Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
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- Staring into the void
[] Attempt to create tree ent warriors and then make aceraceae with the Highlanders
Miss-reading the current winning vote...
Miss-reading the current winning vote...
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I don't think so; for the plan to work the culprit needs a bunch of people to go through with this plan, and then the twistiness to convince the clans that the batch of newcomers are totes not going to wreck your clan like the one it just did, and then to convince a band of warriors that yes, they speak for the king, no you don't need to ask more questions. That sounds like a rebel Good Diplo, in that they haven't totally won control over an area but they're good at manipulating people and groups to do their bidding. All this changes is that our admins might actually be able to find him, though holding onto him might be tricky if they're charasmatic enough to convince us through the fourth wall.
Wait a sec, whatever we do, we need to get back the Iron Weapons our warriors are carrying!
Maybe we have Danzo equivalent stirring trouble?.
BungieONI
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Don't panic too hard. It's a problem, but it would take quite a few weapons for them to figure iron out, as well as a long time unmolested to do research. Time they are not likely to get.
The more probable way they gain iron in enough numbers to matter is through scavenging it off us during a possible war with them.
Iron weapons in themselves aren't too big a problem since while they can rust and reveal the nature of the ore, it's too precious for people to have it rust on purpose unless we provide a very large quantity.
We have two plots:
1) A group of people deliberately adopt themselves into a clan past the maximum size limit, causing it to break up into two clans, get one of their own in charge of a splinter clan, then adopt themselves back into another clan and force it to split, giving the group enough power to elect their preferred chiefs.
-When we imposed laws against changing clans too often, a group of people were found to have NO clan at all.
2) A 'Trade Mission' was organized, where people were recruited under the belief that it was:
-A real war mission - This was a false premise regardless of whether it's an accident or a plot. The warriors were told there's a war mission and didn't question orders, so recruiting under this context was false to begin with even if the warriors were acting in good faith.
-A trade mission - This can be a legitimate trade mission, or a false context. However, you couldn't recruit under the premise of a real war mission unless the trade mission was a fake to begin with. It also showed that the perp needed as many warriors as they could get their hands on without being noticed, which indicated a conquest mission.
-A mission to provoke a war mission - Those guys recruited under this have to be in on the scheme, but you don't need a lot of them. Someone to deliberately start a fight, dragging in everyone else. Depending on how things turn out, this guy probably made a quiet exit...and it smells heavily like a Blackbird tactic to me. Start the fight, let events happen, exit stage left and watch what the King decides. Potentially even the guy who told the King what happened, so he's clear of the consequences if it comes to an investigation.
...wait, isn't this what Twythulmyn did to get kinged? Shuffled around a bunch of resources he shouldn't have had access to, launched his own independent trade mission. This was using similar tactics to get going, but to different ends.
Well, the stunt here is rather esoteric and strange overall.
We have two plots:
1) A group of people deliberately adopt themselves into a clan past the maximum size limit, causing it to break up into two clans, get one of their own in charge of a splinter clan, then adopt themselves back into another clan and force it to split, giving the group enough power to elect their preferred chiefs.
-When we imposed laws against changing clans too often, a group of people were found to have NO clan at all.
2) A 'Trade Mission' was organized, where people were recruited under the belief that it was:
-A real war mission - This was a false premise regardless of whether it's an accident or a plot. The warriors were told there's a war mission and didn't question orders, so recruiting under this context was false to begin with even if the warriors were acting in good faith.
-A trade mission - This can be a legitimate trade mission, or a false context. However, you couldn't recruit under the premise of a real war mission unless the trade mission was a fake to begin with. It also showed that the perp needed as many warriors as they could get their hands on without being noticed, which indicated a conquest mission.
-A mission to provoke a war mission - Those guys recruited under this have to be in on the scheme, but you don't need a lot of them. Someone to deliberately start a fight, dragging in everyone else. Depending on how things turn out, this guy probably made a quiet exit...and it smells heavily like a Blackbird tactic to me. Start the fight, let events happen, exit stage left and watch what the King decides. Potentially even the guy who told the King what happened, so he's clear of the consequences if it comes to an investigation.
...wait, isn't this what Twythulmyn did to get kinged? Shuffled around a bunch of resources he shouldn't have had access to, launched his own independent trade mission. This was using similar tactics to get going, but to different ends.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Well no matter how often he reincarnates into a Hero of the Tribe we're still not making him a god the way we did Crow, so he can go pound sand.
BungieONI
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Huh...
