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Paths of Civilization

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Candesce said:
Was this in response to me? Because I certainly don't disagree with you; but I'd prefer the set of population that's policing our society and the set of population that's sourcing our leaders overlap as little as possible.
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It was just a general post to everyone. I'd definitely like to have specialist Black Birds, but I feel that we'd need to take at least 2 expansions in order to make that a possibility.
 
VoidZero said:
*sacrificing goats*

"Blood for the dice god"
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The RNGogds don't care. Blood or not, skulls or none, righteous or wicked, they simply are. They are the machine of the heavens, and are entirely unaffected by your puny efforts.

It's Lovecraftian; true horror is realizing that not only do the gods not love you, they don't even notice you.
 
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Hangwind said:
The RNGogds don't care. Blood or not, skulls or none, righteous or wicked, they simply are. They are the machine of the heavens, and are entirely unaffected by your puny efforts.

It's Lovecraftian; true horror is realizing that not only do the gods not love you, they don't even notice you.
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Then I'm sure Determination have nothing on RNG too. And dead brother is dead brother.

"When true sorrow strikes you, don't you feel better if you can blame something you can influence instead of cold unknown entity?"
 
Meta game analysis hour:

How do cultural values interact with our society and the choices we make to produce the consequences we see.

There are a few things to consider when we are looking at this question. I will address how we have been using these values in the past, what it means for us going forward, and the instances where a conflicting value likely caused an issue with our choices.
  • The length of time a value has been attached to a culture.
  • The synergy of a value to the other values of the culture.
  • How a value interacts with the environment.
  • How a value interacts with neighboring cultures.
  • Most importantly, how a value interacts with our choices.
For some reference, our current values (spiritual and cultural is a fairly irrelevant distinction where this analysis is concerned):

Shapers of the Land
This world is good, but through tremendous effort and skill, it can be made better, an act which your people take immense joy and pride in. Tread not lightly upon land defended by its sculptors.
Pros: Bonuses to all actions relating to land management, bonuses when fighting on own terrain, additional Econ and Stability whenever completing a land management type Megaproject
Cons: Additional strife caused by deliberate environmental disruption unless it is for the long term betterment of the land, or loss of territory to others
  • Sacred Forest
    While the forests stand and the people care for them, the forests shall care for them. As long as the Sacred Forest is intact, all forests under the control of the People are considered managed, and gain the new action Expand Forest.

Protective Justice
Punishment and retribution are not justice, but tools of justice. Justice exists to encourage desirable behaviours, and thus can be best served by discouraging bad behaviour before it happens.
Pros: Justice is an objective, and thus can be served without retribution or retaliation
Cons: Sometimes the call for justice comes early...

Land of Opportunity
You welcome all, offering food and shelter if they will contribute to your community. Sometimes these newcomers behave badly, and sometimes they bring strange new ideas, but in general they strengthen your community, especially in the long run
Pros: Enhanced absorption of new ideas, +1 social value from current or historical neighbours, whenever a neighbour suffers a stability drop, have the option to also suffer a stability drop in exchange for a large boost to Econ and technological and social advancement by absorbing especially large numbers of people
Cons: Many think you weak, not accepting the needy can cause stability drops, sometimes you get values you didn't expect

Honourable Death (Spiritual/Honour) (LoO Linked)
Death in service to the People and the spirits is the best death of all, removing the fear of death from the truly honourable.
Pros: Warriors fight harder, losses in battle are less disruptive
Cons: Seeking a good death, and the means to achieve it, becomes desirable.

Harmony
To live in harmony with oneself, ones neighbours, and ones environment is to live in harmony with the spirits. To live in disharmony is to invite disaster.
Pros: Bonus to collective action
Cons: Disharmony is to be corrected

Sacred War
Those who are in violation of the laws of nature and the spirits must be punished, lest disaster fall upon all.
Pros: Bonuses to fighting foes with conflicting spiritual beliefs
Cons: Can become locked into fighting with foes with conflicting spiritual beliefs

Death Taboo
Touching or interacting with the bodies of the deceased, excepting those recently late, is seen as a cultural and spiritual taboo. Violating the taboo is grounds for punishment and temporary to permanent exclusion from society. Enemies violating the taboo are seen more unfavorably. (Speculation: Could probably be grounds for a sacred war)

Hard Work is it's Own Reward
Our people are fucking workaholics. 'Nuff said.

