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Paths of Civilization II: Paths of Industrialization

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Ok, so my plan for our PW this turn... Give it all to the royalists save for some we hand to the conservitives so they can RDI, found rail company, and boost SoL (in prep for education.)

I am hopeing they squeeze in something like 3 sell obsolete equipment actions. At least 1, preferably 2 heading to the Hung to hopefully bail water there.

We need both chems. They gate far too much stuff not to get them. A big part of me wants to lean officer literacy over breechloaders, but I know a losing fight when I see one.

And we need that rail company, but a girl gets the best offers if she plays hard to get. This js the Kiel OPENING offer. We are the prettiest girl at the ball, make the boys work for it.
 
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@Academia Nut I think part of the problem is the lack of interaction with foreign powers approaching us with offers. Yes it happens rarely, generally as a reaction to plot events, but this isn't often enough for us to get a passive understanding of the information which should be available.

As a supreme power, we should be having various trade deal and requests from foreign powers occurring much more often. For example; Sketch could ask us to reduce our armies for some diplomatic concessions, Behryvar could request favorable food pricing in-exchange for some research drips of some type, etc. Perhaps the Hung or Khemetri want to outright buy a navy or two from us.

Basically, something to give us a passive inside look at what their desires are by what they are willing to trade with us.

Essentially; at the moment foreign nations often feel more like random events which happen to us, as more often than not we are just reacting to stuff which has happened.
 
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Xon said:
@Academia Nut I think part of the problem is the lack of interaction with foreign powers approaching us with offers. Yes it happens rarely, generally as a reaction to plot events, but this isn't often enough for us to get a passive understanding of the information which should be available.

As a supreme power, we should be having various trade deal and requests from foreign powers occurring much more often. For example; Sketch could ask us to reduce our armies for some diplomatic concessions, Behryvar could request favorable food pricing in-exchange for some research drips of some type, etc. Perhaps the Hung or Khemetri want to outright buy a navy or two from us.

Basically, something to give us a passive inside look at what their desires are by what they are willing to trade with us.

Essentially; at the moment foreign nations often feel more like random events which happen to us, as more often than not we are just reacting to stuff which has happened.
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Or a rumor mill section. We get some idea what happens, sometimes. But unless it directly affects us, we don't even know what happens in the world.

We are barely any different in information gathering than the OYE was. At least it feels like that.
 
Well, this kind of sucks. But anyway...

Supposedly, the Sketch are decentralized a lot? Allegedly, anyway. They should have lots of competing interests right? And sometimes even their companies should do things that the government didn't tell them to do, or doesn't want to do -- as we just saw with the Black Sheep.

So. Can we work with that?

The Sketch just helped the Hespranxer take a lot of Halvyni colonies in Asia (and some in Africa I think) -- and that's kind of surprising, isn't it? Why would the Sketch help their old enemies like that?

Well, maybe it's a pack of lies on the Sketch's part; maybe they don't intend to deal honorably with the Hespranxer on this.

And that, even if maybe the government or diplomats are honest (well, 'honest') about 'Yeah, you can totally take some of the south-east Asian colonies', maybe they're perfectly willing to let rogue Sketch parties ruin all that. Deniable assets in the form of their companies.

Why, in fact, just take a look at what their HEKC likely just did with the Black Sheep just now...


So, an Espionage and/or Diplomatic Overture to the Hespranxer, with the aim of going "The Sketch are sketchy as fuck. Why would you trust them to suddenly have your back on this? And, even if you could somehow... they could always have 'rogue actors' stab you in the back over it. Just look at what happened over in the Kus area."

If we can convince the Hespranxer to get greedy over the Asian colonies -- and, even better, if we could convince them to try to steal the Sketch's Hung ports? That would be great.

And, of course, we also lean on the anti-Hespranxer sentiment in the Sketch at the same time.


