Dude, relax: we have both Grand Docks and Far Northern Trading Post now. We have access to the good wood-stuff now, which should include pitch-producing trees.
Just take some Expand Forests a turn or two to spread/expand these new trees to us and our very high tech-stat coupled with the Grad Dock constant tech-upping should do it.
Except our people have no reason to suspect anything like this is necessary or even possible. Worse, pitch does have a downside: fires. Once the pitch catches...it's not pretty.
I can see the first thing, but I am not sure what you mean by inherent structural weaknesses. Being able to travel thousands of miles in open ocean does not make me think "inherent weaknesses". Do you mean being rammed up the middle?
Because that takes quite a bit of maneuvering skill.
Nope. The problem is the ties. Catamarans work by spreading the weight of a ship over a wider surface area-basically snowshoes for the water. This lets them sit higher and go faster. The problem is that the ties are put under some serious strain to do that, especially if the catamaran is heavily loaded. The second something heavy (like a ship) hits it, the ties will shatter or be pulled from their moorings. And it doesn't really matter where-the forces are far more than what that style of boat can handle. Also, we've never tested in open ocean, only the not!Black Sea. While that can get nasty, it's nothing like the Saffron Sea, much less an actual ocean.
No? Slaves are literally the best source of "burst" power for a ship in these days. And again, Catamarans without pitch are going to be slower than single hulled ships without. Especially if they're heavily loaded.
We just said no to the whole ramming business because we can get to the next step which actually leveraged our advantages.
And with the NTP and Grand Docks, we will get pitch, and our speed will drop much much less over time. So there goes one of the main problems, and it short circuits the Trelli ability to ram us.
(I am mildly confused why the heck we are even freaking out about them right now. War is rather unlikely with them right now)
We can't. Shooting artillery equivalents on the ocean is hard. It will be centuries at the very least before we can make that effective. Especially since catamarans are inherently limited on ammo.
Eventually. Just like the Highland Kingdoms and Metal Workers got iron. Eventually.
Not really-we're getting closer and closer to them, and closer and closer to cutting them out of the Khem trade. And I'm worried about the hoarding of wood and charcoal-that sounds like a fleet build up to me. The question is trade or war?
Catamarans aren't good at ramming, but they're actually quite resistant to being rammed. A typical ram of a catamaran is far less likely to render it completely unseaworthy. Ramming from front or back is almost harmless, and ramming from the side will make one of your hulls leak. Which will still leave you floating and able to make it home.
On top of that, they're close to twice the speed of the proposed rammer... which means they only get rammed if they make a big mistake.
Speed-see the above. Ramming? Sure. It's sort of difficult to ram a small catamaran. One loaded with warriors or goods though? Not so much. And if one of your pontoons is leaking in the middle of the sea, you aren't going home, you're going down.
It's because they don't have the single failure points of traditional ships. In a normal galley design, crumpling it anywhere along the side of the ship will make it take on water and sink.
We have a gentler failure mode. Crumple one of our hulls, and we're crippled, not sunk. We can hobble home.
Umm, where do you get that? Our catamarans can get up to 30 meters in length. Not to mention, our ships are also inherently strong due to clinker construction.
I think you're overestimating "serious disadvantages." Tar and pitch is a spectacular development, but not one that is terribly hard to get for a society that revolves around sailing and trees. By the time that we would be facing Trelli ships in combat we are likely to have pitch and tar anyway.
Let's also not forget that our catamarans are likely faster and far more maneuverable than their ships which, by the way, are long and thin. Sure they can ram, but they aren't doing much damage. They need something big and hulking, which isn't going to go fast.
Because that's the entire point of a catamaran! They're light because that's one of the things that lets them go fast! The other being how high they sit on the water, which is hurt by the fact that we like to put stuff in our ships-like sailors and trade goods.
And the Metal Workers were built around metal. How long did it take them to steal iron from us again? Oh right, centuries.
You do realize that that's what makes them so good against our design, right? The earliest rammers didn't use rams, they just reinforced the prow of their ship and used it like a blunt blade. It would actually be less worrying if they had proper rams, since that would prevent them from doing the worst of their damage to us!
The problem is that if they decide to start fucking with our economy, we may not be able to stop them! They're on one of the most naturally defensible places on the planet. I'm sure they can't invade us, but we might not be able to invade them, especially if we're having internal strife from trade issues anyway.
