So after going pretty much all of the Civ quests out there, from the greats to the not-so-greats, I've decided to give the concept a go myself. I figure I'll operate under a narrative focused format for several reasons, largely my fervent hatred of math, but also because I honestly enjoy this quest more than Paths of Civilizations.
I've hit a stumbling block in one area, however - the map. I want to stick to the idea of using real-world earth instead of making something of my own, but I also want to use a hex grid for simplicity and sanities sake. Unfortunately, google searches for 'hex grid of earth' or 'hex grid of North America' are insufficient for the level of detail I want - ideally, I can get a copy of the map
@Redium is using, since I can't seem to find an example of it on the internet.
Basically, I'm asking how to make a good map for this kind of quest.
Personally, I used Hexmap in order to create the maps used for this quest. If you're interested in giving map-making a shot, a free version of Hexmap can be downloaded. I have a few reference images, .jpeg's, and the .hxm files that Hexmap uses.
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?
Probably not how they react their their trials. This will be much more influential on the aristocracy and how they respond to stress.
@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?
Your government on a day-to-day level hasn't really changed that much. There was always a group of people that were better connected, that had skilled relatives or access to more resources. Aristocrats can be found in any profession; potters, farmers, warriors, etc. They just happen to be the best. Their families tended to be larger and as such, produce more resources (whether food, warriors, or crafts) and they become idealized as the leader of their particular field.
Realistically, nothing changed; the families that would dominantly produced Big Men now produce aristocrats. The aristocracy now sees itself as an economic and social class and they focus more on building ties within their own class so that their resources and networks of support mutually reinforce instead of being used to viciously tear each other apart.
The aristocracy isn't yet distinct enough to have a trump over every class in society. They're formally recognized as leaders and aristocrats are often the best connected and most skilled and successful in society, but they're not dominant. There aren't enough degrees of separation between a random torch wielding mob to allow them to truly oppress everyone else.
You have done away with Big Men, but you've replaced in with a series of settlement councils. Things are currently a bit more democratic than they were before. No longer can everyone speak at a public gathering, but aristocrats depend more on the support of the common person. It's a bit like representative democracy for now.
There is still a meeting up of three leaders to discuss affairs affecting all of the People. They tend not to be leaders in their own right, but representatives.
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?
Binding oaths are gone for now, but you'll have a chance to pick it up again fairly soon. As soon as you get Writing you're going to automatically open up 3 more Value slots. The acually binding value of oaths is less important. The People have evolved the value so that they place more stock on the family part of it.
You do still maintain adoption as turning someone into blood kin, however. Adopting a brother or sister would make them socially considered to be equal to a full-blooded sibling.
The Pearl Divers are a bit weirded out by your choice. You replaced their Familialism value only to suddenly pick up one of your own.
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.
It's not so much the intelligence, but the conflicting instincts and aggression. When you crossbred a dog and wolf, it's got two different neural architectures competing. Wolves are evolved to be smart, excellent problem-solvers, aggressive, and with limited socialization. Dogs have been bred to be dumb(er), dependent on humans, extremely social, and relatively passive. Crossbreeding this neural architectures tends to produce very neurotic crossbreeds; they don't know how to act in order to be successful. This makes wolves unpredictable, and thus dangerous.
Additionally, you've also bred your dogs to be aggressive to
humans. In Europe and the other areas of the Old World, wolves are used to people and behave as aggressively towards them as they would to any other animal. Wolf attacks were a constant threat. In North American and the New World, wolves don't attack people. I'm not sure of the exact reason why, but New World wolves tend to be fearful of humans and rarely attack. In the modern day, Europe has more than double the rate of fatal wolf attacks even though wolves are much, much more common in North America; Europe has about ~12,000 wolves while North America has ~77,500. That means attacks are roughly 13 times more common in Europe.
This aggression to humans is going to leak out of your dogs and start impacting the wolves nearby; you don't control breeding tightly enough to prevent dog/wolf mating.
When the People deal with dogs, it's either the Fangs or hunters working with them. Your dog handlers have to be extremely highly skilled since your dogs are not fluffy fur-balls; they kill and maim people every year.
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?
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?
Trial by Fire is going to be modified more once it's uncapped. Part of the reason that I've begun including a Level rating for each value is to show how complex it is and how comprehensively it is valued within society. Higher level values tend to be more complex because their social penetration allows them to develop further.