In fact, maybe that's also another angle we could try with the Hespranxer; the Hung. We have good relationships with the Hung, right? Maybe we could try to convince the Hespranxer that we could make some deals in that sphere perhaps. Use our good rep and pull with the Hung, to convince the Hespranxer that we might try to get them some trade with the Hung. Or that it would be a good idea for the Hespranxer to some Syffryn -- or at least the Sketch -- ports in there; that we could make it a Hung-Dual Monarchy-Hespranxer trade route?
 
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uju32 said:
Being fair to McLuvin?

We have both military and technical advisors in Hung.We run a Hung port. Our Emperor's wife is Hung royalty.
We should know in intimate detail what the Imperial bureaucracy is like; from personal experience, we remember just how much trouble it was to get a mandarin, any mandarin, to pay attention to our warnings about the Nohon less than ten years ago.

This is the kind of thing that by any reasonable planning, the army we've been training would perform field exercises and detach a brigade or ten to escort weaponry shipments. Possibly with a senior royal family member/trusted royal servant along.
It wouldn't be passed through the princes.

Even the land border shipments would simply get Imperial divisions to run direct escort in addition to anything else the provincial princes can scrape up. You want it, you're going to have to bring an army, not bandits.

*shrug*
Quest mechanics and dice rolls.
That's what I blame.
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Can you instead of being salty read about an's post first before jumping to conclusions? :V

An have clearly state that the emperor don't want it to be escorted within hungs borders because it would damage his legitimacy.

Which was where they were lost.

If you had seen an's retcon, you would know that most of the shipments were "appropriated" by local governors on the way. Either for their own use or to be "rescued later".
 
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McLuvin said:
Read it before I went to sleep, woke up, still angry at that bullshit. Didn't realise the edits had came in. So I'll look back and see what's changed.

Still cannot see us losing that many guns when our agents and soldiers are involved in escorting them.

Hundreds of guns vs hundreds of thousands

There's a big difference there mate
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Read the other an post where the emperor doesn't want any of our troops escorting them since it would damage his legitimacy.
 
This would be my personal preference:

[][Research1] Organic Chemistry (10/40-50?) AND Inorganic Chemistry (17/40-50?) [Science][Chemistry][Open]
-[][Research1] Organic First
We're quite likely to one shot this. As such it should unstall Hiding in the Rainbow and make our Rails cheaper.

[] [Kiel] Yes, please (-1 SoL while Five Crowns active (Kale-Yllthon line under construction or have not natively developed Steel Railroad), founds Rail Company)
No reason not to do this, I doubt we won't get some benefits from waiting.

[][Research2] Universal Officer Literacy (23/60-80?) [Military][Initiative][Open]
This is where I differ from most of y'all, I think universal Officer Literacy would be a massive boon to us, especially since that is a path to citizenship. Taking this is one of the last steps to Universal Literacy in general. While Breechloading Cannon would be lovely, I think this would be better in the medium to long term

[] [BS] Containment (Gives time for attempts at diplomacy and mobilization, increases risk to lowlands, gives time for the rebels to organize)
Let's rearm, remove any bad blood against us and see where things start to shake out.



Also, is there any way we could do, now or in the near future, an action like []Found DIplomatic Corps - 1 free DO per turn ? It's pretty clear that we need something to that effect.
 
Pyre said:
[][Research2] Universal Officer Literacy (23/60-80?) [Military][Initiative][Open]
This is where I differ from most of y'all, I think universal Officer Literacy would be a massive boon to us, especially since that is a path to citizenship. Taking this is one of the last steps to Universal Literacy in general. While Breechloading Cannon would be lovely, I think this would be better in the medium to long term
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I think most agree that this is the more optimal option in an idealized situation.
The problem here, we need to survive to mid/long term, and Sketch, and possibly Nohon getting ironclads while we do not have neither them nor breechloading cannons with better explosives can be a disaster for us.

This is why I expect organic chemistry and cannons to win this turn, they synergize beautifully and we really need them.
 
I just had a crazy idea about integrations. So, would it be posible for us to create a vassle state? Basically take someone like Stymyr, who is feeling squeezed between us, Ochior, and Beh who lean Hes, and offer to make them a direct vassle?

