Paths of Civilization

[Academia Nut]

So, as you may have noticed from the picture at the end of the last post I knew people were going to get angry. This is different from deliberately setting out to make you lot angry.

Look, when you are in opposition to the elites of society, handing them more power is unlikely to advance the goals you want. I could have made the upgrade different, sure, but the Elite trait line was always going to increase stratification and the power of elites. Given everything else going on at the time, it fit to increase the power of the dominant faction. However, that much of a jump required a cost, and having it so that the elite now have so much power and support that they can no longer effectively be suppressed via direct action (since they are the ones coordinating every level said direct action) made sense.

And yes, the two patrician Martial Geniuses will be supporting the patrician faction in the event of a civil war, especially if pushed for early. The primary opposers to Distribute Land within the People are the priests and the urban patricians, everyone else is pretty much either for it or completely apathetic to the issue. So for a self-triggered civil war those would be the groups leading the anti-distribute faction.

Also, there were a number of errors that snuck through. Most of them on the action sheet should be corrected, and most of the important ones on the front page should be corrected now, although I'm pretty sure there's still stuff in need of tweaking. As such, I am resetting the vote. Please keep a consistent tagging pattern of [Sec], [Guild Sec], and [Agenda]. Vote will close tomorrow and an update is unlikely before Saturday or Sunday. Also, will probably be on slow mode for the rest of December.

 

[Chehrazad]

Ghostdevil, fireshadow, 2xMachina, kalugin, ScreenWatcher, Dirk93, Arbit, bluefur87, Karugus, Candesce, ctulhuslp, Romv, DragonParadox, 8bitBob, highs2lows, ExNihilo, Redciv3, Susano, Citino, OliWhail, Titus Stargazer, Killer_Whale, Umi-san, Janadus, pbluekan, VoidZero, Spartan492, Finite, Mortis, Yorick's Skull, hylas240, BungieONI, veekie

I have to ask are you happy with the trait that we got from picking that lesson?

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you seem to have problems understanding Here, let me help you. How could you possibly think that tagging 33 voters to shame them for their choice was ever a good idea? Wait, don't answer, I'll just give you the infraction for being disruptive (and violating the actual threadbanner) and the seven-day threadban. Enjoy your vacation and do not ever do this again.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Aleadrex]

Although as a patrician of reasonably good breeding, Alyxunmyn is actually quite dark of complexion. 'Like good, rich soil upon bronze' is one description I am toying around with.

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@Academia Nut , here we go, as per discussion.

Spoiler: Alyxunmyn

Alternatively:

Spoiler: Original

Spoiler: Slightly Darker

 

[Strypgia]

where is your manus now? Manus is on leave. So you do not get his tender mercies. You get me. And lo, do I declare:

Let's not get into the credibility of Wikipedia here.

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Listen to this man.

 

[Academia Nut]

Okay, lightning round, gonna give these a few hours each:

There are threats from within and without, where did the People focus their attentions when not forced otherwise by circumstances?
[] [Threats] West
[] [Threats] East
[] [Threats] Steppes
[] [Threats] Internal

Pick a development focus
[] [Focus] Military
[] [Focus] Infrastructure
[] [Focus] Technology/Science
[] [Focus] Culture
[] [Focus] Trade and Diplomacy
[] [Focus] Expansion

 

[Academia Nut]

[Threats] Primary + Secondary -> Internal
[Focus] Primary: Infrastructure, Secondary: Culture

The Ymaryn found their attention increasingly drawn inward, only drawn outwards at times by the aggression of their neighbours. Those neighbours however found a hard core of loyal warriors supported by an intricate network of roads, walls, watchtowers, well tended and managed fields and forests, and a culturally and spiritually unified People. However, this all came at the cost of allowing the various tribes, kingdoms, and empires around them to grow and fight with each other. The People remained stable, prosperous, and safe as the world around them underwent various upheavals - usually kicked off by initial innovations pioneered by the People and then casually allowed to disseminate outwards. However, they were not the only ones out in the world innovating, and one day traders from beyond the Salt Sea brought with them tales of the alchemists of the Far East having produced new innovations with fire undreamed of by the People.

