Temples take 3 actions actually, but thats the Megaproject version.
We don't know what the normal temple takes yet, but taking Hill as a template it should actually be 2 actions total.
Ugh, I forgot that we got a free temple action and though it took only 1. I assume the 3 action number is from PoC? If it was, rush builders would make it 2 for us.
In that case, yeah, we should be constantly building at least half-temples.
Not really. Each settlement makes going tall harder forever. The island makers are how one does tall best, they have one settlement with everything. Of course, that has it's own problems.
were going to need allot of good food however, so next turn we might have to get one settlement to secure a good region for food growing and then lock down growing tall.
We already have that. We have tons of available farmland and have taken only a single farming action so far. Even if we can lock in expanding our quinoa crop, it's gonna be a while before we need to worry about land.
Honestly, I think we need to give up on locking in Temples and Hills right now, and instead focus on getting the four settlements done that are needed to lock in our control over the flood plains.
We can focus on locking in Hills and Temples once we're no longer at risk of losing control of the flood plains. Because we've been told that if we don't secure either the flood plains or the bay (which requires fighting the Peace Builders), then we're going to be at noticeable risk of being conquered by someone who does take either of them. And the Mountain Tribes are likely to settle the river island settlement sometime soon, whilst the Island Makers are probably going to settle the southern border spot once they finish building up their second settlement.
And I fully expect one or the other to happen within three or four turns, which is how long we need to spend without settling to lock in settlements.
On the other hand, if people really want to lock in some of the remaining extended projects... Well, locking in The Hill is easier than temples, as we only have one hill that's left to do. Fingers.
I also really think that because we'll be needing to start settling the flood plain soon, we can only lock in ONE of the two extended projects into our cities before we can do that. So I suggest people think really hard about whther we should lock in The Hill for settlements, or Temples at every settlement.
Personally, I suggest we do The Hill, and then build temples every couple of turns, rather than aiming to lock Temples in just yet.
Because if we take too long before starting to settle, then we're probably going to not be able to get EITHER the flood plain or the bay. And as I said, Redium has said that means we're in big trouble in the future.
We have a few turns. The only contest for that part is nomads. Plenty of time to finish Hill and lock in 3 turns. Locked in hills would make even bronze age attackers weep
Ugh, I forgot that we got a free temple action and though it took only 1. I assume the 3 action number is from PoC? If it was, rush builders would make it 2 for us.
In that case, yeah, we should be constantly building at least half-temples.
Not really. Each settlement makes going tall harder forever. The island makers are how one does tall best, they have one settlement with everything. Of course, that has it's own problems.
Okay, something else we want to keep in mind: Once our current Admin/Art Hero dies, we're likely to lose the innovation she created for organising the delivery of the limestone blocks in a timely and continuous manner.
Or in other words, one of the first supply chain/logistics innovations. However, if we build Temples, The Hills or Building Megaprojects (and the derived extended projects most likely) for three turns afterwards, we're going to lock in and keep that technology.
@Redium If we do Temples/The Hills/Building Megaprojects continuously for the next three turns, would that lock in the tech regardless of whether or not the Hero's still living? Basically a 'she's been around for so long, people have picked up on her knowledge, even though they don't have her insight'? Or if we keep building for three turns, and she dies sometime over the three, do we keep our progress towards locking in that tech, or does it start the counter from scratch?
We also want to take at least one Temple action sometime over the next two turns and a couple after that so we lock in the 'Fancy Temple Building' technology I believe. Not the supply chain one, but rather the one that involves using the mica as 'paint' and the like I believe.
Okay, to simplify things, Redium, would you mind putting a list in one place up of what technologies that our current Hero gives us, that aren't going to be locked in once she's dead unless we put in effort to do so, as well as the necessary actions to lock them in?
Because I think there's a bunch of stuff you've told us that we need to know, it's just spread over four or five different answer posts lately. And it's definitely going to impact how we go about the next couple of turns.
Also, would picking doing The Hill actions this vote start our progress towards locking in the Supply Chain technology? Or have we already done that by our work on the Temple for this turn? SO we're currently at 1/3 turns to locking in that innovation.
We can focus on locking in Hills and Temples once we're no longer at risk of losing control of the flood plains. Because we've been told that if we don't secure either the flood plains or the bay (which requires fighting the Peace Builders), then we're going to be at noticeable risk of being conquered by someone who does take either of them. And the Mountain Tribes are likely to settle the river island settlement sometime soon, whilst the Island Makers are probably going to settle the southern border spot once they finish building up their second settlement.
