Paths of Civilization

ctulhuslp · Jul 9, 2017

tryrar said:
I disagree in the arsenal, because it would also be a source of weapon and armor innovations. And like it or not, our kings will need to fight once in a while, and being well equipped means he survives more often.

I am not sure what benefits does Arsenal in the Palace specifically provide, as opposed to just normal blacksmiths.
Royal Library and Gardens make sense to me; but what's the difference between arsenal in the palace and just, you know, blacksmiths in the city?

Susano said:
Look at the map. We're slowly encroaching along the north and south coasts of the not!Black Sea. So extremely long term, the not!Black Sea will probably become our Mare Nostrum. In which case the not!Black Sea will in fact be the most efficient and important transportation medium of our culture.

...once the not!Black Sea is our Mare Nostrum. In the very, very long term.

Nomads.
In a couple millenia, maybe.
OTOH, we have the whole not!Anatolia ripe for the taking with no fookin nomads in there, so coast-settling it would certainly make sense to me, what with bountiful hills and Trelli somewhere there being somewhat okay trading partners and no fucking nomads as opposed to *shudders* settling steppes.

Spacegnom · Jul 9, 2017

All communication between Valleyhome and Hatvalley, South Shore, North Shore, the Stallions, Black River, Greenshore and Western Wall runs through Redshore. So, if we hadn't just grabbed a whole bunch of Lowland real estate Redshore would be a much better capital than Valleyhome. Regardless, I do not want another true city right now, so Redshore will have to wait until we build the Great Docks and turn it into our seafaring/commercial hub.

tryrar · Jul 9, 2017

pblur said:
Anyway, ignoring the where question for the moment, ALL the annexes are amazing. Here's how I'm valuing them:

One Annex Additional Annexes

Library Great Great

Shrine Good Moderate

Great Hall Great Moderate

Armory Good Good

Storerooms Great Good

Garden Good Moderate

Fortifications Moderate Meh

I think it makes sense to break it down by 1 vs. many, since not all annexes scale equally well.

Looking at my ratings, I'd suggest thresholding on Great or Good depending on how much time we want to spend.

[] Plan Only the BEST
-[] Library x2
-[] Storerooms

OR

[] Plan Everything we really want
-[] Library x2/3
-[] Armoury x2
-[] Storerooms x2
-[] Garden

In both cases we get one shrine and a great hall to go with it, so I'm not listing them.

I know that's mainly your opinion with those ratings, but just to be clear, how are you coming by them? Don't get me wrong, I generally agree with you, but it's nice when you bust out a chart like that to explain how you came to a great/good/moderate/meh rating.

ctulhuslp · Jul 9, 2017

Spacegnom said:
All communication between Valleyhome and Hatvalley, South Shore, North Shore, the Stallions, Black River, Greenshore and Western Wall runs through Redshore. So, if we hadn't just grabbed a whole bunch of Lowland real estate Redshore would be a much better capital than Valleyhome. Regardless, I do not want another true city right now, so Redshore will have to wait until we build the Great Docks and turn it into our seafaring/commercial hub.

So, one city is religious center, other cultural/administrative one, other trade/economic/later on logistics hub?

Oh Crow, there is going to be so much bad blood and competition between them

pbluekan · Jul 9, 2017

So, where question aside, the annexes I'm looking at are primarily the Library, Shrine, Great Hall, and Garden.

We are, first, foremost, and always, the Gardeners. Our center of government should reflect that.

Finite Magician · Jul 9, 2017

*Sees all the points made* The building of the Palace is going to be a lot messier than the Tax Reform, isn't it...

Hyacinthium · Jul 9, 2017

Academia Nut said:
No. Actually, to whet your appetites and get productive discussion going, here are the possible expansions

Library
Shrine
Great Hall
Armory
Storerooms
Garden
Fortifications

The palace starts with living quarters and a Great Hall annex natively, and is assumed to start with a shrine expansion. You have the choice to add on additional expansions up to a limit based on the number of provinces and subordinates you have, but it also increases the time and resource commitment to the palace. You can build new annexes later, but it is more expensive in terms of time and resources. However, you can get significant effects for having more than the bare minimum, and annexes can have interactions with each other. Having multiple of the same type of annex can also have other effects, including but not limited to things like having an extra library or temple produced.

The possible locations to build in are Valleyhome, Sacred Forest, and Redshore.

I want all those things, but Library+Garden are good for most practical and then meaningful. Our back is built on our garden culture.

Could we maybe combine the Garden with the Shrine?

