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From Stone to the Stars

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Kelenas said:
Sounds like we need to talk with people more...

EDIT: Though, on the flipside; why is it that the burden of diplomacy in these games always seems to be on the players? Thinking back on other games with a similar system, it kinda seems like other powers/groups rarely talked with the players unless the players initiated it.
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Bad luck, bad decisions and miscommunication are huge elements of history. Read up on some of the coincidences of history; lots of things have occurred purely because of random chance. Heck, look at modern day diplomacy. The US and USSR nearly went to war during the Cuban Crisis half a dozen times and that was one incident with intelligent, modern superpowers. Archaic societies are going to have even more difficulties.

It's possible to automate Trade Missions. Found Settlement, for example, now includes a Palisade, Holy Place, and Sugar Shack, where before it didn't include any of those at all. Actions change by narrative.

The requirement for that is to do the same actions (i.e. Trade: Arrow Lake) three turns in a row. By narrative, this is the People doing something over the course of an entire human lifetime. By that point, sending a trade mission is always what the People have done, so they will continue to do it.

It won't save you from truly bad dice rolls, (sometimes history turns on coincidence) but it would smooth over many difficulties.
 
Redium said:
Bad luck, bad decisions and miscommunication are huge elements of history. Read up on some of the coincidences of history; lots of things have occurred purely because of random chance. Heck, look at modern day diplomacy. The US and USSR nearly went to war during the Cuban Crisis half a dozen times and that was one incident with intelligent, modern superpowers. Archaic societies are going to have even more difficulties.

It's possible to automate Trade Missions. Found Settlement, for example, now includes a Palisade, Holy Place, and Sugar Shack, where before it didn't include any of those at all. Actions change by narrative.

The requirement for that is to do the same actions (i.e. Trade: Arrow Lake) three turns in a row. By narrative, this is the People doing something over the course of an entire human lifetime. By that point, sending a trade mission is always what the People have done, so they will continue to do it.
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Good to know.
Still, not quite sure how this is supposed to disprove my observation?
 
Kelenas said:
Good to know.
Still, not quite sure how this is supposed to disprove my observation?
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Its not that its our job to always engage in diplomacy, its just that life sometimes turns bad out of dumb coincidences. Its not that the Hundred Bands are a bunch of thieving ner-do-wells, or that we were dumb and didnt think to talk to them. Its just how history goes.

Og the Sheep Herder catches Ugh, youth of the hundred bands, messing with his sheep, and kills him. Hundred Bands learns of this, declares war. If we knew about it, we would have turned over Og without a second thought, but all we see is them coming out of the darkness to attack us without provocation. Hundred Bands doesn't know that we have multiple settlements, so kills our elderly out of a sense of mercy, rather than leaving them to die from starvation or the elements. We see this, and now think them evil, and get our revenge.

It's all down hill from there.

Thats what I love about this quest. The horrible, unfair, contrived accuracy!
 
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Redium said:
If they left them, what would happen? Remember, they expected you to melt away in the night. If they left the elders alone in an abandoned ruin, what was likely to happen? Chances are they starve. They believed instant death was better than that. Even if you went back to pick up the elders (not knowing they were there and take a risk braving where the enemy might be), they would've been net negative food producers when all of your supplies and structures had been wiped out. Caring for them would've meant starvation. Abandoning the elders would've been the logical, ruthless choice. Killing them was mercy.
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Sorry, I meant what's our reason for killing their elders? Just retributive justice? They killed ours so we kill theirs? Because we actually know that they have multiple camps.

Edit: I just noticed that my questions could be interpreted as accusatory. They are meant to be asking for clarification only. As in: Did our values cause the elder slaughter, was it for vengeance, and would having no relevant values on that subject meant we would have potentially spared them or would we have required pretty special mercy values for that to be feasible in this age?
 
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Kelenas said:
That's kinda the thing I noticed and am wondering about, though; that in games like this - that's something people might overlook or not quite get; I'm not just talking about the "Stone to Stars" quest, but also some others with similar set-up - it kinda seems like it's always up to the players to initiate and maintain diplomacy.
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The River-Bend tribe reached out to you. They actually diplo-annexed themselves into your culture in order to ensure the continued survival of their people. That was a major diplomacy victory for them; they likely wouldn't have survived at all without it. To help facilitate that, you did nothing.

You turned down the option to try and Trade with the original Fingersmen in order to get them to cease their aggression.

The Peace Seekers arranged to marry into one of your leading families before they got smashed between you and the Barrow Builders. The only reason they're still not trying to Diplo you is because being caught between the war and suffering from the extreme, poor weather pushed them to the point where they needed to make hard calls to shore up Stability. If they didn't get screwed by the dice, they would've used diplomacy until they were stuck to you like a barnacle. If the Big Man of Crystal Lake hadn't started fighting on the Peace Seeker's behalf, and thus alienate them, you might have had a shot at absorbing the remnants too. If you had done a Trade Mission: Peace Seekers after they cut off contact, they would've welcomed you back with open arms. It's likely they would've even relocated to be closer to you!

