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Magna Graecia: Titanomachia (A City State Quest)

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[X] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should send them away.
[X] [Immigration] Talent.
[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.
[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.
[X] [Marriage] To place the Metic father at the same level as his citizen counterpart as unacceptable.
[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.
[X] [Juries] Citizens are just as good a judge as metics, and there is no need to involve them.
 
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[X] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should host them.

We should not send away those that seek our shelter.

[X] [Immigration] Talent.

If someone wishes to come, we should welcome them, but there's no point in wasting resources to look for people. If we send a mission to invite people to our polis, we should invite those that will bring something to the City with them. Not just numbers.

[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.

I think tha Prytanis chosen from citizens actually serves Metics better. Yes, one could argue that Metic Prytanis better understands problems of the Metics, but I think that Citizen Prytanis is the one that can actually be heard by the Assembly. Would the rest of the Assembly treat Metic speaker with respect? Would they listen to the arguments of such speaker? Yes, citizens would listen to him and allow him to speak, as the sanctity of the Assembly requires, but they would not treat him as one of the equals and thus his grivances would be less likely to be solved.

[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.

That's the reasonable request.

[X] [Marriage] Reform the laws so the Metic Father has the same rights in the marriage of his daughter.

I understand that Metic-Citizen marriages are not really a thing, so chance of Citizen husband being affected by this are miniscule. Not to mention that he already lowered his status by marrying the Metic instead of fellow Citizen. In my opinion rights of the father should not be dependant on father's status. Unless we agree that Metic marriages are a different form of marriages than citizen ones, there should be no distinction for divorces either.

[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.

I'm surprised it's not the case already.

[X] [Juries] Citizens are just as good a judge as metics, and there is no need to involve them.

No, no, no. Either only Citizens are the ruling class or not. If they are, then theyy are the only ones that should be members of the Assembly, only ones viable for Public Offices and only ones allowed to be the Judges. If we allow Metic to be the Judges, we are making them co-rulers of our City.
 
Cetashwayo said:
It's been all over the place. The Metic assembly was formed during the timeskip so it's not very old; sometimes it would be called once every year in quick succession to settle some new issue, and other times they've not been called for ages.
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Thanks for clearing that up - and for the useful info post! - it really didn't seem possible that this could be the first time they had been called in 34 years but it's nice to have my assumption confirmed.
 
Would it be possible for half the jury in metic cases to be made of metics as a compromise?
 
NavySeel said:
Would it be possible for half the jury in metic cases to be made of metics as a compromise?
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That would be more than they're asking for.
Adhoc vote count started by Admiral Skippy on May 22, 2019 at 9:35 AM, finished with 780 posts and 79 votes.
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Ironanvil1 said:
I'd point out that the hardening of the exclusivity of citizenship is still relatively novel at this time period - Athens has only required two citizen parents to inherit citizenship for barely two decades at this point.
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Things can be obdurate bedrocks of the social order, or they can abruptly not be, and it changes a lot depending on the social context and events. The history of other Greek Cities and the Roman Republic is fascinating, will enrich anyone's experience of this Quest, and is a rewarding area of study for anyone willing to give it the time. But from the perspective of this quest, it's not a suicide pact.

What matters is that we do things that make sense within our context, for reasons that also make sense in that context, and see how we go from there. There are certainly a lot of very good reasons why Citizens would jealously guard their Citizenship, but what that means to them, and what being a Metic means, are ultimately determined by Eretria's culture and people.
 
Cetashwayo said:
Dry dung fuel is far more popular in areas where trees are less common. The most common fuel used in Eretria, as with all of the ancient Greeks, is charcoal.
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Trees are far less common...

*looks south to North Africa and Arabia*

*looks at Carthage, the Lybian Pentapolis and all the Berbers. And all the various Pre-Islamic Arabs like the Sabeans and the Nabateans*

Oh my. I can see incoming profits, if only we could find a way to transport the Dry Dung Fuel from Italia to these places.

Simon_Jester said:
Also I'm not sure that burning poo would be the solution to global warming as you later imply?
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Hmm...upon further research what you say is right.

