Paths of Civilization

minerva-n-memes · Mar 18, 2017

[X] If you behave yourselves, you may settle (Strong chance of causing strife)

[X][Main] Expand Fishing
[X][Secondary] Step-Farms
[X][Secondary] New Settlement

We get shiny nomadic goods and techniques that would make our position more secure in comparison to other powers, so we can do fun trade things.

Expanding fishing means we'd get to roll again for improving our boats, which would allow us more access to the not!mediterranean and all the shiny goodies of the peoples around the sea. Those riches would put us in a wonderful economic position.

Step-Farms improve our food surplus and doing this again has the chance of making step-farms an automatic action instead of a button that we need to press for it to happen.

A new settlement would allow us to grow more, and most importantly, given it would likely be built near the waterfall holy site, may mean we might get a settlement optimized around wisdom and knowledge, which could push us towards further developing our language and writing system, esp. with an economic center of a settlement supplying the nearby religious/wisdom site.

CatOnTheWeb · Mar 18, 2017

I feel taking the festival is a good idea simply because what it'd do to our Art and Diplomacy, especially since we've been putting it off a bunch. I understand why some people are worried that our Economy is at 0, but it's far from a disastrous situation. Worst case scenario is that the event roll (which I'm positive AN does in the background every turn) is a crit-fail and we take a hit to stability, triggering PS. But the thing is, we have Centralization 5, we can tank that, no problem. And I believe that that is the only way things will blow up right now, as the WC are still stable, the Spirit Talkers are going to be focusing on trading with us, not attacking, and the Nomads are busy infighting.

We're (mostly) in agreement that the Nomads being integrated is a good thing, but that has a very real risk of introducing instability, which will trigger PS anyway and require us to deal with the malcontents. It's a small gamble for introducing communal celebrations and tying our people more closely together.

Hangwind said:
It's a main action, so it will take at least two. Worse, we don't know what order things will happen in.

If the Mains gave us 2 of a stat and minors gave us 1, then the way our stats progressed would be very different. The way it probably works is mains give us a 1 while the others introduce a half that stays in storage waiting for completion. Step-Farms is one of those technologies just waiting in the wings, and it's likely that the nomads will also start building a settlement (because our lands aren't totally conductive to their lifestyle), so our help will give them a solid home and bring the forest under cultivation.

veekie said:
Taking them in requires building Pastures if we want to keep their animals. Why aren't we building it?

Because the Nomads will be the ones putting them to pasture. They wont be a full part of our society yet, so while they integrate they still have some control over their actions. At least that's how I understand it.

veekie · Mar 18, 2017

Kiba said:
How do we increase centralization again?

Wait 2 years, usually. We never needed to do anything to boost Centralization, since Centralization naturally grows over time

Hangwind said:
It's a main action, so it will take at least two. Worse, we don't know what order things will happen in.

Edit: Think of it this way: Centralization is to us what Mysticism is to the ST. It's the one thing that we cannot lose if we don't absolutely have to, because our culture is so heavily specialized towards it.

You probably want to keep in mind that winding up at negative net stability would hurt a lot worse than losing a point of centralization while we're at 5(which is super high).

We can recover from a Centralization hit, but a Stability hit is something we have few solutions for.

veekie · Mar 18, 2017

NotAlwaysFanfic said:
Because the Nomads will be the ones putting them to pasture. They wont be a full part of our society yet, so while they integrate they still have some control over their actions. At least that's how I understand it.

You might want to refer to when we assimilated the group of settlers from the Western Confederacy. They did not give a free construction action. The text only told us what they needed, which we had to build ourself.

This is the problem with heavy Centralization, because basically, you have to order anything to be done unless you make a new settlement to perform our automatic actions on.

Academia Nut · Mar 18, 2017

veekie said:
Taking them in requires building Pastures if we want to keep their animals. Why aren't we building it?
Pastures increase food availability and thus Economy, so it serves the same role as Fishing and Step Farms, which there's no special demand for.
Festival counteracts the Strife hit, which helps with the assimilation.

I'm pretty sure @Academia Nut isn't giving us a free build action here.
So why is nobody doing it?

They'll build where they're told to build, so yes, they can be settled without having to explicitly expand pastures, but there is the possibility of synergy.

hylas240 · Mar 18, 2017

Hangwind said:
It's a Main Action that explicitly costs Economy for Art and Diplomacy(maybe on the Diplomacy). And Main actions are the same as two minor actions. We can literally trade two secondary actions for one main one.

If us choosing to Main the festival would cost 2 Econ, wouldn't AN mention it? I'll ask for clarification.