The unknown north eastern tribe that scouted you out would've made contacted if they didn't get hammered the next turn by unforeseen problems. They were never followed up on. If you had, you would've won major allies there.

Arrow Lake reached out to you diplomatically and started trade relationships just last turn. You've twice (likely soon to be three times) turned down the chance to trade back with them.

Even the Hundred Bands started trade/diplomatic contact by trading for your sugar. Which you didn't really do anything with, never trading back.

The People have been the least Trade/Diplo oriented tribe on the map. Even the North Lake Raiders have taken more diplomacy actions, though they've entirely focused on difficulties up north. You haven't look at the North Lake Raiders in how many turns? You have no idea what's going on with them.

Diplomacy is currently a major falling out because you've done so little of it. To some extent, this is a problem because you parked yourself at the Fingers. When I planned it, the Fingers was going to be adjacent to: 5 tribes. Crystal Lake has 3 neighbours. There are a lot of tribes to deal with and you haven't. There's also the fact that you had two main Settlements. That took you something like 5 turns to stabilize which ended up costing an enormous amount of potential Diplomacy time.

You've gotten you some gains through your choices; you've unlocked brick, lime, palisades, and shrines before everyone else, but that's cost you in diplomatic gains.
 
Keeping in mind that xenophobia and isolationism are not only common, they are the norm for survival. Because people you make diplomacy with have no writing, their relationships require an ongoing investment, which means a steady stream of people doing things that are not Make Food and Protect Self1.
Constant foreign engagement means increased exposure to disease, strange new ideas and higher raid profiles, which takes their own measures to deal with, which in turn leads to their own crisis..

Essentially, diplomacy heavy civilizations at the stone age are primarily people sited in places where there is a secure and stable supply of non-agricultural food, on reasonably defensible, or at least awkward terrain to attack through.

Short version: We opted to get good at developing ideas, but we're not really built to be able to take diplomacy consistently without losing one of those things we've been building up on.
 
Redium said:
You've gotten you some gains through your choices; you've unlocked brick, lime, palisades, and shrines before everyone else, but that's cost you in diplomatic gains.
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And like I said in my initial post; the lesson I took from that is that we need to talk with people more, and I'm going to vote to that effect in the next turn.

But there's still the impression that diplomacy "doesn't count" unless we do it. Taking the Hundred Bands for example, they apparently regularly came down to the Fingers in order to trade their captives for sugar. So there should have been plenty of opportunity for the issue between them and us - about our "relatives" raiding them - to have come to light from complaining traders, guards, or whatever, but instead that only would've happened if we'd sent a trading group to them instead.
Similar with the Arrow Lake; they're trading with us, but apparently that only counts for diplomacy if we invest an action in return.
 
We are trying to reach out now with Arrow Lake who knows maybe we can clear up some problems with other tribes. Is it possible for us to change the building coalition vote from one tribe to all the ones we have good relations with? Obviously the bands are left out of this.
 
Kelenas said:
And like I said in my initial post; the lesson I took from that is that we need to talk with people more, and I'm going to vote to that effect in the next turn.

But there's still the impression that diplomacy "doesn't count" unless we do it. Taking the Hundred Bands for example, they apparently regularly came down to the Fingers in order to trade their captives for sugar. So there should have been plenty of opportunity for the issue between them and us - about our "relatives" raiding them - to have come to light from complaining traders, guards, or whatever, but instead that only would've happened if we'd sent a trading group to them instead.
Similar with the Arrow Lake; they're trading with us, but apparently that only counts for diplomacy if we invest an action in return.
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Diplomacy DOES count. About half of our contacts with others are people making nice, because they want our sugar...and people being nasty, because they want our sugar. We don't SEE the broader diplomatic relations because we're sitting on a nice and secure spot on the map...but keep in mind what was mentioned above: actions spent dedicated to exploring is effort not being dedicated to food production.

Anyone initiating contact is going to want some return on investment. While our sugar means that more often than not, the entire return on investment is "have an open trade relationship", they are looking to benefit, at our expense if necessary.

Ergo, we want positive relations skewed in our favor, we want to initiate. But that comes at the expense of fighting, agriculture and internal cultural issues.
Before looking to our level of foreign relations, you should look to the slowly, but definitively growing rift between our settlements. We need to establish a road to prevent our civilization tearing apart later. We need brick construction to be standard so we no longer spend so much effort repairing and rebuilding, or gathering fuel and food. We need to keep working on our agriculture...

Well, once we finish the currently active megaproject we're fine for now. For now.
 