Animal wastes are 5% of where all methane in the atmosphere comes from while Enteric Fermentation, or in other words the cow's belching and farting, is where 16% of all the methane in atmosphere comes from.

...and yet encouraging the elimination of 5% or less of that methane, in the time of Classical Greece? Methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide? Way before the Industrial Revolution comes about?

I think its worth it.

I genuinely think its worth it.
 
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Honestly the one thing I actually quite like about this shift in the vote is that the assembly abruptly deciding for somewhat unclear reasons that giving the Metics four out of five things would be "too much", and panickedly finding something else to deny them, is more or less completely in-character. :lol
 
Metic Juries are still winning 44 to 33.
Adhoc vote count started by Admiral Skippy on May 22, 2019 at 9:35 AM, finished with 780 posts and 79 votes.
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Admiral Skippy said:
What matters is that we do things that make sense within our context, for reasons that also make sense in that context
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...You want us to act modern first and foremost, and make up whatever reason we can to justify it and hope it works out? In the Classical Era

Why would you try this?

You could get away with stuff like that in POC because we were building a civilisation from the literal ground up over the course of centuries. And even then we screwed up from time to time.

Here we are working off of a Hellenic, Homeric basis of morality, that outright excludes certain things. Already we are seen as freaky amongst other Greeks for how we act and what we do. And most of our 'Modern' thinking only works because we justified it first before we enacted it, such as restricting slavery to protect free labour more than just 'slavery is bad', the Serfs are another great example, and we were never afraid to act like bastards, aka IC, when it suited us and was more convenient.

This isn't a personal attack when I say this, but please, stop trying to get the city burned to the ground for your modern morality. We're not the good guys here, but we're not the bad, try and put yourself in the mindset of what the people in this period would do and feel, and then act appropriately. Otherwise you'll find yourself stretching and pushing, until you tear yourself away from the actual people your supposed to represent IC, and when that happens, it will not be good.
Adhoc vote count started by Admiral Skippy on May 22, 2019 at 9:49 AM, finished with 785 posts and 79 votes.
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[X] [Epidamnians] Eretria Eskhata should host them. They are the representatives of liberty, and do not wish to cause trouble besides. They have conducted themselves honorably, and present advantage to Eretria without creating a route to war.
[X] [Immigration] Loyalty. What good are fieldhands who plot against you, or artists who sing one song among citizens and another among metics? If the city is to grow, it needs those who are loyal and grateful. Look among the refugees of war, or those from old Euboaea, and those who embrace Eretria's vision and government [If successful, random assortment of immigrants grateful to the city with random effects].
[X] [Prytanis] The Prytanis will remain a chosen citizen.
[X] [Standardization] Allow a standard presentation of grievances every eight years, counting from 346 OL.
[X] [Marriage] Reform the laws so the Metic Father has the same rights in the marriage of his daughter.
[X] [Citizenship] If the city should bound citizenship grants by strict rules, then Metic heroes should be given it.
[X] [Juries] Citizens are just as good a judge as metics, and there is no need to involve them.
 
McLuvin said:
...You want us to act modern first and foremost, and make up whatever reason we can to justify it and hope it works out? In the Classical Era

Why would you try this?
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...No?

To be clear, "our context" here means Eretria's context within the historical fiction, which I thought was pretty clear in the post. Apologies if that was still unclear, somehow.

As a general point, maybe like, try and chill out a bit?

I understand the game is gripping, but it's not good to get so worked up over every sub-decision like this in a Quest.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
Huh, well that's nice. When I checked the tally, it seemed to be 33 to 31, but I just checked again and realised the vote for Metics on Juries was split because some people kept the bolding.

Cheers for catching that!
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I made a proper Tally a while back. It's obviously changed a bit but it still shows the basics of how the vote has been going
McLuvin said:
Tally is borked due to differing formatting.
I'll try and count it up and display the real results, not including those with sub votes because they didn't gain enough traction.

The Epidamnians: 2 Against vs 63 For

Immigration:
-39 votes for Loyalty
-15 votes for Talent
-13 votes for Manpower

Prytanis: 63 Against vs 4 For

Standardisation: 1 Against vs 67 For

Marriage: 20 Against vs 48 For

Citizenship: 1 Against vs 68 For

Juries: 29 Against vs 39 For
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kilopi505 said:
Trees are far less common...

