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Paths of Civilization

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tryrar said:
this means most of us want to exclude the HK from the games as to avoid awkward implications of warring on them after they attend.

Also, most of us don't buy the games as a way to peacefully annex them/convince them we're not a threat, due to the geopolitical situation the HK are in. Remember they are essentially stuck having to expand through us at this point, which means they HAVE to eventually take another swing at us eventually if they don't want to simply be marginalized into irrelevance by us eventually.
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I'm pretty sure DrMatoi already knows that, he just doesn't want us to be evil warmongers.
DocMatoi said:
The last time we set out to destroy anyone, it twisted our society irrevocably. I do not want that to happen again.
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We don't have to BURN PILLAGE EXTERMINATE them; the Tragedy of Xohyr occurred because we were super pressed by the simultaneous invasions from the Thunder Horse and (ironically) the Highlander Kingdom. Secondly, the Tragedy is viewed as an important lesson in our civilization - to better prevent future Tragedies.
 
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Raichu1972 said:
Possible creation of steel?
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So steel is an inevitable byproduct of iron working and it will appear eventually.

I think the really important question here is how soon that eventually is. We have case hardening, and apparently there's a huge mill project going up, presumably to hammer more iron. Besides a study metal (which is obvious), what other things can we do to advantage steel production?

Expand Forest to increase charcoal production?
Support Artisans to try and get to steel through the need for tougher components.
Study Alchemy, because of chemistry.

Thoughts?
 
NewAgeOfPower said:
I'm pretty sure DrMatoi already knows that, he just doesn't want us to be evil warmongers.
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Yes. They want a fight / think they need a fight/ wanna be relevant to the world? they can come get some, and we'll stomp them when they do. The Ymaryn do not start fights. They finish them.
 
Potato and Chip said:
Well the HK currently has a spy network within our kingdom which they used to create riots to distract from their kidnapping of one of our blacksmiths as our people killed each other in the streets and apparently they have been conducting even more operations that we don't know about,
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This is half speculation and half fantasy. None of our blacksmiths were kidnapped last update.
 
DocMatoi said:
Fey Mood, and the militarization of our society that followed. AN has said if we want to demilitarize, we need to take peacey options. well heres a peacey option. Lets invite the highlanders and not destroy them.
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If we were less militarized, we would have just lost a war and had our land taken from us.

Eh, no thanks...
 
DocMatoi said:
"Best of the worst" does not equal "good enough." Best of the worst equals "Room for improvement."
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Obviously.

Valuing feels-good morality over the Safety of the People, though, smacks of extreme naivete at best.

In an ideal world we'd have laser-armed jet fighters, the Nomads on Horseback & the Iron-armed Highlanders could never threaten us, and we'd be free to export our moral superiority to them ;p

Unfortunately, we do not live in that world.
 
ctulhuslp said:
I would agree if I've seen even a single attempt at counting numerical costs of going to war and inviting them and then maybe going to war. Instead all I see is accusations of stupidity and lack of spine, mixed with generous doses of condescension.

I mean...people who vote for going full war studiously ignore that CA had given us options to devour their villages peacefully before and nobody fucking voted for it. And Games are CA-linked. And we get a CA upgrade.
And we got Hat-lands through CA annexation spiral.

And I think I've already posted full list of citations on that, and I was not the only one.
I do not see any comparison of numerical costs of CA-eating vs War Here And Now anywhere, only fearmongering of those dirty treacherous Highlanders whom we should conquer and assimilate.



Nah, it's cold political calculus.
Plus, like, we actually sicced nomads on lowlands before, for example, which resulted in a lot of suffering. We are not purely good guys.
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You seem to be assuming that the option to eat the HK through CA is going to be available relatively soon.

People don't just want to neutralize the HK, they want to do it as soon as possible, before we get into another war and they have another opportunity to attack us while we are busy.

If you have some evidence that we will have the chance to eat the HK in 3 turns through CA, I would like to see it.
 
ctulhuslp said:
It's called 'local optimization' - valuing immediate results over more global picture.
Globally, not attacking and instead peacefully assimilating would give us more internal stability because there is less anger and stife going around; plus traditions of peace and not giving a precedent of violence for achieving power being acceptable.
Locally, conquest will result in shorter border and HK losing ability to cut off not!Anatolia from us.