The benefit of having the massive plains is having lots of land to cultivate, but we haven't even begun to cultivate ours.
Also, a settlement isn't the only way to hold the plains. Raids on the mountain clans will do that too, as would fucking with the peace builder's politics.
What I think we should do next turn, assuming we don't lose our actions, is 1)build the hill, 2)take a quinoa action to move towards locking it in, and 3)start up on a temple, using tribute to advance The Hunt. The turn after that, we lock in quinoa, take at least 1 more temple action, and take other actions as the situation dictates(probably finishing the hunt if nothing comes up). Then, the turn after that, we send raiders at the mountain clan, while still doing at least 1 temple action so it stays remembered. By end of that turn, we have 4 farming actions, locked in hills, The Hunt, and at least 1 more full temple. Then, depending on how much available farmland we have, how much of a hold the mountain tribes have, and how much temple progress we've made, we can decide whether to stick to building temples, or to expand again.
What I think we should do next turn, assuming we don't lose our actions, is 1)build the hill, 2)take a quinoa action to move towards locking it in, and 3)start up on a temple, using tribute to advance The Hunt. The turn after that, we lock in quinoa, take at least 1 more temple action, and take other actions as the situation dictates(probably finishing the hunt if nothing comes up). Then, the turn after that, we send raiders at the mountain clan, while still doing at least 1 temple action so it stays remembered. By end of that turn, we have 4 farming actions, locked in hills, The Hunt, and at least 1 more full temple. Then, depending on how much available farmland we have, how much of a hold the mountain tribes have, and how much temple progress we've made, we can decide whether to stick to building temples, or to expand again.
alright I agree with this plan, anyone else want to dispute this? because this really does allow us to be tall and have the best for a long while...so long as we can finally get granite walls and better stuff going. heck we might even find a way to create Rangers or something that would allow us to really be forest masters/skirmishers.
edit: you know, since we have dogs, boars, all that's left if a chicken equivalent and a cow equivalent and we have our own way to cultivate biological warfare if Europeans or other raiders/non natives attack our lands. though we will definitely get wiped out if they bring bloody smallpox over, I just hope by then we would something of a understanding of basic hygiene and other methods to keep our people safe.
because you know once others start arriving into our territories shits going to go down fast. we can only hope we have cannons and Boar Calvary (because those pigs wont go down without taking something with them, and I hear boars if they can keep eating and growing can become monstrous sizes).
also is it possible to tame bears if we find them? because having bears be our friends would be hilarious...
As an addendum to the plan, I do assume that we will generate at least 1 hero over this period, and any non-diplo hero makes the plan much simpler; a martial hero completes the hunt faster and leads us against the mountain tribes, and admin and art heros build infrastructure faster, with art heros being limited to temples specifically. Spawning any one of these heros will shift our plans significantly. Of course, if we spawn a diplo hero then they take over and this plan is meaningless.
For that matter, the value we picked up this very turn could influence the plan a great deal, since it is probably related to building.
We already have a settlement in one of the regions, the fingers.We can use that to raid the mountain clans and stop them from settling there, or burn their settlement to the ground if they do.
Also, as a question to either @Redium or anyone else who knows, what was the source of the 2 extra actions we're voting on now? Climate? Heros?
EDIT-and as a question definetly for redium, do hills and temples count as megaprogects for the purpose of the tribute action?
Hmm... That reminds me of a question I think we need answered before we can do any real planning.
@Redium What is the roll required for a Hero to appear? I know we get a +1 to the roll, but that could just mean we get a Hero on a roll of 19+ on a D20... Or on a roll of 95+ on a D100, instead of a 20 and 96+ respectively.
Knowing this is important, because it tells us just how rare Heroes are naturally, which is going to affect turn plans. Because Heroes seem to be the sole source of additional actions that we can get easily right now. And compared to getting a rank up in Government or reaching the Chalcolithic, getting another Hero is probably easy.
Hmm... That reminds me of a question I think we need answered before we can do any real planning.
@Redium What is the roll required for a Hero to appear? I know we get a +1 to the roll, but that could just mean we get a Hero on a roll of 19+ on a D20... Or on a roll of 95+ on a D100, instead of a 20 and 96+ respectively.
Knowing this is important, because it tells us just how rare Heroes are naturally, which is going to affect turn plans. Because Heroes seem to be the sole source of additional actions that we can get easily right now. And compared to getting a rank up in Government or reaching the Chalcolithic, getting another Hero is probably easy.
I feel like that's not something we should know. Especially since it's something that is being fine-tuned. It's the sort of deep mechanics we should just let the QM deal with.
