctly, or regretting having become one in the first place.
In the context of Priit's story as a whole however, when you apply regret to it, it could be construed to mean many things. Does it mean that Priit's life tale and all that he accomplished was regretful, mostly because he used violence? Is the message of regret one where he regrets a single mistake, making him imperfect? Maybe Priit's life is regretful or one that needs to feel regret for because he left so much he needed to do.
I feel that in any context things can be misconstrued, where any story can be reinterpreted to mean different things. While I regard anger as a negative emotion quite plainly, I feel that it is the best of bad options here.
DarkLight140
Credit to Team
- Location
- Lost in my thoughts
Well, presumably this means that both codes are reasonably well developed and have their proponents who are quite passionate about them. Given that situation, I can make a few guesses:
- The commonalities between the two competing moral codes (i.e. things everyone agrees on) become widely accepted and are treated as the most core moral values.
- Both codes become accepted on some level because our morality/religion isn't in a place where people will start killing each other over abstract points of principle like this and we have no Great Person speaking out in favor of one code and against the other; indeed, from the sound of it Pritt would be approving of both codes' points of view.
- The legitimacy of the concept of using a single guiding moral principle as the guide to all action goes down because people are aware of the flaws and limitations of each idea (as pointed out by the backers of the other) and pragmatists are likely to swap between which code they use to justify their actions based upon convenience.
- Overall the Law becomes closer to a soft set of rules- even if everyone knows what it is, everyone also knows that it's imperfect. It's likely that judgement calls from leaders will be depended upon to fill in the gaps, though with even a soft codified morality for those leaders to work with, the worst flaws of that should be mitigated. The exception is the commonalities mentioned earlier; those are hard and violating their strictures is likely to be treated harshly.
- Ultimately over time the fact that there were two distinct codes fades, and we end up with a single set of laws/morals built around a hard core (commonalities) with a lot of broad fuzzy areas around it where "the right thing" is subject to debate. This prompts debate and probably costs us some of the expected Law stability benefits but also pushes our political/justice system to advance more as it doesn't directly claim to have the answers to everything, which means people need to keep inventing new answers.
- Internal political debates probably come to involve a lot of shitflinging over people whose actions are only proper according to one of the original moral codes but violate the other. Being truly righteous and moral means doing everything that both codes say. Standards rise but expectations for meeting those standards may fall as everyone is inevitably visibly flawed.
That's mostly guesswork but it seems reasonable to me.
I know this has come up from others before, but I still can't use this map for much. Even when I make it as large as possible the text is still so small as to be illegible and many of the icons are indistinguishable from one another; it's usable for terrain and not much else. If there is any possibility of getting a better map, that would be fantastic.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Social cohesion does indeed decrease the baseline chance of internal strife. However, as we have already seen happen, it also makes it easier to put together a cohesive threat of rebellion/civil war.
High level intra-tribe strife is one of the stated downside of aristocracy.
The stability it creates is not generated by mediating internal divisions any better than our previous government, but by limiting the size of power struggles to stop every young idiot with an axe from joining them.
Furthermore, while war is indeed a greater overall threat, we have invested FAR more into cultural ability to endure war than our ability to remain stable. All our values except vendetta benefit war directly in some way (more elites, more general martial skill, defensive morale/hero bonus, greater ability to endure hardship in general, fortification spam), while the only value we have that are good for stability in the case of an internal divide are Familialism(which at least forces the nobles themselves not to kill eachother directly) and Ordeal (Only if we're doing well in some other area). Indeed, MMR and Vendetta such strife even worse, by making it more acceptable to start killing over politics and making it a duty to avenge your friend who was killed over politics (ordeal could land here too, since both sides can easily proclaim the other to be a test from the spirits). Add our tech advantage and massive walls to the equation and I feel far more comfortable with the thought of another war than the thought of another Faction right now. We really don't need another morale buff at the expense of stability.
- Location
- USA
Then we have nothing more to talk about, I can see the points in your position, I just disagree with you on them and their importance considering how some of the times when we've come closest to actually collapsing was no through internal strife but against an external enemy which beforehand was at the bottom of the Leaderboard and kicked ours and the Peace Builders asses.
At this point I can't see any point in debating right now as I don't think we'll shift each other's view points at all.
15 points.
Fixed.
Some other additions have been added to the Informational mark, mostly small ones.
On Behalf of Future Generations modifies both Trial By Fire and Blood Brothers. The fact that you're also switching to an Ancient Aristocracy this turn meant that Blood Brothers had priority (plus Trial By Fire was max level).
You're farming capacity isn't that high. You've just hit it because your farming methods aren't that great and you lack Trails to expand inland.
Right now, your calories come from: Farming 22.5%, Fishing 17.5%, Hunting 50%, Gathering 5%. Fishing has a lot of room left to grow while you've basically hit peak farm, peak safe hunt and are 2/3rds full of gathering.
