Remove ads

Paths of Civilization

Reader mode
Concho117 said:
While I agree that our current system is good for preventing incompetency it also isolates the 'ruling class' from more local issues like the exploitation we saw in the previous update. Moving towards Democracy helps with that as it allows citizens to directly voice their discontent rather than having to go through Judicial channels which may or may not be sympathetic.

E: Also @TheDanishLord who are you calling up-jumped peasant?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


The same can be achieved by localising power.
 
You know, at some point (not now) we should consider combining Enforce Justice + Restore Order + Festival. I suspect the narrative impact would far exceed the normal mechanical benefits since
  • The rules are being explained and enforced with appeals being possible
  • the king is devoting 20 years of his life focusing on the rule of law
  • preferably this would be done right after accepting a bunch of refugees, since that means there's Stability to recover, refugees to set on the right path, and econ to spend on it.
 
Concho117 said:
Also I think that one of the problems is that Academia Nut doesn't really do a good job at conveying to us how the Ymaryn government actually works at anything other than the highest level. We in the Thread assume that everything just works at the mid and low tiers but as we've seen in this update that assumption can be quite dangerous.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's our obscene hierarchy score doing that. We have never dipped below 5 in all the time I have been here, at least since page 600.

There are oodles of layers between the king's perspective, what we normally see, and the most low peasant.
 
pblur said:
At the end of the bronze age peasants were far better off than at the beginning due, primarily, to the tyrannical rule of the elite.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Contestable. There is ample proof for the pre-civilizatory agrarian civilizations in Mesopotamia being far more egalitarian than their city state successors. They couldn't build large monuments or wage war, but the typical peasant then was probably better off than the typical peasant under those monument builders. Also, the Intermediate periods in Egypt, when central rule broke down. There are reports then of the status of commoners that was much higher than under the dynasties, and with no tax collectors breathing down their neck they probably had it much better than under the dynasties as well.

One could also look to Europe: The 13th century was a golden age, with courtly etiquettes being developed, monastery culture being on its height, cities being founded left and right, the first universities cropping up etc etc... but for the common people it was a Malthusian catastrophe. Famines were frequent, and because of overpopulation the value of labour was low, so the common people got nearly nothing for their efforts. It was a great time to be a noble, but a much worse time to be a peasant than previous centuries... and then came the Black Death. And afterwards, that flowering stopped and population levels were much lower, but that meant the value of labour rose again, and hence also the standing and the prosperity of the common people.

The thing is that ancient empires basically were nothing more than protection rackets. They didn't actually provide any services to the people. They just told the people to pay taxes or get their heads bashed in, and those taxes were then spent on the court, the army and monuments.

Either Cetashwayo or Mempet'ran once quoted a really good quote of a history book about that... how in ancient empires, the common people mostly lived between crushing poverty and starvation, because the state took away everything but the barest minimum, and used that to build their outlandish monuments etc. So I very much reject your notion. The ancient state did fuck all for the population; it merely ensured that no other warlords would be exploiting the population, but that it would be them. But at the end of the day, it was just a protection racket.
 
Concho117 said:
Also I think that one of the problems is that Academia Nut doesn't really do a good job at conveying to us how the Ymaryn government actually works at anything other than the highest level. We in the Thread assume that everything just works at the mid and low tiers but as we've seen in this update that assumption can be quite dangerous.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't see how that contradict our assumption about how government in Ymaryn works. If anything, it's everything as I expected, but not at the ideal level due to all the corruption.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Lawful Neutral with Good tendencies?

In the long run, the two are pretty similar - it's only when you choose short-term standards of living over long-term optimisation that it's a problem. Not using slaves is an example of the two lining up - it's a local minima but is no-optimal in the long run.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I guess it depends on how you define Lawful Neutral?

To me, it's defined as basically following the Law, be it our Law or the Highlander's Law or the (hypothetical) Thunder Speaker's Law.

If said law says slavery is ok, then you're ok with slavery, and so on and so forth.

Lawful Neutral with Good tendencies is basically Lawful Good to me, so I'm not sure what the distinction between the two is.
 
Susano said:
The thing is that ancient empires basically were nothing more than protection rackets. They didn't actually provide any services to the people. They just told the people to pay taxes or get their heads bashed in, and those taxes were then spent on the court, the army and monuments.

