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Paths of Civilization

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veekie said:
Depends. With an Arsenal we should be able to outfit elites with steel equipment immediately(see the turn after Fey Mood for how fast we could have deployed iron starting from "figured it out from the ore", to "functional weapons" by the mid turn.), then propagated it outwards
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The next question would be the utility, though.

Is steel such a qualitative leap forward for our armies as Iron was?

Right now, I think heavy armor and the needed production techniques would serve us better. Beforehand, bronze weapons were rare enough that being faster beat being tougher, but if the Khemetri army is like the New Kingdom Army of Egypt, they will all have bronze weapons. Being able to field heavy infantry would no sell that advantage. We would be much slower, but they couldn't actually hurt us and the Carrion Eaters have good odds healing anyone that was injured.

Our existing scale mail may work well enough, I suppose. But I don't know if it is widespread enough. Maybe it's the reason why we managed to hold the line.
 
Candesce said:
I have no idea where you're coming to the conclusion that us having high enough prestige will prevent civilizations that aren't in contact with us from gaining KotH.
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As I've said, the Khemetri are a mere 3 prestige behind us. Somehow I doubt that a Thunderdome Match will be declared if we stumble about a regional 'KotH' which has only half or less the prestige of us.
 
Candesce said:
I have no idea where you're coming to the conclusion that us having high enough prestige will prevent civilizations that aren't in contact with us from gaining KotH.
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Observe, the current example of the Khemetri who probably have 54 Prestige to our 57, as a great example of your point.
 
Susano said:
Somehow I doubt that a Thunderdome Match will be declared if we stumble about a regional 'KotH' which has only half or less the prestige of us.
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Uh-huh.

If we "stumble" into a KotH with half our prestige, I'd bet the only question is the same damned one that every single nation we're in contact with has: "Do we think we can take them?"

A reminder: KotH gives everybody nearby a casus belli against us.

It's, again, our military power, not our prestige, that makes them back down. They might be correlated, but that's only true so long as we keep building up our military to support our prestige.
 
Candesce said:
A reminder: KotH gives everybody nearby a casus belli against us.
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Yes, and I acknowledged that. But this is not the same. That casus belli just means everyone can take a swing at us. Even if they're successful, they don't necessarily get the KotH crown.

This specific conflict is a great power conflicts between two KotHs, directly about transfer of prestige and who gets to hold the KotH crown.

I'm not talking about them backing down. I'm talking about the exact game mechanism that is at play here not coming into play in the first place in my hypothetical scenario.
 
Susano said:
As I've said, the Khemetri are a mere 3 prestige behind us. Somehow I doubt that a Thunderdome Match will be declared if we stumble about a regional 'KotH' which has only half or less the prestige of us.
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When two Kings of the Hill meet, one must back down or they go to war. It doesn't matter if the difference is 3, 50, or 5000.

The larger the difference, the more that the one with the higher prestige has to lose, and the more the one with lesser prestige has to gain.
 
Susano said:
I'm talking about the exact game mechanism that is at play here not coming into play in the first place in my hypothetical scenario.
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You're claiming that no nation can claim KotH so long as there's any nation anywhere with sufficiently higher prestige, yes.

It continues to be a stupid claim.

Any nation that's acquired KotH is going to have more than a little pride in their own works, and a tendency to believe the reputations of other nations are overblown.
 
Candesce said:
You're claiming that no nation can claim KotH so long as there's any nation anywhere with sufficiently higher prestige, yes.

It continues to be a stupid claim.

Any nation that's acquired KotH is going to have more than a little pride in their own works, and a tendency to believe the reputations of other nations are overblown.
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I'm referring to this specific mechanism:

Rakuhn said:
When two Kings of the Hill meet, one must back down or they go to war.It doesn't matter if the difference is 3, 50, or 5000.
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The thing is, no, I don't think this holds true if the difference is 5000.
 
Susano said:
It kinda does? I mean, sure, everyone has the KotH casus belli against us. But this conflict arose because the Khemetri are in fact a peer-level civilization, and do have in fact a shot at taking the KotH status. In fact, it can be concluded that they are only 3 prestige behind us (hence the 13 prestige loss for backing down).

So, in theory, if there are no other contestants because we are so much in the lead, there won't be any thunderdome wars. Now, this is unrealistic of course, but hence the smilie at the end of my post which you so conveniently cut away. Now look at what you have made me do, explaining a joke to death!
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But it...doesn't. Local Kings immediately contest the next King they touch. The system does not compare Prestige scores UNLESS one or both parties concede. It only cares whether you are the King in your area and they are the King in theirs.

The only way to prevent it is to have such a clear visible strength advantage that they back down rather than clash...but nearly every empire of this era getting to be King would have also set up to implode if they lost the crown.
DakkaMania said:
The next question would be the utility, though.

Is steel such a qualitative leap forward for our armies as Iron was?

Right now, I think heavy armor and the needed production techniques would serve us better. Beforehand, bronze weapons were rare enough that being faster beat being tougher, but if the Khemetri army is like the New Kingdom Army of Egypt, they will all have bronze weapons. Being able to field heavy infantry would no sell that advantage. We would be much slower, but they couldn't actually hurt us and the Carrion Eaters have good odds healing anyone that was injured.

