Truly WAAAGH is an awesome power to behold. Let us not use it anymore.
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- Mists of Albion
Funny things is, we didn't even finish them off, our Marches basically swatted them down so hard over one and a half turns that they just broke apart and ran away screaming into parts unknown, leaving the Metal Workers probably just sitting there, looking at the people who took them over easily and then looking at the Kingdom that just bitchslapped them into submission easily, scratching their heads and wondering how.
I would pay good money to see a Negaverse omake of it to be honest, and I'm pretty happy we're sending a trade mission over to them soon as well which should be interesting.
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TheDanishLord
Viking Warlord
- Location
- Denmark
We did by paying the iron prize
Okay, analysis a bit late today but here goes:
Diplomacy 12 (+2) [+1]->14 (max, overflowing) [+1]
-Cashout +2
-New Trails +1
-Quarry/Silver Mine +3
-Saltern +1
Cash out, overflow. Nothing to see here.
Economy 12->10 [-1]
-Great Temple -1
-New Trails -1
-Expand Econ +4
-Build Quarry/Silver Mine -3
-City Tax -1
No surprises here.
Martial 11 {14} (partial limit)
Still at halfway dangerous, since we've seen events start to trigger off it.
Organizational
Centralization 2->3
Roads!
Art 11->14 (max, overflowing)
-Diplomacy overflow +5
-Quarry/Silver Mine +3
Mysticism 2->7 [-1]
-Art overflow +5
-Study Stars +1
-Wisdom Tax -1
Everything's overflowing~
Prestige 13->14
Meanwhile in the north, we continue to beat the Metal Nomads like a drum.
For March stats,completely lost track of March Martial by now since we can't see the results of their War Missions.
Presumably doing well though! They should be getting good war experience cashouts.
Should Alabaster and Silver go here or is this more for practical materials?
Also as predicted, Spoked Wheels for civilian use appears 3 turns after the warriors get it.
-Valleyhome is actually inaccessible to a lot of our newer provinces, despite being our capital. As such, we're seeing provincial jealousy, the IC reasoning for choosing Valleyhome is considered favortism and hoarding power.
-Rainbow Trail and Sacred Forest are the approaches which are trying to pursue spiritual advancement in good faith. The people will believe that this is done for the People's spiritual good.
-Redshore meanwhile is an "eh, it's not Valleyhome..." in an IC point of view. It's not a particularly spiritually significant site, but it does have enough political leverage from being the birthplace of two hero kings to make it happen.
And here we have one answer to "how do you prevent the city from sprawling until it's no longer a city?". Build walls to physically force them to build tall instead of sprawling. Whereever we put an Aqueduct next then, should have walls as well.
It's interesting that we still have a big chunk of farmers living in the city however. Must be a strange commute.
-Fire check - Passed by Organized Settlement, still one of the early investment that's not regretted at all.
That and the old laws were based on geography, which we see some issues arising from that, as land usage changed over time but the laws did not.
So problems:
-Proportionate Representation was Justice, but tracking people was a nightmare. We needed a census to be created and maintained, but we don't have it yet. I'm not sure if the Library unlocks the Census project or the Palace does so, or if we needed both. Something to consider in the future.
-And back to the issue where social stratification growing over time. Inevitable, but we'll slow it down where we can, so that we can develop the adaptations and coping mechanisms instead of crashing into them hard.
Crime is rarer in rural areas outside of crimes of passion, as everyone knows everyone else and a thief or smuggler would get noticed quickly.
Granted, it's probably no small amount of pride as well.
And then there's paved roads, but that's quite expensive to make, even if it'd last basically forever once laid down. We're near that breakthrough, though it'd never be used for anything but the main trunk roads between cities.
The Western Nomads had broken and fled, west and south. I'm not sure how they're fleeing south from there unless they are passing through the Thunder Horse, or stealing boats and sailing in the hopes of not fighting Ymaryn terminators, but there's a chance that the Metal Workers might gleefully adopt them as a slave soldier caste.
We can catch up to it by improving ironworking techniques over time until we breakthrough into steel, but the sheer economic power of early iron is going to overwhelm the military edge for now.
Diplomacy 12 (+2) [+1]->14 (max, overflowing) [+1]
-Cashout +2
-New Trails +1
-Quarry/Silver Mine +3
-Saltern +1
Cash out, overflow. Nothing to see here.
Economy 12->10 [-1]
-Great Temple -1
-New Trails -1
-Expand Econ +4
-Build Quarry/Silver Mine -3
-City Tax -1
No surprises here.
Martial 11 {14} (partial limit)
Still at halfway dangerous, since we've seen events start to trigger off it.
