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Paths of Civilization

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[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)
 
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Thomasfoolery said:
Looking at this

Patricians - Objective: Build Chariots within 2 turns. Success: +1 Culture, Failure: -5 Wealth - DONE
Guild - Objective: Build Glasswords within 3 turns. Success: +1 Tech & Culture, Failure: -3 Tech - No Action
Traders - Objective: Obtain Leading status or better in a new trade good within 3 turns. Failure: -1 Stability - DONE
Yeomen- Objective: Obtain a new province and have 50% or greater trails coverage within 2 turns. Success: +1 Stability - DONE
Priests- Objective: Build a Level 2 Temple within 3 turns. Failure: -1 Legitimacy[/QUOTE - 1/6 Complete, Passives will finish next main

So pretty good, means almost certainly they'll all be finished. I guess the question is how long the grace period is before they refresh. Assuming the clock for a new quest starts the moment one is completed it might be better to drag things out a bit at times.

Also seems like our Hero only got one stability from his Enforce Justice Main considering the yeoman stab reward? I wonder is that might explain the rather lackluster narrative result, he didn't roll that well?
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That reminds me.

@Academia Nut does our provinces doing glassworks mean that we fulfilled that condition?
 
Thomasfoolery said:
Patricians - Objective: Build Chariots within 2 turns. Success: +1 Culture, Failure: -5 Wealth - DONE
Guild - Objective: Build Glasswords within 3 turns. Success: +1 Tech & Culture, Failure: -3 Tech - No Action
Traders - Objective: Obtain Leading status or better in a new trade good within 3 turns. Failure: -1 Stability - DONE
Yeomen- Objective: Obtain a new province and have 50% or greater trails coverage within 2 turns. Success: +1 Stability - DONE
Priests- Objective: Build a Level 2 Temple within 3 turns. Failure: -1 Legitimacy- 1/6 Complete, Passives will finish next main
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@Academia Nut Comment?

Academia Nut said:
Policies – Valleyhome Baths (3/3), Lower Valleyhome Aqueduct (3/3), Sacred Forest Temple (1/6), ignificant Walls (16/45 Significant Walls)
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Error w/ the walls.
 
Malevolo said:
[X] No (???)
Love of Wisdom makes me wanting to contest this prediction!
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Cool! A good reason!

I also do not like IStO on first impressions.

Just, bleh. Hopefully it upgraded our actions in some way because otherwise it's kinda shit.
Sorta.

If it lets us do a level 1 Kick for free. That's kinda horribly broken. And that's pretty good.

Academia Nut said:
Point of note, Tormulyna is a Mystic Genius.
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Holy moly.

We seem to be generating idiot savants all over the place. Or something like them. o_O

Malevolo said:
*looks the chronic backstabber, looks at the Thunder Horse*
*looks at the war against the Thunder Horse in the east, looks again at the chronic backstabber*
*begins painting a target on the Ymarin belly "Attack Here for Maximum Effect"*
This gonna be fun.
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I want to rate this hug and funny at the same time. You have my sympathies.



Hmmm, it is hard to parse the details of this vote fairly.

  • Academia Nut said:
    "Exceptionally so. Tormulyna is barely capable of speech, but she does have quite the knack for letters despite that. A generation ago when we were given the information from the Khemetri about their considerably more sophisticated tradition of astrology we began to work it out for ourselves. The sophistication and complexity was extreme, and we began to literally dig up ancient records of harvest results to compare to noted astrological phenomena. You see, astrology is the study of history as much as it is the study of the heavens. The gods reveal their signs and portents through the motions of the heavens, but unless you know what they did the last time there was a certain alignment or disruption you can't have any idea what any given sign might mean. Along the way it was discovered through the systems my predecessors established in the wake of Yenyna that Tormulyna has a particular affinity for this sort of work. We gave her resources and support and... well."
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    So history + astrology + math. This is actually a push towards focusing on the past. We don't really have much inclination to do this normally in the Ymaryn, at least not beyond parables of "Don't do this, it's a bad idea". Pushing Ymaryn study of history to a more wide in scope is a good idea as it will help us avoid our mistakes and give context to our neighbors.
  • We could end up basing policy decisions off of this mix of good, and bad, and neutral things. This has the potential to burn us pretty badly as this is exceptionally basic and has many flaws. It can also be advanced and let us discover more refined and useful versions.
  • Both choices here will affect how this process is looked at and will influence how things go. Thus I think both choices will test LoW, more than likely, though in different ways. Yes is probably giving more support to this process while No is not.
  • Taking Yenyna out of retirement in the Yes option is mildly negative for me. I don't really like doing it, but I am not extremely upset by it.
  • The (???) on both options is concerning. The (???) being the only thing on No is even more concerning.
  • Both options leave the chance to diplomance the HK, which I am more in support for than warring with them due to changes in circumstances, specifically the DB. Said DB I want to mold into something useful.
  • No does leave us free to do other things than Yes. Anything we want really. Yes forfeits that freedom in order to push back against the DB in my mind at the extra expense of the new war and being intervening pricks.
  • There are several careful steps we must take. Some quotes that are relevant:
    Academia Nut said:
    "We are still triple-checking the details, but the stars have revealed to us something of critical importance. A series of alignments and portents has revealed to us that the gods are paying very careful attention to us and we are in a precarious situation. According to our calculations, if we perform a series of extremely careful steps we can ensure fabulous peace and prosperity for at least a century, but if we fail at this, or worse yet turn against the prophecies, then terrible ruin might be awaiting us," the High Priest explained.
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    Academia Nut said:
    Parsing it a bit, Hertythyn asked, "Officially declare that we're not going to take a swing at the Highlanders, tell the Thunder Horse we're tired of their shit and we're going to separate them and the Harmurri - even though the Harmurri started the current fight - and bring forth some combination of the Dragon Banner, Yenyna, and Yenyna's son to the fighting in the east?"