Either Cetashwayo or Mempet'ran once quoted a really good quote of a history book about that... how in ancient empires, the common people mostly lived between crushing poverty and starvation, because the state took away everything but the barest minimum, and used that to build their outlandish monuments etc. So I very much reject your notion. The ancient state did fuck all for the population; it merely ensured that no other warlords would be exploiting the population, but that it would be them. But at the end of the day, it was just a protection racket.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes, some ancient empires were nothing more than protection rackets and the mafia writ large. These frequently were very often highly decentralized states.

But the complex bureaucracy and the palace economy of late bronze age societies? They weren't protection rackets. They are high-end states that recognize the value of investing in infrastructure and providing protection against famines.
 
Pfiu, just caught up, what A great quest!
What a weird weather though! It killed more civilisation than anyone else around! :/

Hum, whenever I see free cities being brought up I can't help but worry we would eventually end up like the Grecs...

Just a little bit of curiousity, but how big in scale are the battle in our corners of the world? Hundreds of Warriors? thousands? Ten of thousands?
 
Concho117 said:
Also I think that one of the problems is that Academia Nut doesn't really do a good job at conveying to us how the Ymaryn government actually works at anything other than the highest level. We in the Thread assume that everything just works at the mid and low tiers but as we've seen in this update that assumption can be quite dangerous.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hey I've always assumed system dystopia, don't lump me in with the utopians!
 
BungieONI said:
It's our obscene hierarchy score doing that. We have never dipped below 5 in all the time I have been here, at least since page 600.

There are oodles of layers between the king's perspective, what we normally see, and the most low peasant.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Eh. Using over complication as a reason to not elaborate on how the mid to low government systems works seems like a bad idea in a Civ quest. Even having some form of abstraction of how it works would be useful to the Thread.

Kiba said:
I don't see how that contradict our assumption about how government in Ymaryn works. If anything, it's everything as I expected, but not at the ideal level due to all the corruption.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't think I quite understand what you mean here. Could you please elaborate?
 
Raichu1972 said:
Lawful Neutral with Good tendencies is basically Lawful Good to me, so I'm not sure what the distinction between the two is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Willing to commit morally horrible things for the betterment of sociality, like force moment of populations for better work efficiency, abasement of the lessers to get things done but always looking out for having a stable society/doing it for society.

Lawful evil is simply following the laws for ones own personal benefit

Lawful Good is doing things within the law for the 'greater good' aka people with a cause.

Lawful simply means people obey the established government/Laws/highest socialite system.
 
Kiba said:
But the complex bureaucracy and the palace economy of late bronze age societies? They weren't protection rackets. They are high-end states that recognize the value of investing in infrastructure and providing protection against famines.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They were, though. The entire goal of such historical palace economies was to concentrate as much wealth as could be siphoned off from the populace for a tiny elite minority.
 
Arlos said:
Pfiu, just caught up, what A great quest!
What a weird weather though! It killed more civilisation than anyone else around! :/

Hum, whenever I see free cities being brought up I can't help but worry we would eventually end up like the Grecs...

Just a little bit of curiousity, but how big in scale are the battle in our corners of the world? Hundreds of Warriors? thousands? Ten of thousands?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Welcome to the Thread!

We're all mad here.

Also, don't trust the sheep. The words they whisper are universally bad ideas even though they may seem reasonable.
The vampires and insurance lawyers are okay though.
 
Last edited:
Concho117 said:
Eh. Using over complication as a reason to not elaborate on how the mid to low government systems works seems like a bad idea in a Civ quest. Even having some form of abstraction of how it works would be useful to the Thread.



I don't think I quite understand what you mean here. Could you please elaborate?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
AN seems to have a rule to restrict us to IC knowledge for how things are working in our system, for instance we didn't have stat numbers until writing. I don't mind, since it means we have to keep on our toes and actively use the tools we do have to check things like that. I'm thinking of the adviser system here as my example.

Another is how we only got vague things from our subordinates till we got the Palace and our government grew in complexity.

*shrug*

Arlos said:
Pfiu, just caught up, what A great quest!
What a weird weather though! It killed more civilisation than anyone else around! :/

Hum, whenever I see free cities being brought up I can't help but worry we would eventually end up like the Grecs...