Is the river we are on usable by bigger boats then our canoes if that is not the case at what point does it widen enough or have no rapids and waterfalls so that bigger boats can reach the ocean?
is this at the settlement location wide river(between us and the pearl divers)?
There's not enough cultural stuff for them to be really divergent yet, but each Pearl Diver settlement would be significantly more different than say the Fingers and Crystal Lake are.
Peeling away cities from a tribal confederation is really easy. They may not even notice that you've done so. They're very loosely tied so as long as you don't lean on the converted city too much, it won't be noticed.
So were the Pearl Divers originally one tribe who spread out a lot or were they a confederation of tribes that differed only slight compared to each other?
Can we consciously even choose to try to curry favor with one settlement over another in an effort to peel them away? Also when you mean lean on the converted city, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean lean in any way even positively or do you mean like try to take advantage of them overtly?
Was that something that was always going to happen eventually? I assume that is building the Temple simply hastened up the process right as this trade imbalance was going to continue either way.
The Island Makers needed time to breath. The Hundred Bands and then South Lake were at their throats for centuries. They weren't doing bad, but they needed a gap to recover and then spread their wings. The last sixty years of peace have been put to excellent use by them. They needed it to really solidify their gains.
How much have they entrenched themselves into their current positions? I mean I don't think they have our brick wall technology yet, so I doubt it would be impossible for us to dislodge them.
For example how well would the Island Makers deal with your predicted explosion of the Mountain Clans? Would not having roaming Bands of raiders around negatively set back their infrastructure especially for stuff like fields and canals?
Also, on that same note, when it comes to infrastructure is there a cost or a measure for the upkeep needed to maintain said infrastructure?
South Lake was running hot on the collapse of the Hundred Bands. They managed to vacuum up most of their resources after you pushed the Hundred Bands to collapse. If they hadn't had an external enemy in you and the Island Makers, they likely would have been in trouble
Really? How would South Lake have been in trouble?
The only thing I could think of were angering the Tribe of the West enough to cause them to go to war, which while a dicey prospect especially with the enemy having a marital hero doesn't totally change the fact that I think they could've been better off from that compared to how.
Is there a way to avoid the bubble popping as you've so warned? For example could we raid them and cull their numbers down far enough so that any collapse isn't as disastrous as you make it seem? Such as you know launching a preemptive strike as a spoiling measure to let the air come out of the bubble so to speak if we are continuing this analogy?
In case there isn't a way to avert this, can we mitigate the effects of this? Such as having more of our warriors guard our trade parties and fields?
Granite is like.. 2, maybe even 3 times more durable than limestone. It's extremely hard to break. It would require advanced catapults or even trebuchet of some degree in order to break. Limestone walls would be vulnerable to early catapults like the onegar.
The weather and sickness were bad for them too. They wanted to rest as well and everyone's underestimating the Peace Builders because their compromise and consensus nonsense makes them come across as weak.
Smite dice. I have a number of dice I roll every turn that are basically: 'Does something go horrifically wrong this turn?' Disease, astrological phenomena, disasters; all of that's on there.
Just to clarify, do we simply need to do a required action like building a temple or hill in at least three turns after her death like once to keep it or do we need to do it continuously for three turns?
The Peace Builders are happy that you like listening to their stories even if they're disappointed that you don't seem to like them that much. They respect you for your strength, but also really appreciate that you're good neighbours.
The Island Makers treat you like a mudslide waiting to happen. You step softly, quietly, and hope you don't set them off. They plan on poking you in the future, but only in cases of grave importance.
It doesn't actually flood. The areas around the river are flat lands that used to be underwater during the last ice age. This has resulted in a relatively high level of soil quality and quantity, especially compared to other areas.
But even without flooding we can still utilize the land as is for farming right? Irrigation canals would probably help with farms here but they're not essential at this point right?
There's a trade imbalance, but the effects of it haven't really hit them. They have enough lapis luzili production that they can mostly meet their trade needs with you. Arrow Lake still has sporadic trade with the south (though they lose a lot of caravans to the Mountain Clans).
More crops is generally better. It broadens the nutritional component of the People's diet and it makes it less likely that crops will be destroyed by sickness or diease.
When it comes to more crops, do we need to have certain crop actions locked in in order to benefit from the variety of said crops? As I don't think just knowing about and having small numbers of said crop is likely enough to get the bonuses from it right?
Ahh okay, I was assuming the sins of the father thing would make it so that as a side effect the families would also inherit the debts and rivalries of their relatives. What are the negatives of this value?