I think anyone from our periphery states (Beyond vassals perhaps) can appeal to the king's justice, they're still following our laws after all and that is one of them. We're big enough now it's probably hard to get a case heard though, so despite the fact our free cities will be far closer than usual for periphery states so the hardship of traveling to the capital is lessened it probably still won't happen often.
This is one of the narrative benefits of Governor's Palaces, iirc, it allows for a royal official to be nearer by to hear cases - kinda like a magistrate or royal judge
Wellll... I understand there is some anthropological argument on whether the agricultural revolution was really a good thing for humanity; that maybe hunter-gatherer societies are on average happier than agricultural socities, and especially agricultural and hierarchical high culture societies. Agriculture can feed more people, but at the price of them often existing at the brink of starvation, and ultimately, what we have evolved for, especially mentally, is in fact a hunter-gatherer society.
A good example seems to be early European settlement North America. It was apparently a common wisdom that it was quite easy to assimilate into native culture, but rather difficult to assimilate into European culture; and people who had experienced both nearly always stayed with the natives.
So, actually, yes the point could be made that ideally we should have stayed hunter-gatherers. Of course, that isn't a feasible notion. The Europeans wiped away (and often wiped out...) the native Americans. Agricultural societies may very well be less happy than hunter-gatherer societies, but they are far more powerful. It's what some people have begun to poetically dub "Moloch" - that nobody wants a certain arrangement, but are forced to (forced to worship Moloch, who eats them) because otherwise they get swept away by those who do. In game theory terms, a Tragedy of the Commons, basically.
Thus, we had to become an agricultural society, and we had to develop a high culture society, because that directly contributed to our survival. Pyramids and Versailles don't, though.
We could have had pyramids, but we never took that Wonder. There's more than a couple man made objects that could last millenia, even build by bronze/Iron/Steel age civilizations.
Also, just noticed something about the Canal. According to the latest maps, the river that the Canal leads to goes into the Khem colony. We'd be switching one trade partner monopoly for another long term.
That's not how monopolies work dude.
Current situation is, we have the Trelli if we want to trade ANYTHING. They set the terms because there are no options
After the Canal, it means our merchants facing unfair rates at the Trelli can demand that services improve or they'd go through Gulvalley instead. And vice versa.
Well, I guess that brings the other question up. How well could we actually fight the Trelli? I'm pretty sure we lose the naval engagements, but based on their mercenary company's performance in the last war, there is pretty much no way that they could beat us in a land war. So we would probably crush their colony, but they might be able to take tinshore?
As of our current boat tech we'd actually win both the sea and the land war.
On sea, the Catamarans go more than twice as fast as their ships. Ramming strategies don't work, and our bolt throwers give us better range. It's like trying to fight a horse archer.
On land, we know our Red Banner can get a 3:1 K ratio on the Khemetri forces.
The big problem with the war? Logistics. They can't hurt us, we can hurt them(even if just by shutting down the trade), but can't actually conquer them because they're too bloody far to actually fight with anything.
There's been a few. They were too expensive in artisan-hours to make so they never entered mass production however, but they could get absolutely enormous.
Wasn't there a thing that if someone destroyed the People the forests themselves would revolt and burn the ones who did it in revenge? Literally though without being managed a forest fire would go out of control and spread throughout our land.
One of the options to prevent Trelli from totally dominating us in trade is via a Canal-megaproject directly to Khemetri-held rivers.
Problem is that many assume - and possibly quite correctly - that the Trelli would be forced to go nuclear on us to try stopping us finishing the Canal - pitting each other's ability to tank hits against each other in hopes that we would be forced to capitulate sooner than them.
Not going to happen.
The Trelli can't go nuclear. Their trade depends on us and the Khemetri. If they lose the trade from either side, they'd collapse.
So take the following scenarios:
-Trelli attacks Ymaryn over the Canal producing a competing trade route - Trelli collapse after losing access to Ymaryn trade goods that basically pay for half their economy
-Trelli embargos Khemetri over the Canal to block the other end of the trade route - Trelli collapse after losing access to Khemetri trade goods.
-Trelli builds facilities and improves access to compete with Canal for Trade traffic - Trelli lose a lot of profit keeping up rather than coasting on geography, but stays intact.
