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Paths of Civilization

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Abby Normal said:
...I would be very amused if the empire just kept changing overlords; the TS storm Xohyr and displace the Xoh priests with themselves, leaving the TH nobles alive. Then a century later, the Swamp Folk assassinate the emperors until one amenable to their tastes arises...unfortunately for them, the first heir to do so was married to the niece of the Highland King, and so a couple generations later the HK become the leading partner in a personal union...at which point Rulwyna's 5-century plan comes to fruition and a random yeoman farmer from Southshore becomes heir to the Highland-Thunder-Death-Swamp Empire :V
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And the last one is something we never expected to happen. Completely out of the blue.
 
Candesce said:
If we really want fine pottery, finally taking that [main] Art Patronage we keep ignoring is a better idea than spending several stability on it.
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That's reasonable.

Candesce said:
And I'd rather our civ find out about the problems with private land ownership through Wildcat Prospecting than through the Distribute Land action.
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They won't. The guy who owns the mine will benefit, his descendants will benefit, and the people in charge won't go "Oh no look at the evils of private land", they'll instead go "Wow, look how much he's benefiting from private land. We should get private land too."

Maybe they might not go that way, but it's better not to risk it. Once we fall into that trap we're not getting out. Our people have also had a long time to see the effects of private land by looking at other civs and they have yet to see the inherent ills it causes.
 
Abby Normal said:
...I would be very amused if the empire just kept changing overlords; the TS storm Xohyr and displace the Xoh priests with themselves, leaving the TH nobles alive. Then a century later, the Swamp Folk assassinate the emperors until one amenable to their tastes arises...unfortunately for them, the first heir to do so was married to the niece of the Highland King, and so a couple generations later the HK become the leading partner in a personal union...at which point Rulwyna's 5-century plan comes to fruition and a random yeoman farmer from Southshore becomes heir to the Highland-Thunder-Death-Swamp Empire :V
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Don't forget the Metal Workers completing their transcontinental pipeline to unleash the fury of their perpetual fire upon all their enemies.
 
With the vote locked, it's tempting to make tentative plans for next turn, but with the Wrath of Takei to be unleashed, there's really no telling what we'll have to deal with. We can expect some kind of upset to the status quo, anyway.
 
Umi-san said:
If you can pull together a coalition for the invasion of the lowlands I'll support you.
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Full invasion, trying to monopolise the place? Nope, I don't feel like freaking out all our neighbours and having everyone turn against us for fear we'll become unstoppable.

But claiming our own piece of it, thus making it harder for anyone else to unite it - yes, I'm down with that. Starting by settling Redhills, which is a great idea anyway because it increases our provincial actions. Then get a foothold on the lowlands and heavily fortify it.

If nothing else, this will provide us with a staging ground to respond in the unfortunate case where someone else manages to unite the place and must be taken down.

ETA Also, if we send mercenaries to the TS, then having a friendly base closer to them will be a good thing. Faster resupply (sure, they get paid, but only we can replace iron weapons), faster access to any technology they pick up, more opportunities to reinforce them or capitalise on their gains.
 
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ThrawnCA said:
But claiming our own piece of it, thus making it harder for anyone else to unite it - yes, I'm down with that. Starting by settling Redhills, which is a great idea anyway because it increases our provincial actions. Then get a foothold on the lowlands and heavily fortify it.
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Given our only other path into the lowlands is through the Highlanders -

Well, if I thought we had a chance in hell of pulling it off, I'd be for that. But as it is, I favour Redhills too.

But as this is a multi-turn project, I want stability shored up first.
 