Community Property (Just like the Steel Panther song.)
Work is not done to benefit the individual, but to raise up The People as a whole. To gain fame and prestige, skills must be developed and honed.
  • Congrats, we're basically the United Federation of Planets in miniature.
  • While it is listed under social concepts, it has become so ingrained into our society that it is practically a value in and of itself.

Now, before I go on, note that I included Sacred Forest under the cultural value Shapers of the Land. In reality, it should be considered superior to all others, given that all the other values currently derive their significance from the veneration and care of the forest. Sacred Forest was a generations long project to save the environment that The People had lived in for generations. That sort of commitment leaves a mark on a society; for reference, consider 'The American Dream' as a sufficient analogue. For all intents and purposes, the forest is now an anchor for the Shapers of the Land, Land of Opportunity, and Harmony cultural values. The forest also provides a quasi diety for our society's spirituality, and a justification for Sacred War; harm to the forest is harm to the people. They all tie back in. For everything stated below, consider the environment and the forest first.

By far the most important facet to consider when looking at how a value will interact with our society and how our people will see our choices, is to look at how long a value has been attached to a society. The longer a value has been attached to a society, the more it is simply an idea that simply is. The society runs by it, sets their clocks and agenda by it.

For an example, Look no further than Shapers of the Land. A value that first appeared in the incarnation of Caretakers of the Land on turn number three ,"Of Lands and Kings," as our first cultural value. It is so intrinsic to the civ we are building that @Academia Nut practically writes the updates around it. This value is the very basis of our society, and it directly affects all other values and choices, while remaining fairly stagnant in form.


What do we do with this knowledge? Use it to predict how it influences other values, how our people will react to a decision, and thus how our individual choices will affect our stats.

Now, before we continue on to look at all our values, lets establish a few points:
  • There is an effective hierarchy of values in descending order of seniority. The older a value, the more it will affect the practical implementation of "younger" values and the less it will be affected by the tenets of those same younger values.
  • The older a value is, the more accepted any idea and that ideas consequences will be that is based upon it. Conversely, anything that goes against a long held value will have a much stronger penalty (Stability is the likely loser) than something going against a relatively new value.
    • For reference here, I will submit Black Soil as a positive. Its shit work but people did it, and didn't really complain overmuch about doing it, given that it is a direct manifestation of and benefits Shapers.
    • As a negative, I will submit how we stopped our war against the DP. Even with Sacred War active, we only received a -1 hit to stability, and there was extremely little evidence of the issue in the narrative.
Considering those points, any decision we make should be in consideration of the age and relative "seniority" of the values; not just their existence.
  • Shapers of the Land
    • Evolved from Gardeners of the Land
      • Evolved from Caretakers of the Land
  • Protective Justice
    • Evolved from Eye for an Eye
  • Land of Opportunity
    • Evolved from a combination of Sharing Circle and Pioneering Spirit
  • Harmony
  • Sacred War
  • Honourable Death
Cultural values are not standalone pieces on a board. While this may be a game, it is as adaptable as AN himself chooses to be. The values our society holds are part of a system. While some are affected less than others, they all have some effect, to one degree or another, on the decisions available to us and their results.
  • There is an effective hierarchy of values in descending order of seniority. The older a value, the more it will affect the practical implementation of "younger" values and the less it will be affected by the tenets of those same younger values.
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When considering and predicting the effects of an action, this needs to take priority, only followed by considering how 'alike' two values are.

As an example, lets consider the "Sacred Warriors" action and how that action was affected in the past, and how future implementations will manifest.

