Hah, it was nice to see that I was mostly right with my guess on what happened. "Nomads wiped out, double hero stack still somehow manages to take a pound of flesh and vanishes into the aether, still retaining enough fightiness to kick the Metal Worker's teeth in after nomad marching over there."

At least they're only down to one Hero Unit now, though god help us if they spawn another two or three at once down the line, especially once they finish stealing enough weapons and seize enough tributaries to close the tech gap. And considering the first thing they did was basically annex the Metal Workers, that seems to be their current objective.
Luckily the Metal Workers don't have bronze yet, maybe brass but that's not good for weapons.

It's gonna be a while before they close the tech gap. Not too long but quite some turns.

And yep, Nomad Heroes be horseshit in human form.
 
No, 10 Martial, 2 Economy, and 3 Stability loss isn't little. Especially since it wasn't a permanent solution to the Nomad problem.
Considering those losses would have been an order of a magnitude worse without our march, and the fact that this was an outright devastating blow to the local nomads, 10 martial was pretty cheap.

Also, we didn't just break a group of nomads, we broke pretty much every group of nomads within several months travel. It's not a permanent solution, but nobody ever claimed it was. But this was still a massive victory on our part, since we are already back to normal while the nomads need several more turns to return to what they were.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what you're arguing at this point. I mean, we live on the border of the steppes, dealing with periodic waaaghs is sort of expected, so building marchs to guard our borders makes perfect sense.
 
Considering those losses would have been an order of a magnitude worse without our march, and the fact that this was an outright devastating blow to the local nomads, 10 martial was pretty cheap.

Also, we didn't just break a group of nomads, we broke pretty much every group of nomads within several months travel. It's not a permanent solution, but nobody ever claimed it was. But this was still a massive victory on our part, since we are already back to normal while the nomads need several more turns to return to what they were.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what you're arguing at this point. I mean, we live on the border of the steppes, dealing with periodic waaaghs is sort of expected, so building marchs to guard our borders makes perfect sense.
It's the logistical strain in supporting the administration and supply of a march to the North West.
North East is much easier to support in that regard.
 
Wait, what? The only new thing I wasn't expecting to see was Groomed tails (the purpose of which I'm unclear on) but there's nothing about codes?
Gromed Trails are the more advanced idea where people actually maintain the roads and prevent floods from washing them out/plants from overgrowing them instead of just letting people walk them into existence. Much higher quality, and handles higher amounts of traffic without degeneration
Okay, it looks like we need to expand into the lowlands ASAP. As it is right now, we have a military advantage on everybody in a defensive war, and we need to take advantage of that while it still lasts. Definitely when the event chain ends we need to lowlands expansion.
Actually no, bad idea at present. The main reason we have a military advantage is...nobody knows we have an advantage. They don't realize they need to catch up to us yet.

We still need a shitload of walls(built with iron tools to be taller, harder to break and cheaper) to cement the lead.

Theunderbolt, I am massively offended by your slander!

We never did try to push a semi modern tax system on a Bronze Age Civ!

We tried to push it on a Stone Age civ!

Do get your facts straight, man!
:p

...we nearly pulled it off too.
If there weren't these damned kids and their meddling stallion...
Very nearly yeah. We were literally 2 Stability short...2 Stability that they ate.

We have a guaranteed 3 stab hits coming and who the fuck knows however many from events. We don't need them to be flexible, they only have one job for the next couple turns. If they're not doing stab, they can do expand econ to cover it and everything is gravy.
Actually, we need Balanced because it's the only thing that'd allow us to do a Study Metal/Study Tailings/Study Health combo while still covering other stuff, and keeping Econ afloat.

Under Restoration policy we will have no action flexibility left if Southshore goes hot or some other crisis arises. Which means basically either eating unopposed attacks or failing the challenge.

When they guy got brain surgery he started talking in tongues and people thought he was a prophet we treated him humanely and a shaman deciphered his new language. This is the code language I talked about.
It's not really a code. Aphasia is more of figuring out how to talk to someone whose language centers got scrambled and using random related words rather than what they actually meant to say, so it takes some creativity and free association to get across.
They also went ballistic when we settled Southshore and gave us trouble when we began building the Saltern and I think our Heroic Diplomat talked them out of a border dispute as well. Eh not sure if those were three separate incidents or two, however I think we are in the way of their own expansion and we are fighting over resources (fishing spots) and those never really end even to this day. We could ignore them and also diplo them but I'm sure its going to come to blows since they think we're weak and that's going to be tough to push back without stomping them. All I'm saying is if we end up having to do war missions we might as well conquer them to end any headaches.
They're bigger than that though. Currently their minor border province is having a slapfight with our minor border province.
Things might escalate, but I doubt they could do much if Southshore puts up some towers or walls.
You know, from a historical/archaeological perspective, it might look like the Not!Fertile Crescent jumped directly from stone to the iron age in one discontinuous jump.
The beginnings of the Iron Age was pretty murky as it is. Plus we are still destroying all the non-tax based archeological evidence systematically to make fertilizer :p
 