Response to another figuring out gunpowder?
[] [GP] Barbarians know nothing of actual alchemy (x10)
[] [GP] A review of recipes is in order (x2)
[] [GP] Anything worth knowing is worth stealing (x1)
[] [GP] SV attempts to build a sub-orbital rocket with early Medieval technology (x0.2)

 

[Academia Nut]

[X][GP] A review of recipes is in order (x2)

Going over their various recipes and principles, the People found that they had encountered such things in the past, but the components were most easily obtained through improper waste disposal, and significant usage would cut into black soil production. While limited production was taken up in order to remind outsiders that the magic of the People was powerful and to be feared, there was little need seen for doing much other than pyrotechnic displays. The People had no need of barbarian toys, and suggestions for potential weapon usage were scoffed at. The fear of Ymaryn steel and the rain of crossbow bolts was more than sufficient to send barbarian raiders running, flashes of smoke and thunder were wholly unnecessary and in fact less productive than raising more children with well fertilized fields.

The world around them changed, but the Ymaryn remained a rock in a stormy sea. As they had for generations, the peasants tilled the fields under the careful administration of the nobility, who were the fountain of all worth knowing in the world, while the merchants and craftsmen turned the raw materials gathered by barbarians into the wonderful tools that kept the People fed and safe. However, while their more civilized neighbours had long learned to essentially ignore them - the People had no need to go out into the world, anything of value would come to them in time - the truly barbarous savages of the northern steppes remained an eternal issue. Sometimes they fought with the tribes, sometimes they bribed them into going away, sometimes they married the more successful figures into their noble lines or inducted them into their forces of knights. As such, when a new warlord arose whose offers for trade seemed a bit too much like demanding tribute rather than the proper channels, many feathers were ruffled by the affair.

The People's response to this upstart barbarian
[] [Steppe] The steppes are clearly in need of their generational cleaning up (x10)
[] [Steppe] Ignore the upstart, he will dash his forces against the People if he dares further action (x8)
[] [Steppe] Send the traditionally determined bribes (x2)
[] [Steppe] Acquiesce to the larger than usual demands (x0.8)
[] [Steppe] Reach out to further relations with this successful warlord (x0.1)

 

[Strypgia]

The Gods are watching, it would behoove you to stop this nonsense.

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the gods may have mercy. i do not. This man is wise. Heed him.

And you know about what they say if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. You are acting like a troll so I'm going to call you one.

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You have made a provocative post that is technically within the rules with no reason being delighting in messing up things for others. That is classic trolling and so I am perfectly happy to state that you are a troll. Which by the way, is the point I am trying to get across. If you don't want to be called a troll, then don't troll.

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By the way, due to Gavoon presenting his reasoning to me in PM, I am retracting all claims of him being a troll.

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do not do this Declaring someone voting they way they want that you do not as a troll is close to asking for points for insults or disruption. As is carrying on for page after page about weighted voting being unfair. You will chill out, or you will take a break from the thread. The gods are on the QM's side, and he likes a peaceful thread.

 

[Academia Nut]

[X][Steppe] Ignore the upstart, he will dash his forces against the People if he dares further action (x8)

Incensed by this tent dwelling barbarian's unreasonable demands, the People refused to offer the nomads anything but hostility if they crossed over into their borders.

With dense forests, hills, walls, an extensive irrigation works to serve as natural barriers to aid in their hundreds of thousands of warriors, the People felt quite confident in sending this insult. A storm would blow in off the steppes, but such was life, and the People bowed not to the whims of the wind, but broke the storm upon their flanks. Or at least that was what the nobles and knights told the increasingly fretful traders who kept saying that this was something different. Despite many peasants figuring that it was cheaper to send gold than the blood of their sons to the steppes and border regions, the nobility assured them that if they gave the invaders a thimble of gold that would just embolden them and they would start asking for daughters instead next time.

So the People sent their reply, and all was quiet. And after a year it seemed that all was well and the steppe warlord had taken the hint.

Then, suddenly, all at once, the borders literally erupted in fire.