To save anyone who might want to chime in the trouble; I'd usually be happy to continue the discussion, but... one of our cats just died a few minutes ago, so I'm not really up for anything at the moment.
Sorry about cutting the debate short, but I hope people can understand. :(
 
[X] [Prisoners] Temporary labour/prisoner exchange
[X] [Tool] Make being attacked difficult (Improve Palisade)
 
It's likely that the Hundred Band are going to retaliate soon, so let's go for the immediate defense like the Palaside. Arrow Lake won't be dying in our defense any time soon after 1 Trade action.
 
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Hannz said:
It's likely that the Hundred Band are going to retaliate soon, so let's go for the immediate defense like the Palaside. Arrow Lake Trade won't be dying in our defense any time soon after 1 Trade action.
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Its Extremely unlikely, in least we do some kind of Super Crit that the Arrow lake will take a bullet.. or rather an Arrow for us. We have no diplo hero, trying to make Insta alliances that mean anything is hard for a modern nation to do let alone one that has to take MONTHS to travel anywhere or even talk with another tribe. This is time we could be making a fuck you wall that can't be pierced easily or at all.
 
[X] [Prisoners] Temporary labour/prisoner exchange
[X] [Tool] Make being attacked difficult (Improve Palisade)
 
Rafin said:
Sorry, I meant what's our reason for killing their elders? Just retributive justice? They killed ours so we kill theirs? Because we actually know that they have multiple camps.

Edit: I just noticed that my questions could be interpreted as accusatory. They are meant to be asking for clarification only. As in: Did our values cause the elder slaughter, was it for vengeance, and would having no relevant values on that subject meant we would have potentially spared them or would we have required pretty special mercy values for that to be feasible in this age?
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The largest part of it was that it was a chaotic situation. That made it easy for the People to visit violence upon everyone in the Hundred Bands' camp. People were killing as many as they could, setting fire to supplies and structures; anything to cause general chaos.

The smaller part of it was a mix of Flat Arrow Outlook and Retributive Justice. The People see violence as a perfectly acceptable tool in order to solve problems. The People are angry and want blood. The Hundred Bands are a problem. Does one not solve the other?

veekie said:
Essentially, diplomacy heavy civilizations at the stone age are primarily people sited in places where there is a secure and stable supply of non-agricultural food, on reasonably defensible, or at least awkward terrain to attack through.
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The other consideration is access to a rare resource. Neolithic trade networks for lapis luzili and obsidian crossed thousands of miles. Remember the iconic gold-and-blue death mask of Tutankhamen? The blue sections are lapis luzili that was mined in Afghanistan. Archeologists aren't certain when the lapis luzili trade started; time immemorial is their best guess. It certainly predates agriculture.

Obsidian was considered the 'rich man's tool' almost up until the adoption of bronze. Obsidian is better in basically every way over flint and better in most ways than crude copper. Good obsidian deposits would attract people from hundreds of kilometers distant in order to get a hold of some.

Crystals in general were extremely popular. Modern people consistently underestimate how long typical trade networks were. Sure, most of it consisted of one tribe passing it to another tribe with a slightly higher markup each time, but resources could move vast distances and served as a lightning rod to people.

Kelenas said:
But there's still the impression that diplomacy "doesn't count" unless we do it. Taking the Hundred Bands for example, they apparently regularly came down to the Fingers in order to trade their captives for sugar. So there should have been plenty of opportunity for the issue between them and us - about our "relatives" raiding them - to have come to light from complaining traders, guards, or whatever, but instead that only would've happened if we'd sent a trading group to them instead.
Similar with the Arrow Lake; they're trading with us, but apparently that only counts for diplomacy if we invest an action in return.
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To some extent, the Hundred Bands saw low-level raids as the price of doing business. The Fingersmen before you were a nasty lot and constantly raided their neighbours for slaves and then purchased more slaves. From the Hundred Bands' perspective, there was a lull in the raids and then the new inhabitants of the Fingers started doing exactly what they had been before. You bought slaves, low-level raiding slowly started up after that, etc. They were willing to eat low-level humiliation until something big happened and they snapped.

There's also an element of game conceit in this. Your civilization has to have strengths and weaknesses, it can't be good at everything. It's very hard for a GM to make a Diplomacy faction work without taking away player agency. Players can always just say 'No' when a faction tries to convince them of something. I can't project the same charisma through a screen that a real diplomat would be able to do in real life. It's also easy, since this is a game, to take a break and think about things.

Diplomacy works a lot better on NPC factions because they don't have an invisible chorus behind them controlling if they say yes. Players do. That's why player directed diplomacy tends to be more consistent and powerful. NPCs are much less willing to commit to a genocidal war to the knife.