Different priorities.
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That's certainly true, but we aren't in a hyper-simplified game theory game situation here; we have unknown odds of success of both attempting and succeeding at each action, and we all evaluate those differently. Personally, I think we're both more likely to go to war (conditional on this precursor action for both sides) and more likely to successfully neutralize the Highland Kingdom as a threat through war. If we declare war, I expect the thread to follow through with enough actions to see the job done, while if we try to peacefully assimilate, we won't have collectively committed to that course of action and might not do enough to do more than delay the problem.

If it were a simple matter of preferred method with similar odds of serious attempt and odds of success on both sides, I would prefer the peaceful option, but as the peaceful option comes about by declining the war option then manually pursuing a variety of peaceful actions with unclear impact on the situation, they simply aren't on even enough footing for that preference to win out, for me.
 
ctulhuslp said:
It's called 'local optimization' - valuing immediate results over more global picture.
Globally, not attacking and instead peacefully assimilating would give us more internal stability because there is less anger and stife going around; plus traditions of peace and not giving a precedent of violence for achieving power being acceptable.
Locally, conquest will result in shorter border and HK losing ability to cut off not!Anatolia from us.

Different priorities.
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That makes sense, I suppose - it's just that our current situation doesn't strike me as so dire that we have to optimize locally, so given the scope of the quest it seems obvious that global optimization is preferable. Of course, "the current situation is not dire" seems to be one of those points on which I disagree with much of the pro-war crowd, so I take your point. Still frustrating, though.
 
DocMatoi said:
Yes. They want a fight / think they need a fight/ wanna be relevant to the world? they can come get some, and we'll stomp them when they do. The Ymaryn do not start fights. They finish them.
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GREAT. So you agree we should run over the HK next turn?

Because, that is what our CB is. They started this shit with us. We're going to finish it.
 
pbluekan said:
So steel is an inevitable byproduct of iron working and it will appear eventually.

I think the really important question here is how soon that eventually is. We have case hardening, and apparently there's a huge mill project going up, presumably to hammer more iron. Besides a study metal (which is obvious), what other things can we do to advantage steel production?

Expand Forest to increase charcoal production?
Support Artisans to try and get to steel through the need for tougher components.
Study Alchemy, because of chemistry.

Thoughts?
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It might help to study metal while also expanding black soil in the same turn, since I remember a lot of people in thread saying that our black soil already has most of the materials in it needed to turn iron into steel.
 
[X] [WB] Upgrade Cosmopolitan Acceptance

[X] [Inv] Highland Kingdom
[X] [Inv] Trelli
[X] [Inv] Thunder Horse
[X] [Inv] Swamp Folk
[X] [Inv] Metal Workers
[X] [Inv] Storm Wolves

[X] No
[X] [King] Yenyna (Genius Martial, Poor Admin, Awful Diplomacy, Wildcard Mystic; dangerously unpredictable)
 
VoidZero said:
Actually the Admin hero king will decide that so.

On the other hand, who knows when the Nomads will decide to make a visit.
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I'm hoping that with the combination of the Heaven's Hawks attacking the Northern Nomads, who were fighting the Storm Wolves, and inviting the Storm Wolves to the Games, we might be able to get a group of semi-friendly nomads on our boarder.
 
[x] [Inv] Highland Kingdom
[x] [Inv] Trelli
[x] [Inv] Thunder Horse
[x] [Inv] Swamp Folk
[x] [Inv] Metal Workers
[x] [Inv] Storm Wolves

inviting everyone makes a statement. Besides, we may be able to reach out to the highland kingdoms and get them to knock it off. I would be ok with giving them exactly one more chance backed with this and a trade mission to wrap their heads around the fact that we don't conquer people because they are there. If they fuck with use one more time though we end them as a culture. we conquer them then spend the next few turns with targeted support subordinate until they are us.
 
Wiadi said:
That makes sense, I suppose - it's just that our current situation doesn't strike me as so dire that we have to optimize locally, so given the scope of the quest it seems obvious that global optimization is preferable. Of course, "the current situation is not dire" seems to be one of those points on which I disagree with much of the pro-war crowd, so I take your point. Still frustrating, though.
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The situation may not feel immediately dire, but we basically avoided ruination via good rolls before. And the AN announced he was jacking up quest difficulty.

And a few turns ago he announced the Nomads were overdue for a Wagghh!

I am pro-war because we cannot afford to continuously gamble our civilization on good rolls.

DocMatoi said:
we already finished that fight. remember? We got +1 stability for it?
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Absolutely not. They're still free to stab us again. Half the thread voted to accept the peace because the AN stated we would receive a CB against them for their Treachery.

This status quo cannot continue.

HK Delenda Est.
 
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