So if they think they're the victims how are they reasoning out the cause of the last war? I mean their slaves did revolt after all which precipitated the war.
They pulled out due to the weather and disease hurting them. They took one look at South Lake and thought, 'Eh, the demons from the north'll finish 'em.'
Yeah, that's ironic, because I think some of us thought that they would take take care of South Lake. If South Lake does become resurgent, what are their most likely targets say after they defeat the Bond Breakers? Would they go for the Tribe of the West, then the Island Makers, then us?
So I'm guessing absent a massive catastrophe or a sudden alliance against them, is our intervention in a subtle way the only check on their dominance in the near future?
Right, so since we know about the South still, I'm guessing we can still try that action again next turn?
Because right now we should at least try to get a handle on what is happening on there as well as our options of preventing them from gaining Hegemony.
How would the Peace Builders regard us sending a trade delegation down that way anyway? That wouldn't be seen as an overtly hostile action would it?
There's a triangle along the St. Lawrence from Brockville in the south, Ottawa in the west, and Quebec City in the north that's filled with farms. Everything from wheat, corn, cattle, milk, potatoes, sweet pepper, etc. is grown there.
The entire area used to be one giant lake, Lake Champlain, during the last ice age and that's made the soil evenly distributed and relatively fertile. It's not as good as the Niagara Peninsula and southwestern Ontario (that is some of the best farmland in the world), but it's high quality.
Did not know that, I guess we now have our long term expansion goals set then. What areas is this comparable too? Such as could controlling this area allow our population to boom like China and India or are those unique phenomena?
Social organization is also extremely important. Technology isn't everything. Rome came to dominant the Mediterranean and it wasn't because of technology. They had a level of social organization and cultural values that propelled them to that point. There's an argument to be made that they were inferior technologically compared to Carthage or the various Greek petty kingdoms.
I see your point. But when you say social organization, how exactly would that be measured here in the quest? Would it be everything in the Organization section on the status page? Such as hierarchy, centralization, and so on? If so, what would we exactly need to do, action wise when it comes to normal actions, to develop our civilization socially?
Because, to be fair, it seems like a good portion of our social values and recent social organization has come from technology and developments such as building brick walls and then building the temple.
Progressing to the Chalcolithic will give more actions. Advancing your Economic or Government system will also give more actions. Increasing your spawn rate for Heroes (by modifying your values) will also effectively give more actions.
So when it comes to progressing into the chalcolithic age, what exactly do we need to do to get there? Such as, how would we even determine if there are copper deposits around us? I know that we will probably need to learn how to forge copper, which is helped by having our Ember Eyes as they are good with fire, but how would we even know we have copper to begin with? Also, how would advancing into the Chalcolithic give us more actions narrative wise? Is it simply the fact that we now have metal tools that would make it so that certain actions could be achieved easier in a shorter amount of time?
When it comes to advancing our government, I know you said that we could do through actions such as centralization in order to get an overarching Chieftain, but now that you've brought up the topic of wide and tall recently, when it comes to advancing how do we know when we've reached the point that changing our government is a step forward rather than a step back?
I know that the last time we changed our economic system, it was tied to the internal tributary system, which itself was related to an administrative issue. So how would we as the players direct ourselves into advancing our economic system? Would this be a social change or would it require technology? Both?
When it comes to increasing our spawn rate of heroes, would I be right to assume that the value that governs that is elitism? Which we would need to develop once it's not maxed out anymore?
Stability. Tall civilizations are far, far, far, far more stable. Venice, for example, existed as a powerful independent polity for something like 1400 years, at times dominating much of the eastern Mediterranean. China was a tall civilization and as such while it crumbled many times, it was never replaced. The Eastern Roman Empire was tall compared to the Western Roman Empire's wide and they were much more stable and wealthy as well as a result.
I don't dispute Venice and the example of the Roman Empires. However, wasn't China an example of both tall and wide? I mean, China seems like a somewhat unique example in that no matter who ended up being the dynastic ruler of China, they were still seen as Chinese rather than the ethnicity of the rulers instead, such as with the Mongols and the Yuan Dynasty, or the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty. In a side note, how exactly would we develop a society like China's where we would have such a contiguous history that could fracture and still survive said fractures and collapses?