Ghostdevil said:
ts Extremely unlikely, in least we do some kind of Super Crit that the Arrow lake will take a bullet.. or rather an Arrow for us. We have no diplo hero, trying to make Insta alliances that mean anything is hard for a modern nation to do let alone one that has to take MONTHS to travel anywhere or even talk with another tribe. This is time we could be making a fuck you wall that can't be pierced easily or at all.
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Arrow Lake is a 1 week round trip by canoe. They're actually about the same distance from you as the Hundred Bands are.



For the current vote, I think everyone should know that you're likely going to be selecting your go-to response when raiding. Killing everyone is going to have consequences. There are consequences to all of the choices and I really think people should spend some time evaluating these. This decision will likely have major repercussions.
 
[X] [Tool] Building Coalitions (Trade: Arrow Lake)
[X] [Prisoners] Temporary labour/prisoner exchange

I have a feeling the consistent "kill literally everyone who isn't us" approach will lead to a total war scenario, and I think that the Hundred Bands would win in such a scenario.
I would rather that not happen, so I'm hoping we can begin to deescalate.
 
[X] [Tool] Building Coalitions (Trade: Arrow Lake)
[X] [Prisoners] Temporary labour/prisoner exchange

Redium said:
For the current vote, I think everyone should know that you're likely going to be selecting your go-to response when raiding. Killing everyone is going to have consequences. There are consequences to all of the choices and I really think people should spend some time evaluating these. This decision will likely have major repercussions.
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For me, personally, I keep having trouble wrapping my head around "This particular vote for this particular situation dictates the way we're always going to do it for the foreseeable future" as opposed to thinking we'd get to pick and choose how we react depending on the enemy we're dealing with.

I don't want to hold onto the Hundred Bands prisoners, I want to get rid of them, but I don't want to make "Murder Everyone" our standard modus operandi for raiding in general.
 
[X] [Prisoners] Temporary labour/prisoner exchange

But I have to second Space Jawa. Killing everyone here should mean we kill everyone in similar situations, not whenever we go raiding or counter-raiding in any situation. Especially not as we develop better ways to keep and feed prisoners or learn concepts like conquest, domination or tributes.
 
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Space Jawa said:
For me, personally, I keep having trouble wrapping my head around "This particular vote for this particular situation dictates the way we're always going to do it for the foreseeable future" as opposed to thinking we'd get to pick and choose how we react depending on the enemy we're dealing with.

I don't want to hold onto the Hundred Bands prisoners, I want to get rid of them, but I don't want to make "Murder Everyone" our standard modus operandi for raiding in general.
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The war is likely going to shape up to be a long one. With the destruction of the Northern Hundred Band camp, you and the Southern Hundred Band are going to be slap fighting with ten foot poles. Decisive engagements are going to be basically impossible to forceand you'll have to settle in for a period of low-level raiding. Once one side's suffered too much attrition, they'll Shatter.

Technically this doesn't decision set a precedent going forward on its own, but it will set a precedent for the rest of the conflict. The conflict is likely going to last for multiple turns (purely based on geography and current war mechanics) and that may hit the magic 3 turn "We've always done it this way," limit and becomes automatically ingrained because that's what the People's traditions are.

Even if it doesn't technically effect your over all war-making, it can always affect your Values.

Rafin said:
But I have to second Space Jawa. Killing everyone here should mean we kill everyone in similar situations, not whenever we go raiding or counter-raiding in any situation. Especially not as we develop better ways to keep and feed prisoners or learn concepts like conquest, domination or tributes.
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You'll get a chance to change it eventually, but you're in the Stone Age. The correct level of political sophistication for some of these ideas is simply not there. 'Feed the prisoners' sounds simple, but it's really not. A lot of prisons didn't feed prisoners systematically until well into the Modern period. It sounds simple, but having people just sit there and be unproductive is extremely costly to society. Currently, for every criminal imprisoned in the USA, it takes the taxes of 4-5 'average' people to afford to house, feed, and secure them. In a Neolithic society, that's going to take even more relative labour.

Having to feed and guard prisoners simply isn't feasible for most of history. It's a substantially better resource investment to teach someone how to read, write, or perform a trade. There's a reason that most criminal punishments tend to be: reparations, corporal punishment, exile or execution. It wasn't until you got to the Industrial Revolution the prisons for the common folk really started to take off because it was at that point that it became possible to produce enough to keep people unproductive and doing nothing.

For conquest, domination or tribute, you need to invent Wealth or easy bulk transport for it to really be useful. Without Wealth, the concept of some secondary, easily portable trade good that's accepted by everyone, there's not much point in conquering other tribes; they won't be able to give you anything that you can use. You could take something of little value in bulk, but you have no way to effectively transport it yourself. Food tends to be of little value because it's so hard to transport. It is much, much easier to get food close by than waste tons of calories moving it.

It's much more effective to turn conquered people into slaves or drive them off completely. Land and labour are the only thing that's truly valuable since that's what feeds you. Everything else is a pretty babble.


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