Huh, something i just realized...with the new wealth changes, all the study actions got cheaper mysticism wise, so now the only actions that aren't covered by our library mysticism refund are study alchemy, building more libraries, the census megaproject. Midturn actions and golden age innovations can do so as well, but are pretty uncommon. Combined with our temple +1/turn, we're going to have a semi-permanent overflow drip into art starting in a few turns :)

also, on the library issue, even though more refund isn't super important, for narrative reasons, i'd like to end up with 3 libraries. The current one in the temple in sacred forest, one in valley home as part of the palace, and if possible one in redshore after we make it a true city. That way, we've got three distinct power groups (shamans, admin/king, and... guild masters? powerful merchants? hmm...) each managing a library, which should help with the whole "you record history in one place, entirely by way of a group with a specific set of political and cultural biases.
 
pbluekan said:
Sounds like we should start integrating the western wall so it doesn't diverge/and pull an America on our Britain.
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To be honest, I don't think we have to worry too much about the Western Wall breaking away, since they don't seem to be as culturally divergent as say, the stallion tribes, and are also more likely to stay since we have lord's loyalty.

Plus, unlike America and Britain, I'm pretty sure that we are directly connected by land route to the Western Wall, which will further disincentivize them breaking away.
 
On Western Wall - see everything I've said about settling the steppes.

When it comes right down to it, I'd rather risk losing Lord's Loyalty to something getting smashed by a Waaagh than Divine Stewards - and if they break away, good riddance.

Let them try to fight off the next nomad Hero on their own.
 
Candesce said:
On Western Wall - see everything I've said about settling the steppes.

When it comes right down to it, I'd rather risk losing Lord's Loyalty to something getting smashed by a Waaagh than Divine Stewards - and if they break away, good riddance.

Let them try to fight off the next nomad Hero on their own.
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How do figure we would lose DS?
[Curiosity]
 
Candesce said:
But as this is a multi-turn project, I want stability shored up first.
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Fine with me. If we use Enforce Justice, the extra Centralization will counteract the effect of expansion. If we use something else, then we'll have enough Centralization room to put down trails to the new settlements.

And if we send our mercenaries to stir the lowlands pot in the meantime, there may well be stability drops there, that we should be prepared to eat. Remember, a thousand years ago or more, we had the opportunity to potentially collapse the Dead Priests with massive refugee drain, but it would have put too much strain on our Stability at the time?
 
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Academia Nut said:
The more successful civs tend to realize right quick the necessity of centralization and will often take cues from the People with regards to that. While few use the land management or elective nobility, they do tend to maintain large amounts of Crown Land and the Highlanders have something of a parliament, while the Xoh use a strong religious advisory council (although that is in part how they got the Thunder Horse to switch their capital to Xohyr) that can influence which heir becomes king.
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Interesting, so the Xoh surrounded the Thunder Horse with religious advisors(wonder how they got there), who controlled what they knew of the world, and then a little nudge to suggest that they should move closer to their gods?
Academia Nut said:
*Glances at historical civilizations that leveraged trade advantages to hire out massive mercenary armies*

Total coincidence, honest.
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Tended to collapse rather abruptly though...
Academia Nut said:
Hmmm... yeah, the Trelli are doing quite well for themselves, and noting your entrance into the market have started bringing in new stuff, both to trade with you and to compete with you.
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Trade Post Ho!

Very tempting!
Candesce said:
If we really want fine pottery, finally taking that [main] Art Patronage we keep ignoring is a better idea than spending several stability on it.
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Reminder that the Xohyssiri are something like a dozen Main Art Patronages ahead of us, they were making such good pottery people gave up their neighbors for sacrifice to get access to it ever since the days of the WC.
Abby Normal said:
Huh, something i just realized...with the new wealth changes, all the study actions got cheaper mysticism wise, so now the only actions that aren't covered by our library mysticism refund are study alchemy, building more libraries, the census megaproject. Midturn actions and golden age innovations can do so as well, but are pretty uncommon. Combined with our temple +1/turn, we're going to have a semi-permanent overflow drip into art starting in a few turns :)
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Observed this earlier, wealth costs aren't too bad because they generate Art and our Art don't have many outlets so it just turns back into Wealth.
 