Organizational
Centralization 2->3
Roads!
Art 11->14 (max, overflowing)
-Diplomacy overflow +5
-Quarry/Silver Mine +3
Mysticism 2->7 [-1]
-Art overflow +5
-Study Stars +1
-Wisdom Tax -1
Everything's overflowing~
Prestige 13->14
Meanwhile in the north, we continue to beat the Metal Nomads like a drum.
For March stats,completely lost track of March Martial by now since we can't see the results of their War Missions.
Presumably doing well though! They should be getting good war experience cashouts.
@Academia Nut
Should Alabaster and Silver go here or is this more for practical materials?
And we have the next road tech. Still need to get to Paved however. We have all the tools needed for paving major city roads, but probably not out in the wilds. Just need to Road Harder.
Also as predicted, Spoked Wheels for civilian use appears 3 turns after the warriors get it.
Somewhat unexpected province selection, but it goes to show they can spot needs that the new stone and silver would be good for the temple, while we missed it completely
And heres how our people take out choices this time. The Trails will focus on ensuring everyone has A route to the new temple site, which mainly means ensuring that theres basic roads from Black River, Southshore and Redhill to their nearest provinces. Still need much more of course.
And here we can see a few things:
-Valleyhome is actually inaccessible to a lot of our newer provinces, despite being our capital. As such, we're seeing provincial jealousy, the IC reasoning for choosing Valleyhome is considered favortism and hoarding power.
-Rainbow Trail and Sacred Forest are the approaches which are trying to pursue spiritual advancement in good faith. The people will believe that this is done for the People's spiritual good.
-Redshore meanwhile is an "eh, it's not Valleyhome..." in an IC point of view. It's not a particularly spiritually significant site, but it does have enough political leverage from being the birthplace of two hero kings to make it happen.
And here we have one answer to "how do you prevent the city from sprawling until it's no longer a city?". Build walls to physically force them to build tall instead of sprawling. Whereever we put an Aqueduct next then, should have walls as well.
It's interesting that we still have a big chunk of farmers living in the city however. Must be a strange commute.
-Disease check - Passed by Sacred Warding Clinics(speaking of which this is probably going to trigger an event if we maintain the city for a few more generations, the clinics never considered the possibility of having to deal with such a vast number of people...unless the Hospice tech covered that), Passed by Aqueducts. No plague happens.
-Fire check - Passed by Organized Settlement, still one of the early investment that's not regretted at all.
-Crime check - Passed by Blackbird law enforcement. Failed due to Martial over cap.
And here we have territorial issues stemming from the most big and powerful families, who have reached the point where they CAN'T concentrate power properly anymore.
And here we have the issue that overconcentrated families aren't being Justice anymore, since authority concentrated heavily while support did not grow to match.
That and the old laws were based on geography, which we see some issues arising from that, as land usage changed over time but the laws did not.
So problems:
-Proportionate Representation was Justice, but tracking people was a nightmare. We needed a census to be created and maintained, but we don't have it yet. I'm not sure if the Library unlocks the Census project or the Palace does so, or if we needed both. Something to consider in the future.
-And back to the issue where social stratification growing over time. Inevitable, but we'll slow it down where we can, so that we can develop the adaptations and coping mechanisms instead of crashing into them hard.
And of course, major crime was an urban problem, partially from social stratification(ambitious people can't get into leadership from their social class, so they created their own organizations), partially from having more people than your monkeysphere can handle living close together.
Crime is rarer in rural areas outside of crimes of passion, as everyone knows everyone else and a thief or smuggler would get noticed quickly.
It certainly is immensely valuable for squeezing extra work out of the population.
I love our guys. That's so sweet.
Granted, it's probably no small amount of pride as well.
Gravel roads! Cheap to make, since it literally used the garbage from our mines, and exceedingly durable compared to groomed dirt tracks. The next step up is to actually use the slag from iron mines for road material, since the silicate slag is even more durable and nearly inert...well aside from it's value as a secondary and tertiary iron source for reprocessing.
And then there's paved roads, but that's quite expensive to make, even if it'd last basically forever once laid down. We're near that breakthrough, though it'd never be used for anything but the main trunk roads between cities.
...our guys are mining the Steppes for nomads huh?
The Western Nomads had broken and fled, west and south. I'm not sure how they're fleeing south from there unless they are passing through the Thunder Horse, or stealing boats and sailing in the hopes of not fighting Ymaryn terminators, but there's a chance that the Metal Workers might gleefully adopt them as a slave soldier caste.
And the war has started, but bronze doesn't do shit to walled towns, and walls doesn't let you retaliate.