The specific relationship would be as followes. Stymyr would continue as it has. It would not engauge in agressive diplomacy, butncould engauge in trade.

The DC would commit to protecting every inch of their lands.

Stymyr citizens can qualify for DC citizenship via service in the DC army or navy and maintain duel citizenship.

Just a crazy spitball idea. We are SP now. A lot of our buffer states standing between us and our potential enemies must be getting pretty nervious.

We can then encourage them to downgrade their armies and grow industry and rail like crazy.

I would LOVE a little minion state taking actions to grow IC and SoL without our PW.
 
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Alectai said:
To elaborate on that point.

Human beings given that level of independent authority and this kind of distance from authority tend to do their own thing. It requires near real time communications to actually pass information around and keep everyone at least nominally working on the same team.

As things stand, for the Sketch to pull this off, and coherently move to a coherent national agenda despite actually being six to eight smaller nations in coalition, requires magic or that they somehow cracked satellite communications. This level of coordination of their resources with the sheer scope of their actions is otherwise impossible.

You don't get to simultaneously have "Every one of my trade companies has full autonomy to use the nation's resources" and "None of our trade companies ever overdraws and causes our overall geopolitical position to collapse" with nineteenth century communications methods. Doubly so without draining their interior dry, which we know isn't happening. So we also know these independent trade companies are also happily paying taxes, in defiance of all known human behaviour.
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The problem as I see it is that this is a NPC-faction and it has been decided that they can't break from that strain.

Even if players would have much worse time with such a system, the NPC's with their utter lack of needing PW and many other management, gives them a Civilizations series' level of bonuses to keep them punching our intestines out with toothpicks.
 
Thermodynamics is all types of heat engines, refrigeration, energy and enthalpy analysis in chemistry - if we want to get ahead of the Sketch on motors we need this.
Inorganic chemistry we can get a boost from the Kielmyr with closer ties, also it's well suited to public lectures and demonstrations and publication of individual discoveries - i.e. we are drawing from (and no doubt contributing to) an international knowledge base. The joy of academic free press. Important for our glass and ceramics. Has the most obvious spectroscopy applications.
Organic chemistry is is not just explosives, it's fuels, dyes, drugs. With our massive forest pharmacoepia and expanding medical research, ancient dye industry and surface crude oil, if we don't lead the world in this we should be ashamed.
Electricity is fashionable and exciting - again it's going to be a world tech level as the international society of electricians shows off.

My own experience is that thermodynamics is the most fundamental and least fun so most needs the official program. The others are better suited to lots of people doing their own experiments. Invite leading names to give demonstrations by royal command and every noble who can afford wire, acid or glasswear will start dabbling and some will keep at it and get gud.
 
noliar said:
Thermodynamics is all types of heat engines, refrigeration, energy and enthalpy analysis in chemistry - if we want to get ahead of the Sketch on motors we need this.
Inorganic chemistry we can get a boost from the Kielmyr with closer ties, also it's well suited to public lectures and demonstrations and publication of individual discoveries - i.e. we are drawing from (and no doubt contributing to) an international knowledge base. The joy of academic free press. Important for our glass and ceramics. Has the most obvious spectroscopy applications.
Organic chemistry is is not just explosives, it's fuels, dyes, drugs. With our massive forest pharmacoepia and expanding medical research, ancient dye industry and surface crude oil, if we don't lead the world in this we should be ashamed.
Electricity is fashionable and exciting - again it's going to be a world tech level as the international society of electricians shows off.

My own experience is that thermodynamics is the most fundamental and least fun so most needs the official program. The others are better suited to lots of people doing their own experiments. Invite leading names to give demonstrations by royal command and every noble who can afford wire, acid or glasswear will start dabbling and some will keep at it and get gud.
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I like thermo, but we need to take the chems. Perhaps a boost or two to sort them out right quick is also a good idea. We need to transition to smokeless powder before the great war. If we have it and nobody else also has it, then all the ironclad armor will be designed around gunpowder assumptions and we just punch through it like we do wood.

