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Paths of Civilization

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veekie said:
Trade Post Ho!
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So...the Trelli's response to a new economic power is to trade with them. This has potential.

Now that we no longer have CoT, we don't have to engage in trade war. However, they likely have it and will thus see us as a threat. I wonder whether there is a mechanic that will let us cooperate? Shared market dominance? They have some kind of new yellow dye; if we could swap that knowledge for our new techniques, both nations would be able to far outstrip all neighbours.

ETA: Wait, what if we helped them to build up Glass trade (since we're not close to dominating that anyway) and thus take a potshot at the Xohyssiri? We know the Xoh have CoT, unless they've evolved it, so there's a good chance we can induce a Stability drop and vacuum up refugees. And this time, let's make sure we have enough Stability ourselves to vamp them hard.
 
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notgreat said:
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.
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Only true if we're willing to regularly distribute lands.

You really want to bet on that?

Personally, I'd expect there to be mid-turn consequences the first time we do that, and the exact effects of the action to change in response to the action we vote to take in response - but that means we don't know how often and easily we can reduce Cent.
 
Candesce said:
Only true if we're willing to regularly distribute lands.

You really want to bet on that?
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Yeah. So long as we keep our Centralization high by doing continual EJ, it's not a problem. We're not giving them the land, we're delegating the administration of the land to them. That's kinda a necessary thing for any reasonably large group.

So long as we keep Symphony and Divine Stewards strong, they won't do anything bad with the land... At least, so long as we run periodic checks via EJ.
 
ThrawnCA said:
So...the Trelli's response to a new economic power is to trade with them. This has potential.

Now that we no longer have CoT, we don't have to engage in trade war. However, they likely have it and will thus see us as a threat. I wonder whether there is a mechanic that will let us cooperate? Shared market dominance? They have some kind of new yellow dye; if we could swap that knowledge for our new techniques, both nations would be able to far outstrip all neighbours.
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Trade with and economically judo flip them, yes.


Anyway, so since Temples have presumably enormous quality of life benefits and are comparatively cheap (1 M action, 4 Art/Econ which we'll want to drain some out of anyway), I'm definitely going to be voting to install one in the north. But where?

These are the available locations:
Rainbow Trail (0/4), Sacred Forest (Temple 0/8), Holy Sea (0/4), Horse Valley (0/4), White Circle (0/4), Warrior's Rest (0/4), Star Mirror (0/4), Sunrise Grove (0/4), Skyforest (0/4), Bloodgrove (0/4), Spiritwell (0/4), Moonwell (0/4)
But I don't know how they map to provinces. Any ideas?
 
Guile said:
These are the available locations:
Rainbow Trail (0/4), Sacred Forest (Temple 0/8), Holy Sea (0/4), Horse Valley (0/4), White Circle (0/4), Warrior's Rest (0/4), Star Mirror (0/4), Sunrise Grove (0/4), Skyforest (0/4), Bloodgrove (0/4), Spiritwell (0/4), Moonwell (0/4)
But I don't know how they map to provinces. Any ideas?
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Rainbow Trail, Holy Sea, Star Mirror are all pretty central, IIRC.

Horse Valley is up in, I think, Stonepen, and Warrior's Rest and White Circle are Northshore / Stallion Tribes territory.

Not sure about Sunrise Grove through Moonwell; they're pretty new though, so you can look through what settlements were built recently to take guesses. I think the order they're in is by when they were built.

Edit: As to where to build one - probably Stonepen or one of our marches? Bringing the Stallion Tribes or the Hath closer to us culturally would be useful.
 
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Guile said:
Trade with and economically judo flip them, yes.
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Meh. I'm less concerned now that we don't have CoT. If they take over Dye dominance, then they're on a pedestal that we can knock them off.

Given that they must maintain dominance, while we don't have to, and they seem to prefer trade to war, I think there's potential for alliance here. Right now, of course, they want to push us down in the dye market so they can get an extra bonus for it, which is fair enough. But in general, there should be ways for us to profit from each other. Our different boat designs, our different dyes, our different zones of influence and reach.
 
ThrawnCA said:
That sounds...much more exposed. We've almost lost the ST to nomads before, and there's enough cultural divergence to introduce a risk that someone up that way will simply split off.
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You forget that the libraries are not only Ymaryn's treasures, but humanity's treasures. Building all your libraries in the southern provinces is putting all your eggs in one basket.

Plus, volumes are continuously copied and traded anyway, especially with shamans who travels.

Remember that most work of antiquity didn't survive. If we want to preserve work for future generations, we must build temples and libraries far and wide, with geographical location bequething different bias and emphasis, so that we can cover all our bases. Not all work is going to be copied from one scroll to the next.

Sooner or later, one of our library is going to burn or pillaged. I prefer we have backups.
 