Fine. Mechanically, a few more governors palaces will enable us to have another maintenance free true city, which is important if we want a lot of true cities but few free cities.
Narratively, it eases the administrative burden and gives larger numbers of people access to higher level appeals processes. Essentially, they can complain to the guy above and he has more authority than the town chief. As a result of this, our administrative reach is extended and will ensure that the people of the northern subordinates and provinces feel our hand a little bit more.
In a way, it actually centralizes power a bit more in the areas it governs by decentralizing the main power of the king.
Also, worth noting is that while a FEW Governor Palaces increase local power concentration and thus risk of revolt, the more of them there are the less likely said revolt would be, because they'd start competing with each other unless the central government becomes broadly unpopular.
Eh, the canal really doesn't doom the region. I mean, you can't really transport big ships through the canal unless you're crazy enough to dredge the whole length.
It a massive connection, species (fish, algae, insects and whatnot) from both sides would move in creating heavoc in the local ecology. The suez canal did a number on the fish variety, and this is a far larger scale project.
Reminder that our canals do not directly connect the two seas, but rather the much less challenging task of bridging two rivers that are already near each other.
And @Academia Nut, how come the poor are asking for a theatre? Aren't theatres for the well to do? Or do we have a variety of forms of theatre? Or is it primitive enough, that it hasn't developed into the different categories of theatre?
Even in the classical era, theatre was extremely popular as a public amusement, which sometimes included legal disputes, religious debate and political speeches in the same amphitheatres.
This is a mixture of professional and hobbyists.
Visit now and watch the reenactment of the gods arguing over the taxes and the great gygo that ensued!
IIRC, it wasn't so much that we chose not to but rather that all the other shiny buildings distracted us and we didn't yet know there was a time-limit.
And I find it quite questionable that there wasn't any use in it, given what we've seen Wonders do so far.
And the Polish peasants. And the Nordic peasants. And the Hungarian pasants. And...
And that's just what I meant. The nobles were at their magnificent courts, playing war games and trying to outdo each other with art, while all around them the people died from cold, starvation, plague and said war. And it wasn't just the 30 Years War. The Deluge killed a third of the Polish population, the French aggressions in the Palatinate a quarter of the population and so on and so forth. That was the normalcy of the time of Versailles.
The nordics had the great northern war, the eastren Europeans the second serfdom, the deluge, the northern war and an ottoman war. Then there's Spanish succession war, the 90 years... Etc. The point is its war that's at the heart of the issue not grand art.
sans warfare, and eastren European serfdom the life of the peasants was decent, better than the following century even.
As for life, man and morals. They hold little to no material value, and yet they are held deeply by humanity. A materialistic or purely rational outlook is an inhumane one, because humanity is neither; And under such an outlook it or its human aspects are redundant.
There is no sense in trying to build anything "lasting" or "for the ages". It's all dust within a few centuries, a few millennia at best. So we should concentrate on the present, should concentrate on making everyone happy here. Yes, I'm a nihilist, but at least I'm not a moral nihilist.
So... your plan is to do what... make Idiocracy the standard governmental system? The only way to make everyone happy all the time is to either make them so dumb they don't know better or force them to be perma-happy via artificial means.
You literally can't make everyone happy. Too many people are only happy when some one else is suffering or dead (not enough people that are blissful happy suffering or being killed). Different things make different people (or the same person) happy at different times. The only way to make everyone happy all the time is to stick joy wires in everyone's heads and leave them all blissed out until they all starve to death blissfully unaware.
Strangely enough giant, shiny monuments to the things mankind can accomplish when they work together make me happy on occasion... which means your goal is a logical fallacy.
So... your plan is to do what... make Idiocracy the standard governmental system? The only way to make everyone happy all the time is to either make them so dumb they don't know better or force them to be perma-happy via artificial means.
You literally can't make everyone happy. Too many people are only happy when some one else is suffering or dead (not enough people that are blissful happy suffering or being killed). Different things make different people (or the same person) happy at different times. The only way to make everyone happy all the time is to stick joy wires in everyone's heads and leave them all blissed out until they all starve to death blissfully unaware.
Strangely enough giant, shiny monuments to the things mankind can accomplish when they work together make me happy on occasion... which means your goal is a logical fallacy.
"You can't make everyone happy, so why even try, let's just build giant shinies instead" ?
