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Paths of Civilization

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veekie said:
Hmm, that's a pretty good number, but the reasons on record strongly indicate poorly adapted migrants. Particularly public violence(which is a LOT more acceptable in less urbanized societies as a thing that just happens, but is shut down harder in cities).

Do we know about the motive forces for unlicensed prostitution?
I'm suspecting that they need the work to get paid, but our public health laws limit their work conditions and being told to stop working until you stop being diseased would be a death sentence to an unskilled refugee.
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Unlicensed prostitution combines together both sexual liasons the authorities don't like, and people without the resources/contacts to get licensed through health inspection by a local shaman. Also, for fresh immigrants, they might be carrying pre-existing STDs, which automatically disqualifies them from legal practice, but if they are in need of resources...
 
Jesus christ do some in this thread loath heredity, tradition, liberty and wealth.

What's the alternative? Going back to Hunter gatherers? Doing what the communist did and just butcher everything and anything they didn't like? Suppress the populace and have the state systematically plunder it's wealth? Institute the thought police and have people punished for wrong think?
 
@Academia Nut

Question on the Bulk Trade.

Common Textiles are at None.

Are pastures for sheep just that rare or not useful beyond internal demand because the sacred herds of cattle take up a disproportionate area? Because I think given our total area, there should be quite a bit.

If cattle displaced the sheep except in areas where cows are simply too big (the cataracts and mountains are probably too remote and difficult for cattle), shouldn't leather/parchment be listed? Leather is quite valuable given how resource intensive livestock can be.

Additionally, pigs can eat damn near anything. Given our forestry, they would be ideal to clear away undergrowth that's not desired and they can be slaughtered for meat and more leather, although probably rougher and tougher than what the sacred cattle would provide.


Next concerns Charcoal and Lumber. What level of excess forest would we need to actually start trading it? Because we are really building it up.

As pitch is a normal byproduct of making charcoal from pines, will we need extra forests to make it or will it be calculated as a fraction of charcoal production?
 
Could we turn Black Soil into a Trade Good if we spam it enough or would it be too bulky to even be a bulk good?
The idea of shipping piles of dirt around sounds really amusing.
 
@Academia Nut
Were there any decisions we could have made that would have prevented or greatly reduced the decay of egalitarianism among the Ymaryn, or is it something that we had no control over?
 
BungieONI said:
Basically patricians are considered the best, the top, and in the context of our society with Arete everyone is striving to be a patrician. Do I have that right?
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In essence yes. At the same time even being born in a patrician family does not mean you stay a patrician.
Look at the infopost again.
For a patrician:
-1st & 2nd sons are trained to be Patricians from birth and introduced to all their friends. The second in line may never be a Patrician of the same rank as his father when he grows up(and for lower patricians, may outright wind up working as an elite clerk, or trader, since it uses the same skills), it's to protect family interests in case the first son is an idiot or suffers misadventure.

-3rd & 4th sons are chariot archers, who maintain an easy route into power through achievement in the military. In case anything happens to their brothers or a slot opens up, its easy for them to squeeze in with some added crash course in management. They form hereditary warrior families, who then either lose prestige and drop to Yeomen a few generations later or get noticed and become patricians themselves.

-5th+ sons fall out of the caste entirely. They join a trader friend of the family or a guild friend of the family so that whoever winds up in charge will have family and contacts in these important areas of the community.

The standards are pretty brutal when you think of that. Your social status requires constant work and politics to maintain. Show weakness, or worse, incompetence and you become a failing family whose best hope is to marry or adopt a rising talent, trading contacts for skills.
Chrestomanci said:
Second we need an independent judiciary, the current system of the local leader (village chief, guild master etc) deciding the punishment results in the half-exile duration being heavily influenced. While we do have a good appeals system(you can work your way up to the King) the time required is unaffordable for most. Improving our Justice value and possibly governors' palaces might help with developing magistrates.
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We actually do have it. The chief declares the half exile sentence, the priests determines how long they stay punished.
It's just not quite good enough yet.
Academia Nut said:
Unlicensed prostitution combines together both sexual liasons the authorities don't like, and people without the resources/contacts to get licensed through health inspection by a local shaman. Also, for fresh immigrants, they might be carrying pre-existing STDs, which automatically disqualifies them from legal practice, but if they are in need of resources...
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Ah, that makes sense.

...even the prostitutes are elitist after all.
And naturally, while people would prefer licensed prostitutes, the illegal ones are cheaper....
 
You know I actually just ran the numbers on a very conservative estimate of 2% of our population being patricians and I got 100,000.
That sounds like quite a lot of people to me. In fact way back when, when we first got Valleyhome as a TC, 100000 was it's entire population and is still a significant fraction today.

It's kinda cool actually.
 
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Academia Nut said:
Honestly the history buffs are probably rolling their eyes at me for making you too egalitarian.
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The thought has come up, but it hasn't been too glaring and has stayed within the (somewhat stretched) realm of plausibility.

