Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
You keep saying that, but we're contending that the king didn't have any particular interest in keeping him alive. He burned his polictical capital to gain the guy's knowledge.
And if anything, the Shamans probably would have preferred he were executed after a public trial.
And to get it more intopic, I don't see any need for separation of church and state. It wouldn't even be a concept right now. The church is the state is the church. The secular and the divine are completely intertwined. Look at any society even through the beginning of the Classical era: the state derived legitimacy through the church and vice versa. You have the Pharoahs of Egypt, the semi-divine kings of Assyria and Babylon. The Kings of Shang and Zhou with all their giant ritual bronzes and Oracle Bones.Even in Rome, the original distinction between Patricians and Plebeians was that Patricians could communicate with the Gods by reading the bird signs while the Plebeians couldn't.
Last edited:
Umi-san
Procrastinating.
- Location
- ꙮ
First step, make the library, palace, and temple one grand structure.
Second step, elect a God-King.
Third step, invade Sparta.
- Location
- Canada
Still doesn't change the fact the King kept him alive for decades so there's no point in killing him at the end unless the shamans were pushing for it. The shamans wouldnt have wanted a piblic trial after spending so many years learning from him. The first few posts had people speculating the shamans killed him. Whatever we're not going to convince one another and it doesn't matter in the end.
Last edited:
All kings were god-kings in the Bronze Age.
Ok, fine there was some push-back in Mesopotamia against kings explicitly calling themself gods ( like Naram-sin), but the reliefs at Ninevah and other Palaces did depict loads of gods supporting and protecting the King.
And the Persian King wouldn't have been an explicit God King either, since they were monotheists, but the legitimacy of the King was in large part derived from his ritual role.
I think the King killed him to assuage his own conscience. I find it unlikely he only cared about a man defiling holy relics and shrines because of the political implications.
Again, the Shamans probably would have wanted a public trial and execution.
Last edited:
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
Still plenty of time for one. And knowing AN, he'll likely update right after I go to sleep.
Yeah, that's the big thing. The Catholic Church was the one who inherited the whole thing, which stemmed from having a bishopric in Rome, putting it in perfect position to go for a popular power grab when everything went to shit.
Mmm, yes, that's one of the reasons to put the religious and intellectual capital as a third axis from the Trade(Redshore) and Political(Valleyhome) capitals.
The Temple is going to change shaman recruitment methods. Previously, we could afford to take the strange and unusual exclusively, letting us select from the outliers in society, which helped keep the institution disinterested in politics except to shut down stupidity above and beyond the norm.
However, look at the sites:
-Sacred Forest lies on a midpoint of every route across the region. As such, it's highly accessible, taking half a week's travel by canal(full route being a week) from the two capitals of Valleyhome and Redshore. At the same time, most of the population here is dedicated to agriculture, industrial and spiritual concerns, there are no lineages of Great Chiefs Families born in Sacred Forest, which means most noble dynasties here are less influential overall.
--This means that when recruitment is massively boosted, the Great Temple will be drawing from farmers, smelters and foresters, as well as the clerks organizing the former, and some of the lower chief families to set up their initial structures. Theres not enough political influence around to sway the recruitment process heavily.
-Valleyhome and Redshore on the other hand, have centuries old noble family lineages. They are the birthplaces of every Hero King to date, which means a lot of favors, connections and such to call upon. While the shamans get to choose who to recruit, we know for a fact that this choice can be politically influenced, and in turn, status within the shamans is also possible to influence, after all, someone recruited from a chief family is likely to know all the political tricks and favor exchanges to rise more quickly in status.
--This means that when recruitment is massively boosted, the Great Temple will be drawing heavily from the city's population and, the big difference here, is that there will be enough concentrated political power to influence appointments and recruitment. This will not flash corrupt the priesthood, but it means that the early spiritual organization will be strongly influenced by our political structure of entrenched power, which in turn means they will continue to recruit from similar families down the line.