When the action was last taken, we ended up with the Blackbirds, while many of us were expecting something more along the lines of the berserkers of the Spirit Talkers. Lets look at why.
  • The first clue? We aren't a warrior culture. We weren't then, and we aren't now. Despite the presence of Sacred War and Honourable Death that will not change unless we deliberately and attack other civs and continue to do so. For all that we have had quality warriors from the dawn of our society, they have only been used as protection, up until recently. We don't (usually) fight wars. We've fought all of two and only one out of choice so far in the game. Two wars does not a society make. As a result, our warriors tend to be hunters and scouts in their spare time.
  • Clue the second is the seniority of Shapers of the Land and Sacred Forest in the eyes of our society. Our knowledge of the forest and the environment is unparalleled, and is the center of our belief system. Naturally, those warriors who know the forest best, who show that belief best would be chosen.
If we were to take the action again, what would we get? Why?
  • Once again, we are not a warrior culture. Unless I miss my guess, we will never get berserkers. Their presence doesn't mesh with anything our society has done; not even Gwygoytha, though she was the closest.
  • Some people have suggested we might get a "battlefield engineer." IMO, this is the most likely. One only has to look at our chief value: Shapers of the Land, and our societies tendency towards hard work. Why didn't we see these the first time around? Well, it's a bit of an esoteric concept. It seems intuitive to us, but to our people, the droughts and famines that could be caused by the diversion of a tributary or silty soil, is the realm of the spirits.
  • Should we "Study Forest" and end up with primitive medicine, we might end up with an early medic of some sort.
There's also negative interaction to consider. Values such as Harmony and Protective Justice can harm a war effort just as much as they can help it. If the war is unprovoked, and there is no causus belli that out people will accept, we are likely to see issues with the war.

There isn't terribly much to say here, other than to reference three separate values.
  1. Sacred Forest
  2. Shapers of the Land
  3. Harmony
These three determine how any action that affects the land will be seen by our society. So, lets look at some of our possible actions (beyond the obvious) and the implications they can have.
  • New Settlement (wherever)
    • Largely, this will have positive feedback. We set up places for people to live, and they spread out from those central locations to tend the forest.
    • Keep in mind, however, that extremely large populations and large numbers of settlements will be harmful to the environment and thus produce a malus from the above values.
    • Should we continue to drop settlements without expanding the forest and thus our borders, we would likely run into an issue of being unable to expand without some harm to the forest ecosystem and thus some major issues with Shapers.
  • Mining
    • There is very little benefit to the environment from mining. However much we will need it in the future, getting it up and running will be difficult. It will likely require some thought into synergistic actions that would alleviate the malus' from some of our values.

Alright, this is turning into a bit of a bigger production than I was expecting. But here we go.

When we meet another culture, there are a few different aspects that go into every choice we make, and our people's attitudes towards them. Based on our history, I've extrapolated a rough set of whys, hows, results, and an order of operations.
  • Who are you, and what do you believe in?
    • This is the primary divider between us going to war and offering them bread, wine, and our daughters.
    • Because of Harmony and Land of Opportunity, which have seniority, we are a fairly accepting bunch, despite Sacred War.
      • Even the Spirit Talkers, whom we don't much like, are generally treated fairly and traded with. They, however, stay on firmly iffy ground, politically speaking. No daughters for them.
      • The Spirit Talkers, on the other hand were quite prepared to take our tribute and go, until we proved their equals (roughly).
    • However, when both of those values and our hidden values are very firmly opposed, we get a situation with the Dead Priests, where we are more likely to go straight to War.
  • How do you interact with others?
    • Slavery is pretty much a no-go with us. If you practice it, we either get you to stop (the Western Confed) or we go to war with you. (The DP)
  • How do you interact with your environment?
    • You farm like shit, here's how to do better. Now marry my daughter. one of us. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.
  • What can you offer in trade?
    • That's shiny. Here, I have dye. Marry my daughter. one of us. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.
There's really... not much else to it. I'm also tired of writing this.

Alright, I'm tired.

Edit: Woo got an insightful from AN. I got something right in this mess of nonsense.
 
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It's a shame we can't just ask the trees to pull metal out of the ground using their roots.

Maybe I should pray.
 
Lilithium said:
It's a shame we can't just ask the trees to pull metal out of the ground using their roots.

Maybe I should pray.
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Yeah, it's going to be one of our biggest problems going forward, especially once industrialization becomes a thing. Industrialization itself can be done relatively cleanly, especially for a society that is so focused on the environment. However, large scale extraction of metals is extremely difficult to do in an environmentally conscious manner. We can't really even do it today.

The best I can see are methods of riverbed sifting or purely underground methods of mining. Anything else is so obviously damaging it isn't even funny.
 
Lilithium said:
It's a shame we can't just ask the trees to pull metal out of the ground using their roots.

Maybe I should pray.
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Eh, if everything goes well for a couple of generations (HA) then they'll be our frontline soldiers in our takeover of... just about everything, really. Most people have attack dogs, we have attack trees!...