I'm mostly rolling my eyes at the people declaring the current status quo worse than Satan and worth burning down our entire administration system.
 
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Dutch said:
The thought has come up, but it hasn't been too glaring and has stayed within the realm of plausibility.

I'm mostly rolling my eyes at the people declaring the current status quo worse than Satan and worth burning down our entire administration system.
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Sadly the second seems to be a recurring trend whenever stuff like this comes up. I find the thread's lack of faith... disturbing.
I give it a skim and let the thread cool down with minimal input of my own. :V
 
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Sugnez said:
Oh gosh, I don't know if I can pick one specific thing, so I'll just do a bunch.

You know those giant siege weaponry pieces we got in the upgrade against the Khem, the scorpions? I didn't even know they existed before I saw them in the update. The closest thing I can compare them to is medieval rocket launchers, because at this era of technology that's exactly what they are. And that's super cool.

And oh man, don't even get me started on aqueducts. They're so important to the spread of clean drinking water and the disposal of waste and these things literally keep our cities from being giant slum filled messes of poverty and disease like the Xoh capital was. They're the mvp of our entire culture, right behind the trees. I would love for every city in our civ to be kitted out with max aquaducts, but I know that's not really viable yet.(Still, a girl can dream, and I know we'll get there eventually.) The only reason it's not viable is because our current level of communication and administrative technology can't keep up with the sheer number of People these things can give a healthy and sanitary lifestyle to. It's amazing. I love it.

I also learned a lot about boats. Did you guys know that it's possible to argue for 30 straight pages about them? Also longboats were portable, that was a pretty nifty fact that I didn't know before. Didn't the vikings land in America on a longboat? That's pretty sick. And I learned that catamarans don't just look cool, they're actually really good and functional.

With the limitations of the stone/bronze/iron age civilizations and all you guys advocating different economic structures, it's really opened my eyes to alternative forms of government to what's used in the modern day and what I grew up with in america. I don't know what I expected when I first clicked on this thread, but it wasn't to agree with feudalism the most in a discussion between guild mercantilism, feudalism, capitalism, and democracy.

By the way I really want to thank @maximillian for being amazing with his? determination and level headedness in his? continuous arguments in support of feudalism and a lauded aristocracy, they're nothing short of brilliant. If anyone like Umi thought he? was trolling, I strongly suggest you go back and read some of the posts, just for sheer educational value and perspective. Fuedalism certainly wouldn't be that bad for us, though it would shift our governmental focus from wealth, infrastructure, and factional needs to decentralized military strength and culture.

I learned that teamwork is the most important part of administration. Governments(and our heavily centralized government especially) have a bunch of little fiddly bits that need to be managed just right, or things start blowing up. With all the corruption issues we've had to deal with over the last 4000 pages, people trying for personal gain have caused many of our internal problems, and even a few of our external ones.

-glares @those guilds that tried to stop us from discovering glass, then at the guys who taught the HK iron smelting behind our backs-

If we aren't working together, and people try to benefit themselves instead of the bigger whole, it takes away time and resources that we could be spending moving forward as a people, instead of just cleaning up our past messes.

And teamwork is super important in the meta as well. As an easy example, just look at how we as a thread got RatS - the nomads pissed off us as irl people so much that there were like 4-5 straight pages of votes to fuck them up in less than an hour. Because our collective voice was so strong and single minded in that moment, we ended up with two legacies and two new value slots over the course of that one war.

Outside the story and just in the thread, look at how many of us rely on the technical expertise of people like veekie and AbbyNormal and zamin and BungieONI's math/analysis, or pblurs detailed data collection of the thread's actions or Concho117's ever-updating map of our area. And don't forget stuff that isn't strictly technical, like BungieONI's memes, maxamillian's sheep, ManusDomine's mediation when things get too heated, and Omegahugger's tree hugs! We're awesome and great and each and every one of us contributes to this thread in a different way, and all together? We're the spirits of the Ymaryn.
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The flock prospers!
 
I tend to be annoyed with the ideological fraction advocating things like democracy, because I am a pragmatist at heart, and prefer things that work versus things that don't.
 
agumentic said:
But then, where would one get valuable supply of salt?
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It obviously all comes from the times when I am letting it cool down, the tempering process generates metric-tons of the stuff.


Which then promptly gets teleported to the top of a mountain near the Far East Salt Sea. :p
 
I mean. If you think this is bad, wait until the coming of education creates an even more exclusive elite culture. Right now, all that matters is your competence at your job, the kind of job you have and your wealth.

With Life of Arete and Love for Wisdom there's a decent chance that in addition to that, you'll need to be able to properly recite the Tales of the Dragon from memory in the near future.
 
Dutch said:
I mean. If you think this is bad, wait until the coming of education creates an even more exclusive elite culture. Right now, all that matters is your competence at your job, the kind of job you have and your wealth.

With Life of Arete and Love for Wisdom there's a decent chance that in addition to that, you'll need to be able to properly recite the Tales of the Dragon from memory in the near future.
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Hoooo boy.

Layering.
 
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