Empowerment is basically a replacement of Tribute focus. Instead of picking a Tribute policy, you pick a beneficiary who executes actions for you; i.e. a warchief, elder, landholder, shaman, etc.
If anger is chosen, Priit dies one of those old, angry men that would fight the world if they could, because the world broke them.
The Worker Clans are equivalent to the Mountain Clans. They're a loose federation of nomadic hunter-gatherers that used to live in the not!Adirondack mountains. They've been forced west since then into the not!St. Lawrence Lowlands due to slave raids from their western neighbouts, Arrow Lake (not!Lake Champlain), who you are fighting.
Err... do you mean orkers? They're this thing (Technically a closely related species, not this exact one. It is a better picture, however.):
Link because the media embed function seems to be broken.
The only difference is that they've evolved to be hypocarnivores (eat <30% meat) rather than mesocarnivores (eat >30% meat <70%) over the last few million years.
Your military leader is also dying. There's no guarantee that his successor will be nearly as competent. It is unlikely that you will get a truly moronic war-chief, however.
Inbreeding basically isn't a concern. Your dogs regularly breed with wolves and are not forced to inbreed to closely; the People are disgusted by incest and don't let their domesticated animals breed incestuously as a result. Inbreeding has basically only become a concern within like the last 100 or so years. People didn't do inbreeding on dogs before that.
You're also breeding first for intelligence. Your dogs are likely to become the dog breeds that would've been herding dogs or retrievers.
By accident, you're also making the wolves nearby you scary as heck.
All of these are good ideas that would have been implemented, but there's a more immediate reason why taking two divergent law codes/cultural canons would be a very bad idea and extremely divisive. It would've been the straw the broke the camel's back; the one last thing on a fault-line you had been piling on.
I know there was someone that offered to work on a map, I'll probably contact them. I'm really, really unmotivated to do so myself since map making takes forever and isn't very fun. Tracking numbers, I can add entirely unique aspects to individual settlements or your civilization as a whole with less than five minutes work.
Note: intra-civilizaiton conflict is a risk with any medium or low centralization government style. A League of City-States, Tribal Confederation, Provincial Kingdom, or Oligarchy would all have these same issues.
The two main determinates on whether or not there's civil war are: how centralized is the power? And, how predictable is legitimate succession? More Centralization and more predictability make civilization more stable.
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Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
While i wasn't worried of contracting "Divine" marriages, it does make me glad to know we have no chance of them.
Just to clarify, all of these choices represent what happened to Pritt after the world broke him, right? So we're choosing how people react after they fail their trials?
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
@Redium How does our de jure government and hierarchy look now? Will aristocracy be enshrined in the Law as a must have that trumps every other option? Have we done away with the three Big Men that meet, judge and rule completely, there now being no one officially at the very top above all others?
Or is it more that, while Big Men are still elected in each town following the same types of ceremonies, everybody knows that they better elect someone from the "better trained" families and non-aristocrats that try to interfere are having a bad time?
Or in other words, how much did the theory and tradition of "How Things Are Done" change vs merely the day to day realities of how things end up looking to an outsider?
Or is that tradition still mostly in tact, except that blood brothers are now considered family no more important than actual family and usually slightly less?
Also what effect does us evolving away from Blood Brothers have on our relationship with the Pearl Divers and our track towards assimilating them?
Or even a completely intertwined belief where equality comes close second. I mean we were already pretty special in not punishing children for the sins of their fathers, what with adopting the offspring of Debtors and even POWs into our tribe.
In any case, I am pretty sure that all of the options you gave us still matter to the People to some extent, right? I mean they are not shitting on the Spirits, still care about remaining a single tribe following the same leaders and united against foreign tribes that wish them harm, still would rather be powerful than weak and don't shy away from using violence and other methods to come out on top compared to their peers and still hold the land and it's manipulation as sacred. So why aren't parables and legends that kind of preach a hierarchy that goes [On Behalf of Future Generations>Balance of People>All the Other Options>Behavior that Conforms with None>Mad Anti-social Idiocy] or something possible?
Or is it more that, while Big Men are still elected in each town following the same types of ceremonies, everybody knows that they better elect someone from the "better trained" families and non-aristocrats that try to interfere are having a bad time?
Or in other words, how much did the theory and tradition of "How Things Are Done" change vs merely the day to day realities of how things end up looking to an outsider?
Does losing Blood Brothers as one of our six defining Values mean that the tradition of binding oaths and related "brotherhood" that we adopted from the North tribes is completely gone from the majority of the population now? And that despite yet again fighting with Northerners at our side?
Or is that tradition still mostly in tact, except that blood brothers are now considered family no more important than actual family and usually slightly less?
Also what effect does us evolving away from Blood Brothers have on our relationship with the Pearl Divers and our track towards assimilating them?
Could you elaborate? Also, what do said wolves give up due to their increase in intelligence? After all if it were something that makes them all around more viable in the wild they would have evolved that way before our interference.
