Not true! The Ymaryn use composite bows, which already avoid the size issue for high draw-strength bows.
Currently we're going for maximum power bows for our infantry remember? Composite bows could be made large as well, the main limitation at present is how swole the archer is. It'd take a minor step in the other direction to go from the equivalent of .44 magnums to 0.09s.
 
And this makes all female horse archers a improvement and a likelyhood. No testicles to paste.

Though the breasticles might get in the way. Dunno!
Chest bindings probably are a thing. Not such a devastating issue since undergoing a lot of physical development would generally produce modest breast sizes due to lower body fat and higher muscle.
What's your estimate on getting light cavalry and then horse archers in number of updates?
Too hard to call, we don't get innovation rolls unless we USE them, so...probably around when the next Waagh shows up? Light cavalry probably won't take too long in absolute terms once the horse selective breeding kicks in, but horse archers...unless our people are practically born in the saddle like the nomads or a really dedicated and expensive elite, it's a long ways off.
 
Not just weight. Width as well. Currently it's basically teen girls wearing maybe 3-5 kg of iron riding on a blanket. An adult male warrior(noting greater height and muscle density) is going to weigh something like 20% more naked.

Not sure if the horses actually have barding yet, since that's REALLY heavy if you want the horse to protect more than a bit on the vitals.
And then of course, you need to train horses not to panic at blood.
Wow, is iron scale really only a few kg? I'd been imagining the iron scale was a sizable percentage of the weight...and maybe its barding in the vein of our previous, non-metal armor? Because it does specifically say armor for "her and the horse"...
Ah yeah, you'd actually have to partially reverse the archery developments to have bows which shoot well from the limited space of horseback, then without stirrups...it's a hyper elite endeavor to hit ANYTHING at all while bouncing up and down and moving fast enough to generate a breeze.

Also some serious testicular fortitude to fight from horseback until you have the saddle. Quite distracting.
Note that, per the People's Panoply informational threadmark, we don't just use our best bows; mine, i dont know if either "unitary recurve or flatbows" are more suited to horse archery than the "most famous" composite bows or the occasional longbow that we apparently use, because i dont know much about the subject, so...
Depends on which one you're pushing against. As long as she gets to Kingship by means of achievement, gender norms will take pushback(though the messengers are useful enough that they'd be getting SOME pushback just to have the horse messenger units at all). But the militarization of our culture over time is something I'd strongly like to avoid, especially reinforcing the already easy to bolster precedent of making successful generals king.
I mean, another female king would be great no matter what, yeah, but:
1. I think the study option is way less likely to lead to her being king
2. shamans and priests are already our most gender balanced group; having an amazing mystic revelation come from a woman isn't going to shock our people out of gender norms...honestly the only surprise there would be if she's not queer, since our people's stereotype for "amazing mystic scholar" is "queer and mysterious", without much prejudice for gender.
3. the military, on the other hand, is the biggest source of patriarchy right now, and so pushing back on that front would be much stronger than even "she's amazing at magic, make her king!"


We can only do one thing, so I wanted to seperate the votes to do more than one thing from those that are for only one action.
...But those votes aren't "to do more than one thing", they're specifically to use the built in approval voting system that we have to say "i'm fine with either of these two winning"?
 
Warning: Who needs gunpowder when you have modboxes?
who needs gunpowder when you have modboxes? @Reader of all first you argued that not voting for Ruwynna would lead to gender inequality, when you were challenged for this claim, you provided a long list of unsubstantiated claims and insisted that this would create discontent with the average Ymaryn, when this was challenged, you moved instead to argue that no one would trust Ruwynna despite a complete lack of evidence or support for your claims. When your claims about gunpowder were challenged, you moved to insist that no, it would not be enough to make her king despite having your argument challenged directly with an example of the same that did allow the Spirit Talkers to rule their civilization through illusions and stage magic. You have been shifting goalposts and refused to substantiate your postulates repeatedly; this is not enough for 25 points, but you will receive a warning for marginal behaviour.

Have a good day.
 
Note that, per the People's Panoply informational threadmark, we don't just use our best bows; mine, i dont know if either "unitary recurve or flatbows" are more suited to horse archery than the "most famous" composite bows or the occasional longbow that we apparently use, because i dont know much about the subject, so...
Let me check...

Unitary re-curve bows are actually exactly what you want for horse archery.
 
Isn't that only for turn votes though?
Pretty sure its always the case...

Also, @Academia Nut would it be possible to have our next war turn feature a PoV from the enemy? I'd love to see the reaction to our starmetal clad elites, as well as our mysterious and probably magical horse taming girl shaman-warriors or whatever they perceive the couriers to be :p (Also it might help me understand what our war actually looks like atm)
 
Pretty sure its always the case...