Susano · Jul 9, 2017

ctulhuslp said:
I am not sure what benefits does Arsenal in the Palace specifically provide, as opposed to just normal blacksmiths.
Royal Library and Gardens make sense to me; but what's the difference between arsenal in the palace and just, you know, blacksmiths in the city?

The same difference between the library in the palace and the library outside? As an advice, think of it as symbols. By having an arsenal annex, we symbolize a certain martial focus. Which we might need for defensive wars alone.

Nomads.
In a couple millenia, maybe.
OTOH, we have the whole not!Anatolia ripe for the taking with no fookin nomads in there, so coast-settling it would certainly make sense to me, what with bountiful hills and Trelli somewhere there being somewhat okay trading partners and no fucking nomads as opposed to *shudders* settling steppes.

Yeah, ah... I have some bad news for you. Namely, that the West Wall has been doing that for a quite a while already all on their own without our input.

ctulhuslp · Jul 9, 2017

pbluekan said:
So, where question aside, the annexes I'm looking at, are primarily the Library, Shrine, Great Hall, and Garden.

We are, first, foremost, and always, the Gardeners. Our center of government should reflect that.

Libraries.
Maybe storehouses, depending on what they are, but, like

AN said that doing Study Forest, Study Alchemy and building libraries is the road to paper and that we are not that far from it.
Paper.
So...libraries for days.

pblur · Jul 9, 2017

Almost all Iron Age empires had sea access from their capital. There's a reason for that...

So far as vulnerability from the sea goes, I don't think it's an issue. We control more of the black sea than anyone else, and the Black sea has a natural defense point at Byzantium/Trelli. IF someone decides to go a-viking, they're far more likely to raid Trelli than Redshore. If we end up in a war with a sea power (in the really, REALLY long term) we can simply reinforce/ally/conquer Trelli for a bottleneck.

So far as the Long Term vs. short term debate, we'll probably only build one palace to this scale for millennia. We need to be thinking carefully about the long term.

Palace isn't ONLY a short term fix; it's also an extremely long term part of our infrastructure. It's important that we plan for that.

Kiba · Jul 9, 2017

Libraries. Then garden or storehouse.

pbluekan · Jul 9, 2017

ctulhuslp said:
Libraries.
Maybe storehouses, depending on what they are, but, like

AN said that doing Study Forest, Study Alchemy and building libraries is the road to paper and that we are not that far from it.
Paper.
So...libraries for days.

I can get behind that. The only things I'm truly against are an armory and fortifications. It just isn't us. The message it sends isn't something I really like, and it isn't necessary in my opinion, at least not on an early build when we are the only people with seigecraft.

Abby Normal · Jul 9, 2017

Kiba said:
OK. So, there are five-seven actions. Does that mean we get five slots before further addition costs more?

Judging from this:

Academia Nut said:
The palace starts with living quarters and a Great Hall annex natively, and is assumed to start with a shrine expansion. You have the choice to add on additional expansions up to a limit based on the number of provinces and subordinates you have, but it also increases the time and resource commitment to the palace.

Academia Nut said:
Each additional annex adds an extra megaproject action to the total. They can be done later as an extended project at twice the cost.

Depending on what "is assumed to start with" means, we get either [Living Quarters + Great Hall] or [Living Quarters + Great Hall + Shrine] for the cost of 5-7 actions
So for example, these plans:

Chrestomanci said:
[X]Valleyhome

lower Valleyhome if possible / next to the river

We start with ; Living Quarters, Great Hall, Shrine (3 annexes)
We have 10 provinces and 6 subordinates (plus a mercenary company) so the palace can have 16 annexes

I vote for :
-Library (4 annexes)
-Library (5 annexes)
-Library (6 annexes)
-Shrine (7 annexes)
-Shrine (8 annexes)
-Great Hall (9 annexes)
-Storerooms (10 annexes)
-Garden (11 annexes)

A Palace with a triple sized Library should hopefully increase our Centralisation limit and count as a library (+1 Mysticism)
The double shrine should compensate for the fact many Kings do not have a Mysticism stat
The increased Great Hall will increase Prestige allowing us more subordinates
A Garden and a Storerooms is probably necessary, but I do not want our Kings to have a military focus so I am omiting both arsenal and fortifications.

Would cost 13-15 actions

pblur said:
Anyway, ignoring the where question for the moment, ALL the annexes are amazing. Here's how I'm valuing them:

One Annex Additional Annexes

Library Great Great

Shrine Good Moderate

Great Hall Great Moderate

Armory Good Good

Storerooms Great Good

Garden Good Moderate

Fortifications Moderate Meh

I think it makes sense to break it down by 1 vs. many, since not all annexes scale equally well.

Looking at my ratings, I'd suggest thresholding on Great or Good depending on how much time we want to spend.