Sort of. My understanding of what he did was shuffle resources around so he could send a trade mission and then use the success from that to get support for being Kinged. The massive difference was that he never actually had malicious intent in his heart, i.e he never planned to kill or hurt people of any nation in his plan. This person if they exist has clearly demonstrated that they are malicious with this cock up so they don't get the Kingship, ever.
My only concern is that you are tunnel visioning on the possibility of a snake. Please be wary of confirmation bias making you attribute both of our clan and warrior problem to one snake.
Like I've said I am pretty certain the South Cock Up is something stinky caused by a snake. The clan thing sounds more like jockeying Oligarchs however. I'm gonna go re-read the update.
Hehehehehh. Oh crap that's hilarious. *chuckle* Good one.
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Come to think of it, the original Crow did this goddamned stunt too...
Right, but the tactics were similar, it's the sort of noticing that there are free resources(which we had similar symptoms of, since people started taking more actions on the mid turn, and recently our mid-turns have become two Main actions instead of one Secondary, if you looked closely), figuring out how to use those resources, and then being six months away on a boat/into the lowlands before the King even noticed...when they returned with Mission Accomplished.
Just making the observation that both of them use disturbingly similar methods. The clan thing was explicit, malicious manipulation as well:
I don't believe it was accidental here, see the bolded. A specific group of people were going in and out of clans to break them up and spawn new clans to their political benefit, and a group of people were 'stuck' outside clans once we put the cooldown rules in play to stop this nonsense.
BungieONI
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Hmmmmm ok re-reading the update.
This accusation of spying seems out of left field. I'm not sure what to make of it.My reading comprehension is probably failing me. Wait I got it. This is a case of a chief, let's call them Chief A, sending a person from their clan to be adopted by another clan run by another chief, Chief B, that Chief A wants information on the plans of Chief B. This spy goes to Chief B's clan and gets information on their plans and then returns to their old clan or a third clan run by a friend of Chief A. At least is the simplest scenario I can think of for what this means.
This is bad because some people are actually honest adoptees and would be justifiably angry at any such accusations, leading to stabbenings. The wording suggests to me that this is a general widespread problem not caused by any one individual, but multiple competing ones. Yay Oligarchs.
Next.
We can see that the chiefs caught a case of a local sub chief orchestrating the "spontaneous" overloading of clans so they fissure until you get three "new" clans who then support said local sub chief and tip the voting. The way it is worded pretty much says the sub chief was caught and punished, because we hear about it as an example. So they can't be the snake.
Next.
We get the weirdness of people being outside the clan structure some how because we establish a patch to give a fixed amount of time between switches. This seems like a bureaucratic accident to me. What use would a snake get from these people who cannot vote on anything? Perhaps they were shuffled out of their clans, as they are all loyal to the snake in some fashion, and so when they are put back in a clan the snake ends up with agents in multiple clans. A sorta diaspora tactic. However this seems like a very wide stretch and I am concerned this is just paranoia. For this reason. If they were in multiple clans to begin with, which is what it sounds like from the update, then why did the snake waste time moving them around in this complicated fashion? They already had agents in multiple clans before hand. It becomes more suspect if it was one clan that this entire group of clanless came from.
@Academia Nut what clans did the various members of this group of clanless people come from? What did we do with them after we found this out?
@veekie I do not think the "spontaneous" overfill group and the clanless weirdness are connected because my reading of the update indicates the other chiefs caught the sub chief and punished them. I think this because we are hearing about it with the addendum of "tip the voting process for a local sub-chief". If they knew that this unfairness was going on then it is obvious to me that they caught the sub chief and punished them.
Now to the stinky bit.
Some of the warriors who came back to us were under the impression that it was either a trader caravan who needed more escorts because it was going into the Lowlands, or a true conquest mission. If this is the Trade Caravan meant to be sent to the Metal Workers and Hathaya then it was hijacked in some manner. That is a clear crime, especially since whoever did it meant to have this happen like as not. Although they may well have just honestly wanted to go into the Lowlands instead while also unfortunately happening to be an idiot who fucked up on controlling their people. Either case of this they should be punished severely because holy crap Darwin Award much? Generally though I trust absolutely none of these stories because the traveling warriors had plenty of time to come up with a story to cover their own asses, even without the very high likelyhood of a mastermind.
As to the people staying we have the moral warriors who want to protect the people who suddenly don't have protectors because they think that is the right thing to do. This is a strange detail, it makes me curious. Makes me think the warriors who tell it are more trustworthy. Not sure what to make of it.
And then we have people who decided might makes right and want this land because they fought for it. They need to be punished as hard as we can, but any warrior who spoke ill of their comrades like this should be watched closely.