@Academia Nut Is the festival going to cost 2 Econ if its a main project?

veekie said:
[X] If you behave yourselves, you may settle (strong chance of causing strife)
[X][Main] Establish Annual Festival
[X][Secondary] New Settlement
[X][Secondary] Expand Pasture

So uh...question:

Taking them in requires building Pastures if we want to keep their animals. Why aren't we building it?
Pastures increase food availability and thus Economy, so it serves the same role as Fishing and Step Farms, which there's no special demand for.
Festival counteracts the Strife hit, which helps with the assimilation.

I'm pretty sure @Academia Nut isn't giving us a free build action here.
So why is nobody doing it?

Academia Nut said:
It seems probable that the additional people and animals would be of value to the economy, yes.

Yeah, we're going to expand the pastures automatically which will give us 1 econ. Though i'm sure the unhappiness is referring to letting them stay with us (hence the strife gained from choosing to house them).

Academia Nut · Mar 18, 2017

hylas240 said:
Is the festival going to cost 2 Econ if its a main project?

No, but depending on the Admin roll it have its costs come off before the returns of other projects are completed, pushing the Economy into the negatives. Not guaranteed, but its possible.

Kiba · Mar 18, 2017

If we're going to expand pasture automatically, we might as well double down on it.

Hangwind · Mar 18, 2017

veekie said:
You probably want to keep in mind that winding up at negative net stability would hurt a lot worse than losing a point of centralization while we're at 5(which is super high).

We can recover from a Centralization hit, but a Stability hit is something we have few solutions for.

Except this is the one stat that we need more than any other. This is the one that allows our economy to work, that gives us advantages over other civilizations. And honestly, we have absolutely no need for a Festival beyond Rule of Cool. Our Diplomacy and Art are both at 5. They're among the highest of our stats! Why would we sacrifice our lowest current stat for our highest ones? It just doesn't make any sense!

Academia Nut said:
No, but depending on the Admin roll it have its costs come off before the returns of other projects are completed, pushing the Economy into the negatives. Not guaranteed, but its possible.

TL;DR: Wait a turn! Don't take gambles that risk a lot for very little return!

Sivantic · Mar 18, 2017

lol, if you guys are trying to do that, you have a long fight against you, as well as pulling people back into the discussion.

cause here's the current tally
Vote Tally : Paths of Civilization | Page 267 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.10.1
[32] If you behave yourselves, you may settle (Strong chance of causing strife)
[6] Escort them to the lowlands, where they can be safe from their relatives but are on their own after
[5] You must live as half-exiles until you can demonstrate proper behaviour (Strong chance of being rejected)
[2] If you behave yourselves, you may settle

——————————————————————————————————————————————Task: Main
[30][Main] Establish Annual Festival
[9][Main] New Settlement
[6][Main] Step-Farms
[4][Main] Expand Fishing
[1][Main] Expand Forests

——————————————————————————————————————————————Task: Secondary
[39][Secondary] Step-Farms
[26][Secondary] New Settlement
[17][Secondary] Expand Fishing
[6][Secondary] Expand Pasture
[5][Secondary] Expand Forests
[2][Secondary] Study Forests
[2][Secondary] Establish Annual Festival
[2][Secondary] Expand Pastures
[1][Secondary] New Settlement x2
Total No. of Voters: 50

Entropy Engineer · Mar 18, 2017

Don't we gain centralization by building trails? Plus I'm pretty sure we'd gain some centralization by doing the festival as it's stated to be a collective action.

hylas240 · Mar 18, 2017

Honestly, we're taking the stability hit anyways so the festival is a must for recovering the strife. Step-farms is also super useful for obvious reasons. I could be swayed to select Expand Pastures since AN said it would have synergy with the Nomads building their own, as opposed to a new settlement (which would also give us 1 econ, and expand the land we have under cultivation).

I'm leaning much more towards the settlement though.

Hangwind · Mar 18, 2017

hylas240 said:
Honestly, we're taking the stability hit anyways so the festival is a must for recovering the strife. Step-farms is also super useful for obvious reasons. I could be swayed to select Expand Pastures since AN said it would have synergy with the Nomads building their own, as opposed to a new settlement (which would also give us 1 econ, and expand the land we have under cultivation).

I'm leaning much more towards the settlement though.

They're two seperate events! AN just confirmed that the Festival could trigger first, drop our Centralization, then the Nomad issue could trigger, dropping us again!

hylas240 · Mar 18, 2017

Hangwind said:
They're two seperate events! AN just confirmed that the Festival could trigger first, drop our Centralization, then the Nomad issue could trigger, dropping us again!

He said depending on the roll he does. Its not guaranteed, just possible.

Sightsear · Mar 18, 2017

Hangwind said:
They're two seperate events! AN just confirmed that the Festival could trigger first, drop our Centralization, then the Nomad issue could trigger, dropping us again!

No no, Nomads drop our stability but raise our economy.
The Festival drops our economy but raises our stability.

