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Paths of Civilization

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Folks, we have less than a thousand pages to go before we take King of the Hill! Through pure salt and enthusiastic debate, we can easily reach this hill in two months or less, without diluting the signal to noise ratio.
 
FortTell said:
If a local judge/noble is corrupt, in a centralised society it is much easier to appeal against him.

In a decentralised society, the King will just say "A vassal of my vassal is not my vassal", and good luck overturning the ruling of your local lord.
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A local notable is very much one of the locals, he is very much intertwined with them.
What you describe is no different from if the king is corrupt, then you are fucked, because you he is above you.

Decentralisation aims to prevent that by giving power to people down the ladder until you hit the bottom. That way if Somthing is wrong, you can do plenty about it.
 
Please remember that we need to actively attempt to crush the peace and prosperity of our empire in order to test whether the prediction is real or not.
If we don't lose our prosperity for 100 years magic is real.
If we do magic is a lie and she's just good at math.
 
random_npc said:
a better question is why they should send their young men off to die for outsiders or listen to those city folk about how the village down the road doesn't deserve to be burned to the ground for its crimes. It's not like the empire does much for them. Humans are neither inherently good or evil, but we do have some inherent tendencies towards tribalism. It's not uncommon for small amounts of contact with outsiders to lead to xenophobia or at least not caring one whit about people not in your village.
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Tradition (and religion) and ceremony are powerful tools of cohesion, and trade interdependence erases the concern of fracture.
 
maximillian said:
Liberty is irritating only to tyrants.

...

Only when power is divided down to the lowest level feasible is liberty assured, and with it happiness. And provincial laws are very much feasible.
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... What. No seriously, what?

I'm only in my late twenties and every single ounce of real life experience I've had tells me this is wrong. People are happy to be horrific tyrants at the smallest of levels for the smallest of things. I worked in a dive dinner and had an assistant manager who thought they owned me while I was on the clock. That's just the most egregious example to come to mind, not a significant outlier. I mean there are parents who are horrific shitlords and all they have power over is a house and couple of preteens.

I'd feel comfortable making the statement that people when left to their own devices except in that they are being given a bit of power often to a frightening degree trend towards 'tyranical asshole'. Not always or even the statistical majority, but a non-trivial amount like at least the double digits percentage points.

Dividing power like that assures neither liberty nor happiness. It just gives a chance for it... But so does every other division of power, so...
 
Umi-san said:
Please remember that we need to actively attempt to crush the peace and prosperity of our empire in order to test whether the prediction is real or not.
If we don't lose our prosperity for 100 years magic is real.
If we do magic is a lie and she's just good at math.
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No. If we intentionally squash it, it will just cause problems and would invalidate the results in the eyes of the priests as The Good Times were sabotaged by moral-deprived actions. We should play as normal and see where the dice take us.
 
NotAlwaysFanfic said:
Why must you do this to me Karugus Senpai?!?! :(
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In all seriousness, I've come to the personal conclusion that the theological significance of this event is more important to me than the material advantages astronomy could provide (or at least securing those advantages sooner).

To everyone, friend or foe- the day the Star fell has enormous ramifications, combined with all our various 'King' legacies, it makes attacking us a much more intimidating prospect, it can be lauded as proof of our righteousness, and it can be used to justify Ymaryn hold over their newest vassals. By expanding on that mythos, and fully exploring and declaring the ramifications of it- there's a lot of indirect benefits to be had.

If people feel our Priests can explain precisely why and how that occurred (at least from a mystical perspective), in addition to the ramifications of its occurrence, that gives us a really powerful cultural tool. One of my dreams is to more clearly define what it means to be Ymaryn and to further create a unifying sense of culture and ethics- for that, the mystical mumbo jumbo of Black Mirror is more important to me.
 
SamPardi said:
... What. No seriously, what?

I'm only in my late twenties and every single ounce of real life experience I've had tells me this is wrong. People are happy to be horrific tyrants at the smallest of levels for the smallest of things. I worked in a dive dinner and had an assistant manager who thought they owned me while I was on the clock. That's just the most egregious example to come to mind, not a significant outlier. I mean there are parents who are horrific shitlords and all they have power over is a house and couple of preteens.