That is why, while we could have switched to Oligrachy early on by force, our gradual transition had eased many of the issues of the system. That is why, while our shamans are involved in politics, it has become Traditional that their influence is there to strongly counter stupid ideas, and to weakly preserve shaman authority, rather than the potential Theocracy. Even if it is inevitable, HOW it transitions is important to determine how it behaves.
The young Great Temple requires space to grow it's own views and traditions, rather than being entangled in and reflecting the politics of the nobility.
After all, the Church being used to dump inconvenient inheriting children certainly helped a lot with politicising it.
While the former part is nice, the latter part was part of the problem which caused the Roman Empire's out of control expansion. People started expecting to be able to win new lands through wars, so the wars had to continue to win new lands.
Personally I figure once he got the knowledge he just stopped ordering the protection. Enough people wanted to kill the mad scientist that it's eventual.
Last edited:
- Location
- his hidden lair
Except we can avoid a lot of that by not having land be hereditary along with our social values. We can circumvent a lot of the issue by ensuring our land isn't perpetually tied up in paying our military and feeling like we need to conquer in order to sustain that.
Even in times of relative peace, it would be a way of essentially encouraging greater concentrations of yeomen at our borders and marches than demanding more conquest. I mean, we'd be entirely justified in simply setting it up that yeomen at the borders or freshly conquered regions simply get more/better rations and partially subsidize settlement there. Amusingly enough is that despite being incredibly dedicated to farming and an agrarian society if ever there was one, our communal ownership means land itself isn't as valuable as it otherwise might be.
The whole thing was based on plunder. The Ymaryn don't gain econ from plunder. We gained from working and improving the land.
Since loss of territory causes strife, we can't afford to expand willy nilly, which causes us to build Tall and to fortify the hell out of it. It also makes us extremely ferocious defenders. Relatively small territory to defend also make it a brutal nightmare for any conquering armies.
Incidentally, while we have the greatest manpower capability of any polity, it is also the most expensive in the known world. Every male citizen is also a part time soldier and archer.
Just to be aware, our Divine Stewards line is only a VERY short step from declaring Eminent Domain/Manifest Destiny casus belli on all land everywhere. It's just lacking the impetus of a war of conquest
Be very careful with incentives, because you HAVE to assume the worst with how they are taken. Conquest is one of those things that becomes culturally honorable rapidly, displacing previous values because of just how profitable it was. Expect pushbacks against communal land ownership as well, because people tended to get attached to stuff after they've gotten maimed getting it.
It's a powerful feedback cycle, because said Yeomen are likely to rapidly rise in status via conquest, and then to perpetuate our views. It's already happened once for us.
Nope, the early Roman model wasn't slavery reliant. It just switched to slavery after going conquest, because slavery let them get actually RICH.
Farmers had historically the most free time between planting and harvest seasons(which is why I'm mystified by prior claims in the thread that the farmers are too busy to participate in religion, a farmer-shaman could spend planting and harvest season helping out, while a city based artisan has no time, as his work never ends), which was used to wage war, while the proceeds of the harvest was used to pay for improved equipment of their own...as you can see our yeomen paying using their excess produce to trade for luxuries and then pay for a blacksmith to make their axes and knives bigger.
This is the Roman model. Land is the true source of wealth, so farmers were loaded and paid for the services of artisans.
Last edited:
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Our farmers may be too busy; the update from the point of view of the escaped Dead Priest lady said that the Ymaryn pretty much never stopped working.
So we stick to diplo-annex and diplomacy as much as possible. Trying as much as possible to avoid war.
The nomads will allow us to continue to improve and keep our military tradition sharp.
- Location
- his hidden lair
That's fair, but I still think by using rations/currency as an incentive rather than land directly we can avoid that conquest feedback loop because said incentives don't necessarily require more and more land. We can allow for more 'border yeomen' rations not by conquering some poor sods, but by expanding dye production, or salterns, or silver jewelry, or wine etc. They can then use these rations to trade for better/more equipment, use them directly, etc. Even food rations can be accommodated for by expanding agricultural production rather than more land.
