Such as...?
No seriously. We have almost no info to go on at this point, which precludes any sort of in depth planning. Speculation on different end states seems just as interesting a way to pass the time as Think Happy Thoughts.
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
Such as...?
No seriously. We have almost no info to go on at this point, which precludes any sort of in depth planning. Speculation on different end states seems just as interesting a way to pass the time as Think Happy Thoughts.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Of course we never had Indian Ocean access. There are still the Hamurri. Meanwhile, the Khemetri colonies at the Levant have been abandoned. However, the Lowlands have the value that they are, well, the Lowlands - incredibly fertile soil. And that plays to our strengths.
Generally, I'd prioritize stuff like that
1) Southern Territories (where we have all our mines!)
2) Lowlands
3) Black Sea Territories
Why the Black Sea territories last? Because there is an Ymaryn culture there. Even if Westwall, Greenshore etc don't rejoin the Kingdom of the Ymaryn, as independent polities they would still be Ymaryn polities, in terms of culture, identity, etc. We allowed participants of the Western Ymaryn to our games and competitions, because we still accept them as part of the People. It would be the same deal there. And well, that is still somewhat acceptable. I'd rather have a second Ymaryn state than a truly foreign state.
And if the Lowlands become independant, Txolla or Twin Horses, the that is what will happen. We will again have a foreign nation right at our eastern border. That is far less acceptable, IMO.
(also hey, let an independent state deal with the nomades
)
It can run for a turn. Period.
But during said turn it'd be Swole enough to see off any opportunists
This isn't true however, from the start we know whoever holds and unifies the lowlands will be the only party which can threaten us. Refer history of China where the civilization in the hills and mountains lasted about as long as it took for the floodplains to finally unify and then just steamroll on sheer weight of numbers.
It would be vastly easier to reacquire lost Black Sea holdings than the Lowlands. Most of them are not really on anything resembling defensible territory if you hadd the sealift capacity until Trell itself.
Actually no, this sort of Fuck You is extremely common. We had just dodged every one previous to that.
We've had a civilization ending climate disruption we just shrugged and canceled it. We took Cholera and Smallpox and broke their hold on our civilization.
It is an expected outcome that a civilization loses continuity. We managed to avoid it partly due to AN softballing us, partly due to stupidly good luck and partly due to being absolutely obsessive with food, climate and disease security to the extent that our culture and military suffered for it.
Plagues like this did exist in the historical record however. Observe the evidence of a large north american civilization that got wiped down to tribal level by a similar fast spreading plague.
What actually happened was that they burned rapidly along urban centers, then simply burned OUT everyone without natural resistance in short order, leaving isolated pockets(like the Highland Kingdom would have been) and remote colonies(like Amber Road).
Such plagues tend to last about a generation. They exist, but are so lethal that they naturally deselect themselves when they kill all viable hosts.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
From my PoV it's a pretty good thing.
No more need to worry about vassals breaking away or whatnot. Did we really need to have Txolla and the Thunder Twins?
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
More so than the Black Sea territories, anyway.
We can also cease to exist. Then we won't have anything to worry about.
If we need to choose just one, I think we would be better off focusing on the Lowlands. If we want to concentrate or civ somewhere, doesn't it make sense to move in the direction that has massively higher agricultural productivity?
Looking at it another way, I'd much rather have neighbors/competitors in the Not!Black Sea then ones on the Lowlands. Lowlands neighbors can marshal the forces to be a major military threat to us, whereas Sea neighbors are much more likely to be threatening only as trade rivals.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Yes, which is why I said we need to figure out how to breed one
Yes, which is why I said we need to breed one
Did you even read my post?
I specifically suggested this, I don't know why you're proposing it as if it's a correction.That just extends the feedback loop. If someone becomes symptomatic later, quarantine everyone they 'inoculated'. (Unless people can spread it during the asymptomatic period?)
We just had an update where a smith apprentice was being tasked with keeping a flame at a particular temperature, so it's at least possible for us to try various combinations of temperature / exposure time.
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Again, this is a long term concern. If we'd already built them up, then this would be a very different situation. Anyone who wanted to use the lowlands has to:
- Actually unify the lowlands
- Develop the region enough to take advantage of it
- Grow fat off their bread basket long enough to rival us
Like I said, I'd prefer to keep our intact infrastructure so we can move forward sooner, but if others prefer the long con then alright.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
TT not so much. Txolla yes.
I'd rather not be spread thin and not leave a breadbasket lying around waiting to be formed into a sword in our back. We should focus on leveraging our comparative advantage in agriculture, and leave trade as a side project.
Eh, I don't think the lowlands will be a viable successor because it's not of our culture and if the nomads eat the Mountain Horse they're going to roll out and smash the Thunder Twins, but the Core weathered that hit well enough that as AN said, we could probably successor RIGHT on top of our original forest hill pocket, retaining all our megaprojects and values.