Also, @Academia Nut would it be possible to have our next war turn feature a PoV from the enemy? I'd love to see the reaction to our starmetal clad elites, as well as our mysterious and probably magical horse taming girl shaman-warriors or whatever they perceive the couriers to be :p (Also it might help me understand what our war actually looks like atm)
I like this idea too! Sounds like a lot of fun!

Pretty sure its always the case...

Also, @Academia Nut would it be possible to have our next war turn feature a PoV from the enemy? I'd love to see the reaction to our starmetal clad elites, as well as our mysterious and probably magical horse taming girl shaman-warriors or whatever they perceive the couriers to be :p (Also it might help me understand what our war actually looks like atm)
Also I actually wonder how close we are to a Mongol Bow equivalent (a re-curve composite bow) or the more advanced Manchu Bow...

I think we already cooked up the first? Need to check with AN.
 
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Wow, is iron scale really only a few kg? I'd been imagining the iron scale was a sizable percentage of the weight...and maybe its barding in the vein of our previous, non-metal armor? Because it does specifically say armor for "her and the horse"...
Remember this was the earliest version, iron scales sewn or riveted onto leather or cloth backing, not the full scalemail that you might be thinking of(which would be a horribly expensive thing to make considering each scale has to be individually forged and then attached by smiths).

Generally speaking armor which was not articulated like plate weighs a lot less than people imagine, because there's only so much dead weight you could wear before you couldn't fight for shit. So in the case of our early scale armor, you'd probably see something like a heavy jacket.
Note that, per the People's Panoply informational threadmark, we don't just use our best bows; mine, i dont know if either "unitary recurve or flatbows" are more suited to horse archery than the "most famous" composite bows or the occasional longbow that we apparently use, because i dont know much about the subject, so...
That's mostly the thing about not having a unified or standard set of weapons. People are using whatever weapons fit.
I mean, another female king would be great no matter what, yeah, but:
1. I think the study option is way less likely to lead to her being king
2. shamans and priests are already our most gender balanced group; having an amazing mystic revelation come from a woman isn't going to shock our people out of gender norms...honestly the only surprise there would be if she's not queer, since our people's stereotype for "amazing mystic scholar" is "queer and mysterious", without much prejudice for gender.
3. the military, on the other hand, is the biggest source of patriarchy right now, and so pushing back on that front would be much stronger than even "she's amazing at magic, make her king!"
1 - Agreed
2 - Even so, a woman holding the position will be significant.
3 - That's kind of the issue, the military is an inherently male dominated profession, even with recent pushbacks, it will ALWAYS recenter on male dominant, as physical advantages(and population expendability) are very significant factors. Which in the long run only reinforces the gender imbalance, because it's sending a message that a woman can become king if she's basically a man and thus not really normal.

Think on it:
-Administrative success -> Kingship - Equal opportunity
-Intellectual success -> Kingship - Equal opportunity
-Diplomatic success -> Kingship - Unequal opportunities(neighboring culture issues make it difficult for a female Trader King because that depends on marriage links)
-Martial success -> Kingship - Unequal opportunities(warriors are, and will continue to be male dominated indefinitely even if not exclusive)
 
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So, On Light Cavalry:

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years(possibly a couple centuries) till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men. My opinion is that it will take about three more updates (this coming main and the next main) before we see them, but this is intuition driven speculation.

We have decent arms to make them really scary, but I figure what we really need are curved wide swords like scimitars to really make it nasty.

We also need the Saddle I think to make this wide spread. It is not necessary for them to be created, however, to be wide spread and probably cost less you need this at least I think.

The Stirrup will also help immensely and allow even more devastating charges as the rider can stay affixed more easily on impact.


On Horse Archers:

We already should have the proper bows. We have re-curve and composite and these were the types of bows you need for this.

We do not have the Saddle or the Stirrup. Both of these are needed for Horse Archers to become more than a very very rare elite unit. However, they are not explicitly required to my understanding, you just have to be a bit insane to try to fire a bow from a blanket covered horse.

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men.



Basically, we need light cavalry first.



Anything pop out to anyone as immediately incorrect?
 
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We do still have it. Wouldn't make sense to get rid of it.

Art went Art -> Myst -> Old!Diplo

Now I think it goes:

Art -> Wealth -> Mysticism -> New!Diplo
The original flow for our non-martial stats was
Econ <-> Diplo <-> Art <-> Myst,
with right-flow (and it's transitive decedents) prioritized over left-flow.

