Looking over the Reform options.
Reforms I:
-Shiny:
--[] [HS] Main Build Gymnasium (Does not advance Reforms, +1 Stability)
This is unrelated, a shiny thrown to the Patricians to shut up.
-Army administration(aka who gets to tell the armies where to go):
--[] [HS] Center Command on the Cities (Blackmouth becomes a Free City, Reforms advance)
Draw the army leadership from the City leadership since the armies are tied to the cities. Effectively this treats the City Mayors like Super Yeomen.
Empowers and differentiate Urban/Civil Patricians.
Mayors generally do not prefer war, but cities have been known to rebel before. Usually over taxes or laws to reduce their power.
--[Q] [HS] Increase Professionalism (Found Mercenary Company, Reforms advance)
Draw the army leadership from the career military. Effectively this is the beginnings of drawing up NCOs.
Empowers the Urban Poor in the long run.
--[] [HS] Introduce an elite core (Sec More Spiritbonded + Sec Expand Econ, Reforms advance)
Draw the army leadership from the noble class, where cavalry commanders direct infantry masses.
Empowers the Patricians.
-Army Control(aka how do you keep the army from doing whatever the hell it wants):
--[] [HS] Prototype Deployment Organization (2xSec Blackmouth Colossal Walls, Reforms advance)
Anchor the army into city guards(which the Colossal walls represent as it has the martial cost for an integrated garrison), giving them peacetime employment and promotion routes.
--[] [HS] Prototype Weapon Storage (Palace Arsenal + Storehouse Annexes, Reforms advance)
Protect state access to military equipment, so the army can only be deployed when the state wants it deployed.
-Pay for the army:
--[] [HS] Increase Iron production further (Redshore Ironworks [-3 Econ, -3 Tech, 2 Sustainable Forest used, Expand Econ additional +1 Econ, -1 EE, -1 Tech] + Sec Survey, Reforms advance)
Leverage tech advantage to make equipment for cheap.
-Create the army:
--[] [HS] Continue raising troops (Main Raise Army, Reforms advance)
Actually raise the army.
Reforms II:
-Shiny:
--[] [HS] Main Build Gymnasium (Does not advance Reforms, +1 Stability)
They forgot about it already.
-Army administration(aka who gets to tell the armies where to go):
--[] [HS] Center Command on the Cities (Blackmouth becomes a Free City, Reforms advance)
--[Q] [HS] Increase Professionalism (Found Mercenary Company, Reforms advance)
--[] [HS] Introduce an elite core (Sec More Spiritbonded + Sec Expand Econ, Reforms advance)
Leadership approach has been locked in.
-Army Control(aka how do you keep the army from doing whatever the hell it wants):
--[] [HS] Prototype Deployment Organization (2xSec Blackmouth Colossal Walls, Reforms advance)
--[Q] [HS] Prototype Weapon Storage (Palace Arsenal + Storehouse Annexes, Reforms advance)
Prediction: Prototype Deployment Organization will be gone next turn.
-Pay for the army:
--[] [HS] Increase Iron production to make things cheaper (Redshore Ironworks [-3 Econ, -3 Tech, 2 Sustainable Forest used, Expand Econ additional +1 Econ, -1 EE, -1 Tech] + Sec Survey, Reforms advance)
Finance army with industrial expansion. If you make the equipment cheap(fortunately we're doing this AFTER arms production and storage control), the army can be financed by making it cheap to outfit.
This would NORMALLY give the Guilds a lot of power, but with our Weapon Storage choice we've basically nationalized the Armorer guilds.
--[] [HS] Streamline system to better pay for reforms (Main Distribute Land)
Finance army with land distribution.
This gives the nobles a lot of power, and well...you'd need more land to hand out eventually.
--[] [HS] More trade is more money to pay for things (Main Plant Poppies [-3 Econ, -3 Econ Expansion, +1 Mysticism, +7 Wealth, increased trade power])
Finance army with trade goods. This makes the army vulnerable to trade disruption and gives the traders a lot of power.
-Create the army:
--[] [HS] Continue raising troops (Main Raise Army, Reforms advance)
Actually raise the army.
There's really no point in putting Colossal Walls around Valleyhome, since if it ever gets to the point where Valleyhome is getting sieged we've likely exploded from Stability Spirals through land loss.
Forting up our periphery cities let's us push back opponents before they can really start to contest our lands, letting us avoid the stability spirals and giving us hardpoints where the enemy will have to wait and siege us out before advancing, once again slowing down the land loss.
Worth noting that Valleyhome had literally never,
ever seen war. No foreign power has ever set foot upon the hill other than as friends.
But Colossal Walls there do have a use in city administration, rather than as defense. We'd probably find that once we build those in Blackmouth we'd find it FAR easier to control urban crime and disease in general. As with the Chinese Fortress-cities, the walls section off the city into gated blocks, which are then subdivided by walled but not always gated subdistricts.
Which means more or less any crime that's detected is fucked. You can bar the gates to individual city blocks and then push the full time city guard through the block to root out crime rather than deal with "vanished into the city"