Yeah, no, I'm not really convinced. You're right that different things make different people happy, but that is already a luxury problem - that is a problem you get on the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. My point is, let's take care of the second two levels of that pyramid first.
First of all, I have no idea why people keep rating this "Insightful". It's getting way more attention then I figured a throwaway one-liner joke would get.
Now, onto the actual analysis...
Hello and welcome to another episode of "zamin over-analyses everything"
Today's episode can be summed up in one picture:
[][PSN] Bit more black soil (Sec Black Soil, -1 Centralization)
[][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)
[][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)
[][PttS] Black Mirror
[][PttS] 0 Stability
[][Diplo] Send out reassurances (Sec Trade Mission to Khemetri, Trelli, and Harmurri)
Yikes. If we'd boosted the PttS, we might have finished it this turn. Then again, we probably wouldn't have gone into a Golden Age either, so eh.
Actions Taken
[Main] Place to the Stars
[Sec] Support Subordinate – Ruined Thunder Horse
[Sec] Found Trading Post – Far North
[Guild] Grand Docks
Nothing I wouldn't have wanted to do. Though the fact that he ended up building the North Trading Post anyway is kinda amusing.
Provinces – [Main] Expand Economy, [Sec] Study Stars, [Sec] Study Alchemy, [Sec] Study Metal
Policies – Redshore Baths (2/3), Sacred Forest Temple (6/6), Significant Walls (17/46)
Western – [Main] Governor's Palace (6/9), [Sec] New Trails, [Sec] Aqueduct (3/3)
Greenshore – [Main] New Settlement, [Sec] Build Walls, [Sec] New Trails
Gulvalley – [Main] Survey
Heaven's Hawk – [Main] Survey
Txolla – [Main] Expand Econ, [Sec] Black Soil
Tinriver – [Sec] Trade Mission - Trelli, [Sec] Trade Mission – Tin Tribes
Thunder Speakers – [Sec] Support Artisans, [Sec] Expand Econ
Ruined Thunder Horse – [Main] Repair
Provinces: More Econ + Maximum Studying
Policies: "Urgh, look at all these filthy plebs walking around nowadays. We need a Bath to clean them up and a Wall to keep them out of our fancy mansions. Oh, and may as well finish up that new temple. Maybe that'll distract them for a bit."
Western: *Desire for True Cities intensifies*
Greenshore: "Quick, grab that land before anyone else can stick their flags in it!"
Gulvalley: "I wonder if we'll find anything nice around here?"
Heaven's Hawk: "I want more shinies. See if we have anything buried in the ground."
Txolla: PTSD-chan demands MOAR FOOD
Tinriver: "L-Let's all get along, alright?"
Thunder Speakers: "Draw me like one of your Ymaryn girls." "Uh, sir, could you please get off the ground? We need to finish planting."
Ruined Thunder Horse: *Screams at all the damage he has to fix*
Hertythyn had grown old and experienced in the past few generations, ushered the People through incredible changes and even more incredible dangers. Under him, the People had seen remarkable growth, and now... now he was dying. Age had caught up to him far too quickly, his health rapidly declining in the past few months. However, he had discovered a last burst of energy to write and dictate out one last treatise. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and this treatise was draining the last of his energy in a final burst. Some nights he was haunted and unable to sleep, ideas dancing behind his eyes.
Yeah, old Hert has been through a lot, hasn't he? He started working during the Great Catfight War with the Khemetri, he founded the Games and expanded them internationally, he's watched a giant fuck-off comet vaporize one of our neighbors...
Basically, he's seen some real weird shit. And he doesn't really want to go without leaving at least one last gift to his people.
It had all started with the astrology so many years ago. He could follow the math, even if the logic behind why the math in a given situation was used, and thus he could understand what the priests were talking about. Over the years his nightmares had slowly filled up with the bane of all clerks: typographical mistakes. The consequences of a misplaced number in the sequence... dreams of everything he had ever known, burning and shattered, taunted him, all because he had forgotten to carry a number from one operation to the next. More recently, had it not been for the habit of leaving notes out where Tormulyna could find them the alchemists in the palace might have poisoned themselves with their latest concoction because they got the ratios in their calculations wrong due to an errant drop of ink.
"WHO DARES FILL IN FORM 46-B WRONGLY?! AND WHY HAS APPLICATION 074 BEEN FILED IN THE WRONG DEPARTMENT?! I DEMAND BLOOD FOR THIS HERESY!"