...
Oh good god it's a variant prisoners dilemma or something to that effect. Yeah just keep a very very close eye on all the warriors who came back. We have no proof of who is telling the truth or not.
This accusation of spying seems out of left field. I'm not sure what to make of it.
This is bad because some people are actually honest adoptees and would be justifiably angry at any such accusations, leading to stabbenings. The wording suggests to me that this is a general widespread problem not caused by any one individual, but multiple competing ones. Yay Oligarchs.
Next.
We can see that the chiefs caught a case of a local sub chief orchestrating the "spontaneous" overloading of clans so they fissure until you get three "new" clans who then support said local sub chief and tip the voting. The way it is worded pretty much says the sub chief was caught and punished, because we hear about it as an example. So they can't be the snake.
Next.
We get the weirdness of people being outside the clan structure some how because we establish a patch to give a fixed amount of time between switches. This seems like a bureaucratic accident to me. What use would a snake get from these people who cannot vote on anything? Perhaps they were shuffled out of their clans, as they are all loyal to the snake in some fashion, and so when they are put back in a clan the snake ends up with agents in multiple clans. A sorta diaspora tactic. However this seems like a very wide stretch and I am concerned this is just paranoia. For this reason. If they were in multiple clans to begin with, which is what it sounds like from the update, then why did the snake waste time moving them around in this complicated fashion? They already had agents in multiple clans before hand. It becomes more suspect if it was one clan that this entire group of clanless came from.
@Academia Nut what clans did the various members of this group of clanless people come from? What did we do with them after we found this out?
@veekie I do not think the "spontaneous" overfill group and the clanless weirdness are connected because my reading of the update indicates the other chiefs caught the sub chief and punished them. I think this because we are hearing about it with the addendum of "tip the voting process for a local sub-chief". If they knew that this unfairness was going on then it is obvious to me that they caught the sub chief and punished them.
Now to the stinky bit.
Some of the warriors who came back to us were under the impression that it was either a trader caravan who needed more escorts because it was going into the Lowlands, or a true conquest mission. If this is the Trade Caravan meant to be sent to the Metal Workers and Hathaya then it was hijacked in some manner. That is a clear crime, especially since whoever did it meant to have this happen like as not. Although they may well have just honestly wanted to go into the Lowlands instead while also unfortunately happening to be an idiot who fucked up on controlling their people. Either case of this they should be punished severely because holy crap Darwin Award much? Generally though I trust absolutely none of these stories because the traveling warriors had plenty of time to come up with a story to cover their own asses, even without the very high likelyhood of a mastermind.
As to the people staying we have the moral warriors who want to protect the people who suddenly don't have protectors because they think that is the right thing to do. This is a strange detail, it makes me curious. Makes me think the warriors who tell it are more trustworthy. Not sure what to make of it.
And then we have people who decided might makes right and want this land because they fought for it. They need to be punished as hard as we can, but any warrior who spoke ill of their comrades like this should be watched closely.
...
Oh good god it's a variant prisoners dilemma or something to that effect. Yeah just keep a very very close eye on all the warriors who came back. We have no proof of who is telling the truth or not.
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- Location
- Actually pretty lost
[X] Attempt to capture the errant warriors and then make amends with the Highlanders (-5 Diplomacy, probable war with Highlanders)
Regarding the mass-tagging, I don't think it's particularly rude specifically because not only has new information/reasoning been made available since those voters voted, but @Hangwind is not trying to change the outcome of the winning vote - his vote has already won. he's trying to make the vote unanimous, which has been demonstrated in the past to have its own effects. If I'd voted for one of the other options I'd be happy to be tagged - my vote would already have lost, but changing my vote is strictly neutral-or-good. I don't think it'll work - even if he pulled it off, I doubt AN would let such blatant gaming of what was supposed to be a cool event caused by actual unity, not tactical voting work - but it can't hurt to try.
Regarding the possible snake - I think this might actually be a result of low Centralisation. We have less control over own country, so someone's taken advantage of this situation in a way they wouldn't be able to get away with if there was more central command.
It probably also came from this:
Low Centralisation and competing ambitions? Oh dear.
I don't think it actually is - doesn't it also increase our cap proportionally?