*looks south to North Africa and Arabia*

*looks at Carthage, the Lybian Pentapolis and all the Berbers. And all the various Pre-Islamic Arabs like the Sabeans and the Nabateans*

Oh my. I can see incoming profits, if only we could find a way to transport the Dry Dung Fuel from Italia to these places.
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I am pretty sure they have already figured this out for themselves. Even if they hadn't, they probably aren't interested in importing fuel of any kind. Dessicated poo is, as a fuel, competitive with firewood. If a region wouldn't import firewood, they probably wouldn't import poo. And I've never heard of a trans-Mediterranean trade in firewood. Grain, yes. Good timber for construction projects, yes. Firewood? No.

Hmm...upon further research what you say is right.

Animal wastes are 5% of where all methane in the atmosphere comes from while Enteric Fermentation, or in other words the cow's belching and farting, is where 16% of all the methane in atmosphere comes from.
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Uh, you do realize that the cow will still belch and fart whether or not we later set the dung on fire, right? The methane isn't going to stay locked up indefinitely inside dung.

...and yet encouraging the elimination of 5% or less of that methane, in the time of Classical Greece? Methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide? Way before the Industrial Revolution comes about?

I think its worth it.

I genuinely think its worth it.
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Pre-industrial cattle ranching didn't create enough methane or other greenhouse gas emissions to be relevant from a global warming standpoint. It wasn't until the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels (and to a much lesser extent things like scientific ranching of animals en masse for meat, yes) that we start to see greenhouse gas emissions significant enough to matter.

Eretria, by contrast, is pretty close to carbon neutral as it is.

Admiral Skippy said:
Honestly the one thing I actually quite like about this shift in the vote is that the assembly abruptly deciding for somewhat unclear reasons that giving the Metics four out of five things would be "too much", and panickedly finding something else to deny them, is more or less completely in-character. :lol
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Look, until we give an order for a city to be brutally exterminated to the last man, woman, and child, and then the next day go "oh snap that was a terrible idea" and dispatch a ship full of the biggest-armed men in the city to go overtake the first ship and countermand the order...

Well, I'm pretty sure the ekklesia of Eretria is still doing better than the ekklesia of Athens.
 
The discussion is amusing to me because there is a potential path to the development of more advanced technologies but such a development is unlikely to start in Eretria or be provoked by clear player choices :p
 
Simon_Jester said:
Look, until we give an order for a city to be brutally exterminated to the last man, woman, and child, and then the next day go "oh snap that was a terrible idea" and dispatch a ship full of the biggest-armed men in the city to go overtake the first ship and countermand the order...

Well, I'm pretty sure the ekklesia of Eretria is still doing better than the ekklesia of Athens.
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There's still time!
 
Simon_Jester said:
There aren't really a lot of goodies in the classical Mediterranean.
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Not many.

But there were some. :cry:

(Look, if you just accept that the Persians deserved it as payback for invading Greece, that the Egyptians were happier under Alexander, and that unifying the Hellenic world was an omlet worth cracking a few cities over...then Alexander was the good guy)

Cetashwayo said:
The discussion is amusing to me because there is a potential path to the development of more advanced technologies but such a development is unlikely to start in Eretria or be provoked by clear player choices :p
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Literally every single historical quest I've ever run has had someone suggest, without fail, one of the following within the first three updates:

1.) Fully automated luxury gay Mediterranean communism.

2.) Just...invent steam seventeen centuries early, it comes out of the ground already, right?

3.) Go to China (in antiquity), find gunpowder (in antiquity), and make the leap to inventing guns (in antiquity).

4.) Trebuchets.
 
Telamon said:
Not many.

But there were some. :cry:

(Look, if you just accept that the Persians deserved it as payback for invading Greece, that the Egyptians were happier under Alexander, and that unifying the Hellenic world was an omlet worth cracking a few cities over...then Alexander was the good guy)
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Look, I'll grant you that the man had arete shining out of every orifice.