It's the logistical strain in supporting the administration and supply of a march to the North West.
North East is much easier to support in that regard.
Considering it borders both the sea and one of our provinces, it shouldn't be that bad to keep it supplied. If we made another march further west, we might have problems, but since literally nobody has suggested such a march...
 
Yeah, it'll be a while until the Nomads are ready for another go--unless they shit out another pile of Heroes anyway and their crazy Hero magic.

We should spend this time consolidating our northern border while working on our own internal stuff so we can weather the next go around. Since at this point, we're basically the local China in the sense of "Rich province full of 'Weaklings' who we can take their stuff from", and worse luck, we've basically made blood enemies of them by both--not knuckling under their pressure and actually depopulating the local region with our counterstroke.

Like, if the Great Wall of China didn't stop the Steppe Hordes, for all intents and purposes, we should consider them strategically invincible, so the best we can do is arrange ourselves so that when they wind up a massive horde to try and run us over, that they don't manage to take anything priceless with them (Though it's pretty likely they steal tech when they manage to break through--which means it's pretty likely they now know how to smelt Iron from their captives and are going to make their new tribituary start mining and extracting it for them)

Like, I would bet money that they stole our ironworking tech, and that's why the next move they made was to beat the Metal Workers in and force them into a tribituary situation, so they can get iron weapons of their own.

Not a lot of money, but the Steppe Nomads have pretty historically only failed to run us over because everyone involved is stone age and we're an absolute fucker when it comes to defensive fighting, and the tools needed to run us over anyway like the late nomads were able to do to any civilized group just don't exist yet--but they'll probably learn them fast now that we're not keeling over when they run at us, especially since they can just steal any 'magic' that they don't have from other people when they go on their deep raids like this.
 
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Yeah, it'll be a while until the Nomads are ready for another go--unless they shit out another pile of Heroes anyway and their crazy Hero magic.

We should spend this time consolidating our northern border while working on our own internal stuff so we can weather the next go around. Since at this point, we're basically the local China in the sense of "Rich province full of 'Weaklings' who we can take their stuff from", and worse luck, we've basically made blood enemies of them by both--not knuckling under their pressure and actually depopulating the local region with our counterstroke.

Like, if the Great Wall of China didn't stop the Steppe Hordes, for all intents and purposes, we should consider them strategically invincible, so the best we can do is arrange ourselves so that when they wind up a massive horde to try and run us over, that they don't manage to take anything priceless with them (Though it's pretty likely they steal tech when they manage to break through--which means it's pretty likely they now know how to smelt Iron from their captives and are going to make their new tribituary start mining and extracting it for them)

Like, I would bet money that they stole our ironworking tech, and that's why the next move they made was to beat the Metal Workers in and force them into a tribituary situation, so they can get iron weapons of their own.

Not a lot of money, but the Steppe Nomads have pretty historically only failed to run us over because everyone involved is stone age and we're an absolute fucker when it comes to defensive fighting, and the tools needed to run us over anyway like the late nomads were able to do to any civilized group just don't exist yet--but they'll probably learn them fast now that we're not keeling over when they run at us, especially since they can just steal any 'magic' that they don't have from other people when they go on their deep raids like this.
Hmmm...
Sensible.

And now I am inclined to go and beat their teeth in.
I was going for "wait and see" point of view, but if they have kidnapped people who know how to mine and smelt iron...

Well, then it is not tolerable to let them be.
 
I call bullshit that the nomads just stole our ironworking tech especially since they didn't attack the province our mine is. Getting techs is hard you can't just raid someone and automatically get one of their techs it just doesn't work that way unless the 'tech' is something super simple like 'wearing armor helps you not get killed' or something.
 