I'd feel comfortable making the statement that people when left to their own devices except in that they are being given a bit of power often to a frightening degree trend towards 'tyranical asshole'. Not always or even the statistical majority, but a non-trivial amount like at least the double digits percentage points.

Dividing power like that assures neither liberty nor happiness. It just gives a chance for it... But so does every other division of power, so...
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By your own statement then a little power make a tyrant, well decentralisation water down power to such an extent that at worst you end up with a horde of tiny tyrants who do little to no harm outside of the selves. But it also gives them liberty to do with thier life as they will, be it good or ill.

But if you centralise, you congeal power into a dense core whose tyranny is gigantic, and the harm it could inflict more so.
 
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Somebodynobody10 said:
No. If we intentionally squash it, it will just cause problems and would invalidate the results in the eyes of the priests as The Good Times were sabotaged by moral-deprived actions. We should play as normal and see where the dice take us.
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nope
if we're guaranteed prosperity by the prophecy and we fulfilled its directions then nothing should be able to go wrong
we put in our dollar and should get 10 dimes out

Saying otherwise is saying that the prophecy was a lie. At which point nothing can be trusted.
 
@Academia Nut who are we even draining the Econ/Stability from here? Because the Mountain Horse are the only ones who seem like an available target and the impications of draining 3 Stability and 6-8 Econ on a civ which just got nuked are...daunting.
 
[X] [Conq] Take the northern lowlands (Thunder Speakers become vassal, Txolla annex additional territory, gain Ruined Thunder Horse as vassal, remainder fragment, -4 Econ and 4 temporary Econ damage from supporting wrecked vassal)
[X] [Refugee] Send out runners that you have food and intact farmland (6 temporary Econ damage, -6-8 Econ Expansion, -1 Stability, chance of further loss, +6-8 Econ next turn)
[X] [PttS] Black Mirror
[X] [PttS] 0 Stability
[X] [Diplo] Send out reassurances (Sec Trade Mission to Khemetri, Trelli, and Harmurri)
[X] [PSN] Bit more black soil (Sec Black Soil, -1 Centralization)

Thank you @PyrrosWarrior and @ETA50M for convincing to stop lurking and finally join in.
 
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Da Boyz said:
@Academia Nut who are we even draining the Econ/Stability from here? Because the Mountain Horse are the only ones who seem like an available target and the impications of draining 3 Stability and 6-8 Econ on a civ which just got nuked are...daunting.
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The farmers and relatively rural population are all still there, if heavily traumatized by the God Fist erasing the entire local army and government.
 
Kiba said:
I don't think the Ymaryn even has a concept of illegal immigrants. They might be concerned of being unable to handle the stress of massive immigration, though.
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"You mean...not letting in people who come to your land? I don't know, that sounds like heresy and disharmonious policy to me."

The Ymaryn would be hilariously offended by immigration quotas. They'd just end up massively increasing the administration to deal with increased immigration rather than refuse entry.
 
Da Boyz said:
@Academia Nut who are we even draining the Econ/Stability from here? Because the Mountain Horse are the only ones who seem like an available target and the impications of draining 3 Stability and 6-8 Econ on a civ which just got nuked are...daunting.
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The stab drop already happened with the bolide, and the econ is narratively people coming to us to be safer.
 
@Academia Nut, do the Ymaryn have a concept of illegal immigrants? Is it just people by passing the health checks? (and what are the consequences of that btw) And how do they handle it?
 
Da Boyz said:
@Academia Nut who are we even draining the Econ/Stability from here? Because the Mountain Horse are the only ones who seem like an available target and the impications of draining 3 Stability and 6-8 Econ on a civ which just got nuked are...daunting.
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Econ drain is not literally Econ drain. It's people drain.

In this case, it's refugee drain, and removing them probably helps the remaining TH because they now have less people to take care of while in this state.
 
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