Basically if the Sketch don't have guncotton and has their ironclads based on even generously conservitive gunpowder strengths, well those are now just big slow slightly tougher timberclads.
 
Somebodynobody10 said:
The problem as I see it is that this is a NPC-faction and it has been decided that they can't break from that strain.
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Y'know, it's vaguely amusing to contrast the glee we take in moments like the financial crisis - where we would appear possessed of implausible competence/resilience/foresight from an outside perspective - with the dead certainty (and concomitant outrage) that other parties who look that good must be the beneficiaries of unfair authorial fiat.
 
Wiadi said:
Y'know, it's vaguely amusing to contrast the glee we take in moments like the financial crisis - where we would appear possessed of implausible competence/resilience/foresight from an outside perspective - with the dead certainty (and concomitant outrage) that other parties who look that good must be the beneficiaries of unfair authorial fiat.
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I find the whipsaw jumps between elation at victory, pure salt at setbacks, and constant gripeing about how government is to slow to react to world events to be more or less historically accurate.
 
Korporati said:
Can you instead of being salty read about an's post first before jumping to conclusions? :V
An have clearly state that the emperor don't want it to be escorted within hungs borders because it would damage his legitimacy.
Which was where they were lost.

If you had seen an's retcon, you would know that most of the shipments were "appropriated" by local governors on the way. Either for their own use or to be "rescued later".
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Dude, I read it.

The details of my assertions pretty clearly state that said weapon shipments should have been met by Imperial troops from the armies we are helping the Hung Emperor train. Not DC armies, Imperial armies. Directly loyal to the Emperor.
It wouldn't have been handed over to the local princes.

What happened is the equivalent of, say, leaving the security of a VIP to the local sheriffs office instead of sending the Secret Service.
Despite knowing the local sheriff has been dogged by accusations of corruption and incompetence.
You don't get to act surprised when said VIP meets an "accident".

I understand contrived incidents occasionally happening because of the dice.
Otherwise, our own experience with the obduracy of the Hung bureaucracy would have prevented any situation where we hand over stuff to the local officials instead of a direct Imperial representative.

If the Emperor could send a family member to the DC court, he could damn well send a personal representative to organize receipt and transport of the goods instead of leaving it to business as usual. That he didn't is literally mind-boggling for a nation literally fighting for it's life, and an Emperor whose legitimacy is rather shaky, and who remembers what happened to his predecessor less than a decade ago.

The only reason such a contra-survival event would happen is dice roll.
 
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We need to sit the Hung emperor down and explain to him that he HAS no legitimacy if his empire dies. He needs to simply swallow the pill and take iron illegitimacy. He can be legitimitly in charge by having a modern army. Any loss of legitimacy in chasing thay goal is secondary.

We need to send him 2 more shipments of guns, double our first order. We need to send it with two armies. We need to march along the shipment route and FIND all those missing guns. We need to hand them to the emperor.

If our troops fly his flag while doing it, who cares. He gets his guns.
 
@Academia Nut, since we are Rivals of the Sketch (and have spent the PW, lost the temp trust and endured the more open hosility from the Sketch to achieve this) will BEN actions in Sketch and it's colonies and DO actions with it's rivals and potential clients now be 0 PW please?
 
noliar said:
@Academia Nut, since we are Rivals of the Sketch (and have spent the PW, lost the temp trust and endured the more open hosility from the Sketch to achieve this) will BEN actions in Sketch and it's colonies and DO actions with it's rivals and potential clients now be 0 PW please?
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At least -1 to the PW costs. And as SP it would really make a good deal of sense for DO to be discounted, like perhaps the first DO each turn is discounted by 1PW as people come to us rather than forcing us to go to them.

We are SP. The diplomats sent to our kingdom likely have increased authority to treat directly due to our importance in the world. This would make it easier for us to initiate action because we can start with the local ambasador rather than having to send reps to their kingdom to do anything.
 
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