We can catch up to it by improving ironworking techniques over time until we breakthrough into steel, but the sheer economic power of early iron is going to overwhelm the military edge for now.
And the Hathatyn have realized slamming their face into us is pointles and they should just go settle in the other direction.
- Location
- Austria
And that's why Megaproject support would be a great pick - we need three megaproject back-to-back, done as soon as we can.
We should have canvas from our boat tech in some form, so paintings are possible, but we hadn't invested into them, so it's just hobbyist work.
Funny thing is due to the dye production, reds and purples are relatively common for us, even if not exactly cheap.
Noting that this evens out at the higher end. Our traders and nobles don't look THAT much wealthier than those of other lands unless they break out the salt, its just that we have a higher baseline quality of life
Study Forest. You need waxes and oils. Fastest route is trees.
Mega Pompadour when!?
Worth consideration is that we have a very high portion of fruit access due to all the forests and orchards. Those are sweeteners, as is honey.
We probably also are figuring out: iron cooking surface + animal fat = frying.
Fried food, especially meat, is going to be a bit of a delicacy.
Shrooms are associated with decay taboo and our current R&D would say that they're often deadly poisonous. Going to take a long time to disprove that one.
FYI, Wine gates a lot of the improvements in fermentation method needed to unlock those alcoholic beverages, including further improving beer.
It's the high sugar content, it makes fermentation experiments dramatically easier to do.
It's also used medically as a solvent for a number of herbal medicines.
Actually, it's causing us trouble in a good way at present. Provided we don't push base Martial overcap and limit the overflow to the Quality of it's own addition, it's helping us innovate ways to deal with excessive violence.
I'm personally for sitting on it until we hit Prestige 15, then spin off another March.
Basically, remember when our Marches break Nomad tribes they also take home all the women and children. Sometimes they have more than they can marry, so they send the excess down south.
Only if it's not making things worse.
I wouldn't switch to Megaproject Support yet unless our provinces actually start doing useless things instead of taking actions we've dismissed as useless but proved to be important.
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- Location
- Austria
But them taking those actions means delaying megaprojects, which are quite important, every one of them. Like, provinces taking those actions have some hefty opportunity costs, IMO, in delaying Library+Temple+Palace triad of proper Iron Age government and knowledge gathering system.
Hyacinthium
Writing about sad cannibals as we speak.
- Location
- Bedroom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I wanna marathon the Library since it could also serve as a center of education in addition to a repository of ideas and history.
"Ymaryn Fry Chicken. Still making it since 10,000 BC. Mmm, mmm good!."
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- Location
- Australia
I don't think we should do another March. It would be the third war-centric, nomad-adjacent periphery state in our civilisation, which could have some bad consequences down the line in terms of what it'll do to our culture.
Since we're opening up trade with the Metal Workers again, it may actually be better to found a Trading Post. It'll lower our Martial by a sufficient amount, emphasise our civilisation's trading side instead of its war side, give us Diplomacy over time, and possible do stuff like advance boat technology and find new civilisations to trade with.
EDIT: Remember how the Stallion Tribes contemplated starting a civil war back during the tax crisis? Imagine if there were three of them, especially after generations of successfully using violence to solve their problems.
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The March is for the lowlands/Thunder Horse mostly.
But again, not urgent, I think our Marches might actually be at their Martial cap from their successful war mission rewards. Ideally we sit at the partial overflow and trigger an event to evolve Quality of it's own.
Megaprojects are distinctive, but don't be under the illusion that they are all that matters.
But again, not urgent, I think our Marches might actually be at their Martial cap from their successful war mission rewards. Ideally we sit at the partial overflow and trigger an event to evolve Quality of it's own.
But also missing the equally real, if not as directly impressive importance of laying down proper infrastructure, like roads, forests, vineyards, mines, walls, or Stability. There is also the Study Stars streak that's recently resumed nicely to mitigate cometary terror and identify beneficial weather patterns like the last Baby Boom, with our new bonuses.
Megaprojects are distinctive, but don't be under the illusion that they are all that matters.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Time for trade and diplomacy? Because up until now we were never an aggressor; having us in the back means your back is secure.
- Location
- Austria
If we could take Policy - Build Roads and Forests, I would take it in a heartbeat; and one of the reasons I still want Megaproject policy is to free up both of our actions to do a Double Main Trails for the max effect of 'non-linear scaling'.
Megaprojects are not be-all end-all, sure, but Library+Temple+Palace are mandatory ASAP. I am not pushing for Games or Dam or whatnot, but that Triad of Government and Knowledge is must have, the earlier the better.