Balance of People would've pushed you further towards a Caste system, to be honest. It would've laid out a lot of explicit rights and responsibilities, but it would have codified the overarching idea of there being an ongoing struggle between people and social classes.
So essentially we need a King then?
Kings tend to be more stable than other forms of government, but they don't prevent social disorder. If your succession system if Tannistry, for example, that's going to be riven with significantly more conflict than agnatic primogeniture even though you have a King in both systems. It's impossible to prevent social disorder, even up to the modern day.
So I'm guessing this got pushed off to the next turn?
Yes.
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?
The fact that orkers are fully capable of
eating meat means that they are pure nightmare fuel.
The only thing that you can use orkers for at this point is for herding. They need to be fully domesticated to be ridden in combat. The upside is that orkers are
bigger than modern bulls; they're immediately large enough to ride. They aren't like caribou or horses where you need to either breed them larger or have them fight with child/teenaged sized riders. They're also fairly dumb; the reason that they went extinct IRL was because they were outsmarted by bear-dogs so you don't have to worry about silly things like 'self-preservation' or anything like that.
Oh, there's tons of prehistoric animals out there! The People have probably encountered some but don't yet know they 'should' be dead.
How scary are wolves in our area? And how are they 'scary'?
I believe I answered this elsewhere.
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.
You've pretty much got what the Fangs value. The one thing is that the Fangs are a lot more willing to tolerate viciousness towards humans. Your dogs aren't likely to be hulking monsters like Caucasus Mountain Dogs or Great Danes, but they are going to be medium to large size and very intelligent. Right now, you probably value Intelligence/Sociability>>Scent>Endurance=Strength>>Speed>>>>Looks in roughly that order.
I'm guessing the main things dragging down our craftworks production is a combination of not having enough materials, as seen by having specific materials needed at the moment, as well as not having enough Specialists in general needed to produce these goods.
You have quite a few specialists. The main issue is not even lack of materials; it's lack of transportation capacity. You have enough resources and enough craftsmen to turn out the goods you need, you just can get the resources to the craftsmen effectively enough. Kilns would also help a lot; getting kilns would free up enough material that you go from Tiny Surplus to Huge Surplus.
Last time I remember you showing us our stats our diplomacy was in equilibrium at the time with only our magic value buttressing it. Is that the same now, where most of our diplomacy surplus is due to our magic skills, or do people genuinely prefer to talk to us for other reasons, such as our trade goods?
I re-balanced how Diplomacy was calculated a bit and that did help you numerically. Your situation has also improved, however, by having an effective vassal in the Northlands and helping out the Peace Builders.
So how exactly would we gain more clay for material needs aside from claiming more land on the rivers, which naturally gives us more clay?
For wood I'm guessing gathering lumber from the forest as well as introducing those new kilns to make it more efficient would help meet those needs.
I thought brick buildings were more valuable to us due to their value at insulation and not needing to be as repaired as much as wooden ones did, so why would we want to transition to wood?
You're going to have resource specific buildings: Arborists, Clay Pits, Mines, Farms and Gathers all generate some amount of materials. Mines, Arborists and Clay Pits are much more effective, however; roughly in that order.
No surprise here. Of course we have a moderate surplus in warriors considering our emphasis on warriors and war. What I am curious about is how exactly that value in the parentheses is represented as I don't really know how to read what a small surplus of martial being available to the average person would look like.
A small surplus of Martial shows how much is available to defend any point in your empire.
What's a Golden Age do mechanically? I know Golden Ages in general are good things for us to try to reach, however what are their effects?
Conversely, like in the civ games which have a similar mechanic to this, are there Dark Ages that will provide certain effects for us and goals to accomplish?
What about Heroic Ages?
Golden Ages are awesome and you want to get one as soon as you can. If you have a choice between a Golden Age and something else, Golden Ages would be painful to turn down, regardless of how awesome that other thing is.
I don't really have any ideas for Dark Ages so far. That's really just civilization collapse.
Heroic Ages are awesome, but not good; think the Three Kingdoms Era in China or the Sengoku Jidai of Japan,
How does one go about producing a controlled low Stability dive, and what would be a good example of one? As the only one I can think of right now is how Priit's Faction emerging helped us immensely in terms of resolving our social issues.
