Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

[occipitallobe]

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[Lampshade]

So, when considering the latest round of arguments, I realized I'd been working with some pretty heavy assumptions:

1) The pace of recruitment from The Coloneia will be fairly constant rather than gradual.

The colony promises 12 legions that will take an unspecified amount of centuries, which I've been guessing to be as little as 2 or as much as 5, translating (very roughly) to 2-5 new legions in time for the Cannibal deadline. However, if the pace is gradual (i.e. less "legions per turn" at the beginning and more towards the end), we might struggle to finish more than one.

2) The legions from the Coloneia will be automatically integrated with Sheng Yu.

Some people are arguing as if The Coloneia merely raises the theoretical limit of legions that we could recruit rather than the functional number. Could we get some clarification on that? Are we buying tangible defenders or a pie in the sky with this option?

And if it's the latter, can Sheng Yu be made to hurry it up? Can we throw money at the problem, appoint an assistant Protostrator or something?

 

[no.]

Well, if I'm playing devil's advocate . . .

It's a decent way to go all-in on Altar Lord being in terminal decline. If we count on the war in the north concluding in 5 or less turns and if these guys are tough enough to go from victory to victory, accumulate so much merit that everyone has to shut up and are left somewhat intact in the aftermath, we earn a massive return of investment.

On the other hand, we've just seen how things can play out for legions without NS support during AL's endgame. Any part of the Battlefield can turn into a meat grinder at any time. It is quite plausible that within 2-3 turns they are all wiped out, scattered or converted to BP, leaving us with disloyal and undisciplined refugees that hate the desert due to extreme difficulties with acclimatizing.

There's also the part where they need a stable piece of land to replenish horses. If the gamble fails, even best case scenarios might turn sour as they are whittled down by attrition. Then it becomes a challenge to squeeze the most out of them before they are spent and I have no idea where to even begin counting that, especially since we have no specific objectives up front.

My guess regarding an avarage scenario is that by the time of the Cannibal deadline, they will be down to 5 limping legions that are getting yanked around for peanuts, whereas the Coloneia Legions would be money in the bank.



So I have this vision where the The Coloneia becomes the Capital of Weirdos due to being so far from the RP, like a watered down version of the Maze. The rest is just glitter lol.

Click to shrink...

Why do we want Altar Lord in terminal decline though? The Righteous Powers are not our friend, the more both sides kill and hinder each other the better it is for us. Our ideal scenario is forever war, or at least, forever war until we build up enough to conquer everyone.

 

[Resonant]

Worth pointing out that our next big focus in terms of military operations will be on the Devil Bees or Sorrowful Blacksmiths, where Cavalry won't see use in the Mountains.

Taking the Ma Clan would help in the Plains' war effort, but that's not our main priority. In fact, it's much better for us if the war drags on, such that the Clan has more time to grow.

To reiterate again, Righteous goodwill is ephemeral and requires an extra step to exchange it for concrete benefits. Growing the Clan's legions is simple, straightforward, and holds the greatest potential when compounded by our previous choices. This is the last opportunity to consolidate a stronger foundation, there's no easy gains leftover with the Desert fully conquered, and the Great Era + Trials promises to be a difficult challenge to overcome.

 

[Lampshade]

Why do we want Altar Lord in terminal decline though?

Click to shrink...

Indeed, we really don't.

As you will note, I was playing devil's advocate, due to a lack of specific plans on how we will actually utilize the Ma legions.

I was arguing that the best way I see to get maximum profit from the Ma Clan option is IF he's about to get rekt, in other words, choosing Ma Clan could be a good way to gamble on Altar Lord's quick defeat.

On the other hand, if we expect Altar Lord to still have some good mileage in him, likely resulting in the horses getting fed into a blender, then a more stable development option might be prudent.

 

[Simon_Jester]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[Resonant]

2) The legions from the Coloneia will be automatically integrated with Sheng Yu.

Some people are arguing as if The Coloneia merely raises the theoretical limit of legions that we could recruit rather than the functional number. Could we get some clarification on that? Are we buying tangible defenders or a pie in the sky with this option?