I personally think using land as a direct incentive is probably a really bad idea in the long run (if useful intermittently and over short periods) but I think our stubborn insistence on communal ownership really helps us here. We have the perfect excuse to reward service with our diplo rather than econ stat- and we've been dealing with more diplo than we know what to do with for a long time.
Last edited:
Our farmers are also yeomen. They must find time to shoot bow and arrows, and practice their crafts in forests, as well time to go to the craftsmen to forge shiny new swords.
It helps that the new iron tools make the job of a farmer a lot easier.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They could also adapt their farming tools as emergency weapons.
Not really. Yeomen and militia wouldn't be possible otherwise.
It's relative to the people of the floodplains. The work that the seasonal floods do for them, we do by hand to fertilize and irrigate, so it SEEMS we're working all the time...except the update itself also said that we have a lot of make-work. Work done for work's sake rather than work that needed to be done.
Basically.
I think using ANY direct incentive is a bad idea really. We have Honor of Elites. Success is already its own reward, and we already know the marches have taken to aggressively raiding the nomads near them for wives.
You never need to produce incentives for war. It creates its own as long as you're winning.
Pretty much. Archery is time consuming to train and you can't stop.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
Just imagine one of our neighbours discovers slash and burn farming.
pblur
Reminiscing over the halcyon days of Ymaryn
- Location
- Lawrence's Wagon
A possible compromise on Temple location: Holy Sea, in Redshore. Our second biggest city, on the coast so more likely to be widely accessible in the future, and more nearly centered in the nation than either of the others.
It's also situated at the end of the canal+river, so easily accessible overland.
It's also situated at the end of the canal+river, so easily accessible overland.
Last edited:
- Location
- his hidden lair
Except I'm not trying to incentivize war so much as further militarize and secure our borders- which is potentially risky but also something we're already pretty big on anyways.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's really cool, pun not intended.
An interesting tidbit for when the Ymaryn get to the modern age is that such technology would be useful for vaccine preservation, as sated in the article.
On the location of the great temple my opinion is to put it in Sacred Forest. I'm discounting Rainbow Trail and Redshore due to environment and in Redshore's case vulnerability to potential sea raiding, even if that threat is minimal for now it may not always be so.
So my reasons.
One, because it's a really damn cool location. Even if it is not fairy glade kinda temple it is still in a very cool and interesting environment and it's fun to imagine the temple and visualize it and how it interacts with the forest. It is also cool in Valleyhome but it just does not strike me as effectively as Sacred Forest does in this regard.
Two, it is centrally located. This means it is accessible by everyone and is actually not isolated. In this respect it is almost the same as Valleyhome, except the King would have immediate access if we build it in Valleyhome. It is thus inferior to Valleyhome in this factor, even with it's frequent trader and traveler population. Such a central location is also very defensible, and here it is equivalent to Valleyhome.
Three, Sacred Forest is involved in one of, if not our oldest, Megaprojects. A Temple in this area should support this conservation effort and bring it onto the table where it could be improved. With LoW active now instead of developing, looking at this should see a advancement with far less risk of damage to the megaproject, at least that's how it should work in my head.
Four, anywhere we build this place will become very important and experience a population increase from people moving there and a gradual increase as more people mean more babies are born there. Through logic and timelining we can extrapolate that Sacred Forest is our third largest city, and we had some confirmation from AN about this as well. Building the Temple in Sacred Forest will grow it as a city, and I find this appealing because it encourages our civ to use available space and build tall and dense. Not saying it will enable Sacred Forest to be a True City but it growing means we encourage more people and more babies who grow up to make even more people. And more people is our advantage. I feel putting it in Valleyhome is either neutral or slightly detrimental on this factor though I need to think about it some more to confirm.
