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Paths of Civilization

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ThrawnCA said:
I really think that the Trelli are overextending here, and it's going to bite them hard.

Remember, there are no "I Win" buttons in this quest. If something seems like a universally-winning combination - eg take slaves, get wealth, hire mercs, take slaves - then it's flawed in some way.

Remember, they didn't develop currency and mercenaries themselves. They copied them from us. But they don't have the social foundations of symphony and peace and acceptance that we do. And they haven't formed companies of their own loyal citizens; they've hired outsiders. And they're stirring up wars left, right, and centre, to trade the spoils.

It's not sustainable. Something has to give. For example, the supply of "unprofitable" tribes may be exhausted, leading to a large dip in trade, and suddenly they can't pay all these mercs. Or someone wealthy and ambitious might turn the tables on them and hire the mercs to raid them back, or even capture the city; remember, these guys aren't actually loyal to Trelli.

We can wait them out. Let's build the east trading post, keep them thinking we're their friends, make them rich enough that they'll overextend, but build up our ability to resist pirates, so they don't bother hitting us, and they instead raid the west until it either runs dry or seeks revenge. Meanwhile, we make friends with all the survivors of the climate crisis, so when the Trelli implode, our trade doesn't.
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We actually can't wait them out if they take the West trading post site themselves. That gives them 2 Dominances(Bronze and Tin, which they are already near dominance at), and thus 2 more Wealth worth of Mercenaries.

Which is enough dudes that we can't really stop them any more than Venice's neighbors could. They are overextending sure. The next major trade disruption that hits will set them on fire all at once. But until then, if they get the Tin route they're going to eat the western black sea uncontested.

Just consider what happens when they can afford to throw 4 Mercenary bands at any given problem indefinitely. 32 Martial worth of punch.
Rakuhn said:
Also, I'm pretty sure that they don't need to declare war on us to raid our shipping. All they'd need to do is act as a haven for pirates, and the pirates would naturally sell their ill-gotten goods in their city.

We'd probably get a casus belli of course.
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We did get the same thing from the Hathatyn piracy. Gave us a 1 turn casus belli for "bandits".
 
PrimalShadow said:
The fact that the baby-boom starts next turn doesn't mean it triggers next turn. I mean, climate instability used to trigger mid-turn, and yet getting rid of it is listed under "starts next turn". Make sense?
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I'm sorry, what? No this doesn't make sense. It is all listed under started this turn, not starts next turn.

Baby boom started this turn. As in we already got our +5 -5.

It should proc again next mid turn or at the start of the next regular turn. Either way, we are covered for Econ costs. What is the issue here? Why are you wanting it to end?
 
bluefur87 said:
Ooo, neat, update.

*Reads and gets a sinking feeling in his stomach.*

*Checks tally.*

Yep.

*Checks discussion.*

Well, I'm discouraged from reading through it all after the first couple pages. You know, didn't this thread use to basically have the idea of never war? Now we want to do trade wars with the assumption that nothing will be sparked as a result of this? Sigh.

[X] [Exp] Found Far Northern Trade Post
[X] [Diplo] Need a bigger boat (Main More Boats)
[X] [Int] Build palace (Extra megaproject action)

Northern trading post is a healthier answer to this dilemma than trying to out muscle someone else's advantages as a center of trade. Instead we try to become our own.

Boats for a tech upgrade, in case this does turn south.

Finally, megaproject because, well.

We currently have 3/8-10. If we do one megaproject upgrade that will be raised to 4/8-10. This means we will be 5 actions away from finishing the megaproject on average. Guess what's so special about that number?

Actions we take:
[Main] Palace
Actions our provinces take:
[Main] Palace x3
Symphony generated actions (We're still assuming symphony works by generating actions, whether or not it does, it has effectively generated this):
[Main] Palace

This gives us 5 actions, meaning we are almost guaranteed to finish the palace next turn.
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...thats how you GET a war though. A worse one.
 
pbluekan said:
I'm sorry, what? No this doesn't make sense. It is all listed under started this turn, not starts next turn.
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My bad; misread the notification there. You are right, things started this turn.

pbluekan said:
It should proc again next mid turn or at the start of the next regular turn. Either way, we are covered for Econ costs. What is the issue here? Why are you wanting it to end?
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If it procs next mid-turn, that will be after the provinces take their actions. If we want to spend 6 econ on the palace in the next turn, we need to have that econ available at start of turn - and in fact, we need 1 more econ (because provinces don't spend down to zero) and depending on mechanics, two more on top of that (because of the city tax). That is 9 econ total. The current plan gets us to 7 econ at end of turn.
 
bluefur87 said:
I am confused by the funny ratings I am receiving unless people find my continued loss of faith in this thread comical?
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You're...protesting war by voting for the path most likely to ensure a long drawn out war.

The West trade post leaves them in a scenario where they must win in a few turns, stop fighting or implode. Or you know, not fight at all because they are stuck.

If they take the West spot war goes from likely to inevitable.
 
@veekie - do you perchance remember the mechanics of how city tax + baby boom + provinces being conservative add up? Do provinces save for the tax but not use econ generated by the boom, ignore both (assuming that the boom will pay for the tax but not using it themselves), or use both?
 
Hey @Malevolo how do you like these for the Ymaryn in general? E: Or at least when they are being suitably epic.