In any case, as I was saying, wasn't China an example of both a tall and a wide civilization? Such as how the Chinese essentially expanded outwards from the Yellow River valley, the Central Plains heartland of China, thus acting as a rather wide civilization seeing as they expanded over such a large area, where they then went tall by coalescing into a culturally homogeneous and technologically advanced tall civilization under the Shang, Zhou, and then the Qin Dynasty which was precluded by China fracturing during the Warring States Period? Because China here seems to be a unique phenomena, which I am not sure we could really replicate.
Wide civilizations fracture and collapse much more easily than tall ones. Wide civilizations are bigger, but much more vulnerable to war and natural disaster. Tall civilizations also tend to be more well developed, they're wealthier, more technologically and culturally advanced as well. They very much play the quality to a wide civilization's quantity.
So which category do the Peace Builders fall under then? As they seem to me to fall under wide right now due to the fact that they are expanding so much and then integrating those they conquer.
Wouldn't wide civilizations be much better at surviving such shocks like war and natural disaster as even though the wider society may come crashing down, wouldn't the fact that having multiple settlements give them a better chance at resurfacing later under a related successor state? Whereas if a Tall State fractures, it tends to be more brittle in that regards?
Also out of curiosity, where do Civilizations like Alexander the Great's Empire and the initial Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan fit under this paradigm as they also appear to be both technologically advanced yet also wide ranging?
It's a peninsula. It's along the western side of Rahu bay. Manitoulin island and the other islands in the chain extend all the way back to what would be Saule Ste. Marie in the modern day.
So is this one of the changes you talked about? Since it appears that Manitoulin Island isn't an island this go around? Will it eventually become an island or will it permanently stay this way?
Okay, a different question then. Will holding Hill Guard make it so that we could prevent one civilization from totally controlling or monopolizing Rahu Bay?
Well, that sucks. Considering the fact that we just locked in fishing this turn, will that help for rolling for that innovation now that it is an automatic action?
Considering how different the west is from the easy, are the parameters for controlling it different from that of the east? Such as how Rahu Bay would likely necessitate that the one controlling it also have considerable naval prowess as well?
Well, that's good to hear. I'm guessing in this case going tall would probably grant us more cultural stability?
Out of curiosity however, when it comes to fusing factions. How exactly would two factions fusing affect the actions that they've locked in previously, as well as the buildings they now see as standard for each settlement?
For example, if we fused with the Pearl Divers, would the actions they locked in such as ones related to aquaculture then be locked in for us as well? Or would their settlements once integrated suddenly have brick walls and sugar shacks? Furthermore, say we fused with a tribe, would our counter for locking in a building or infrastructure suddenly change again as well?
When it comes to legacies though, do they evolve at all, or would we simply just gain an additional legacy for that longevity?
Now that you have Mysticism, those will start differentiating. Art before Mysticism wasn't complex enough to generate different types of heroes. Now Heroes will be one or the other (or for Double Heroes, potentially both).
Because right now I can see a nightmare scenario of South Lake defeating the Bond Breakers, taking all of their stuff and land, then reenslaving them, while at the same time the Mountain Clans explode, tying down us and the Island Makers, which South Lake then exploits in a war for vengeance.
Warriors are being forced to give up their martial training to plug gaps in the People's resource base. This is immensely unpopular and makes the warriors quite mad.
How would our martial stat help fill in stats like magic or diplomacy? I could understand martial filling in for economy due to warriors giving up training to produce food, but the others I am not so sure of.
The other tribes don't have a Mystcism score so they're a bit better in that regard. Generally, their peak stats aren't as high as yours; they're more consistent.
There's a general roll for the region i.e. China, or Western Europe, and then sub-rolls to flesh it out. For example, a plague happened and it started somewhere in France.
That makes it seem like they aren't as egalitarian as I thought they were seeing as they view certain people as being the right people to speak. How do they determine who those people who should speak are?
So, are we their only trade partners then? And when you mean pushing them closer, does that mean just closer as trade partners through being more interconnected, or does this also include making their opinion of us more positive?
This existed historically. Centralized civilizations (AKA: tall) tend to be much more cohesive, rich, technologically advanced, and better organized. The general trend was for an area to become dominated by an uncentralized group who were then replaced by a centralized power which could more effectively marshal its resources, or the uncentralized group fractured and then some of its fragments eventually became centralized.
How exactly do you drive a group to fracture into smaller groups rather than just having them collapse? Would their stability need to tank that badly or is it multiple factors?
I'm also guessing that if we want to become a tall civilization we will need to centralize more, while if we want to wide would we need to decentralize?