Five, building this Temple gives an official edifice to our shamans much like the Palace would to the king. This is the fulcrum of the argument of Sacred Forest vs Valleyhome as far as I can tell. On one side if we place the edifice of Shaman power near the secular power in Valleyhome they quickly become part of governance, having political power of their own develop that they can use to get what they want and on the flipside they can also be more closely regulated and influenced by the Oligarchy and the King.
If we put it in Sacred Forest, that province will over time convert to essentially be run by Shamans due to their density and the lack of the strong secular powerbase of the King. This means that the Shamans will be slower in developing political power because they are more distant from the secular powerbase and such distance encourages them to focus more on the mystical matters and teaching what they find. On the other hand their power will be far more intense as they develop with less kingly oversight and instead of political power directly they will have social and religious influence on a deeper scale and more widespread.
I prefer Sacred Forest in this factor for this reason. I feel the need to enhance the counter force the shamans already are and have them be more independent of the Oligarchy and King. Such a three part system whose individual pieces cover a lot of the concerns of the People appeals to me, especially since our Shamans have been shown on multiple occasions to be an anti-stupid force. Enhancing that seems like a good idea, and I am concerned that sticking them in Valleyhome will dilute that ability.
Six, the spread of education caused by the temple. The temple is a place to teach our shamans, more than the people at large. However, the density of learning and teaching will spill over into the surrounding population through osmosis which is a point in Valleyhome's favor because there are more people to osmosis to. As a counter to that the more northern provinces have ever so slightly more access to Sacred Forest because of the trails going directly from there to Stonepen and it's slightly more central location. It's a trade hub as well on a smaller scale to Valleyhome so it can act as an intermediary between Redshore and Valleyhome.
Seven, building it in Sacred Forest and then building the Library there has some varying effects. Making that combo in Valleyhome ensures that it is accessible or at least visible to a lot of people and that the king has quick access to it. This comes at the cost of this Temple Library complex having more of it's time taken up by political matters and less time to pursue free studies. It also places it under much more direct influence of the Oligarchy which could be bad. Restricted access to only the Oligarchs and the like, though such a development may not happen immediately. Placing it in Sacred Forest means that in my mind it is less vulnerable to such shenanigans and is in the long run more open to everyone. As the complex grows so to would the city around it, and in Sacred Forest it is more able to focus on the mystical and academic and technical.
Nine, is more of general thinking on the entirety of the Temple/Library/Palace mix. I figure that if we make the Temple and Library in Sacred Forest we can make the Palace in Valleyhome. This has the advantage of the mystical and academic advancement being in one place while the palace acts as a repository for legal events, taxes, and other administrative documents. This form of splitting lets each piece focus on it's area of importance and not be distracted by other things except when they are needed for harmonious action. Also The Library to my understanding is not really meant to store such things like our tax records, that's the job of the Palace. Combining all three in Valleyhome could have interesting effects which we could speculate on, but the idea seems needlessly complex to me.
I do believe we already do a variant of this to deal with our Blight.
I'd go for that if not for the sea air. Salt water vapor is not good for recording media of any kind.
Moldy tablets and the like.
It's a delicate balance in my mind Karugus. Forting up can lead to war, really weirdly, and war can lead to forting up. Martial activities tend to trend towards self feeding cycles. I think we can pull it off but it needs to be a slow thing, which I don't think you would mind?
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
That's more like slash and char. slash and burn is much worse as it basically abandons the land once it's no longer fit for crops and moves onto the next bit of forest.
pblur
Reminiscing over the halcyon days of Ymaryn
- Location
- Lawrence's Wagon
Moldy clay? What impact would that have on readability? Seems irrelevant till paper.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's very relevant actually. Tablets of clay that become moldy quickly decay and become unreadable, if I remember correctly. I am not an expert in the subject but my understanding is that the clay eating molds can weaken the tablets and make them fragile as well as obscure and distort their surface and markings.
General question to the thread, I know that humidity plus clay tablet equals unreadable tablet. Does anyone know the particulars or specifics on the deterioration of clay tablets?