A natural extension of that would be
Econ <-> Wealth <-> Diplo <-> Art <-> Myst
And that would still be transitive. But AN said that wasn't quite right. Art flows to Wealth before Myst now, which means... what? If Art flows to Wealth and then immediately to Myst, that isn't transitive, since Wealth flows to Diplo before Myst. Now, if Art flows to Wealth, Dyplo and Myst in THAT ORDER, then we'd have transitivity. In such a case, here is what the diagram would look like:


Most of the picture is self explanatory. The only tricky bit is the priorities for the overflow of the main complex in the middle. The overriding, "0th" priority is to fill up everything in the complex. Once Art, Wealth, and Diplo are all full, the 1st priority is to overflow to Mysticism, the 2nd priority is to overflow to Econ, and the 3rd priority is to overflow to Martial.

@Academia Nut - is this correct?
 
We do not have the Saddle or the Stirrup. Both of these are needed for Horse Archers to become more than a very very rare elite unit. However, they are not explicitly required to my understanding, you just have to be a bit insane to try to fire a bow from a blanket covered horse.
If we have invented battle lines for infanterie, horse archers could start as fast mobile archer units, shooting from a resting horse over the heads of the battle line.
 
If we have invented battle lines for infanterie, horse archers could start as fast mobile archer units, shooting from a resting horse over the heads of the battle line.
Well kinda yeah, but in the heat of battle, if you have a bow and the enemy is charging at you and you are on a horse then firing that thing regardless of what your horse is doing is gonna be kinda instinctive. At least I'd think so. So basically those items are Anti-Stupidity measures.

That said your idea has merit and is probably how our very first horse archers are gonna do things, which will be quickly phased out.
 
If we have invented battle lines for infanterie, horse archers could start as fast mobile archer units, shooting from a resting horse over the heads of the battle line.
On Horse Archers:

We already should have the proper bows. We have re-curve and composite and these were the types of bows you need for this.

We do not have the Saddle or the Stirrup. Both of these are needed for Horse Archers to become more than a very very rare elite unit. However, they are not explicitly required to my understanding, you just have to be a bit insane to try to fire a bow from a blanket covered horse.

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men.
or we might start with archer dragoons, riding into position to deliver dismounted volleys, then remounting and riding off to a new position to fire again
 
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I understand most of the debate regarding the choice has largely died down, but I just wanted to voice my opinion with regard to the choices.

So this turn we got confirmation that Rulwyna was in fact a heroic character, and that our choice to have Rulhuthyn raise her likely gave her the push into heroic martial versus some other trait. The war against the Hathatyn is going reasonably well, with our technology advantage (iron) and heroic leader mitigating what is likely more advanced tactics and their own heroic leader as well.

The main question now it seems is what Rulwyna should do. AN has given us four choices, and I would argue the four choices, while all viable, are not equal.

I'll begin with what is probably the worst of them:
[] Run away to the north
So, this essentially has Rulwyna impose a self-exile on herself, heading to the nomads who are apparently "peaceful" (for now). This choice "fights" against the establishment of hereditary rule, but I think everyone can see the huge downfalls with this choice. If this choice had been instead to go to the Stallion Tribes or some periphery state, this might have been an interesting as none of the technology / skill would leak out, but as it stands it just seems like we're gifting the nomads primitive horseback riding and a heroic martial leader. While it has been stated that the horses are only able to act as couriers (and the occasional elite horse archer), the selective pressures imposed by the nomads will likely raise large enough horses for horseback archery much faster than us, if only by necessity.

[] Begin diplomacy with the Highlanders
This is the second diplomacy option, and an option that seems a lot better than the nomads, but still is quite poor (in my opinion). While it is true that Lolwyna likely did not gain as much significance because of her poor diplomacy skills, this option will likely only have a limited chance to increase the diplomacy of Rulwyna. The narrative strongly hint at the "diplomatic" mission being just marrying Rulwyna to the prince in the hopes of consolidating the two kingdoms, and with HK's heavily patriarchal government system I don't think they'll take to Rulwyna being any more than a queen-consort. Sure, we might get a few offsprings that would be able to claim the throne to the HK in a generation's time, but this also then reinforces hereditary (versus meritocratic) rule for us. Furthermore, that's not even accounting for if we fail the diplomacy roll and causing a possible diplomatic incident that we don't necessarily need.