You can generally drop stability by choice. Many of the events you're now going to see will have options to ruffle people's feathers and drop stability.
For example... say that the Ember-Eyes come up to you with a petition. They've noticed that a lot of people are using these newfangled 'stoves' within their longhouses. These contraptions are made of brick and used to cook things; the Ember-Eyes feel that these things infringe too much on their own experiments with heating and burning things in kilns. They want the practice stopped because it's causing people everywhere to ape and devalue their magic.
Or... you're presiding over a trial. A member of the Fangs and one of the Frost-Scarred got into a tussel that ended up dragging several of their friends in and some people dead. Both sides say the other started it and there's no proof either way. Further investigation shows that the conflict was sparked by the use of the Frost-Scarred's sled dogs to help their winter warfare. The Fangs felt that they were torturing their dogs by forcing them to pull along sleds and it's caused a bitter tension between the two with the potential promise of future violence.
Just... examples...
So now that Legitimacy has changed, I am guessing it will not reset when a new leader takes charge then of our civ, but instead represents the legitimacy of our government in general?
Legitimacy is how much people trust the government to make things better. It's unlikely to drop under new leaders now.
As legitimacy has changed, what are examples of ways to gain and lose it? Furthermore, I am guessing unlike stability, that having low legitimacy is bad right?
Legitimacy can be gained by decisions, but it can also be gained by buildings. Temples now give a constant Legitimacy boost while Festivals do as well. Other buildings can drop your legitimacy as well. Any prolonged period of misfortune where the government fails to stop it will ding legitimacy.
Huh...so does that mean the Temple we build in the Fingers will be for the Frost-Scarred to use?
Yes.
When it says 3 levels, for here and the other categories, does that mean that there are 3 levels before we max out? Have we advanced far enough that our values can once again be raised once more without going overmax?
That means that you're allowed to have 3 levels of values in that category, whether that's 1+1+1, 2+1 or 3.
Quick question regarding this in the immediate sense, do these bonuses apply to us right now in our war against Arrow Lake? While we did go to war against them, it was they who seemingly struck first and provoked us into this war in the first place. So will these bonuses apply or not?
Also, will there be a casus belli system later, as right now we seem to be able to declare war at will, but I am assuming later we will need justification right?
The bonuses do apply.
Casus belli will develop later on. Like the actual
necessity of having a cassus belli is either locked behind developing certain Values or a certain development level. Unless you pick up a pacifism trait, you will always have a cassus belli of some sort until fairly late; people were simply really accepting of war in the past.
You'll start getting Casus belli distinctly in the Iron Age.
Why's this? Is this because the families choose not to discuss social issues, or hide from them, or is there something more I am missing?
More that those issues are presumed to be the private province of the family. If people will disabilities or mental illness are being abused, it's not civil society that's worrying about it. If slaves are being abused, they're being abused at home by their masters.
So does this mean that they appreciate people doing things in person rather than learning them second hand? Such as they prefer if someone is taught how to shape clay not through just words but through practice? Or am I overthinking things here?
You prefer practical experience. If you were planning a road trip with this value, you wouldn't bother with a map but would instead ask someone who has been to your destination. It's great for dealing with solved problems, even if the solution is unpopular. Not so much for things that can't be solved or have no known solution.
So, quick question. Both this value and Retributive Justice are both at level 1, but we know this value is a more advanced value because it is a combination of two other advanced values. How do we determine whether a value is an advanced, fused, value for example, rather than say a bog standard started value with much worse effects?
Is there a nuance or is the level system just it?
The level system is a combination of how well the value has penetrated society and how complex it is. Both of those tend to go hand in hand since a value needs to have a wide reaching audiance
I'm assuming since life is now a category that we too can also study it as a separate category? How did we gain it exactly anyhow?
I basically decided to open up all of the resource categories. It doesn't make sense for you to be able to study fire, but not plants, for example. You are better at [Fire], [Beasts], and [Life], however due to your Holy Orders.
Life is plants.
I want this so badly.
@Redium Are there limits when it comes to what we can research? Such as, is there a time limit towards researching certain topics, or will some research topics being chosen invalidate another as they are mutually exclusive? Because having massive war mammoths is a great boon for us, even if this is so far away right now, the possibility is great.