And if it's the latter, can Sheng Yu be made to hurry it up? Can we throw money at the problem, appoint an assistant Protostrator or something?

Click to shrink...

New legions would presumably be trained under Sheng Yu's new paradigm, making them immediately functional. It would be highly unusual and counter-intuitive for Sheng Yu to train new Legions using the outdated doctrine, needing to reform them again.

So yes, new legions are automatically integrated and immediately usable/tangible.

 

[SeptimusMagisto]

[X] Plan Vassal Synergies

They're available now, they won't be hampered by the Trials the way our core forces will be, and I just like having as many weird subcultures as possible within our territory for writing purposes.

 

[No7sHere]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[Narasan]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[no.]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

This works fine, maximizing population caps is good. Means more of everything good, in the long term. Simple.

 

[Sirrocco]

It's been poitned out that in order for the Ma to actually be worth it, we'd need actual plans that they could act in support of. So... plans for the Righteous. What are our plans for the Righteous? Where do we want to go from here? Flattening the Jingshen so thoroughly and dominating the desert so utterly means that we suddenly have all of our short-term goals. We've burned through all of our short-term plans because we have no more goals for those plans to achieve. We're suddenly one of the dominant powers in the local area. Where do we go from here?

Well, first, we should consider our possible threats:
- The Trials: they're a problem that scales with us, and the only way we're going to get rid of them is if Young Bhigru comes through with his key and we manage to gank him and take it. Other than that, it's a matter of hunkering down from time to time.
- Old Cannibal: He's still fielding more raw power than we are, and he's going to come after us with everything he has once the treaty expires. For realpolitik reasons, there's a good chance that we won't really see any Righteous support on that one, too.
- The Righteous: The Great Era means a lot of heavenly inevitability behind them. Between the Breaking of the Altar and the Great Era, it is highly likely that they'll eventually overcome the remnants of Blood Path in their area. They probably still won't be able to crush Noble Knowledge, but at some point we're going to be looking at a map that consists of Noble Knowledge, Righteous Sects, us, and a few random heretical groups that don't matter much. History suggests that at that point they're highly likely to consider coming after us.
- The Heavens: Their hate abates, but it is not yet fully spent. At the same time... honestly, the Great Era was a huge spend, and the Golden Devils keep being only mildly offensive to the Heavens. I suspect that we're going to see more stuff showing up a the Great Era comes into full flower, but there's a good chance that hte Heavens aren't going to start pulling some New Thing, at least until we manage to rise up to new heights of heresy.

Random blood path rebellions are also going to be a thing, but at this point they're more of a natural disaster or a terrain feature than they are anythign else.

Now we consider our neighbors:
- The folks to our north are great. Yuan and Qiguai have stayed out of basically every fight since forever and their secret realm diplomacy means that people are just generally not going to be inclined to attack them - and that attacking them gives all sorts of CB for everyone else in the region. Magic Oak is non-Righteous, has way more power on the defense than on the attack, and has a general foreign policy of not trusting outsiders and wanting people to leave them alone. Our northern border down to turtlebone is pretty solidly secure (and turtlebone itself is pretty badly impassible). They might be a bit destabilized now, but by the time any Righteous Path gets to the point of wanting to punch through them, they wont' be anymore. Admittedly, there is a chance for us to soft-diplomacy ourselves into a sort of gentle hegemony there, fi they're collapsing and/or worried enough and we can offer them enough of a solution to their problems.
- The Abyssal Bees are a problem, in that they're a natural corridor for Old Cannibal to attack through, but that's pretty much something we have to deal with, I think. Trying to take that land isn't going to help the process. Facing those forces in the mountain isn't going to help things.
- The Sorrowful Blacksmiths... they're an opportunity. That entire place is full of ancient Golden Devil legacies and ancient Golden Devil defenses, and havign control of the place when the Righteous turn on us would be really helpful for making it really hard for them to follow through. Also, it'd give us tones of power-ups as we explored the place. Otherwise, they're a point of entry for the Righteous, but not for the Blood Path.