Arete is not 'goodie'-ness.

Literally every single historical quest I've ever run has had someone suggest, without fail, one of the following within the first three updates:

1.) Fully automated luxury gay Mediterranean communism.
2.) Just...invent steam seventeen centuries early, it comes out of the ground already, right?
3.) Go to China (in antiquity), find gunpowder (in antiquity), and make the leap to inventing guns (in antiquity).
4.) Trebuchets.
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(2) and (3) are stupid, (1) is half achievable for certain values of 'luxury' and 'gay,' and (4)... well, I honestly can't think of a good reason for (4) to be impossible except for a lack of budget for siege engineering. On the other hand, there's also no real benefit to it unless you have a lot of siegecraft to do.
 
Whilst I find the idea of BURN POOP GET RICH QUICK SCHEME being put forward as a serious initiative by the Assembly so amusing that I'm actually very strongly tempted to back it, I think one thing maybe being missed here is that our people probably do already see manure as the valuable resource it is.

Our people are mostly pre-modern farmers, the kind of people for whom the phrase "everything but the oink" refers to in pig butchery. It seems unlikely they will be letting dung go to waste, although it's possible cultural factors are playing a role. It's very probable that our poorest tenant farmers, or those without much access to wood, or goat or sheep herds living up in the hills for weeks at a time, are already using dried dung as fuel.

Manure is also fertiliser, making it immensely valuable in its own right, and there are literature references in both Homer and a 4th century BCE agricultural manual to the collection of manure as fertiliser*. In general it would be very odd not to use it in this way. Then there are other uses, like tanning leather, and forming a matrix for building huts, although I don't know if we build that way. In general rural economies tend to be really fucking complex, and pretty much everything, even what appear to be "waste" products, have about fifteen uses.

@Cetashwayo with his extensive research on the topic is probably eager to give us all a summary of all the exciting things Eretria is using poop for right now.


*(There is a quote floating around on Wikipedia's entry on Agriculture in ancient Greece saying that the Greeks didn't, "possibly due to the low number of cattle", which is repeated word-for-word on "Hellenica World" and "greeceheaven.com", but this has literally no substantiation that I can see, so I am extremely dubious of its veracity. In my opinion, it is ironically, bullshit.)
 
Mostly I am just confused by the focus on dung as an exportable resource. It is not nearly so efficient to justify export and is available everywhere where there is cattle. Next someone is going to suggest nail clippings as an unexploited resource.
 
Admiral Skippy said:
Whilst I find the idea of BURN POOP GET RICH QUICK SCHEME being put forward as a serious initiative by the Assembly so amusing that I'm actually very strongly tempted to back it, I think one thing maybe being missed here is that our people probably do already see manure as the valuable resource it is.

Our people are mostly pre-modern farmers, the kind of people for whom the phrase "everything but the oink" refers to in pig butchery. It seems unlikely they will be letting dung go to waste, although it's possible cultural factors are playing a role. It's very probable that our poorest tenant farmers, or those without much access to wood, or goat or sheep herds living up in the hills for weeks at a time, are already using dried dung as fuel.

Manure is also fertiliser, making it immensely valuable in its own right, and there are literature references in both Homer and a 4th century BCE agricultural manual to the collection of manure as fertiliser*. In general it would be very odd not to use it in this way. Then there are other uses, like tanning leather, and forming a matrix for building huts, although I don't know if we build that way. In general rural economies tend to be really fucking complex, and pretty much everything, even what appear to be "waste" products, have about fifteen uses.

@Cetashwayo with his extensive research on the topic is probably eager to give us all a a summary of all the exciting things Eretria is using poop for right now.


*(There is a quote floating around on Wikipedia's entry on Agriculture in ancient Greece saying that the Greeks didn't, "possibly due to the low number of cattle", which is repeated word-for-word on "Hellenica World" and "greeceheaven.com", but this has literally no substantiation that I can see, so I am extremely dubious of its veracity. In my opinion, it is ironically bullshit.)
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Ah yes, the other certainty of historical SV quests: poop statistics.

That's why I write all of my history quests about Romans civilized people Not Greeks people with a functioning sewer system. :V
 
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