Also, Tormulyna-chan best girl. Saved our alchemist's asses from being smoked by double checking their notes.
At some point he had come to the conclusion that Crow was with the People in a most peculiar way. The heroes of the People for the past few generations had been seeing patterns, had been seeing that which was impossible to see with the eyes but that were there nonetheless. And now the king was seeing them too. He was seeing the patterns in all things, seeing how everything fit together. Some clever lad had discovered generations ago that if you made a bow of bricks it was stronger than if you laid a flat section between two pillars, and Hertythyn thought he might be seeing how to describe that, how to take the intuitive feel of a skilled mason and turn it into something a priest or clerk could describe like the motions of stars or the inflow and outflow of grain from a depot. He could see how to take shapes and manipulate them, transform them, and produce values that could be counted and thus described with numbers.
Hert really needs a vacation. Somewhere nice and quiet where the numbers won't fill his nightmares.
Remember how we were wondering why all our Geniuses seemed a little off? It feels as though Hert has evolved from Heroic Admin to Genius Admin during the last years of his life.
He and Tormulyna had begun writing down scribbles for each other, and the damnedest thing wasn't just that she seemed to get his work, but that he got hers. The squares produced by the two smaller sides of a right angle triangle had a combined area equal to the square produced by the long side. Arcs and circles and squares and triangles and the numbers dancing just beneath the surface, it was all so maddeningly hard to describe and yet the king knew that it was there. More than that, he knew that it could be of aid to so many things. Surveying, accounting, architecture, astrology, construction... the list went on and on.
I'd make a joke about how they're leaving little love letters for each other, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be appropriate.
Also, we seem to have unlocked advanced math. I can already hear the curses of countless future Ymaryn children crying out in despair. Sorry kids, but this tech is just too useful to ignore.
Hertythyn could also feel a change in the air from the aftermath of the God Fist, and knew that the People would be able to make excellent use of the information he had. While the gods had shown their displeasure in other ways since the destruction of much of the Thunder Horse - there had been a few years of poor rains which when combined with all of the displaced people turning to banditry had resulted in what else but famine throughout the region, and the combination had seen enough crowding to have the priests request that the People not 'sow their seeds' quite as much. The yeomanry complained a bit about the cities, but the patricians were quite happy to see the guilds and freelance associations that they managed and controlled swelling with people - the low status refugees in particular pleased them for bringing in low skilled workers who could be assigned the menial grunt work of a household.
Of course, the low status workers also brought their own voice to the table, which would probably begin annoying the patricians soon enough.
Urgh, weather problems again. Also known as "one of those problems that affect other people". Our newest vassals are probably not happy at all, though.
And it seems that our Population Explosion/Baby Boom has finally ended. It's a bit sad, but we've already had it for longer then expected, so I'm not complaining.
Tensions rising between the Yeoman and Patricians as the latter start to gain more power due to all the cheap labor moving into our cities. Better keep an eye on this.
The new docks in Redshore were also greatly helping with keeping the traders happy by allowing massive amounts of shipping to come and go through the port efficiently, although at their insistence they had also had a new trading post in the far north in order to begin trading for furs and amber. They had fortunately also been invested in enough in the project to give considerable backing, thus the trading post had been founded with enough wealth and workers to get some fairly significant walls up in short order. Of course, despite all the nice things being given to them, they were now complaining that they wanted direct access to the Saffron Sea, which would either require building a giant ass canal in Gulvalley, or negotiating passage with the Trelli, who probably weren't all that keen on losing their advantages. Actually, thinking about it, he should really get his work done simply so that the next king might be able to review the surveyors around Gulvalley. The maps never looked right with what was known of the place, and he suspected something had gone wrong at some point.
Bloody traders indeed. We've just set up that damned trading post to provide them with more stuff to sell, and they're already clamoring for more. Of course, they've got a point about how the Trelli are being assholes by not letting people pass through their area. Personally, I kinda want to build a canal and laugh as Negaverse-Trelli loses their shit.
Also, did something go wrong with the Gulvalley survey? Hert is thinking that the maps there aren't looking right for some reason.