    "We're triple - quadruple checking in some instances - the horoscopes, but yes, that is what we have drawn from the secondary and tertiary calculations."
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    So, difficult to falsify. This seems to me to be a gradient of outcomes if things go poorly from "Something is wrong with what we did? What and why? Oh our process was wrong." to "We simply failed the prophecy.". Interestingly the priests agree with Hert's parsing. We have to do a specific set of things in a specific way to get peace. There are multiple holes in this.
  • Starting with that things rarely go pleasant for long periods of time. Things are happening and conflict as in IRL history. We've seen it in the quest, weird shit happens all the time. And then there is the climate involved which has little to do with what mortal actions we take.
  • These actions are actually rather simple in my mind. Let go of the HK, intervene with the TH v Swamp, bring out the Dragon Doom General, and have her son(oh hey she has a son! Yay!) along. Have the pair fight in the intervention.
  • LoW itself will make the first response if something weird happens with the prophecy to be questioning it.

All of this together makes me think that these are both good options and below I shall summarize my views as best I can.

No lets us: Be free to act as we wish(fight the HK if our CB lasts long enough, leave the TH v Swamp be, prepare etc etc). It does not fight directly against the DB. It gives less support I think to this process, which weakens both the things we want and the things we don't. Going against the prophecy is explicitly called out as a fail condition for the prophecy i.e if we say no and then something bad happens(and this can be a wide variety of things) prophecy confirmed as we did not heed the gods. There is not defined period for how long this would last either, it's open ended(though may end in three generations, maybe). I have already stated that I think nothing bad happening in the near future is unlikely, and the fact that this is open ended on time means that I really don't think it is tenable, but I am not sure. If nothing bad happens though we get immediate proof that there is something hinky with this process and can refine it and this is definitely possible.

Yes lets us: Pushback on the DB. But we are not going to be very free and we have to bring Yenyna out and risk her and her son. It gives more support for this process, strengthening what we do want and what we don't. It is time specific when it comes to the peace. However how it interacts with the world is far more complicated than in No. You get a gradient of things: If yes and we succeed and something bad happens anyway we will get a range of things that could result. Ranging from "Is something wrong with the process?" to "Okay did we fuck up our process and calcs? Let's check." to "Did we sin?" to "Oh we just failed the prophecy". That last one and the second to last are less likely if we succeed which is highly likely.
If we say yes but fail the components then we just fail. We didn't fulfill the tasks so we don't get the peace.
If we say yes but succeed and nothing bad happens, then we strengthen the prophecy. I do not know what this will do. It may give us a DB, though my intuition and gut says this is unlikely unless we repeatedly say yes. Business as usual may occur. This is unlikely since bad things happen often.


All in all I think Yes is slightly more open in possibilities of outcome, but No has big potential to just crap out.

Thus I shall vote:

[X] Yes (Forfeits the CB against the Highlanders, declares war against the Thunder Horse, brings Yenyna out of retirement, ???)

With a comment that if No wins I have no real objections. Both have a chance to end at the same place I want, which is having refinement of this process and stress testing LoW positively.
 
Concho117 said:
Different laws of the universe lead to a different mathematical system being valid.
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As someone who has taken a good number of math classes, this is fundamentally false.

Math is built upon axioms and logic. Neither rely upon the physics of our universe, beyond the choices in the selection of axioms.

Also, we have plenty of mathematical systems. Peano Arithmetic is very different from Set Theory. One of the most interesting aspects of math is how almost every self-consistent system gives results that are effectively identical within their domain.
 
Umi-san said:
canada is allied to a peer (the UK). Mexico, tho...
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The UK is not remotely an American peer. The entire former British Empire, including India and Australia would get roflestomped by 2 Carrier battle groups. 4 if America wanted to do it fast.
 