Whichever happens first, the other will breifly cancel out, but than (ideally) they start snowballing their positive aspects, while leaving the negatives behind, becoming a net positive.

2628

CatOnTheWeb · Mar 18, 2017

Hangwind said:
TL;DR: Wait a turn! Don't take gambles that risk a lot for very little return!

But the gamble is there no matter what! We're taking in the Nomads (most likely), which has a high probability to cause instability. We need to cover that with a festival. The worst case scenario is still us at -1 stability, but is less likely because we're introducing a variable that addresses stability loss.

Hangwind said:
They're two seperate events! AN just confirmed that the Festival could trigger first, drop our Centralization, then the Nomad issue could trigger, dropping us again!

No, that's the festival happening before our economy actions buffer us enough, I'm pretty sure the Nomads are happening first.

Hangwind · Mar 18, 2017

hylas240 said:
He said depending on the roll he does. Its not guaranteed, just possible.

You did notice that I used the word "could" right? The question is, why would we risk it?

Kiba · Mar 18, 2017

[X] If you behave yourselves, you may settle (strong chance of causing strife)
[X][Main] New Settlement
[X][Secondary] Expand Fishing
[X][Secondary] Expand Pasture

Reason: We need econ action. Expand Pasture synergize with the new settlers, and the fishing give us a chance at new boats. Settlement is long overdue.

hylas240 · Mar 18, 2017

Hangwind said:
You did notice that I used the word "could" right? The question is, why would we risk it?

Because we can afford to? In the worst case scenario we lose 2 centralization, but get 2 economy from the double trigger. It would cause our economy to explode into 5, maybe 6. We're not sacrificing anything we can't love without, and that event is unlikely to happen anyways. You're acting like we will destroy our civilization for no gain whatsoever.

Kiba · Mar 18, 2017

If we lose centralization, then we're not going to be as efficient when we attempt our Grand Canal project.

veekie · Mar 18, 2017

Hangwind said:
You did notice that I used the word "could" right? The question is, why would we risk it?

Because:

Sightsear said:
No no, Nomads drop our stability but raise our economy.
The Festival drops our economy but raises our stability.

Whichever happens first, the other will breifly cancel out, but than (ideally) they start snowballing their positive aspects, while leaving the negatives behind, becoming a net positive.

2628

The Stability hit doesn't recover itself. We're pretty much committed to taking the stability hit, which means we MUST get it back to 0 by end of turn or start facing stability problems.

Academia Nut · Mar 18, 2017

Okay, the two events are separate, but how it goes is...

Bring in nomads, piss people off, drop stability, raise economy, drop centralization
Have festival, which if it goes off before other econ raising actions drops economy, which drops stability because you're at 0, which triggers PS and raises econ and drops centralization

The order of things is determined by administrative skill, which means I roll for it. So it is possible you lose no stability (and thus gain no PS triggers), or you lose 2 stability. 2 stability is not probable, but it is distinctly possible.

Killer_Whale · Mar 18, 2017

[X] If you behave yourselves, you may settle (strong chance of causing strife)
[X][Main] New Settlement
[X][Secondary] Step-Farms
[X][Secondary] Expand Pasture

Hangwind · Mar 18, 2017

Sightsear said:
No no, Nomads drop our stability but raise our economy.
The Festival drops our economy but raises our stability.

Whichever happens first, the other will breifly cancel out, but than (ideally) they start snowballing their positive aspects, while leaving the negatives behind, becoming a net positive.

2628

NotAlwaysFanfic said:
But the gamble is there no matter what! We're taking in the Nomads (most likely), which has a high probability to cause instability. We need to cover that with a festival. The worst case scenario is still us at -1 stability, but is less likely because we're introducing a variable that addresses stability loss.

No, that's the festival happening before our economy actions buffer us enough, I'm pretty sure the Nomads are happening first.

That is exactly what he didn't say.

Academia Nut said:
No, but depending on the Admin roll it have its costs come off before the returns of other projects are completed, pushing the Economy into the negatives. Not guaranteed, but its possible.

So we could end up with a situation where we lose an economy and go into the negatives, losing a point of centralization there, and then lose a point of stability directly, losing a point of Centralization there.

That is an explicit, WOG risk of taking the Festival this turn!

And again, why would we? We don't need those stats right now! They're sky high!

Sightsear said:
The Festival drops our economy but raises our stability.

It raises our Art and Diplomacy. It says nothing about our stability, which we are largely neutral on!

hylas240 · Mar 18, 2017

Kiba said:
If we lose centralization, then we're not going to be as efficient when we attempt our Grand Canal project.

If we lose that 2 centralization (again, not a certainty) our economy would rise from 0 to 5-6 in one turn. As our economy is right now, we wouldn't be able to support the canal yet anyways, and we can recover the lost centralization easily enough in the next turn or 2.

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