Megaproject completed! Grand Docks
Extending out far into the water to provide deep berths in a protected, partially artificial bay and places to house ships away from the weather, this set of massive docks serves as a Trading Post for the purpose of supporting wealth generators such as salterns and gold mines, gives access to the Bulk Goods market (or gives bonus trade power in that market), and provides a free Boat innovation roll every turn for Classical or earlier sailing technologies.
> Counts as a Trading Post
> Unlocks Bulk Goods trading
> Free Boat Innovation roll every turn for Classical or earlier sailing techs
"Oh, hi there Trelli. Those are some nice boats improvements you've got there. Must have spent a lot of time and money on that, huh? It's be a shame if someone were to simply gain all those improvements for free, eh? Eh?"
So... it looks like we won't need to worry about Trelli naval dominance for a bit. Now we can not only drown them in numbers, but also get access to all the lovely, lovely boat techs for free. I anticipate much salt and cries of "Bullshit!"once they figure out what's going on.
New faction spawned!
Urban Poor. Likes: Urban infastructure and amenities, Dislikes: Patricians
"I say Charles, have you heard the latest news?"
"What is it, George?"
"The plebs are demanding a say in how we run the nation!"
"The nerve of some people. Can't they just shut up and let us nobles do our work?"
"What's next? Free housing? Public baths? Even... *gasp* Theaters?"
"I tell you, all these young people nowadays are ruining our nation! Why, back in my day..."
Faction Quests:
Patricians - Objective: Build a governor's palace within a core province within 3 turns. Failure: -1 Stability Guild - Objective: Build Glasswords within 1 turns. Success: +1 Tech & Culture, Failure: -3 Tech Traders - Objective: Establish a navigable path to the Saffron Sea within 4 turns. Success: Ship innovation, Failure: Trelli gain trade power Yeomen- Objective: Have 20 or more Sustainable Forest within 3 turns. Success: +2 Sustainable Forest Priests- Objective: Have a level 2 Temple in Dragon Graveyard within 3 turns. Success: Theological innovation Urban Poor- Objective: Build a Main Strength Theatre within 3 turns. Success: +1 Stability
Patricians: "Well, we can't just let the plebs run around willy nilly. Someone has to take charge! And he should have a nice, fancy palace to live in while he's at it!"
Guilds: "Guys, we could really use some more glass here..."
Traders: *Hiss* "Filthy Trelli, blocking our trade routes like that. Just you wait. Either you let us into all those lucrative new markets, or we'll make our own way through. With blackjacks and hookers!"
Yeoman: "Hey, do you know what we need? More trees."
Priests: "THE GODS HAVE SPOKEN! THEY DEMAND A BIGGER TEMPLE!"
Urban Poor: "Well guv, it's kinda borin' here, innit? Some music and plays and such might be nice."
Still, all of the newcomers had brought with them significant vibrancy even as they packed into the People's territory, and while they were scared of things, the People were also confident that they had the support of the gods, and that gave them a degree of breathing room socially. While some called it arrogance, others felt that it was simply well earned confidence to know that they faced no real external threat for the foreseeable future, and that gave room to expand and grow and experiment.
Ah, our Second Golden Age. Remember, if we reach 0 Stability or have no stats at max by the end of a turn, the Golden Age ends. Let's try not to crash it early this time, yeah?
Hmm... tough choice. From what I can tell, everyone's going for some kind of Genius, which is honestly a pretty solid choice. Just remember that we only have 18 Culture, so if we pick a Genius we can't construct a Theater or Governor's Palace until we raise our Culture back up a bit.
Of course, all of that urbanization was rapidly becoming a colossal headache to manage. Some of the cities had to be set somewhat outside the current oversight system soon or their incessant demands were going to give the next king a heart attack.
Split some of the new cities off as Free Cities? (2 Econ and Econ Expansion transferred to each, max 2 transfers)
[] [FC] Redshore
[] [FC] Sacred Forest
[] [FC] Redhills
[] [FC] Stallionpen
[] [FC] Just one FC
[] [FC] None
Remember, Sacred Forest and Stallionpen both contain important temples, which means making those into Free Cities might give the priests an uncomfortable amount of power (especially since our Religious Authority is already at yellow). Personally, I'd go for Redhills and maybe Redshore.