There are some limits, but usually not. Often times, if you don't pick up a certain practice by a certain level of development, you'll simply stop trying to bother. It's not worth investigating Arboriculture when you've picked up Three Sisters, for example. You would need to go back and actively research it since Three Sisters is so much better; arboriculture is worse in every way so the People stop trying.
For mastodons specifically, you always have to worry about them going extinct. A lot of the megafauna in North America went extinct after people arrived there and wiped them out.
If you want to pick up Tamed Mastodons faster, lean on the Northlands because they are further ahead than you in researching it.
Research in general will improve when you take related actions. Want to boost Arboriculture? Pick up Arborist actions.
Damn...even harder than Mammoths...who would've thought? Anyhow, everyone here has heard from the QM how effective these can be as cavalry. Plus, this might be our closest analog to bacon.
Note orkers are on 'domesticated' not 'tamed'. Those words aren't the same; domestication is much harder than taming but it gives you a lot more ability to control the breeding of the animal. You must tame something before domesticating it and taming it is generally a lot easier.
So
@Redium , as Life and Magic were not study options before, can I take it that they are options now?
Yes.
I'm somewhat curious how a value like Spartan, as in austere, would affect this stat.
It'll probably help for a little bit and then get ignored. Sumptuary laws have been tried across cultures and throughout history; they always get ignored eventually.
So how exactly would we gain more clay for material needs aside from claiming more land on the rivers, which naturally gives us more clay?
Trails. Clay pits.
I thought brick buildings were more valuable to us due to their value at insulation and not needing to be as repaired as much as wooden ones did, so why would we want to transition to wood?
Brick Buildings are better, but you do not currently produce enough brick to house all of your population. You need to make more or people will start using wood again and stop using brick.
So, I get what this explanation says, I'm curious however about surpluses. As seen with the Luxury stat, and how it seems to differ in that its demand grows over time, I am curious about how surpluses affect us across the wide variety of stats. For some of them, like martial, diplomacy, and materials for example, their effects are obvious. However for others, such as say mysticism, magic, and staples they are not so clear cut. Are there special effects for example from having a certain amount of surplus, as I remember our old economic system had food reach a level where it would spoil before we eat it. Or are there downsides to having too large a surplus of magic and mysticism, like how we had too many people wanting to be masters earlier which threw off our economy and made us change the trials again.
Generally, if you have a big enough surplus, you will find a demand to meet it. If you have too much wood? Then obviously you can use more fire. Too much food? Turn grain into beer, or have a lot of children, etc.
If you maintain a surplus too high for too long, there can be deleterious effects. Too much Magic will cause people to become superstitious and practice their own witchcraft. Too much mysticism means things ossify as people start navel gazing and stop working. It tends to be hard to get to that point; too much of a resource is more likely to flavour other crises.
Aren't they defunct here in the trade menu?
Will fix.
Huh...so does that mean the Temple we build in the Fingers will be for the Frost-Scarred to use?
Yes.
Ah...I imagine this is the "placate unhappy faction" option? Or if we spawn a Hero that's not directly under our control and we want to use them?
To some extent. It's more like: "Okay, we have a tooooon of resources just sitting around and we don't know what to do with it. We simply don't have enough oversight to figure out what to do with it. We don't want it to go to waste, so we should give it to someone who can do something with it."
It's essentially telling someone (a War-Chief, an Elder, a Settlement Leader, etc.) that they can take whatever action they deem in the best interest of the People. Obviously these actions are going to be a bit self-serving; a war-chief is going to train warriors or raid, not plant sunflower fields.
So we probably want to do a whole lot of work on the trails soon or theres' going to be a More Clay pressure(and making the trail situation worse)
Yep.
Though on the opposite side, the more stable it gets the harder it gets to innovate and adapt, since it would interpret innovation as damage quite often.
Most civs settle in on "your components can fight each other, but they won't fight the top level authority often" I think?
Absolutely. You don't want too be too chaotic that everything is constantly falling apart and on fire, but you also don't want to ossify. There's not so much a right answer here as there is a sliding scale of where you are comfortable.
Where are we in the Vote Tally?
[X] [End] Regret
[X] [War] Continue to strangle Arrow Lake's food supply.
Vote is closed.
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