[] Plan Only the BEST
-[] Library x2
-[] Storerooms

OR

[] Plan Everything we really want
-[] Library x2/3
-[] Armoury x2
-[] Storerooms x2
-[] Garden

In both cases we get one shrine and a great hall to go with it, so I'm not listing them.

And either 8-10 actions or 12-14/13-15 actions
So... Yeah, unless i'm wrong, or it turns out that we get a lot of the admin benefits right away, or we get a baby boom going and an end to these wars, or something, i really don't think we should (or really *could*) go for any of these elaborate plans...
Of course, part of that depends on AN confirming whether "twice the costs" for annexes means it costs 4 resources and a main action per annex, or if it costs 4 resourcesand *2* main actions per annex, because if the former, than our Rush Builders legacy means its pretty feasible for us to build annexes later on; 1 econ and 1 art isn't a super big cost to pay in exchange for getting a critical admin benefit up and running a turn or three earlier in the midst of several issues, the biggest of which is administrative issues.

...Also, @Academia Nut random question...you've said that theres a canal extended project available up in the Stallion Tribes' land, right? Why haven't the stallion tribes done that, since they apparently can build extended projects like the temple they're soon to have? Or is that an exception where they can only build it because of the natural wonder?

ctulhuslp · Jul 9, 2017

Susano said:
The same difference between the library in the palace and the library outside? As an advice, think of it as symbols. By having an arsenal annex, we symbolize a certain martial focus. Which we might need for defensive wars alone.

No, library in the palace has explicit practical purpose usable everyday - storing records, precedents, copies of laws to quickly look up right here and now.
I do not see much everyday use potential for arsenal as opposed to, again, just city facilities.

Susano said:
Yeah, ah... I have some bad news for you. Namely, that the West Wall has been doing that for a quite a while already all on their own without our input.

I know and I am in the state of mild panic/grim counting of all the losses we are going to suffer whenever I think about them.
Poor, naive Northern provinces think that getting their crops and villages burned, men slain and wives taken once or twice in recent several centuries means the worst that could happen did. Little they know this all was easy nomads mode.
They will learn. We all will.

pbluekan said:
I can get behind that. The only things I'm truly against are an armory and fortifications. It just isn't us. The message it sends isn't something I really like, and it isn't necessary in my opinion, at least not on an early build when we are the only people with seigecraft.

I am of roughly same opinion so far - our city as a whole has more than enough defenses, and defending from the city is not a thing our king should even think about; and, if given such tools, some of them are bound to think about it.

Forgothrax · Jul 9, 2017

... stop grabbing the shiny. We picked the option to do the Palace first on the back of a movement that wanted to resolve the admin crisis immediately and then deal with the North. Delaying crisis resolution in the name of shinygrabbing is not just hypocritical, it's pushing back resolution of multiple crises (North, taxes) for shines. And it's prolonging administrative strain when we're also dealing with lowlands and attacking enemies. I have significant doubt that we will be able to afford to swap to megaproject support anytime soon due to the Thunder Horse, so we need to minimize the number of mains we spend on the palace. Especially so because the longer we take to do it and thus the longer it takes overall, the more chance we're going to have to spend actions on wealth building. And we have to integrate the Stallions soon too.

Yes, it's less efficient to build annexes later. You know what's really inefficient? Emergency actions to hold together the polity because we spent too much time shinygrabbing and the strain became unbearable. Or civil war.

ctulhuslp · Jul 9, 2017

Forgothrax said:
Yes, it's less efficient to build annexes later. You know what's really inefficient? Emergency actions to hold together the polity because we spent too much time shinygrabbing and the strain became unbearable. Or civil war.

Good point.
Let us see what the options are, grab minimal adminstrative package and build stuff later, when we are out of....3 simultaneous crises (Tax Crisis 2, North vs South, Fookin Lowlands), +/- climate one which throws refugees into us, +/- troubling sightings of nomads riding horses.

pbluekan · Jul 9, 2017

pblur said:
Almost all Iron Age empires had sea access from their capital. There's a reason for that...

So far as vulnerability from the sea goes, I don't think it's an issue. We control more of the black sea than anyone else, and the Black sea has a natural defense point at Byzantium/Trelli. IF someone decides to go a-viking, they're far more likely to raid Trelli than Redshore. If we end up in a war with a sea power (in the really, REALLY long term) we can simply reinforce/ally/conquer Trelli for a bottleneck.

So far as the Long Term vs. short term debate, we'll probably only build one palace to this scale for millennia. We need to be thinking carefully about the long term.

Palace isn't ONLY a short term fix; it's also an extremely long term part of our infrastructure. It's important that we plan for that.