Concho117 said:
Yes.

Our current system of mathematics is completely reliant on the physical laws of the universe being as they are. Different laws of the universe lead to a different mathematical system being valid.
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Not really. Math is truly universal and only requires basic logic as a prerequisite.
If the laws of physics change, our mathematical representations of them would change, but 1 + 1 would still be 2.
 
pbluekan said:
Well, seeing as how most everything else is based off of IRL, then I'm going to say that this single thing being different is highly unlikely.

AN has maintained historical and physical accuracy almost entirely. Only geography has changed. If the laws of physics were different, I think we would have noticed.
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Our last genius did manage to predict the future at least once.
 
Azel said:
That never happened so far. The last horde coming through there was the old TH when they crushed the Spirit Talkers and became thus the modern TH.
I've always thought that to be odd, but it seems likely that they just get along with the hordes a lot better then us, since they share the same roots.

None the less, you are right, but a march can take care of that and it's not like that bit of border will matter much when our entire western holdings have huge borders to the steppes already.
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Yes, but that's why I proposed a Great Wall (in blue) to deal with the Western borders that are exposed to the Steppes. Sure, we could secure that northeastern mountain pass ourselves and it wouldn't necessarily be that hard. But letting the TH guard it for us serves the same purpose and would give us time to prepare for a war if they get overrun. Besides, we already have a large underdefended border between the Txolla and the TH, but that's not as bad because the TH are not strong enough to be a real threat compared to nomad hordes.
 
NewAgeOfPower said:
The UK is not remotely an American peer. The entire former British Empire, including India and Australia would get roflestomped by 2 Carrier battle groups. 4 if America wanted to do it fast.
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militarily, obv not - though I disagree that it would get roflstomped in such a manner.
economically?
culturally?
technologically?

obviously is. And since Canada is allied w/ the UK and the UK still has alliances w/ India & Australia and the EU (despite the recent idiotic split)..
 
Godwinson said:
That the quest might not run on real-world physics. It's another iteration of the "Is there magic in this setting?" issue.
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Ok, look. If physics were different, we would have noticed. Magic excluded. These things are not small changes. Change how inertia works and bows, boats, and horses aren't what they are. I'm not claiming the planets are the same 8 we are used to, but at a fundamental level, magic excluded, the universe must work exactly the same or literally nothing would work properly.

There is also no logical basis for it. Why would AN change this thing in particular? Sure, he changed the geography a bit, but not overly much. So why would he change physics of all things.
 
maximillian said:
There is a very simple reason to bring the Highlanders under our dominion:

1-They are close to us
2-They are weaker than us
3-They are not allied to a peer

No other consideration is necessary, and yes I apply the same criteria to other polities.
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But they have a very useful value we can only steal so long as they are outside our dominion.
 
Timewinders said:
Yes, but that's why I proposed a Great Wall (in blue) to deal with the Western borders that are exposed to the Steppes. Sure, we could secure that northeastern mountain pass ourselves and it wouldn't necessarily be that hard. But letting the TH guard it for us serves the same purpose and would give us time to prepare for a war if they get overrun. Besides, we already have a large underdefended border between the Txolla and the TH, but that's not as bad because the TH are not strong enough to be a real threat compared to nomad hordes.
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The Heavens Hawk would probably hate our guts for building the wall there, since it leaves them completely exposed and turns them into our doormat.

I'm not a big fan of building that wall at all, since we lack the defensive landscape the chinese incorporated in theirs and our border in the steppe is already tremendously huge.
 
pbluekan said:
Ok, look. If physics were different, we would have noticed. Magic excluded. These things are not small changes. Change how inertia works and bows, boats, and horses aren't what they are. I'm not claiming the planets are the same 8 we are used to, but at a fundamental level, magic excluded, the universe must work exactly the same or literally nothing would work properly.

There is also no logical basis for it. Why would AN change this thing in particular? Sure, he changed the geography a bit, but not overly much. So why would he change physics of all things.
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Would we? We are not exactly given exact measurement of...well anything. Hard to say for certain that any one exact detail is the same.

As for the second,

*looks back at Age of Strife, Shapers of the Apocalypse, and Into the Amber Age*

because he thinks it is fun? :V
 
pbluekan said:
Ok, look. If physics were different, we would have noticed. Magic excluded. These things are not small changes. Change how inertia works and bows, boats, and horses aren't what they are. I'm not claiming the planets are the same 8 we are used to, but at a fundamental level, magic excluded, the universe must work exactly the same or literally nothing would work properly.

There is also no logical basis for it. Why would AN change this thing in particular? Sure, he changed the geography a bit, but not overly much. So why would he change physics of all things.
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Magic existing as a force would, be definition, mean that physics are different because there's magical force. That's all I was meaning. "Magic versus Not Magic".
 
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