Now there's an idea, breeding a species of tree specifically for hardiness, propagation, and evasiveness. Farfetched, but hilarious.

2776
 
pbluekan said:
Yeah, it's going to be one of our biggest problems going forward, especially once industrialization becomes a thing. Industrialization itself can be done relatively cleanly, especially for a society that is so focused on the environment. However, large scale extraction of metals is extremely difficult to do in an environmentally conscious manner. We can't really even do it today.

The best I can see are methods of riverbed sifting or purely underground methods of mining. Anything else is so obviously damaging it isn't even funny.
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On the other hand we are likely to have green technologies and green industry from the beginning.
 
tenchifew said:
On the other hand we are likely to have green technologies and green industry from the beginning.
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True, but those techniques aren't easy. It will certainly slow development. For now, though as we move through the chalcolithic and bronze ages it isn't much of a concern. The Iron Age is where I think we will likely see those sorts of issues start to really pop up.
 
pbluekan said:
True, but those techniques aren't easy. It will certainly slow development. For now, though as we move through the chalcolithic and bronze ages it isn't much of a concern. The Iron Age is where I think we will likely see those sorts of issues start to really pop up.
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I think it will depend in part if there is some form of real magic in the setting.

So far I think probably not...
But I am unsure. And if there is, we could try to go the Druid way of industrialization.

Otherwise...
It will be harder, but things like filters and proper waste utilization are not too difficult, actually.

It will be harder, though, no doubt about it.
 
pbluekan said:
True, but those techniques aren't easy. It will certainly slow development. For now, though as we move through the chalcolithic and bronze ages it isn't much of a concern. The Iron Age is where I think we will likely see those sorts of issues start to really pop up.
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Actually, depending on how Shapers evolves, metal extraction might happen on a large incidental scale as we terraform the world around us. We might invent strip mining early purely as a way to make our lands even better for farming.
 
On the subject of long-term problems and kudzu...

We're traders. It doesn't seem likely that we're going to vote to change that any time soon, and people want to get sailing and longer-distance trade up and running. As far as I'm concerned, these are all good things.

But.

Sooner or later, we're going to be picking up at least one invasive species. We'd better keep that in mind, because the way we've built our culture so far, we're not going to get the option of ignoring that problem.
 
Plant trees with a wide root system and mine around the roots? Hope we can find natural caves with exposed veins?

Also, I hope our love of the environment extends to animals. Fuck industrialized farming, specifically dairy and meat. It's an unsolvable problem though, albeit in real life. More reason to never let it start in our tiny fictional world.
 
tenchifew said:
I think it will depend in part if there is some form of real magic in the setting.

So far I think probably not...
But I am unsure. And if there is, we could try to go the Druid way of industrialization.

Otherwise...
It will be harder, but things like filters and proper waste utilization are not too difficult, actually.

It will be harder, though, no doubt about it.
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I'm like 90% sure that if there was magic, we would have way more supernatural stuff happening in the narrative. The ST would be performing more acts of spiritual stuffs, the DP might even haul out some blood magic sacrifices and see results, etc. After hundreds of years we've yet to see anything that we don't understand the reason for.
 
Lilithium said:
Plant trees with a wide root system and mine around the roots? Hope we can find natural caves with exposed veins?

Also, I hope our love of the environment extends to animals. Fuck industrialized farming, specifically dairy and meat. It's an unsolvable problem though, albeit in real life. More reason to never let it start in our tiny fictional world.
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What why? if we use the manure from the industrial farms, together with air-filtering the methane from the air, we can have a shit and fart energy system, together with a shit and piss fertilizing system...
 
pbluekan said:
As a negative, I will submit how we stopped our war against the DP. Even with Sacred War active, we only received a -1 hit to stability, and there was extremely little evidence of the issue in the narrative.
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We didn't take a hit to stability that turn. The update says there was only a possibility of stability loss, and we rolled well enough that we didn't lose stability.

pbluekan said:
Some people have suggested we might get a "battlefield engineer." IMO, this is the most likely.
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I'm thinking it's going to be based on cart warriors. Cart warriors are already considered to be the best in our society, being held up even among the Blackbirds. With the new shrine in the pastures inspired by cart warriors and meant for that, combined with Sacred War and Honourable Death both being Spiritual Values, I'd say there's a better chance that it'll go in that direction instead of "battlefield engineer".
 
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