Ok. Great.

How are you going to deal with the centralization tolerance problems? How are you going to fit in all of the extra infrastructure we would have to build in Redshore into our already jam packed to-do list? How are you going to deal with the social upheaval of moving a capital that has been in place for millennia?

No, the palace isn't a short term fix, and we will have to deal with the consequences of only having river access in Valleyhome, but we also have ongoing issues that the palace is simply a prerequisite for. An ongoing tax crisis, which can only be solved by completing the palace and then completing another megaproject. An administrative crisis where we need a high level of centralization, but can't get it because our centralized society is growing too fucking fast.

Quest · Jul 9, 2017

One reason to build it in red shore for the medium term. Grand Docks megaproject.

Susano · Jul 9, 2017

pblur said:
Almost all Iron Age empires had sea access from their capital.

Rome (sure, Ostia, but Rome itself wasn't at the sea). Persepolis. Xi'an - in fact, no Chinese capital until modernity was directly at the sea. Nara, Kyoto, Asuka in Japan. All those Indian empires centred in the Ganges plain. And so on, and so forth.

ctulhuslp said:
No, library in the palace has explicit practical purpose usable everyday - storing records, precedents, copies of laws to quickly look up right here and now.
I do not see much everyday use potential for arsenal as opposed to, again, just city facilities.

An arsenal is not (just) a smithing facility. It is where you store arms centrally. Having the arsenal in the palace gives the palace control over the warrior class, and makes the palace a martial centre - that is where the warrior's weapons are, that is where they need to go to fetch them, that might be where they train etc.

tryrar · Jul 9, 2017

Quest said:
One reason to build it in red shore for the medium term. Grand Docks megaproject.

....which has ZILCH to do with the palace, and I cannot see how that would benefit having the Palace there.

pbluekan · Jul 9, 2017

Quest said:
One reason to build it in red shore for the medium term. Grand Docks megaproject.

That is just as long term as any of the others. Sea access is what we are arguing here, and the worth of that sea access versus the shitstorms we have bearing down on us. Grand Docks in a capital is certainly something, but it has the same long term worth as sea access in general.

ctulhuslp · Jul 9, 2017

pbluekan said:
Ok. Great.

How are you going to deal with the centralization tolerance problems? How are you going to fit in all of the extra infrastructure we would have to build in Redshore into our already jam packed to-do list? How are you going to deal with the social upheaval of moving a capital that has been in place for millennia?

No, the palace isn't a short term fix, and we will have to deal with the consequences of only having river access in Valleyhome, but we also have ongoing issues that the palace is simply a prerequisite for. An ongoing tax crisis, which can only be solved by completing the palace and then completing another megaproject. An administrative crisis where we need a high level of centralization, but can't get it because our centralized society is growing too fucking fast.

Make Valleyhome a Free City after Redshore grows into True City? As not a religious center, it should be safe-ish.
Like, it is not unsolveable at all, and aqueduct + Census is not actually all that hard because they draw from different resource pools - Econ for aqueduct, Mysticism for Census.
Plus Palace itself will probably ameliorate some of our centralization problems.

Plus, Redshore-positioned one is going to be way better able to support and communicate with northern provinces and faraway tradeposts - better than Valleyhome ever can hope to do these things. Because seashore positioning is important as hell boon.
Like, being able to sit on the boat, drive to the palace and that's it is going to be easier however you cut it with regards to communications.
And since not!Anatolia is way less contested than Lowlands and it would make sense to expand there, Redshore is, even despite Lowland Vassals, a good place for the palace.

DocMatoi · Jul 9, 2017

Citino said:
I'm sure that's what the Xoh, Swamp Folk, HK, TH, TS, etc... all thought as well.

They all made a point of NOT fortifying.

Rakuhn · Jul 9, 2017

We are going to want to build another library before we do the Census.

It may be worthwhile to include it as part of the Palace.

Spacegnom · Jul 9, 2017

ctulhuslp said:
So, one city is religious center, other cultural/administrative one, other trade/economic/later on logistics hub?

Oh Crow, there is going to be so much bad blood and competition between them

Sounds like fun

To be serious though, we are gonna need/get a True city on the Black Sea coast eventually. So, a "True City" Redshore is probably only a question of time (IMO not right now though).
That said, if we ever get the option to have Sacred Forest stop being a city, I am so gonna take it.

	One Annex	Additional Annexes
Library	Great	Great
Shrine	Good	Moderate
Great Hall	Great	Moderate
Armory	Good	Good
Storerooms	Great	Good
Garden	Good	Moderate
Fortifications	Moderate	Meh

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