Regarding the mass-tagging, I don't think it's particularly rude specifically because not only has new information/reasoning been made available since those voters voted, but @Hangwind is not trying to change the outcome of the winning vote - his vote has already won. he's trying to make the vote unanimous, which has been demonstrated in the past to have its own effects. If I'd voted for one of the other options I'd be happy to be tagged - my vote would already have lost, but changing my vote is strictly neutral-or-good. I don't think it'll work - even if he pulled it off, I doubt AN would let such blatant gaming of what was supposed to be a cool event caused by actual unity, not tactical voting work - but it can't hurt to try.
Regarding the possible snake - I think this might actually be a result of low Centralisation. We have less control over own country, so someone's taken advantage of this situation in a way they wouldn't be able to get away with if there was more central command.
It probably also came from this:
Low Centralisation and competing ambitions? Oh dear.
BungieONI
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My current bet is a combo of:
Low Stability causing Oligarchs to try for more power, while low Centralization lets them do it, by using our Over Martial limit caused by the Yeomen as a tool. Seems almost textbook doesn't it. <.<
Oh dear is a very accurate summation.
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
Academia Nut said (not in the update) that there are trade missions not endorsed by the king all the time - given the context of his reply, it means this one to the lowlands isn't the one he endorsed to go to Hathatyn.
Nope - if you look at the civilization sheet we have an effective martial rating of 14 (and an actual one of 11, which isn't enough to put us over the limit) which has 'partial limit' after it which means that Quality of its own doesn't increase the cap.
BungieONI
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Hmm okay.
That makes it more likely in my head it is just a moron in charge who screwed the pooch so hard they screwed said pooch into another pooch.
*sigh* Using the cover of a trade mission to recruit warriors to attack a people who did nothing is wrong and should be punished. And on the other hand fucking up this badly from your own stupidity is not a valid excuse and should also be punished. If we catch the person who did this I am pushing for their full punishment, possibly giving them to the Highlanders, because damn.
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Then why don't we have the results of that trade mission yet?
There's not even a mention of it in the update
BungieONI
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Too soon. The Metal Workers and Hathatyn are a long way away. The traders sent their way probably have got there, but still need to return. This entire debacle seems really really early in the turn.
Yep. This part I don't find suspicious. It's just people being passed around, some of them maybe being a little too free with their tongues, and some of the oligraches being paranoid overall.
Issue: The sub chief was not claimed to be the snake.
This is the case of someone outside the chief/clan system pulling strings to get a favored candidate elected. Someone inside the clan/chief system would find it difficult to think of the idea of troll adoptions, as their loyalties would have been set along clan lines.
The clanless is very suspect, because, despite the cooldown between adoptions, there aren't so many reasons for people to be adopted twice in rapid succession, and getting stuck outside the clans, if they weren't part of the earlier troll adoptions.
Due to communications lag in the era, it's quite feasible for them to leave before they learn about the cooldown and get stuck that way.
Overall the process sounds like they established a meta-organization. A Company, so as to speak, which doesn't rely on clan ties for loyalty like our oligraches do. Points to the process being organized by someone who:
-They are strongly personally loyal to, above and beyond ties of clan as we know them
-Who is likely not in a leadership position in an influential clan and thus needed to do this to gain political power.
-Who has chief level political skills.
-Who is personally familiar with adoption politics on a level that's unusual, as has been stated, most people only ever get adopted when they marry, or when they come in as refugees.
-Who has some kind of grievance or great ambition that the normal process wouldn't work for.
Now beyond this is speculation, but the hints(we don't have anything nearly solid enough to call evidence) points to:
-Someone adopted in the last mid-turn during Plague Trials(whic was only 20-30 years ago), when we took in entire wrecked nomad families, including some humiliated chiefs, and then scattered them across the population, triggering the True City transition.
-Such a person would be personally familiar with mass adoption politics.
-They would belong to a social group which is disenfranchised by lacking generational accumulated favors and honors. Of course, they can earn/marry their way up, but that's cold comfort to an ambitious young man.
-They would belong to a social group which has lingering ties spanning multiple clans, because we probably deliberately split them up so they would assimilate properly.
--Valleyhome converting into a True City meant that the split was less of one than it would appear on the surface, as while on
-They would belong to a social group which had people die, on purpose, to test the Sacred Warding's effectiveness on the chiefs/shamans say so.
It's almost a textbook Lost Nomad Prince story.
Pure storytime mode from here:
-Say one of the tribal chiefs we broke with the Western Wall had a son around eight years old. Note that the nomads have higher gender equality than we do, the chief's wife is probably an equal partner in leadership matters.
-Obviously we wouldn't split up mother and child, that's wrong. We send them over to the big city where they get adopted by one of the warrior families. The mother teaches the son everything she knows, he joins the warriors.