As for the voters who believe that this option will be the first steps to establishing vassalage over the HK, I again ask if you are willing to switch to a hereditary system to do so. Diploannexing another country requires integration and at least observance of their customs (at first). Personal unions indicate that the ruler is not simply the king of an enlarged state, but rather he/she is the king of each respective country. As such, they must observe the customs of each country, and can't simply go in and start changing all of the rules of the PU'ed country. If you want to successfully diploannex the HK, you'd need to establish something that can shift their social values even more closely to ours without affecting our social values overmuch (yes, the codification of laws was good, but in the end they codified their own laws, not ours): organised religion would definitely be a driving force, and given the proximity if we build up our religious authority / pilgrimage the HK would likely be the first to feel its effects. So while I support the concept of eventual expansion, I don't think simply sending off our Martial/Mystical(?) hero off on a diplomacy mission will lead down this path (or at least down the path to our favour).

[] Forge a new path of war
As you are likely seeing from how I'm writing this, I support the science option. However, I would not be against the martial option either. While yes, it is redundant in that we are winning against the Hathatyn already, war is war and one can never be too sure. While I am not sure why people think that choosing this will alleviate the martial excess (if anything, this will lead to new innovations that might bump our martial scores even higher. We have main/secondary war missions to send out people to fight), I also concur that as long as we can keep stability up the martial excess will remain a problem and not a disaster (the mega-project "The Games" I think will help with this, providing a way to integrate martial training and ideals into a more social aspect). Furthermore, as AN mentioned we are "schizophrenic" in our technology, and I think that is especially true in martial technology. We have been (I hope) leading in material advances, first with recurve bows, then chariots, and then iron, but I think our military tactics are lacking. Sure, we have massed formation, but we need to have martial discipline and a coherent command/logistics network if we want to properly leverage these advantages. Right now, this war is the perfect chance for us to look past anti-raiding tactics and focus on strategic development against an (supposedly) easy enemy.

And if I'm allowed to be blindly optimistic, I'm honestly just waiting for proper pike formations. Chances are not in this war, but...

[X] Attempt to finish her mother's work
Yeah, I'm choosing science. I understand some people are concerned about how jumpstarting technology can actually hurt in the long run, as you don't research all the things in the middle, but I frankly don't think this is actual gunpowder. Note that it said Lolwyna was "burned" and that it may have had something to do with fire and water. Naptha is a likely guess, or just some kind of flammable liquid. I suppose we shall see but as PowerofMind stated this can be a huge boon to our religious authority. By showing that we have the power to create "unnatural" phenomena, we can effectively "one-up" any local religion (unless they have something similar, in which case we'll at least have a drawing point). If nothing else this is yet another step forwards in alchemy (ever so slowly approaching chemistry, although that is still millennia off).

For people who don't think it's a good idea to send a martial hero off to do research, it is stated that Rulwyna seemed to have the raw knowledge to carry on, although she is lacking in experience with the research. So while it isn't likely that she'll make an immediate breakthrough (barring lucky rolls), so long as she doesn't catastrophically fail we'll likely at least know what Lolwyna was working with. If anything this will reinforce the meritocracy and further drive the distinction between heredity and meritocracy: yes, Rulwyna is the descendant of the previous king, but she has risen up to her currently position of her merit. Instead of currying favour with the nobles in other nations, she is utilising her skills to bring benefit to the Ymmri.

Oh, and the whole gender debacle. This choice (and the war choice) will likely delay the encroachment of the patriarchy for another handful of turns and may even secure a permanent spot for women in warfare/logistics. I personally don't get why everyone is so fundamentally against the patriarchy, especially in a Bronze/Iron-age society. Infant death rates are still atrocious and forced marriage (whether by force itself or by coercion) is commonplace. Women have to give birth to maintain population rates, and we have seen this throughout our civilisation's history (even in the earlier turns, when we were supposedly less patriarchal, even the king had three to four kids of which two died). So long as we can recognise exceptional talent regardless of sex (Lolwyna and Rulwyna is a good example) and maybe even get a legacy that acknowledges this, I'll be happy.
 
or we might start with archer dragoons, riding into position to deliver dismounted volleys, then remounting and riding off to a new position
This too.

Same might apply to our Light Cavalry. The horse is just meant to get the warrior there.

The original flow for our non-martial stats was
Econ <-> Diplo <-> Art <-> Myst,
with right-flow (and it's transitive decedents) prioritized over left-flow.

