I think Study Forest would impact the efficacy of the forest expansion, regardless.
No doubt, it would.
Though I expect any gains to be incremental
Also, black soil wouldn't necessarily have all the appropriate micro-organisms. It depends on if it was done near trees and using soil from those trees rather than just clay shards, waste, and charcoal. Even if soil is used, of course, the environment of the black soil pits would partly skew the microbial populations... but whatever. Black soil will definitely help with a lot of things and all it would take to transplant the appropriate soil fauna and fungi is planting a sapling or two in pots w/ original soil and then replanting both the tree and the soil in the lowlands.
The black soil pits we ferment the crap in are likely in the forest itself, or at least outside the village, due to the obvious acceptability issues of burning manure and other rubbish within smelling range of the village..
It doesnt matter how crippled they are, a good roll of the dice would still be enough to distract the DP. But then it hasn't really been an available option yet so...
I'm pretty sure the problem is that what people are envisioning and what's actually going on has a fairly larget gap.
What's going on here for our war process:
-During Summer(Spring and Autumn are too wet, Winter too cold), we send a hundred dudes down with a season's worth of food supplies in wagons.
-These dudes will look for a weakly defended Dead Priest settlement to take a swing at and attack. They wreck(or fail to wreck) the garrison warriors, then loot the stores, loot the cattle, free the slaves, and lead them away. Some of the civilians get killed in the process, unusually many due to the Dead Priests being fundamentally offensive, anyone suspected to have desecrated bodies(consumed human flesh) would be executed.
--Our Blackbirds help here, by moving ahead and locating targets.
-The Dead Priests warriors arrive either during the fighting with the garrison, or when our warriors are retreating from the fight, having freed as many slaves and loot as they can haul. The battle here is to get clear or get the loot back depending on which side you are. Raids do not generally spend a long time in one settlement, much less enough to raze it, as the longer they spend in one place the more likely that the defender will be able to muster enough concentrated force to kill the whole raid group.
--Our Blackbirds help here, by identifying enemy patrol timings, we can get more time to work with.
-Engagements between warriors are not by default to the death. Fights generally end once both sides have like 5% too badly wounded or dead to continue fighting(the broken side starts running. Obviously the winning force isn't going to stop just because the losers are running(especially not with recurve bows), so either the losers will be forced to turn around to inflict comparable injuries before both sides disengage, or they are harried until they run out of range.
-This continues for about 3-4 successful raids, or 1-2 failed raids, upon which our warriors will trek for a month home again, with whatever loot and leftover supplies they have. Due to the distance and lack of roads, they're going to be taking portable wealth, leaving the cattle and ex-slaves to the WC.
@Sivantic
I really don't think that making an unwalled settlement is a good idea. The DP's entire system relies upon raiding unprotected towns, and that's basically what we would have if we didn't wall it off at all. A DP raiding group could get in and wreak some major havoc that we wouldn't be able to deal with. We could probably get away with delaying the walls by 1 turn, but any further and we're taking some major unnecessary risks.
Pretty much yes.
Their
entire model is based on raiding nearby villages to kidnap, maim and enslave their people. You do not leave a settlement without walls there.
I'm not disagreeing with [main]ing the settlement, I'm personally expecting to vote for [main] settlement and [secondary] walls. This will drop our econ to 2, but that's better than risking a DP attack and getting hit in both the settlement's workforce/infrastructure and in our morale/stability.
I've been convinced over the discussion to Main the walls and Secondary the Settlement, since the settlement is going to pay back the walls next turn, so we'd go Econ 3->Econ 2->Econ 3, rapid settlement expansion is secondary to putting up walls so that our construction workers have some peace to work in.
As I mentioned they are still on the other side of a desert and the Confederacy between us. We have some leeway there. I think the Walls are important enough to do a Main Action if you're that worried, which means the next turn after. If they are as big a danger then they should be the best walls we can make.
He's talking about the wall costs.
Main Walls + Secondary Settlement > Secondary Walls + Main Settlement >>>> Main Settlement + Main Walls next turn
That's an entire generation, 30-40 years, for the Dead Priests to locate and target an undefended settlement. The Western Confederacy deal with Dead Priest raids by picking up their settlement and moving whenever they get hit, so the Dead Priests will have to waste time searching the lowlands for where they put the settlement after every successful raid.
The settlements we build won't have the option of pulling up stakes, so you can expect the Dead Priests to hit it, and
keep hitting it.
The new settlement's location means:
-Dead Priests only have to cross lowlands to reach it. Badlands are to the northeast of the site.
-It's in closer raiding range from the Dead Priests than our Lower Valley village. It's the whole point of putting a village there.
-The Western Confederacy don't utilize static defense, they won't meaningfully obstruct raiding over the timespan of a generation.
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