Consume probably isn't the right word, redirected is likely better. What you're doing is having the Holy Orders act externally to shore up the People's reputation. To most people, it's extremely intimidating when an Ember-Eye starts a fire by pouring water on wood (they only use a little to dampen lime which then starts an exothermic chemical reaction). Creating the temple was also an exercise of magic (primarily masonry) to raise your cultural capital (diplomacy) among other tribes.
Making people interested in it. Holy Orders are basically using their magic to get kids interested in becoming part of their holy order. The kids growing up around this ubiquitously used magic makes them develop intellectually.
Settlements are a bit of a misnomer. They're better thought of as 'the smallest centralized administrative unit'. Most of the People don't live in the settlements, but around them in very small communities. The actual settlement is only a fraction of a part of what goes into making a new settlement. Over time, the settlements will evolve to be provincial and regional capitals.
So, what happens after settlements become provincial and regional capitals, and the game zooms out as you mentioned. How will expansion and settling work as I am not sure we could just plop down a fully functional provincial capital like we can settlements today?
They've some how managed to make it so that the caribou they hunt don't run away. The sheer amount of frustration that caused among your hunters was humerous to behold.
If you wait on building the temples, all of the accumulated skills you've developed from building the first temple are going to disappear. They'll be forgotten. Do you want to try replicating them in the future, but at a time where you don't have an Admin/Art Hero? An Admin/Art hero is literally the ideal person to have organizing this and the only reason it was possible at all. The only one better would be a Genius and you don't have access to them yet.
Firstly, how long can we afford to wait on building the temples again?
And when it comes to that time, do you mean time until we complete another one or begin the process of building another new temple before it's lost?
When it comes to building temples would they be new builds like hills, or would it be more like how holy sites were upgraded into shrines, where now we can upgrade shrines into temples through an action choice?
How many actions would it cost to build a temple anyway?
Finally, what exactly is a genius and what differentiates them from a hero? As I've always assumed Kaspar was a genius.
Adhoc vote count started by Japanime on May 15, 2018 at 12:00 AM, finished with 135 posts and 30 votes.
[X] [Action] Check on the Northlands. The Cave of Stars did kill their High Shaman. (Trade: Northlands)
For example how well would the Island Makers deal with your predicted explosion of the Mountain Clans? Would not having roaming Bands of raiders around negatively set back their infrastructure especially for stuff like fields and canals?
Mountain Clans exploding is going to do heavy damage to Wide civs, but will be just inconvenient for Tall civs. Disorganized and hungry raiders aren't actually dangerous for us for instance.
But they can overrun and take over wide civs locally.
Also, on that same note, when it comes to infrastructure is there a cost or a measure for the upkeep needed to maintain said infrastructure?
This is already accounted for in the cost. When we spend stat points we're actually dedicating them to the building and upkeep.
Is there a way to avoid the bubble popping as you've so warned? For example could we raid them and cull their numbers down far enough so that any collapse isn't as disastrous as you make it seem? Such as you know launching a preemptive strike as a spoiling measure to let the air come out of the bubble so to speak if we are continuing this analogy?
Raiding them is a good way to pop the entire bubble in your direction though.
You'd need a coalition effort to prevent them venting an unsustainable economic/governmental structure in your face.
But granite would require metal hand tools to quarry right? So we couldn't get it soon even if we wanted to.
How do our brick walls compare to limestone walls?
Also what about other wall building methods such as using tamped earth?
Bricks are much more fragile compared to stone.
The issue here is economy.
-Tamped Earth is labor intensive, fragile to hand tools and the weather. It takes constant upkeep to make, though it can serve as a 'core' to a brick wall to give it more strength.
-Logs are more labor intensive than tamped earth to build, but more durable, even if it still requires very regular upkeep. The cost rises steeply with wall size, since harvesting and transporting larger trees is just that much more difficult.
-Bricks are again, more labor intensive than logs...but their durability basically makes them maintenance free, and a small wall's expense scales linearly with a large wall.
-Limestone is tougher than brick, and also maintenance free, but quarrying limestone without metal tools is horribly labor intensive, and the cost scales horribly the larger it gets.
-Granite is Limestone+, better and worse in the same ways, but more so.
Basically? Bricks let us build lots of walls. Stone lets you build much stronger walls, but without metal tools the expense makes it impractical to use except in strategic spots.
So what happens if say the smite dice are bad but the weather roll is super good?
Good reputation. It establishes you as someone you want to deal fairly in, and avoid otherwise. It also means a new hero would consider taking a swing at the local fae to be a means of establishing their bad boy creds, so it has to be paired with strength.
So if they think they're the victims how are they reasoning out the cause of the last war? I mean their slaves did revolt after all which precipitated the war.