Spies in among traders infiltrated northern fortress towns, slipping fell alchemical devices into gate houses, and causing them to explode in an attack with coordination none had expected. Hard points and fortifications expected to survive months or even years of siege were brought down on a large front, with multiple groups of thousands of nomads penetrating the now porous borders before news of the first strikes could even return to the capital. Riding hard, some groups reached northern cities that didn't even know they were at war and began to sack them, much to the confusion of their mayors and governors, who thought that they had thousands of warriors in fortresses between them and any foes. Massive city walls were breached by skilled engineer-slaves, brought over from mythical eastern territories and armed with alchemical devices and millennia of accumulated skill in urban siegecraft.

Within six months the northern cities had been emptied out, sacked in a maelstrom of fire. Key passes had been seized, and the rich holdings of the Horse Mountains and the Lowlands were threatened, their walls wholly inadequate for what was to come. It was, in an intense panic, that the king called forth every able bodied man to fight.

It soon became apparent that the khan they were facing was something else entirely, and each his horse mounted warriors he was the equal of ten warriors of the People when commanded by his skilled and daring generals.

It was cold comfort then that the People outnumbered him twenty to thirty to one in warriors.

Defensive works built up over centuries or even millennia were smashed, and the intricate irrigation systems were considered a part of that. More than that, at some point the conflict became a blood match for both sides, the People descending into a psychotic fury to defend their homes, while the nomads howled at their own losses and the reprisals against their camp followers. The lands of the People burned, with refugees driven displaced by the utter destruction of urban centers causing the collapse of farming in the rural areas they were driven into. Damaged irrigation controls and the loss of manpower brought cascading failures of floods. Famine and then plague swirled out from the whirlwind of war. Opportunistic raiders and petty kings from the west closed in on settlements stripped bare of defenses from the distant parts of the kingdom. Cities in the west, exposed to the steppes directly but not first on the chopping block like those in the north and east, capitulated when the nomads sent expeditions their way, choosing submission over gambling that they could repulse the enemy where others had previously failed.

In the end, the Ymaryn "won", forcing the foe back through sheer attrition, and letting their holdings in the east rise in rebellion now that their nomadic overlords were distracted in the west. Like an elephant mauled by lions, despite victory the mighty and ancient empire was collapsing to its knees from blood loss and infection. Too many nobles had been slain, the loss of administrative knowledge was too great and the restrictions placed by the patrician nobility on the vital knowledge that let them do their jobs was spread too thin. Even if territory could be reclaimed and restored, there was no one to administer it, no one to protect it, and in too many places the ties that bound had been severed. Survivors despised the central administration for not being there for them, and the central administration was suspicious of those who had bent knee to foreign agents. Many cities in the west, having sworn to the nomads for self-protection, decided that they did not think that the king would welcome them back without punishment, and so simply declared their independence. In the Southern Highlands, the kingdom there, long bottled up as an amusing hermit, began to strike at various ravaged holdings in the lowlands and Hathytta.

Bleeding out, the Ymaryn kingdom crashed and shattered.

Who revived their light?
[] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core
[] [Successor] The small yeomen farmers
[] [Successor] The wealthy trade cities of the west
[] [Successor] The breadbasket of the lowlands
[] [Successor] The primordial temples
[] [Successor] Among the patoralists that filled emptied spaces, fascinated by the old culture

How?
[] [Revival] A religious reawakening
[] [Revival] Long neglected diplomacy
[] [Revival] A cultural flourishing
[] [Revival] A territorial reunification

 

[Strypgia]

IT'S A FACT BECAUSE WITHOUT THE WEIGHTING THAT VOTE WOULD BE DEADER THAN OUR SURVIVAL STREAK RUGHT NOW

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stop shouting at everyone. that's my job No matter the vast fields of salt spawned by bobbling this vote, you don't need to scream at everyone. CAPS LOCK IS NOT CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.

...
You and stupidity are also not mutually exclusive, that doesn't mean I automatically equate the 2 until given good reasoning for it.

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not this This is a bit more insulting than you need to be for your argument. 25 points, 3 days out.

Everyone else, remain calm, reduce salt. The Lawyer-God Manus has returned as well, and casts a judging and angry eye across all the lands. And then he sends me to SMITE.