-Going out into the city, he meets the others. Most of them probably don't really give a damn, but there's going to be a bunch of dissatisfied youths because that's what they DO. They come up with a Plan. It's in the best legacies of the people, after all the last guy who did it was made a provincial chief. They just need to exchange favors with a subchief who'd normally find it hard to get elected, have him lean on his contacts after election to authorize a trade mission. Ambitious, slightly dodgy, but all legit by Ymaryn standards.
-Then recruiting, get the warriors lined up, recruit from his bros promising great loot and status to come, take the trade mission and provoke a first strike, then go to the King and present him with a new province on a silver platter.
This takes no malice on the offender's part, to them, it's just a clever guy taking advantage of the system to get himself some glory.
It's also too neat to be true entirely, but considering last time we had similar events we spawned Crwiid in nearly the exact same process...
Also you missed the group of warriors who signed up because they honestly thought it was a legit war mission. Whoever it was missed the memo that we had no Casus Belli, or thought it was for the greater good to go manufacture one.
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Clearly our God desires war!
I told you all that taking Quality for the Honor trait was a shitty idea.
(the change to an oligarchy was caused by that trait, as a reminder)
maximillian
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You know maybe those folks don't just vote and leave, maybe they read all the arguments and are unconvinced of the majority decision, and thus they rather be the defeated right minority over the victorious wrong majority. (right and wrong by prespictive)
Or maybe they just want to be contrarian, or they picked a hill to die on, which is a favourite of the thread.
Or maybe they just want to be contrarian, or they picked a hill to die on, which is a favourite of the thread.
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BungieONI
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I didn't though? When I said true conquest mission that's who I meant.
E: Unless you mean something else?I think my problem with this storyline, and only the story time, is this
"-Then recruiting, get the warriors lined up, recruit from his bros promising great loot and status to come, take the trade mission and provoke a first strike, then go to the King and present him with a new province on a silver platter."
We have seen no evidence of said person. Also as a humorous aside that is a very textbook young hothead plan.
As to the issue of the sub chief I see no reason it could not be a case that they manipulated events to get themselves a sub chief position but then fucked up and got caught. Why? One is that we are not inflexible enough to not accept new blood and they could have come from the outside of the system. Two this is a sub chief position, which sounds very low on the totem pole, so I figure it is easy to get into if you are intelligent enough. Three, if they did start outside the chief system they do not have the problem of clan line loyalties clouding the idea maker.
So an intelligent person makes a lot of friends, gets them to move to the clan because they say these friends will get benefits, and the overflow plan is enacted. From there it works a little too well and we get the case that the person was elected sub chief, but got caught because they weren't smart enough to clean up evidence or get a "friend" in place instead to deflect blame.
You have a good chance of being right in the idea that the overflow problem, the clanless, and the warrior fuck up are the doings of one or maybe a small group of snakes. Probably a small group due to complexity and the amount of different connections and crossed social spheres I imagine would need to be made to pull this off.
I simply need more solid proof before I will say that the overflow is connected to the clanless event. It is a valid way for that to happen, but not the only one since other means of corruption were mentioned if not extrapolated on. We should probably ask AN some questions about what our king and advisors know about how the clanless got clanless. What's their various stories? Do they make sense?
The clanless thing being connected to the warriors I can see. They'd make a great core of loyal people to get that bullshit off the ground.
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maximillian
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And folks stop pretending that the decision to mess with Clan structures and laws is anything but tomfoolery and that's its somehow good in the long term. We should switch to districts or guilds as soon the option is there.
I find it especially strange since so many are against aristocrats yet they like clanisim, even though clans have nobles who, thanks to our vote, can harness the full power of the Clan for thier advancement.
As for a there being a conspiracy, do keep in mind that history is stranger than fiction, many a time happenstance caused chaos, as people refuse to believe that something so simple could be true.
I find it especially strange since so many are against aristocrats yet they like clanisim, even though clans have nobles who, thanks to our vote, can harness the full power of the Clan for thier advancement.
As for a there being a conspiracy, do keep in mind that history is stranger than fiction, many a time happenstance caused chaos, as people refuse to believe that something so simple could be true.
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BungieONI
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Hey @Academia Nut, do our advisors know if the clanless come from many different clans? How did the majority get to be clanless, beyond the gap in adoption time? Are a significant fraction of them clanless due to this overflow problem we saw?
And finally can we tell if any of the clanless ended up heading south with the trade caravan that caused the Uber-Screw Up?
And finally can we tell if any of the clanless ended up heading south with the trade caravan that caused the Uber-Screw Up?
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