Kiba said:
Remember that most work of antiquity didn't survive. If we want to preserve work for future generations, we must build temples and libraries far and wide, with geographical location bequething different bias and emphasis, so that we can cover all our bases. Not all work is going to be copied from one scroll to the next.
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Fair enough.

This reminds me - is it possible for us to send out colonists to form entirely new civilisations in remote locations, no longer governed by us but inheriting our values? That would help ensure that our cultural legacy survives, and someday we may come across them again and have relatively humane+peaceful (though surely diverged) neighbours.
 
Bah everybody knows it means the nomads with their egalitarianism has spawned a Father-Mother-Son-Daughter Hero set.
 
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A better question is "will other civs take offense to us hiring out to their enemies," to which I think we can safely assume the answer is yes.

Is that enough for them to come after us? I kinda doubt it - we're a really hard target, and a war just means they get to fight our army as well as our mercs, while we get defensive bonuses.
 
Kiba said:
From a strategic point of view, it would be stupid to declare war on the mercenary's backer. Not only you will be facing the mercenaries, but the rest of their countrymen.
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And the customer, too.

ETA And the most likely candidate, not already at war with us, to get hit by our mercs is the Xoh, who are at rather long range to invade us. A supply train that long is just begging to be cut to bits by the TS and HK.

ETA2 And founding a mercenary company should be a hint to everyone that we're pushing the limits of our Martial cap, so provoking our home base is a very dangerous proposition.
 
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Kiba said:
From a strategic point of view, it would be stupid to declare war on the mercenary's backer. Not only you will be facing the mercenaries, but the rest of their countrymen.
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Candesce said:
A better question is "will other civs take offense to us hiring out to their enemies," to which I think we can safely assume the answer is yes.

Is that enough for them to come after us? I kinda doubt it - we're a really hard target, and a war just means they get to fight our army as well as our mercs, while we get defensive bonuses.
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From a strategic point of view, notdeclaring war on the mercenary's backer means that every future war is harder cause you have to keep fighting the mercenaries :p ...well, assuming you can end the first war... and don't intend to hire the mercenaries yourself after that first war...and so on :p
Also, remember, the lowlands think we're weak, they've just always had bigger fish to fry...if the TS last long enough to use our mercenaries, and the mercenaries help them break free, and the Xoh Empire keeps itself together after the war, i expect we'll finally be a big enough fish for them to attack us
 
Candesce said:
A better question is "will other civs take offense to us hiring out to their enemies," to which I think we can safely assume the answer is yes.

Is that enough for them to come after us? I kinda doubt it - we're a really hard target, and a war just means they get to fight our army as well as our mercs, while we get defensive bonuses.
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"I am so annoyed by having to fight a hundred of these mercenaries that I'm going to declare war against the rich hill weirdoes who spawned them! Yes, they're a hundred miles away on the other side of this nation I'm currently fighting, and have almost nothing to do with my plan to conquer the lowlands, but darn it, they are really annoying so imma do it anyway!"

When the Ymaryn hear about this months later:
"Oh no, how terrible. Better start laying in food and building more forests..."
 
Abby Normal said:
if the TS last long enough to use our mercenaries, and the mercenaries help them break free, and the Xoh Empire keeps itself together after the war, i expect we'll finally be a big enough fish for them to attack us
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They can bring it on :). If they sit tight, we face the prospect of fighting them later after they assimilate the whole lowlands and become nigh-unstoppable, or wading into the meatgrinder ourselves and attacking their bone wall. Whereas, if they bring the fight to us now, the advantages are all ours.
 
ThrawnCA said:
ETA2 And founding a mercenary company should be a hint to everyone that we're pushing the limits of our Martial cap, so provoking our home base is a very dangerous proposition.
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Actually, we are the first to have mercenaries. That is because we are the first to have currency, not because of high martial. So no one else should have any idea why we have mercenaries yet.
 
Sivantic said:
So no one else should have any idea why we have mercenaries yet.
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They should at least get the idea that we have warriors to spare.

ETA I suppose our CA Reputation of Weakness might persuade some opponents that we must have sent all our forces to the front line. But it would be a rather foolish assumption to make. Not exactly the act of a Heroic general. If someone with such a poor level of military strategy came after us, it would be an easy win.
 
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ThrawnCA said:
They should at least get the idea that we have warriors to spare.
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Not necessarily. They would have no idea how much it costs to start one up. For all they know this costed us only 2 Martial to start up, and maybe an Econ to upkeep.

We have hardly seen anyone else have Marches, Trading Posts, or Colonies of their own either.
 
Sivantic said:
So no one else should have any idea why we have mercenaries yet.
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I find the potential realization to be a schadenfreude:
Negaverse: Oh, come on. How come they make Mercs first even though they are literally the least aggressive of the civs?
Academic Pea: For what reasons mercenaries fight again?
Negaverse: For payme- wait a minuite.....oh frak they got currency up and running didn't they?

The irony of the fact that it was essentially a communist state being the one who invented currency first is not lost on them :V
 
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