Abby Normal said:
Huh, something i just realized...with the new wealth changes, all the study actions got cheaper mysticism wise, so now the only actions that aren't covered by our library mysticism refund are study alchemy, building more libraries, the census megaproject. Midturn actions and golden age innovations can do so as well, but are pretty uncommon. Combined with our temple +1/turn, we're going to have a semi-permanent overflow drip into art starting in a few turns :)

also, on the library issue, even though more refund isn't super important, for narrative reasons, i'd like to end up with 3 libraries. The current one in the temple in sacred forest, one in valley home as part of the palace, and if possible one in redshore after we make it a true city. That way, we've got three distinct power groups (shamans, admin/king, and... guild masters? powerful merchants? hmm...) each managing a library, which should help with the whole "you record history in one place, entirely by way of a group with a specific set of political and cultural biases.
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That seems to be favoring the South way too much. If anything, I prefer we build a library up in the northern provinces.
 
BungieONI said:
How do figure we would lose DS?
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Mm. I'm trying to find the AN posts that lead up to this thought, but that's likely to take a while, so here's the theory sans cites:

We can lose traits if we're not meeting their conditions; see Sacred War. Repeatedly triggering the negatives of a trait is something that we know can evolve a trait if circumstances are right, but if they're not right our people are just going to get fed up with the ideals in question.

As such, if we take too many stability hits from losing territory in rapid succession, I expect Divine Stewards to suffer for it. "Why should we improve the land if we're not going to get to keep it?"

veekie said:
Reminder that the Xohyssiri are something like a dozen Main Art Patronages ahead of us, they were making such good pottery people gave up their neighbors for sacrifice to get access to it ever since the days of the WC.
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While true, not all of those actions are going to have produced tech advances - and between Love of Wisdom and our generally higher tech level now compared to their tech level then, our actions are going to be worth more than theirs.

Mostly, though, stability's enough of a pain to get now that I think it's worth more than one [main] to us, and it's not like we'd get everything they know about pottery from a CA hit, anyway.
 
Candesce said:
"Why should we improve the land if we're not going to get to keep it?"
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But... nomads don't take over land? They just kill everyone and force any survivors to pay tribute. I can see that triggering Greater Justice, but the nomads don't care about the land itself, so our Divine Stewards trait shouldn't proc.
 
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Citino said:
But... nomads don't take over land?
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They do burn improvements, though.

Academia Nut said:
The north burns, the surviving People huddled into the settlements with walls, barely scraping by with fish and grain imported via boat, their warriors dead and chariots smashed or captured. Everything not safely protected by stone walls has been burned or carried off, depending on how valuable and transportable they are.
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Candesce said:
Mostly, though, stability's enough of a pain to get now that I think it's worth more than one [main] to us, and it's not like we'd get everything they know about pottery from a CA hit, anyw
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It is under most methods... But EJ is stupidly good, especially with our new CA trait, that it's worth slightly less than a main so long as we can keep our walls up.

EJ+Survey+Forest = +1 stability and whatever bonuses we get from the mine. It's ridiculously good.
EJ+Distribue Land = +1 stability, +1 Wealth.

EJ is also narratively so much better than RO. RO is an FBI investigation followed by either killing or exiling those who are doing wrong. EJ is sending out cops and inspectors to make sure people are following laws to begin with (and then bringing cases to the King if it's not obvious)
 
ThrawnCA said:
They do burn improvements, though.
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yeah, that'd piss off our people, but I don't think it'd be a full DS trigger. More a 'fuck the nomads, get justice' thing.

DS is meant to trigger if someone steals our land. So if the Hathatyn took out our march, that could trigger it. But nomads give no fucks about staying on land, so DS is probably not endangered.
Candesce said:
Hmm. A fair point.

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that our infrastructure or wonders getting torn up could also trigger it, but we haven't built that much up north, either.
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ouch, losing a megaproject would hurt, especially if it was a land built one like the canal or sacred forest.

Lucky our megaprojects were mostly built in the well protected south.
 
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