You know it seems like as king of the hill we are slowly morphing such that our neighbors adapt to us even further then they have already to survive our Econ Vampirism.
Which is really weird to see that we are basically inputting selection pressures on our neighbors for reals now.
You can hear the social system strain ringing out from the future into our time.
Well, our selection pressures:
-Cosmopolitan Acceptance line means that our neighbors adapt one or more of the following solutions:
--Negate or offset Stability loss immediately on trigger.
---We've learned Theocracies can deflect Stab hits into RA with some combo.
--Maintain deep Economy reserves with Econ fountain traits.
---Western Confederacy and Hathatyn developed Pioneering Spirit and Wildcat Prospecting routes of Econ backing.
--Gain ability to restore Stability for low or no Economy cost
---Highland Kingdom developed Order Above All
---Xohyssiri developed Greater Good -> Moloch Calls
--
Maintain high Centralization to NOT trigger refugees all the time. Impossible for most of history due to Lowland contests
-Cosmopolitan Acceptance also resulted in a systematic removal of dissident forces from neighbors, leading them to become static socially by offsetting their Stability losses until the point they suddenly collapse.
-Mass dominance of trade goods suppresses Center of Trade cultures due to suicide pact results happening when they have to fight the turtle focused Ymaryn for trade dominances.
--Trelli's adaptation allowed them to take advantage of our dominances, but also trapped them into trade dependency upon us.
-Early Code of Laws led to early adoption of legal systems in neighbors, with incidental focus on taxation and wealth redistribution.
-Early iron development led to acceleration of metallurgy development in general to catch up, which both produced unusually prominent smith castes and fueled an immense demand for slave labor.
-Ymaryn becoming primary Nomad Magnet and our Marches scouring the local steppes of hostile nomad forces means that our regional steppe neighbors are underprepared for truly major raids...until they bounce off the Ymaryn and go destroy everything in the area instead.
-A defensive King of the Hill with massive defense bonuses and punishing King of the Hill CBs brutally encourages alternative forms of gaining power, which in turn incentivizes lesser powers to prey upon each other to bulk up sufficiently first, or to develop grand coalitions to take the crown.
--And then we introduce the Games, which gives them the HOPE of Taking the Crown, but they would have to invest a lot into our values to make it work.
Why only a Secondary? A Main is near guaranteed to get us into max Stability and will root out a hell of a lot more corruption. Better to do it as much as possible now so that the miscellaneous routes to corruption can be identified by our Heroic Admin and shut down in the best ways possible.
Because we only get 1 Main or 2 Secondaries in the Mid Turn reaction.
Actually, they have a river-way to Highland Kingdom - if they really want to attack, they could rush-built barges and come from their rear.
Hadn't seen said river on the AN set maps, but unless the river as as big as the Nile that's not a very good attack vector. The Khemetri ships take a pretty deep draft.
But if they do it is fine by us, since that'd trigger Cosmopolitan Acceptance as we eat up the other side of the HK by eating all their settlements in the pass and to the north like we did for the Hathatyn when the Highlanders took a swing at them. We ended up taking more land than the Highlanders did that time too.
Still don't understand why such a vast majority choose trails; when this corruption has been clearly a thing for decades, when we have a limited opportunity of an admin hero, and as mentioned we get benefits for having higher centralization from more econ damage buffer and it enables us to be more flexible on the Wildcat options.
A few reasons:
-We needed the Trails to generate enough Diplomacy to use Terrify. Moot now with the Games
-We needed the Centralization to maintain an open buffer for Wildcat.
-We needed the Centralization cap increase to handle Cities.
-Part of the corruption problem was the terrible roads preventing the central administration from getting a good grip on what's going on. Poor roads means local authorities have more leeway.
Though if you want to catch the criminals, it's Restore Order to investigate and purge the problems via an Admin roll.
Enforce Justice tries to solve the problem by legislating it away, but doesn't do anything about eliminating the offenders directly.