Just a little bit of curiousity, but how big in scale are the battle in our corners of the world? Hundreds of Warriors? thousands? Ten of thousands?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Several thousands are normal I believe and we in particular are starting to get to tens of thousands with our population.
 
BungieONI said:
AN seems to have a rule to restrict us to IC knowledge for how things are working in our system, for instance we didn't have stat numbers until writing. I don't mind, since it means we have to keep on our toes and actively use the tools we do have to check things like that. I'm thinking of the adviser system here as my example.

Another is how we only got vague things from our subordinates till we got the Palace and our government grew in complexity.

*shrug*
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Okay.
I can see how the lack of knowledge might be one of the ways AN raises the difficulty level in this quest.

If so, then we need to figure our what we can do to fix the information gap.
 
BungieONI said:
AN seems to have a rule to restrict us to IC knowledge for how things are working in our system, for instance we didn't have stat numbers until writing. I don't mind, since it means we have to keep on our toes and actively use the tools we do have to check things like that. I'm thinking of the adviser system here as my example.

Another is how we only got vague things from our subordinates till we got the Palace and our government grew in complexity.

*shrug*


Several thousands are normal I believe and we in particular are starting to get to tens of thousands with our population.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thanks!
Hu, considering that we are in the Mid-bronze age that's a good number. I guess our little corner of the world is rather advanced...
 
Susano said:
Contestable. There is ample proof for the pre-civilizatory agrarian civilizations in Mesopotamia being far more egalitarian than their city state successors. They couldn't build large monuments or wage war, but the typical peasant then was probably better off than the typical peasant under those monument builders. Also, the Intermediate periods in Egypt, when central rule broke down. There are reports then of the status of commoners that was much higher than under the dynasties, and with no tax collectors breathing down their neck they probably had it much better than under the dynasties as well.

One could also look to Europe: The 13th century was a golden age, with courtly etiquettes being developed, monastery culture being on its height, cities being founded left and right, the first universities cropping up etc etc... but for the common people it was a Malthusian catastrophe. Famines were frequent, and because of overpopulation the value of labour was low, so the common people got nearly nothing for their efforts. It was a great time to be a noble, but a much worse time to be a peasant than previous centuries... and then came the Black Death. And afterwards, that flowering stopped and population levels were much lower, but that meant the value of labour rose again, and hence also the standing and the prosperity of the common people.

The thing is that ancient empires basically were nothing more than protection rackets. They didn't actually provide any services to the people. They just told the people to pay taxes or get their heads bashed in, and those taxes were then spent on the court, the army and monuments.

Either Cetashwayo or Mempet'ran once quoted a really good quote of a history book about that... how in ancient empires, the common people mostly lived between crushing poverty and starvation, because the state took away everything but the barest minimum, and used that to build their outlandish monuments etc. So I very much reject your notion. The ancient state did fuck all for the population; it merely ensured that no other warlords would be exploiting the population, but that it would be them. But at the end of the day, it was just a protection racket.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


It aient a racket if the protection is legitimate (as in, the other warlord will not even bother knocking)


As for the state of the peasants, Thier state varied wildly, and whilst starvation and poverty were endemic, it was more duo to natural factors than tax factors. That is not to say that peasants where not oppressed in some eras and regions, but the fact is that they unlike the burghers, where often taxed in labour rather than coin means that its damn hard to establish an economic well being metric for them. And medieval taxes were barely existenat, as rents were the norm for agrarian dues. And Twas the plague that caused serfdom to gain steam.


Also the threat of force is built into the very concept of governance itself , even the most hippy happitos modern state still runs on the principles of do it or else.
 
Last edited:
Concho117 said:
Okay.
I can see how the lack of knowledge might be one of the ways AN raises the difficulty level in this quest.

If so, then we need to figure our what we can do to fix the information gap.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
More of what we have been, mostly.

The adviser system is one of the best things we have cooked up in this thread. Like if during the first tax crisis we had asked what they thought the simplest choices were, we would have been much better off. We did a little of that during the Occupational Debacle, it didn't quite help because of a loophole no one realized was even there but it really blunted the issues.

I am strenuously supporting we do the same when we get to our tax reform.


Aside from that though I'll need to think about it. My brain is still full of Free Cities.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top