Our existing scale mail may work well enough, I suppose. But I don't know if it is widespread enough. Maybe it's the reason why we managed to hold the line.
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Bolded? Absolutely.
So you see, bronze was better than iron on a personal gear level, but iron was better on a civilization level, because you could afford to equip everyone with semi-elite gear, along with spares and secondaries. The resultant economies of scale from iron tools and parts led to productivity explosions and the availability of work strength metal enabled innovation even if it was kind of too soft to make complex gears(iron mechanisms tended to strip under strain over time, which can be distressing when happening to a loaded crossbow).

The Iron -> Steel leap was simultaneously easier and more powerful.
It means every soldier of yours is equipped better than their elites. Across the whole empire, on every field contested. And yet production wise it doesn't require extensive new facilities, it's approximately as difficult to convert our smelters to producing steel instead of iron as it was to convert our kilns to ash glazed pottery.
 
Hey @veekie, @Candesce what do you think might eventuate from this vote:

Main Arsenal
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Shrine

Trust in the science guy to come up with the greatest things. I don't particularly want to do this one, I'd much prefer your antimaterial sniper idea. But I do want to discuss hypothetical things from going full research by trying for library x2/shrine x2/arsenal x2. Maining an Arsenal would make it a times two build, correct?
 
BungieONI said:
Hey @veekie, @Candesce what do you think might eventuate from this vote:

Main Arsenal
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Shrine

Trust in the science guy to come up with the greatest things. I don't particularly want to do this one, I'd much prefer your antimaterial sniper idea. But I do want to discuss hypothetical things from going full research by trying for library x2/shrine x2/arsenal x2. Maining an Arsenal would make it a times two build, correct?
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Should be, but I think the shrine isn't as urgent as a Secondary Study Metal in this circumstance. The Arsenal is just the lab. You need to actually perform the research.
 
Candesce said:
It's, again, our military power, not our prestige, that makes them back down. They might be correlated, but that's only true so long as we keep building up our military to support our prestige.
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And the fact that even the Nomads think we're a little crazy.

We have big smiles, yes, and even genuine ones. But we also have very large teeth.
 
Susano said:
I'm referring to this specific mechanism:



The thing is, no, I don't think this holds true if the difference is 5000.
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From how I understand it, KotH is a regional based thing.

Before we eclipsed them in prestige, the Xoh Empire was KotH. I think they had 30 prestige at most at that time.

The Khemetri, with their Wonder Spamming ways, likely had far more prestige than the Xoh.
This wouldn't matter though, because KotH means that a nation is King of their Hill, and they gain the title based upon that fact.

We have known of the Khemetri as "those guys with all of the money that live in an endless paradise" for a long time before we met them, before we even knew about KotH being a thing.

By your argument, we could have never claimed KotH because we knew of someone that sounded more prestigious than us.

As for the Thunderdome effect, AN has said that Great Power wars happen when two KotH's meet in this age, full stop. If you're trying to imply that one KotH having astronomically more prestige than another KotH would make the less prestigious KotH automatically submit, I would disagree. The less prestigious KotH has everything to gain from a Great War, because it lets them take the more prestigious KotH's prestige for themselves.
 
veekie said:
Should be, but I think the shrine isn't as urgent as a Secondary Study Metal in this circumstance. The Arsenal is just the lab. You need to actually perform the research.
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Sooo... FULL SCIENCE! Would be:

Main Arsenal
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Study Metal

Very similar to your Steel Elite Infantry vote combo, but it puts more emphasis in my mind on getting more people in to help him and to work on the problems he cooks up for experimenting. A sort of feed the Genius lots and lots and lots of assistants so they can keep track of all of his ideas and tinker on them.

Do you think there is much qualitative difference between mine and yours?

maximillian said:
So guys, how many mains and secondaries can we take now? It changed with law and gov no?
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We are not quite sure right now Sir Sheep.

AN said that the old Double Main thing from last time we had a project update was a copy pasta error.
We as players probably only have 1 Main and 2 Secondaries.
 
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BungieONI said:
FULL SCIENCE! Would be:
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I mean, really truly FULL science would be a mix-and-match of:

Main: Study (metal, health, alchemy, forest, poppies)
Secondary: Study (metal, health, alchemy, forest, poppies)
Secondary: Study (metal, health, alchemy, forest, poppies)

E:
Hell if we REALLY want steel, do

Main: Study Metal
Secondary: Study Metal
Secondary: Study Metal x2
 
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BungieONI said:
Sooo... FULL SCIENCE! Would be:

Main Arsenal
Secondary War Mission
Secondary Study Metal

Very similar to your Steel Elite Infantry vote combo, but it puts more emphasis in my mind on getting more people in to help him and to work on the problems he cooks up for experimenting. A sort of feed the Genius lots and lots and lots of assistants so they can keep track of all of his ideas and tinker on them.

Do you think there is much qualitative difference between mine and yours?
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Willing to back it.
 
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