Or you can choose the mine rich but infrastructure nothing remains of the Hathatyn territory, which gives access to the Khemetri colonies and whats left of Freehills.
Or you can choose the completely intact trading post of Amber Road all the way up in winterlandia.
Or you can choose the sparsely developed, overextended, lands of the northern Black Sea, where basically 2/3 of their territory is open to steppes.
Or you can choose the expanding-like-a-gas Western Ymaryn.
Only one of the options will preserve Greater Sacred Forest under us incidentally.
I might consider voting for Amber Road because it would be interesting, but if we want a large and powerful empire taking the Ymaryn core and taking another shot at the lowlands is probably the best choice, I'd agree.
People cannot spread it during the asymptomatic period. However, the early symptomatic period can be difficult to distinguish from unrelated symptoms, like smoke or soot exposure triggered irritation
The temperature range where you can distinguish heat by color is about 100 degrees too high. To pasturize a disease sample without destroying its proteins you need a sustained temperature of around 80 degrees celcius. The color trick works for metalworking temperatures, but to do the same for lower heat you need gas or liquid fuel fires.
And also you would need to deliberately maintain a population of infected to do this. Without catching the live stuff from them
Personally, I just don't want to deal with an extra militant threat at our borders, even a theoretical one.
Back before we first had the Iron advantage, the Lowlands was a time bomb (which would ironically explode after becoming stable); if they ever came together we would be effectively screwed. I'd rather avoid a repeat.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Depends if you're trying to keep everyone immune forever, or just beat the one wave of plague
Gah, now I'm wishing we'd gone for the techs, one of them might have been a damn thermometer.
Although... given a flame of constant temperature, you can set samples at various precise *distances* from it for various precise lengths of time, and sidestep the issue that way?
Our Cinnabar mine just ran out.
That would have made making thermometers... interesting.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
New social value:
Plague OCD.
Any member of the People who coughs, sniffles, or feels even slightly under the weather immediately places themselves under voluntary quarantine
Flame of constant temperature is the problem. You need a pure fuel with a constant surface area. No solid fuel produces a significant flame of constant temperature, because the surface area is constantly changing, the fuel's composition itself is uneven.
The first usable fuel for this purpose would be distilled alcohol, which is reasonably pure and burns steady.
It's also super expensive.
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
I just wanna die!
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
I felt the same way when everything was on fire and it seemed like we would never win. It's weird how the plague doesn't actually seem that bad compared to the stuff that happened before. Plagues are easy since you just need to find a cure and not worry about social unrest or people being stupid. During a crisis like this you can just kill the idiots for the good of the many.
At least the Plague was definitely our fault and everyone else is worse off for it. Schadenfreude goes a long way in these things.
- Location
- Canada
You know, between this, Veekie's suggestion that the plague itself might have come from a horse-based strain, and the fact that we have an open spiritual slot I feel like there is a potential lose-lose situation in the future (assuming we survive that long, of course)
Now pardon me for being pessimistic, but there are a few outcomes I can see happening:
-Civ dies from the plague, knowledge of where the plague came from is pointless.
-Civ survives from the plague, source of the plague is known and comes from horses: potential spiritual value / debilitating belief against using horses: gives us a heavily skewed and inflexible army composition
-Civ survives from the plague, source of the plague is unknown: potential spiritual value investing in superstition and away from Philosopher Kings, seeing as proto-empiricism couldn't find the answer.
Additionally, I feel like people's suggestions that the Ymmri are 18th century in terms of urbanisation and bringing up making attenuated vaccines without the help of microscopes, precise thermometers and volumetric measurements is a bit... frustrating. I know we like to stroke our egos and suggest that we created a "super-civ" that is centuries ahead of its time. Heck, it may be even true with regard to certain tech fields. However, through these tech advances we've also inadvertently caused our culture to develop a bit haphazardly. While this may be a bit of a hyperbole, sometimes I feel like we are looking at what giving an Iron-age civilisation (with their respective morals, norms, and culture) bits and pieces of advanced technology will do. While some good may come from it, there are also a slew of problems such as our relative ineptitude at espionage (why look outside when we clearly have the best tech?), the persistence of inter-clan violence (having been supplanted somewhat by the different social classes now, but in a way it's become just another extension of the clan violence), and the effects of a (relatively) sprawling empire (we have the people and power to take it, but we don't yet have the communication technology to maintain it, it seems).
Would these problems arise if we didn't focus on tech and agriculture? Maybe. There would likely be some similar problems, along with other ones as well, but I just wanted to point out that just because we gave cavemen steel tools and guns, it does not mean that they will somehow magically adopt Enlightenment/Modernist/Post-modernist Era thinking. That takes centuries/millenia of struggles and conflict (like this plague right now!
) to cultivate. TL;DR: Ymmri is still an Iron-Age Civ, don't expect us to leap ahead on the whole just because we have a few anachronistic techs.