Like, if the Great Wall of China didn't stop the Steppe Hordes, for all intents and purposes, we should consider them strategically invincible, so the best we can do is arrange ourselves so that when they wind up a massive horde to try and run us over, that they don't manage to take anything priceless with them (Though it's pretty likely they steal tech when they manage to break through--which means it's pretty likely they now know how to smelt Iron from their captives and are going to make their new tribituary start mining and extracting it for them)
Uh, the Great Wall's purpose was less to STOP them, and more to make sure that whatever forces manage to get through are small, fast groups, which gives time for the levies to be called up to smoosh them locally. Larger groups be stalled and then hammered

Which made it massively unprofitable, and highly bloody to try. So they continued breaking through, but did negligible damage.
Like, I would bet money that they stole our ironworking tech, and that's why the next move they made was to beat the Metal Workers in and force them into a tribituary situation, so they can get iron weapons of their own.

Not a lot of money, but the Steppe Nomads have pretty historically only failed to run us over because everyone involved is stone age and we're an absolute fucker when it comes to defensive fighting, and the tools needed to run us over anyway like the late nomads were able to do to any civilized group just don't exist yet--but they'll probably learn them fast now that we're not keeling over when they run at us, especially since they can just steal any 'magic' that they don't have from other people when they go on their deep raids like this.
Can't steal our ironworking. Our smelters and smiths are in Redshore(and now, Redhill), they only hit Northshore, so they might have seen the Saltern and passed the idea on to other coastal groups.
 
Considering it borders both the sea and one of our provinces, it shouldn't be that bad to keep it supplied. If we made another march further west, we might have problems, but since literally nobody has suggested such a march...
It's what the issue is believed to be *shrug*.


As in our redhill province isn't even walled...wall them first THEN expand.
What I meant almost exactly.

Yeah, it'll be a while until the Nomads are ready for another go--unless they shit out another pile of Heroes anyway and their crazy Hero magic.

We should spend this time consolidating our northern border while working on our own internal stuff so we can weather the next go around. Since at this point, we're basically the local China in the sense of "Rich province full of 'Weaklings' who we can take their stuff from", and worse luck, we've basically made blood enemies of them by both--not knuckling under their pressure and actually depopulating the local region with our counterstroke.

Like, if the Great Wall of China didn't stop the Steppe Hordes, for all intents and purposes, we should consider them strategically invincible, so the best we can do is arrange ourselves so that when they wind up a massive horde to try and run us over, that they don't manage to take anything priceless with them (Though it's pretty likely they steal tech when they manage to break through--which means it's pretty likely they now know how to smelt Iron from their captives and are going to make their new tribituary start mining and extracting it for them)

Like, I would bet money that they stole our ironworking tech, and that's why the next move they made was to beat the Metal Workers in and force them into a tribituary situation, so they can get iron weapons of their own.

Not a lot of money, but the Steppe Nomads have pretty historically only failed to run us over because everyone involved is stone age and we're an absolute fucker when it comes to defensive fighting, and the tools needed to run us over anyway like the late nomads were able to do to any civilized group just don't exist yet--but they'll probably learn them fast now that we're not keeling over when they run at us, especially since they can just steal any 'magic' that they don't have from other people when they go on their deep raids like this.
On the iron thing *shrug*. If they have it well shit. If not, which is what I expect, since we did not have it in high density spread until we opened the mine which we did as we chased them off then it is not going to be a problem for a while.

I totes agree with the idea of forting up our recent gains. This includes Maturing our recently spawned March, spawning another March in the North East, walling up Redhill and Blackriver and Stonepen and Northshore, adding towers and walls to Southshore. More Boats.

We finish the Challenge and this is all of what we should do in my opinion. Veekie actually put it well once, the Nomads are a gas. You can kill tons of them but more just flow in to be annoying or possibly lethal.
The Lowlanders are liquids, they flow and shift and dissolve into one another. They settle in equilibrium sometimes but not often.
And then the Ymaryn are a solid. It is very hard to damage us and we diffuse and expand slowly. Usually. We are approaching a phase where we behave more like a fast growing crystal.
 
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which means it's pretty likely they now know how to smelt Iron from their captives and are going to make their new tribituary start mining and extracting it for them)
Eh, the northern provinces weren't involved in ironworking at all though, as far as I can tell. We didn't even have large scale iron working set up at that point, and the northern provinces weren't as developed as the south. We should probably still plan for them getting iron, but I don't think that was a guarantee.
 
Honestly in terms of territorial gains I would really like to grab some more of those eastern hills, yeah they're closer to the TH but the distance is still significant and the terrain favors us.
 
Stop: Good luck I'm behind seven moderators or something
Re-reading my posts in the debate with veekie, nowhere was I behaving like an ass. I did my best to remain as polite as you can over the internet (what with it carrying no tone but the readers).