 
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Academia Nut said:
Worse yet, there were rumours that the knife hulled ships that hugged the Trelli coasts and aggressively patrolled their strait were being built with the intent to fill with mercenaries to hunt the trade ships of the sea. Why trade with others when you could just take their things for yourself? So far these were just rumours coming from the unknown southern seas, but the People had to admit that their ships were mostly used for trade and exploration and weren't really meant for fighting in the way the sea cutting ships of the Trelli were.
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Just as a note. This is the first time I've seen so far that the Terrify action might actually come in handy. After all, Trelli isn't just a polity with a True City - it is all True City. And If the Trelli start sending pirates at us, that needs to stop.
We'd probably want to wait until we had the forces there to actually carry through on our threats, but still.
 
veekie said:
You're...protesting war by voting for the path most likely to ensure a long drawn out war.

The West trade post leaves them in a scenario where they must win in a few turns, stop fighting or implode. Or you know, not fight at all because they are stuck.

If they take the West spot war goes from likely to inevitable.
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The assumption that they would willingly start a war with one of their strongest trade partners is a horrible one. They will only do so as an act of desperation. If they declare war on us they stop getting our goods, and we have dominance in multiple areas of traded goods that go through the Trelli. That is distinctively not good for them. This line of reasoning only makes sense if you assume war with all of our neighbors is inevitable, in which case...

Well, I've learned something today in that case.
 
bluefur87 said:
The assumption that they would willingly start a war with one of their strongest trade partners is a horrible one. They will only do so as an act of desperation. If they declare war on us they stop getting our goods, and we have dominance in multiple areas of traded goods that go through the Trelli. That is distinctively not good for them. This line of reasoning only makes sense if you assume war with all of our neighbors is inevitable, in which case...

Well, I've learned something today in that case.
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Remember our desperate hunger for metal, the one that nearly caused a currency crises? Well now they have to too and they can't trade for our gold and silver because we do not buy their main exports, either at all (slaves) or in meaningful quantities (bronze).

Since they cannot trade for what they need they have to raid.
 
bluefur87 said:
This line of reasoning only makes sense if you assume war with all of our neighbors is inevitable, in which case...
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In the Bronze Age all the way to the Renaissance? Yeah it's pretty much just war or collapse.

What we're doing here isn't prepping to start a war, it's prepping to defend. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's the smart play. It's how we've always played. If nothing happens, then we just have some extra, and nobody walked away with a bruise. If it starts? We're ready and can defend.

I challenge you to name a single neighbor besides the Trelli that hasn't taken a swing at us.
 
bluefur87 said:
Oh, I'm also seeing people discuss econ from baby boom. I feel like I should remind people of something.

This is in response to asking if a the baby boom activates before the true city tax. Thanks go to @Therealtahu for keeping this stuff in a single easy to find location.
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Fantastic! Thanks for finding that!

Between this and Veekie's previous post on the subject, my worries are assuaged. We should be at 7 econ next turn, but if our provinces don't have to fear the city tax they can spend 6 of those, which is enough for our 2x king + 3x province /w law + 1x symphony = 6x megaproject actions. Palace, here we go!


Though something might come up; if it is serious enough to require a main and not be doable with a secondary, or the secondary requires econ, we might have to strip off an action to solve the issue instead. I don't like that idea much since it costs us the free secondary we would have gotten from using the 2x main + 1x secondary format, plus of course it delays our megaproject - but if it comes down to it at least that wouldn't cost us our law or symphony bonuses.
 
bluefur87 said:
They will only do so as an act of desperation.
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I think you underestimate the force that is greed. Will they straight up declare to us that we're at war? No, but they've tasted the fruits of raiding at this point and gotten hooked. No matter what we do they are going to raid our commerce.

Taking the the trading post to interdict the tin trade has a chance to short circuit this process before they can rev up to doing so in high gear.

I don't understand your objection really, you seem to imply we should never compete with anyone in terms of getting market advantages if it might make them angry. Which honestly seems like a total nonstarter.
 
No7sHere said:
Are planning on completing the census before our law mega project or after?
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We might not have a choice; it was listed as a potential prereq, after all.
That said, personally, I'd prefer "before". Assuming we get the library bonus due to our palace, the census would cost no resources, only actions. And it only takes 4-6 actions. That means if we take an action to start it the turn after we finish our palace, we will get 3 actions from our provinces and the law, and another from symphony, which is just about enough to finish it without any other work from us. Seems like an excellent deal.
 
Ugh, the bastards converted the Black Sea tribes into fucking pirates. Now we will have to pacify the entire coastline to have peace. I say we burn down the Trelli for this fuck up. :mad:



[X] [Exp] Found Trelli Trade Post, West
[X] [Diplo] Need a bigger boat (Main More Boats)
[X] [Int] Party! (Main Improve Festival)
 
pbluekan said:
In the Bronze Age all the way to the Renaissance? Yeah it's pretty much just war or collapse.

What we're doing here isn't prepping to start a war, it's prepping to defend. There's nothing wrong with that, and it's the smart play. It's how we've always played. If nothing happens, then we just have some extra, and nobody walked away with a bruise. If it starts? We're ready and can defend.
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Well, we are also actively undermining Trelli's strategic trade dominance with the intent to weaken them. Not saying we are wrong to do so; just that it is definitely an act of aggression, in the same way the USSR stationing nukes in Cuba was an act of aggression despite them not directly attacking the U.S. there.
 
PrimalShadow said:
Just as a note. This is the first time I've seen so far that the Terrify action might actually come in handy. After all, Trelli isn't just a polity with a True City - it is all True City. And If the Trelli start sending pirates at us, that needs to stop.
We'd probably want to wait until we had the forces there to actually carry through on our threats, but still.
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Hmm. That is a good point, Terrify seems to be a good choice to use, albeit what exactly it would entail? Would it mean that if we do go to war anyway we will be obligated to raze them to the bedrock?
 
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