A natural extension of that would be
Econ <-> Wealth <-> Diplo <-> Art <-> Myst
And that would still be transitive. But AN said that wasn't quite right. Art flows to Wealth before Myst now, which means... what? If Art flows to Wealth and then immediately to Myst, that isn't transitive, since Wealth flows to Diplo before Myst. Now, if Art flows to Wealth, Dyplo and Myst in THAT ORDER, then we'd have transitivity. In such a case, here is what the diagram would look like:


Most of the picture is self explanatory. The only tricky bit is the priorities for the overflow of the main complex in the middle. The overriding, "0th" priority is to fill up everything in the complex. Once Art, Wealth, and Diplo are all full, the 1st priority is to overflow to Mysticism, the 2nd priority is to overflow to Econ, and the 3rd priority is to overflow to Martial.

@Academia Nut - is this correct?
Could be it does this.

Econ <->Wealth<->Diplo<->Wealth<->Art<->Mysticism


Which looks broken AF.
 
So, On Light Cavalry:

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years(possibly a couple centuries) till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men. My opinion is that it will take about three more updates (this coming main and the next main) before we see them, but this is intuition driven speculation.

We have decent arms to make them really scary, but I figure what we really need are curved wide swords like scimitars to really make it nasty.

We also need the Saddle I think to make this wide spread. It is not necessary for them to be created, however, to be wide spread and probably cost less you need this at least I think.

The Stirrup will also help immensely and allow even more devastating charges as the rider can stay affixed more easily on impact.


On Horse Archers:

We already should have the proper bows. We have re-curve and composite and these were the types of bows you need for this.

We do not have the Saddle or the Stirrup. Both of these are needed for Horse Archers to become more than a very very rare elite unit. However, they are not explicitly required to my understanding, you just have to be a bit insane to try to fire a bow from a blanket covered horse.

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men.



Basically, we need light cavalry first.



Anything pop out to anyone as immediately incorrect?
With a Hero available to push advances and the Ymaryn's wealth of craftsmen, it is entirely possible for Rulwyna to develop saddles and stirrups all at once, which would be a dramatic leap forward in military capability.
 
So, On Light Cavalry:

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men. My opinion is that it will take about three more updates (this coming main and the next main) before we see them, but this is intuition driven speculation.

We have decent arms to make them really scary, but I figure what we really need are curved wide swords like scimitars to really make it nasty.

We also need the Saddle I think to make this wide spread. It is not necessary for them to be created, however, to be wide spread and probably cost less you need this at least I think.

The Stirrup will also help immensely and allow even more devastating charges as the rider can stay affixed more easily on impact.
A couple of things here:
-Horse breeding programs will take a lot of time to bear fruit. Currently we're just selecting and identifying rideable horses from the rodeo games and the chariot pools, but once the existing horse supply peaks out, we're down for breeding programs on the scale of several centuries(i.e. 5 main turns or so) to refine it. This will probably go faster if we spam cavalry unit actions, but that runs into two problems:
--Martial at cap
--Pushing hard on cavalry means leaving our infantry to lag behind again, which stalls the evolution of We Have Reserves.

-Weapon wise, no true swords yet at all.
--Scimitars were fairly effective, but mostly for riding down lightly armored infantry on plains. It's a lowland sort of weapon. It's also fairly risky, since to use a sword from horseback you'd have to be pretty close, risking being unhorsed in the melee.
--Polearms were the route that cavalry fighting cavalry or heavier armored infantry took. Our spears work fine, but lances require the saddle to actually use to full effect(since a seated lance strikes with the full momentum of the horse, while a spear you ride into the enemy is just as likely to unhorse YOU on impact). Slashing polearms...someone's probably going to figure out something with a scythe being reshaped to a more practical form eventually.

On Horse Archers:

We already should have the proper bows. We have re-curve and composite and these were the types of bows you need for this.

We do not have the Saddle or the Stirrup. Both of these are needed for Horse Archers to become more than a very very rare elite unit. However, they are not explicitly required to my understanding, you just have to be a bit insane to try to fire a bow from a blanket covered horse.

We have sort-of good sized horses. It will take several more years till we get horses strong enough to lift grown women in battle regalia on the massed attack, and even longer for men.
You need two things: Riding from an extremely young age, coupled to substantial talent in archery.

Nomadic cultures basically had everyone ride to some extent(and enough animal to people ratio that just about everyone could have a turn rather than being the ludicrous expense it is to settled peoples), which meant that their first requirement is easily met, and they just needed to sort for those who could shoot worth a damn.

For us...we'd probably need to spend a LOT to raise horse archers.
 
or we might start with archer dragoons, riding into position to deliver dismounted volleys, then remounting and riding off to a new position to fire again
I was thinking - we already have volley fire (== indirect fire?), so - the closest analog I could come up with was the one I posted above.
Dragoons had the advantage of stable firing position and the archer's could use the long range version of bows.
 
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