Why does it have to be two divergent canons instead of one canon with a lesser emphasis on two different concepts. I mean can't Priit and his elder advisors have thought "A is important but B is pretty important as well. We should make sure that there's a balance and that B doesn't get neglected after everyone knows the paramount importance of A"?
Or even a completely intertwined belief where equality comes close second. I mean we were already pretty special in not punishing children for the sins of their fathers, what with adopting the offspring of Debtors and even POWs into our tribe.
In any case, I am pretty sure that all of the options you gave us still matter to the People to some extent, right? I mean they are not shitting on the Spirits, still care about remaining a single tribe following the same leaders and united against foreign tribes that wish them harm, still would rather be powerful than weak and don't shy away from using violence and other methods to come out on top compared to their peers and still hold the land and it's manipulation as sacred. So why aren't parables and legends that kind of preach a hierarchy that goes [On Behalf of Future Generations>Balance of People>All the Other Options>Behavior that Conforms with None>Mad Anti-social Idiocy] or something possible?
- Location
- USA
So how exactly was Trial By Fire modified? Is there some sort of numerical measurement for how we progress in our values, similar to our research here?
Also how would Balance of People changed things?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but how would we expand fishing more? Haven't we already locked it in, with the only aquaculture action not locked on being for mussels?
How would this function mechanically? Is it just more focused with less random chance for which actions are chosen?
That doesn't sound too bad as long as Priit doesn't go "Let the world burn!" Or something.
I think what he meant here was that he doubted things would go so bad that the action we chose would've been overridden because of a single different choice, such as attacking the walls for some reason because anger was chosen.
So essentially we need a King then?
So I'm guessing this got pushed off to the next turn?
- Location
- Somewhere
That's not how evolution works. Useful traits can be changed, or never become a common species trait. Human feet for example, diagonal, or straight?
We are selectively breeding dogs for intelligence. Think of Alaskan huskies for a parralel, what with dog sleds.
Anyways our people started breeding for intelligence in dogs during the stone age. Whatever that's doing, from an occasional wandering dog, to the wildlife could be a little scary. Probably not too unrealistic, stray dogs in europe can take the subway and effectively beg for food.
A little odd we haven't seen any reports on smarter wolves though.
If you're talking about the wolves in Europe, that's probably because dogs and wolves tend to occupy different habitats, dogs living in more uban areas.
If you're talking about the quest, we likely don't notice since the wolves in our area probably don't see us as prey or as a competitor as they would a cougar.
This makes me want orker cavalry even more, or like, just release them at enemy lines. The orkers would probably make one hell of an anti cavalry unit. We have tamed orkers, are we using them for anything, or do they just hang out near us and tolerate us more than before?
Ps. If not!earth has these guys still kicking does that mean there's other prehistoric animals/descendants of those animals?
- Location
- Somewhere
I was talking about the quest. And people have researched wolves in rl, the info is probably lost though, book data, not internet. Just, our qm says the wolves have gotten scary. Scary means different things, wolves pulling military like formations in the wild isn't impossible, or a wolf avoiding human hunting parties.
How scary are wolves in our area? And how are they 'scary'?
Probably better problem solving skills and a decreased wariness of humans from our dogs... maybe. It happens in Ontario with the coyotes, they breed with the stray dogs sometimes, especially in the more urban areas so the get bigger and bolder around humans. It's still not a problem, but it has been happening, i kinda imagine that for the wolves, granted they probably are indistinguishable from our dogs to outsiders.
Sol Zagato
senseless brute
Modern dogs (almost always) are dumber, have much smaller brains, and have a worse sense of smell compared to wolves.
Like the tame foxes compared to wild-type, what makes a dog not-a-wolf is the paedomorphism. They're trusting puppies all their lives.
Dogs have evolved to get very good at reading human nonverbal cues. They're the only nonhuman animal I've heard of that track human eye direction to find something. Even chimps fail at that.
What would neolithic people think are 'smart' dogs? I don't think our typical tribespeople are interacting with the dogs much, it's mostly the Fangs, and to a lesser extent the hunters in general. I think the Fangs would want animals that interact predictably with them (paedomorphism, memory and social skills), that do their jobs well (focus on particular orders for long periods of time, general wolfy skills like tracking and hunting, decidedly non-wolfy skills like direct assault) and that can work with unfamiliar dogs without too much time wasted on fighting.
Soooo... wolves are getting genes that amount to:
-Paedomorphism (less assertive, less hostile in general)
-Less hostility to strange wolves
-Curiosity about humans
-Some talent for understanding human communication
-Greater memory
-Greater focus
I think this means we have large, coordinated wolf packs that have better inter-wolf communication, like hunting people, have grudges and gratitude towards specific tribes, and can carry out long term plans.
Basically, I'm thinking still wolves, but with a little bit of killer-whale-type shenanigans and a fixiation on people.
"Sarak, you have offended the wolf king! The north is no longer a place for you."
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