...and our immediate opportunities:

No... I'm done. Someone else can finish this. I'm tapped out for the moment. What do you think our immediate opportunities are?

 

[no.]

Our best course of action for the mid-term is extremely simple: sit our asses down gathering more and more resources, then use those resources to brush off the next Trial without much damage. That's what puts us in good position for the future. After that, it depends on what the board looks like. The Great Era gives the Righteous a leg up, true, but it's a leg up while in a desperate position; might only be enough to break even for now.

There are times for skullduggery and there are times to level grind; this is the latter. Next turn, a lot of us are thinking we should spend no wealth whatsoever, and spam economy actions on top of that, to guarantee both a repaired Technique Place and another big purchase on turn 15.

 

[Juugo]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[Sirrocco]

Our best course of action for the mid-term is extremely simple: sit our asses down gathering more and more resources, then use those resources to brush off the next Trial without much damage. That's what puts us in good position for the future. After that, it depends on what the board looks like. The Great Era gives the Righteous a leg up, true, but it's a leg up while in a desperate position; might only be enough to break even for now.

There are times for skullduggery and there are times to level grind; this is the latter. Next turn, a lot of us are thinking we should spend no wealth whatsoever, and spam economy actions on top of that, to guarantee both a repaired Technique Place and another big purchase on turn 15.

Click to shrink...

Yeah... for "gather resources, rebuild, and turtle", there's no real reason to go Ma over Coloneia. We're already going to be sitting still and doing nothing for a while.

Although... huh. I suppose that there is one long-term advantage to preserving the Ma remnant. If the Righteous Path manages to recover and turn the tables (which we expect that they will) and the Ma manage to reclaim a place as a righteous power back in the fertile lowlands (which they're certainly hoping to do) then they will owe us their continued existence as a Righteous Power. That's potentially pretty significant from a diplomatic standpoint, as far as convincing other righteous powers to not come after us. Of course, that assumes they can somehow manage to grow themselves another Nascent somewhere along the way. If they can't, then no one really cares. Admittedly, it's not looking particularly good for them.

By the way... the Sorrowful Blacksmiths had one of their Nascents turn. How many Nascents did they have?

 

[adamashield]

I curious if anyone will make a good seed, of a scion of Ma clan that was recruited (and got the blood of our clan).

And name that guy or girl the name Genghis Khan (universal ruler).

At first that would be a joke, then when that dude/dudette become stronger, like core stronger. than that name will be feared

 

[Imugi]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[moon-llama]

By the way... the Sorrowful Blacksmiths had one of their Nascents turn. How many Nascents did they have?

Click to shrink...

They had two an early and a mid i think , the early got turned.

 

[Resonant]

Yeah... for "gather resources, rebuild, and turtle", there's no real reason to go Ma over Coloneia. We're already going to be sitting still and doing nothing for a while.

Although... huh. I suppose that there is one long-term advantage to preserving the Ma remnant. If the Righteous Path manages to recover and turn the tables (which we expect that they will) and the Ma manage to reclaim a place as a righteous power back in the fertile lowlands (which they're certainly hoping to do) then they will owe us their continued existence as a Righteous Power. That's potentially pretty significant from a diplomatic standpoint, as far as convincing other righteous powers to not come after us. Of course, that assumes they can somehow manage to grow themselves another Nascent somewhere along the way. If they can't, then no one really cares. Admittedly, it's not looking particularly good for them.

By the way... the Sorrowful Blacksmiths had one of their Nascents turn. How many Nascents did they have?

Click to shrink...

Sorrowful Blacksmiths had 1 Mid + 1 Early. The early got corrupted to Blood Path, rose to Mid and started a full on rebellion. There's a spreadsheet keeping track of the Nascents in Virtuous Flipper region Here. Most notably, the Righteous-Demonic powers now have an even split of Nascents after the Bloodmist realigned the playing field.