- Location
- Diamond City
inserted tally
- Location
- Mists of Albion
I think we are sending a trade mission over to them and the Metal Workers pretty soon actually
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
Good points all, but how the hell do you expect us to lower our martial score? It's the source of some of our largest problems at the moment.
- Location
- Australia
Second paragraph: found a Trade Post. It costs 2 Martial to found, on top of 5 Diplomacy and 2 Economy. Gets us out of the yellow for standard Martial and out of the cap when factoring in bonus Martial.
Balanced policy can grow forests. We know that part for a fact.
Roads less certain, though we've seen the Marches do it.
And we're getting them. We have the resources for it. Current plan is to push the temple the slow way while we whack a mole on the other issues.
Heck, we can do this next turn:
[Main] Temple
[Secondary] Grand Sacrifice
[Secondary] Grand Sacrifice x2
Province Law Expand Economy
Province Expand Forest - Logical choice due to capping out the number of mines we can support.
Province Vineyard - Logical choice due to new luxury product
Province Study Stars
This is a possible naturally arising turn, which brings us within sight of the Golden Age upon Temple completion.
The most likely reason not to take this combo for the provinces are:
-Defense concerns, so they build walls instead
-Overlooked concerns, so they deal with it.
Overall, a solid positive. Balanced offload part of the decisionmaking to the provinces, who have a better grasp of needs, opportunities and situations out to the mid term.
- Location
- Mists of Albion
We could create a new March, it devours a good chunk of Martial and would let us have a buffer between us the Eastern Step or Lowlands depending on where we want it, also we could annex it when it matures later and we have a free turn or it's safer to gain a good chunk of territory.
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- Location
- Australia
Why "upon Temple completion"? Couldn't we get into a Golden Age the turn after by doing a Secondary Grand Sacrifice?
- Location
- New Zealand
I agree with this. If we can, I'd like to integrate the Stallion Tribes first to at least see what that process is like before we finish spamming our northern border with military-focused factions of our culture.
But one big problem we have right now is that our military is still through the roof from our nomad rage, and I'm pretty sure both our Marches are near their cap as well. One of the main reasons why people want more Marches is to offload that excess. But that's just a delaying tactic, and it's only a matter of time before we're facing the full consequences of Martial overflow. We're just going to have to take whatever consequences there are as they come to us. Because unless some magic button comes up that'll let us convert all this overflow Martial into another stat, I don't see any good ways of reducing our Martial at this point, besides someone in the Lowlands meatgrinder launching themselves at us.
Fermentation is used in every single other alcoholic beverage. What made wine special is the high sugar (and thus alcohol) content. But wine is irrelevant towards the discovery of germ theory. Literally any other fermentation product works. From mead, cider, beer to rice wine. The first three we probably all have already.
Wine is nothing special in terms of research either. The lessons for storage hold the same for beer (which our people already consume) as that spoils faster. And advances there are limited anyway. It wasn't until the 19th century until wine could be stored for a long time without losing some to spoilage as filtration wasn't practical at the time but is standard today (same for beer et al).
Learning plant husbandry from vineyards is an especially impractical notion. Creating a new variety takes at least 4 years to actually see the first grape. Generally, 10 years are assumed to know if the result you want is reliable. Our record keeping is simply not good enough to remember that level of detail over all that time. This is not something like, suddenly the grapes are thrice as big as before. These are very gradual processes. Plants that grow and mature over a single year are much better for learning selective breeding for plants as the cycle is much faster.
Wine is a valuable trade good in ancient times, yes, but I'm fairly sure that was only the very high-quality stuff the nobility got. The common man got watered down vinegar and more often resorted to other beverages, mostly beer.
Moreover, it's insanely labor intensive. Romans generally had it done by slaves. The Ymaryn are going to do it themselves, but grapes consume a lot of acreage and work for a comparatively tiny harvest. I'd rather use that land for more grain than a luxury good we can't even reliably export across the sea.
pblur
Reminiscing over the halcyon days of Ymaryn
- Location
- Lawrence's Wagon
Sure, but they're an action tax. It's better to get them out of the way quickly so we have more actions available for responding to crisis.
My priority list is:
- No low stats (<7)
- Golden Age
- Library and Temple megaprojects
- Infrastruture.
- Location
- Austria
I am not so sure provinces have a better grasp of long-term needs, else they would voluntarily support the Temple instead of Study Stars and Expand Forests instead of Expand Economy because we are capped now. Overall, your whole premise of 'provinces have a better grasp of needs' does not make any sense at all to me; if they did have a better grasp, Heroic Administrators would not be nearly as special...and there would be no need for players.
Provinces are fundamentally short-sighted and care about their own generation-long at max interests first and foremost, as they should be; it's up to us to put them in order and show them one direction.