Untrustworthy people striking the moment you show weakness.
So when it comes to progressing into the chalcolithic age, what exactly do we need to do to get there? Such as, how would we even determine if there are copper deposits around us? I know that we will probably need to learn how to forge copper, which is helped by having our Ember Eyes as they are good with fire, but how would we even know we have copper to begin with? Also, how would advancing into the Chalcolithic give us more actions narrative wise? Is it simply the fact that we now have metal tools that would make it so that certain actions could be achieved easier in a shorter amount of time?
Explore for Greenstone(Malachite variants). Then Study Fire.
When it comes to increasing our spawn rate of heroes, would I be right to assume that the value that governs that is elitism? Which we would need to develop once it's not maxed out anymore?
Hero-spawn values tend to be aggressive/inequality reinforcing values though. Keep in mind.
Justice, humility and equality values tend to hammer down these nails before they stick up.
I don't dispute Venice and the example of the Roman Empires. However, wasn't China an example of both tall and wide? I mean, China seems like a somewhat unique example in that no matter who ended up being the dynastic ruler of China, they were still seen as Chinese rather than the ethnicity of the rulers instead, such as with the Mongols and the Yuan Dynasty, or the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty. In a side note, how exactly would we develop a society like China's where we would have such a contiguous history that could fracture and still survive said fractures and collapses?
In any case, as I was saying, wasn't China an example of both a tall and a wide civilization? Such as how the Chinese essentially expanded outwards from the Yellow River valley, the Central Plains heartland of China, thus acting as a rather wide civilization seeing as they expanded over such a large area, where they then went tall by coalescing into a culturally homogeneous and technologically advanced tall civilization under the Shang, Zhou, and then the Qin Dynasty which was precluded by China fracturing during the Warring States Period? Because China here seems to be a unique phenomena, which I am not sure we could really replicate.
China was a case of a wide civilization that repeatedly had its face broken until it decided to be tall enough to stop being broken. As in, the common perception of Imperial China arose from a few extremely tall urban centers which eventually took over in the wake of everyone else breaking into tiny pieces for them to consume.
Wouldn't wide civilizations be much better at surviving such shocks like war and natural disaster as even though the wider society may come crashing down, wouldn't the fact that having multiple settlements give them a better chance at resurfacing later under a related successor state? Whereas if a Tall State fractures, it tends to be more brittle in that regards?
Hell no. Wide civilizations amplify shocks. War in one portion causes other portions to be strained even if they never contact the warzone, as resources normally allocated to them are rerouted to the warzone, which causes failure cascades as unhappy or panicking portions secede and the central authority is forced to either pull them in or watch everyone else follow their lead.
By contrast a Tall state finds it easier to endure shocks because of their infrastructure. Most of their required administrative, martial and cultural resources are concentrated locally and are difficult to interrupt
Because right now I can see a nightmare scenario of South Lake defeating the Bond Breakers, taking all of their stuff and land, then reenslaving them, while at the same time the Mountain Clans explode, tying down us and the Island Makers, which South Lake then exploits in a war for vengeance.
Look at the map. When the Mountain clans explode their easiest target is South Lake, which is weakened by recent events and without any allies.
How exactly do you drive a group to fracture into smaller groups rather than just having them collapse? Would their stability need to tank that badly or is it multiple factors?
If we look at the change in the leaderboards this time compared to the previous turn it looks like South Lake did indeed smash the Bond Breakers as they leapfrogged them even though they had been tied before, and the Bond Breakers current economy had them starving.
If we take a look at the quotes below, this seems to further suggest that the Bond Breakers are done for or will be, especially if they face a threat of the Mountain Clans.
Not really. The Mountain Clans did really, really well against the Bond Breakers. All they've learned was that they didn't quite raid the Island Makers and Arrow Lake right. Their only settlement was actually one they captured from the Bond Breakers.
I mean, it might in a way. If South Lake continues to weaken the Bond Breakers while the Mountain Clans continue to succeed against them while failing against Arrow Lake and the Island Makers, the Mountain Clans might be tempted to stray southwards as they have an actual settlement there now.
Nope, I've quoted a few of the maps, and both of the leaderboards so far but no archive.
Edit:
[X] [Dedication] Scenes of Mountains and Natural Geography.
[X] [Value] The spirits of land and stone have since been bound by mortar and wrought stone. (Value Synergy)
[X] [Pearl] Expand the Pearl Diver's salterns with the People's Stone magic.