- On Year 220: 23 Righteous vs. 15 Demonic nascents.
- On Year 240: 18 Righteous vs. 18 Demonic nascents (+2 demonic if counting Golden Devils)

- Righteous: 1 Late / 9 Mid / 8 Early
- Demonic: 2 Late / 10 Mid / 6 Early (+1 Mid, +1 Early if counting Golden Devils)

 

[Lampshade]

Well, first, we should consider our possible threats: - The Trials:

Click to shrink...

I agree that for the forseeable future we're in hunkering down mode. I liked the Ten Million Forts option at Council 160, if we have some spare change, we could try to revisit that.

- Old Cannibal:

Click to shrink...

The southwest is woefully unprepared for what's about to come, we will need to do some serious building after the next round of trials. Luckily, our guys are good at that.

- The Righteous:

Click to shrink...

I think you're underselling the Maze and writing the Altar Lord off early. Recall that one of our best moves was baiting Heavens to be overconfident in one round of trials, only for us to triumph in the next. There is no reason Altar Lord couldn't follow the same pattern - the Heavens are conveniently predictable like that. Any plan that begins with the Altar being destroyed ends with the steel jaws of a trap snapping shut.

As for the Maze, recall that it requires constant attrition just to stop it from passively expanding and it has grown to twice the size already. Gemstone Justice is freshly rekt and Ma Empire lost a sizeable chunk of manpower as well. By the time RP rolls around, the Maze could very well be 3-4 times the size and tie up a commensurate amount of forces.

Finally, Cannibal also has ideas on Blood Path sustainability and growth and even if he focuses on us, he isn't the type to keep his back open.

For the forseeable future, I suspect RP "inevitability" will likely be relegated to "not-fully-rekt-ability".

- The Heavens: Their hate abates, but it is not yet fully spent. At the same time... honestly, the Great Era was a huge spend, and the Golden Devils keep being only mildly offensive to the Heavens.

Click to shrink...

The flashback demonstrated Towers of Spite and the Law of Shattered Time as two of the main tools the SCA used to push back the Heavens, we could look into that. I don't have much hope for the latter, but if Time Shatter Sect is on the Righteous menu, we could volunteer and get in on that.

However, I like to think that we've been given some hints with Manuel poking at the Sun and Gravity. If we could find one of these towers, and there is no shortage of candidates, we could perhaps work out something less abrasive between the Spear, the Tower and Manuel's Dao / SoHW, something along the lines of a "Cloaking Tower".

We're suddenly one of the dominant powers in the local area. Where do we go from here?

Click to shrink...

The obvious answer is consolidation. We are massively bloated from everything that we just absorbed and need to properly digest.

Other than fortifying the Cannibal front, I'm thinking of working out some kind of cultivator "opportunity exchange." Many of our vassals have some smaller landmarks that they might not be fully utilizing or are unsuited to them, so we could start with exchange quotas, "We will open this thing for 1000 of your Qi Condensation disciples and you'll let 100 of our Foundation Establishment dudes into that thing."

We could then build that into some kind of voucher system. Vacant opportunities go into a central register and are traded as goods. Promising seeds could then compete for grants and discounts and have their cultivation "path" mapped out in advance with suitable opportunities lined up one after another. (Surely everyone remembers a xianxia scene where tickets into a secret realm are being auctioned and fought over. I'm thinking of a hybrid between that and the classical "Adventurer's guild" . . . xD )

...and our immediate opportunities: No... I'm done. Someone else can finish this.

Click to shrink...

The only thing I can think of are the rebellions up north that we could put down if we have some leeway, but the money plan for the following turns was pretty tight IIRC.

 

[no.]

Yeah... for "gather resources, rebuild, and turtle", there's no real reason to go Ma over Coloneia. We're already going to be sitting still and doing nothing for a while.