Since both of you insulted me directly i've reported you.
good luck i'm behind seven moderators or something While I sympathize with your frustration, threatening or mentioning the use of the reports system with regards to a user is infractible, and I will thus be giving you 25 points and a polite request to not repeat this behaviour.

Please have a good day.

Why would @hylas240 do the research if he can be an ass and shift burden of proof on everyone but himself?
well you're just a stupid meanie! Annoyance at other posters can be a great frustration, but let us stay a long way from base insults, shall we? Take 25 points and please don't repeat this behaviour.

Have a good day.

official staff communication That said, I was alerted by @Academia Nut that Shit Was Going To Happen, and I honestly expected heads to fly, cities to burn and people to admit that they were, in fact wrong over the internet (haha admitting you're wrong is a mistake). But in reality, we received a very small amount of reports from the thread since friday, and I think you should all be very proud of that and maybe pat yourself on the back for keeping cool (insofar as one can call this thread's standards cool). But please do repeat this kind of behaviour in the future!
 
Eh, the northern provinces weren't involved in ironworking at all though, as far as I can tell. We didn't even have large scale iron working set up at that point, and the northern provinces weren't as developed as the south. We should probably still plan for them getting iron, but I don't think that was a guarantee.

Yep.
Bleeding Hills are Redshore, not Northshore.
I misremembered.

So they shouldn't have gotten iron tech.
 
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Actually no, bad idea at present. The main reason we have a military advantage is...nobody knows we have an advantage. They don't realize they need to catch up to us yet.
Except they're also passively catching up. I'm not sure that our rate of nonaggressive progress outstrips their progress without our impetus, and if that's the case then we need to move fast. That being said, getting default walls will be huge and I'm willing to wait until we have default walls or until someone else gets an all bronze elite unit, in which case I will push hard for expansion while we still can.
 
Very unlikely that we can produce enough salt to flood the market. It's just too useful and too valuable. If we get too much we can make salt glazed pottery instead and sell that. Our iron furnaces should be at the kind of temperature you need.
The iron furnaces are well above, actually. Only need 900 o​C. Salt glaze isn't melted salt, its a reaction between the salt and (I think) either the silicates or the metals in the clay. The process sounds pretty polluting though. It died out in the late 1800's because of the resulting air pollution.
 
Yep.
Bleeding Hills are Redshore, not Northshore.
I misremembered.

So they shouldn't have gotten iron tech.
Ayup.

At best they have brass. Which is nice for tools but not weapons due to poor ability to hold an edge. And it's one coalition of tribes. Wanna bet the coalition will get eaten after the Son dies by other Nomads who want the shiny shit and it gets lost?


Except they're also passively catching up. I'm not sure that our rate of nonaggressive progress outstrips their progress without our impetus, and if that's the case then we need to move fast. That being said, getting default walls will be huge and I'm willing to wait until we have default walls or until someone else gets an all bronze elite unit, in which case I will push hard for expansion while we still can.
@veekie too.
Even just us dropping main wall a few times when we expand, because we will probably want to be in control of expansion for now, will help immensely. Switching to defensive Policy after this Challenge should work wonders.
 
It's not really a code. Aphasia is more of figuring out how to talk to someone whose language centers got scrambled and using random related words rather than what they actually meant to say, so it takes some creativity and free association to get across.:p
I was planning to use the aphasia as a launching spot for someone to come up with codes for battle leading to the flag code for battle.

Also i couldn't get rid of the smiley so it's put of place.
 
Gromed Trails are the more advanced idea where people actually maintain the roads and prevent floods from washing them out/plants from overgrowing them instead of just letting people walk them into existence. Much higher quality, and handles higher amounts of traffic without degeneration
Oooooooohhhh. I thought it said Groomed Tails - like, horse tails. I was struggling to work out why this was a big enough deal to deserve an entire technology.

I was planning to use the aphasia as a launching spot for someone to come up with codes for battle leading to the flag code for battle.

Also i couldn't get rid of the smiley so it's put of place.
We don't really get to make those kinds of decisions - we didn't get any kind of "codes" tech, and we don't have a library, so the idea is lost due to lack of reason to keep it around.
 
Oooooooohhhh. I thought it said Groomed Tails - like, horse tails. I was struggling to work out why this was a big enough deal to deserve an entire technology.


We don't really get to make those kinds of decisions - we didn't get any kind of "codes" tech, and we don't have a library, so the idea is lost due to lack of reason to keep it around.
Well it's not totally lost, we still have hospice care so more chariot drivers with aphasia will be treated in those buildings. Gotta build the Library though to record the idea outside of a few shamans heads.
 
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