Elsewhere in the world about the only people who had been okay with the People's involvement in the whole God Fist fiasco were the Khemetri, who had responded by having the entirety of their own royal astrology corps come over to go over what had happened, which had also greatly aided - along with Tormulyna's continued efforts within the palace - to the design and construction of the temple/observatory/astrological record repository at the Star Mirror. The Harmurri were... well, they weren't exactly angry but they also weren't really that engaged with the People on a king to king level, probably because they were feeling a bit traumatized by what had just happened. The Trelli on the other hand were actually actively over the People's discussion of the whole issue, although that may have had to do with the fact that the priests may have somewhat implied that the gods might come for the Trelli next for their slaving ways.
Actually, just sitting here and thinking about the woes of the world, that might have something to do with the reason why the traders wanted a better path to the Saffron Sea. More diplomacy was probably in order.
Ah, a pity. It seems that only our Khemetri trading mission succeeded. The Swamp Folk are still going "WTF JUST HAPPENED" while the Trelli are actively trying to block our access into the Not!Mediterranean cause our priests are threatening them with death via meteorite strike if they don't stop being slaving assholes (a side effect of our high RA?).
Still, at least the Pharaoh was kind enough to send us more astrologers to help construct our latest Megaproject. Thanks Khemetri-chan!
Diplomacy
[] [Diplo] Talk with the Trelli (Main Trade Mission - Trelli)
[] [Diplo] Talk with southern neighbours (Sec Trade Mission - Highlanders + Lowland Minors (South-West))
[] [Diplo] Victory lap (Main Salt Gift)
[] [Diplo] Tie everything together internally (Main Build Roads)
[] [Diplo] Stay home, plant trees (Main Expand Forest)
Option A: "Hey dude. Listen, I'm sorry our priests said you'd die unless you converted, but do you think you could let us pass through your territory?"
Option B: "Highlander-chan! Did you miss me? And look! There's all these little villages sandwiched between our nations! Why don't we pay them a quick visit and show them the wonders of proper farming techniques?"
Option C: MAXIMUM SWAG
Option D: "Roads." "But sir, what about the-" "ROADS."
Option E: "You know what we need to make our neighbors like us? MORE TREES."
React
[] [React] Continue work on the Place to the Stars (5/7-8 actions completed)
-[] [React] Kick project (ISoO already triggered this turn)
[] [React] Main Build Glassworks
[] [React] Main Expand Forests
[] [React] Main Build Watchtowers
[] [React] Main Build Theatre
[] [React] 2xSec Dragon Graveyard Temple
[] [React] 2xSec Blackmouth Governor's Palace
Huh. We weren't even on Megaproject policy and we still got most of the Place to the Stars done in one turn. Getting that boost from Khemetri-chan and our Genius Mystic definitely came in handy.
Right now, my votes are:
[X] [GA] Gain random genius (-15 Culture)
[X] [FC] Redhills
[X] [FC] Just one FC
[X] [Diplo] Tie everything together internally (Main Build Roads)
[X] [React] Continue work on the Place to the Stars (5/7-8 actions completed)
-[X] [React] Kick project (ISoO already triggered this turn)
- Get a Genius. Don't really care what kind. Any of them would help us out a lot.
- Let's not get too many Free Cities until we figure out what exactly they'll do for us
- More roads? More roads. We need the Centralization anyway
- Let's see if we can finish off the Place to the Stars. We can make up the Stability loss quickly via one of the faction quests
Egypt is beautiful. But if it had had less gigantic tombs for its rulers and gigantic temples for it's cults, it could have had more walls, maybe even taken advantage of that natural choke point and built a less ambitious, more functional version of the great wall of china there. It'd be less beautiful, but maybe its pharaohs and its cults would be around to appreciate it.
Culture is neat so long as you live to see it. If you get squashed and all your pretty stone monuments are either re-purposed, defaced or abandoned by the new owners, then its just sad.
It appears the Patricians are absorbing the poor into manors, good thing we have census; otherwise we would not know how much Patricians power are accumulating. We need more economy expansion to suck the poor from the Patricians or we need to send out population to our sub-states achieve the same effect.
Mildly annoyed on spiral of requiring constant expansion to elevate low-skill poor population (farmers are not low-skill nor poor).
Actually thinking about it making the urban poor quest succeed the same turn the Patrician quest fails may knock the patricians' down a peg with them trying to stir up a bit of unrest only to be blocked by their underlings supporting the Crown.
ratio on the Khemetri forces.