Although... huh. I suppose that there is one long-term advantage to preserving the Ma remnant. If the Righteous Path manages to recover and turn the tables (which we expect that they will) and the Ma manage to reclaim a place as a righteous power back in the fertile lowlands (which they're certainly hoping to do) then they will owe us their continued existence as a Righteous Power. That's potentially pretty significant from a diplomatic standpoint, as far as convincing other righteous powers to not come after us. Of course, that assumes they can somehow manage to grow themselves another Nascent somewhere along the way. If they can't, then no one really cares. Admittedly, it's not looking particularly good for them.

By the way... the Sorrowful Blacksmiths had one of their Nascents turn. How many Nascents did they have?

Click to shrink...

There's no way the Ma will ever be accepted again. From the RP's perspective, they were shown mercy and then stabbed them in the back. If that's what you're hoping to get out of helping them, you should give up.

 

[Tall_Garbage]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[Sirrocco]

There's no way the Ma will ever be accepted again. From the RP's perspective, they were shown mercy and then stabbed them in the back. If that's what you're hoping to get out of helping them, you should give up.

Click to shrink...

Hmm...?

[ ] The Ma Clan

Kleisthenes reminds the Council that the remainder of the Ma Clan remains quite strong, with thirteen Core Formation elders as well as a substantial army in the Strength Purity Sect surviving the new Ma Emperor's madness. Attainted and no longer considered to be a righteous power, the remainder of the Ma Clan must choose either to dissolve into other Righteous powers, or be considered Demonic. Tisamenos's closeness with the most powerful Ma Elder, Ganbaatar, has meant a potential offer could be made. The Ma Clan would relocate their last forces into the desert, with almost ten Legions worth of men coming with them. They would swear fealty to the Golden Devils - at least until they could reclaim their former lands. The Ma Clan would still serve in the Great Battlefield, but would be a political pawn of the Clan.

In the short-term, this would offer a substantial boost to Clan power. Of course, much of the Ma Clan fell to the Blood Path, and they are not known for their resilience of spirit against temptation. A rebellion here could easily grow out of hand.

Click to shrink...

I'm just reading what the QM put down. It seems implausible to the point of ridiculousness that the Ma could "reclaim their former lands" while not being accepted by the Righteous Path. Anyway, the ones who would be doing it would be the ones who had been serving at their side, who would continue to be fighting at their side, and who had not fallen to the Blood Path. Depending on how desperate things got, and how well they served, I think it at least plausible that they might regain Righteous status. Heck - some time ago, we had a chance to regain righteous status. We just didn't want to get rid of all of our little heterodox practices (and didn't want to have to swear to not eat the Jingshen).

 

[Seventeen]

[X] Plan Clean Backyard

 

[no.]

Hmm...?


I'm just reading what the QM put down. It seems implausible to the point of ridiculousness that the Ma could "reclaim their former lands" while not being accepted by the Righteous Path. Anyway, the ones who would be doing it would be the ones who had been serving at their side, who would continue to be fighting at their side, and who had not fallen to the Blood Path. Depending on how desperate things got, and how well they served, I think it at least plausible that they might regain Righteous status. Heck - some time ago, we had a chance to regain righteous status. We just didn't want to get rid of all of our little heterodox practices (and didn't want to have to swear to not eat the Jingshen).

Click to shrink...

I mean the Ma Clan as a nation. Individual members will be accepted into various Sects, but there will never again be a Righteous Power that calls itself the Ma Clan. The absolute best outcome for them is that new rulers move into their old territory, the country is renamed and they get to serve under said new rulers. And that's if the entire Ma Empire is conquered, which is hardly guaranteed.

Think about this in terms of pride, and in terms of Nascent-scale time. A nation was relatively recently accepted into their coalition. As soon as the Blood Path begins making big inroads, they turn on their allies and betray them. Is this reading entirely charitable? No. But image is important to the Righteous, including the image of having lines which cannot be crossed.

 

[Lampshade]

So this is random, but if I'm the Altar Lord or the NKS and I see Gemstone Justice falling apart, I'd be growing the maze east on overtime to turn it into a "Great Wall" scenario.

Conversely, if we know Brighu is coming, could Manuel sneak into the Maze and let him spend the Key on PvE?