[X] [Action] Check on the Northlands. The Cave of Stars did kill their High Shaman. (Trade: Northlands)
[X] [Action] Stay home and farm. (Expand Agriculture: Quinoa)
[X] [Dedication] Scenes of Mountains and Natural Geography.
[X] [Value] The spirits of land and stone have since been bound by mortar and wrought stone. (Value Synergy)
[X] [Pearl] Expand the Pearl Diver's salterns with the People's Stone magic.
[X] [Action] Check on the Northlands. The Cave of Stars did kill their High Shaman. (Trade: Northlands)
[X] [Action] Stay home and farm. (Expand Agriculture: Quinoa)
Looking at them:
1. The scale changed to higher res: fewer miles per hex now.
2. The new map has less legible labels- higher compression?
3. God-DAMN our settlements are spread out. Only the Pearl Divers, who have fallen for the boat meme, are as (or possibly more) spread out. I guess we get all the in-between Ottawa river valley to ourselves, which is nice for hunting. This should also make us a trading power in the future, having a direct route all the way from Montreal to lake Huron. Just reel in the Pearl Divers and we have all the way from Ocean to Lake, and a possible canal route later. So maybe it's OK to build tall now: anyone wanders into the Ottawa river valley, they'll have problems/ gonna get assimilated.
4. Not as worried about Peace Builders as I was: they look to be getting a bunch of OK and meh land. The Tribe of the West has the golden horseshoe in hand.
5. River Tribe is sitting on a very nice 3-way chokepoint. That's a bridge too far for us to grab.
6. It would be very nice to get Northlands friendly or in our orbit. That secures a vulnerable flank.
3. God-DAMN our settlements are spread out. Only the Pearl Divers, who have fallen for the boat meme, are as (or possibly more) spread out. I guess we get all the in-between Ottawa river valley to ourselves, which is nice for hunting. This should also make us a trading power in the future, having a direct route all the way from Montreal to lake Huron. Just reel in the Pearl Divers and we have all the way from Ocean to Lake, and a possible canal route later. So maybe it's OK to build tall now: anyone wanders into the Ottawa river valley, they'll have problems/ gonna get assimilated.
4. Not as worried about Peace Builders as I was: they look to be getting a bunch of OK and meh land. The Tribe of the West has the golden horseshoe in hand.
Even if it's not high quality, it's still a lot of land, and unlike the mountain tribes they are taking it from other agriculturalists, so it will be already providing food.
This is the time where I wish there was a discord for these Paths-of-Civilization-type quests.
It feels dirty, but I want to metagame a little. Abusing hindsight, we should know we're on a timer. Eventually, the big boats are coming, with them the diseases which can negate most of what we've made. Sure, the Mesoamericans, Mayans and Incas kept much of their kit before being conquered, but the Mississipians and the Amazonians, among others, were erased. After surviving the diseases, we can worry about enduring the foreigners attached to them.
There are various things we can do.
1. Don't live anywhere Malaria and Yellow Fever can survive. I think we're already good on that one.
2. Be belligerent and dispersed. If we're like the Mapuche or plains Indians, the epidemics will hit us, but not wreck us, and we'll be too much trouble to conquer until later. But this means we're eventually done for.
3. Be foreigner-loving and dispersed. Like the Cherokee, Guanche or Metis, take the the foreigners' distintive(ly delicious disease resistance and technology)ness and add it to our own, while not being wiped out by the initial plague waves. Notably, by some measures this can be said to have been successful OTL, and would have been completely successful for the Five Civilized Tribes if it wasn't for one particular Scots-Irish sonofabitch.
4. Become native to the Altiplano (yeah, Haha), where foreigner women literally can't have children, and the colonizers struggle for breath.
5. Suffer as many epidemics as possible pre-contact. This means we'll have some genetic adaptions to disease (though we really can't increase our MHC diversity), but more importantly, we'll have cultural adaptations to disease that are worth a damn. And our own plagues will set the colonizers on their heels, giving us some breathing room.
It's #5 that interests me at the moment. To do this, we should have as many different domestic animals as possible. We should keep different domestic animals in close quarters to one another and people, like geese and orkers, for example, replicating the Chinese flu factory. We should have rapid internal communications by road or boat, covering long distances. We should have regular contact with as many other groups as possible.
To me, what this looks like is a tall seafaring, merchant civilization with a love for new domestic animals, and excellent internal transportation infrastructure. Which is something I could get behind anyway even if disease wasn't an issue.
However, what kind of government and internal societies should we have to best survive these native-to-the-Americas plagues in the first place, and create the cultural adaptions to best survive them in the future?
