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Paths of Civilization

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[X] Confederate, develop a new position to manage the relations of the tribes
[X] Stay home, brace for trouble
 
veekie said:
Note that their land is crap, and had gotten worse. Noting also that we don't have forts invented yet, though I suspect that's going to be our next project to keep our farmlands safe.

I think you'd find that our population is not going to be hugely interested in settling their land. It takes the work of generations to restore it.
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It does take work to restore, but their poor management of the land is also potentially a strong motivator for our people's Gardener philosophy to get a bonus in a proper invasion (even if we can't take that choice yet). Even our low farmers like Dwi take note of non-local forestation and land quality.

There was also no specific mention that the land itself was naturally poor, just that they tended to it in a poor way (which would make it poorer, but doesn't necessarily mean that it's salted desert).
veekie said:
But they aren't expanding? They started on larger and better quality land, and have been basically passing the land around between each other. The total geographical area settled has not increased
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It has increased. Since the drought, they have actually continued expanding as far as our old farmland borders before the drought! They've done this by spreading their people around, instead of bulking up. A single village is likely to hold less than a hundred people, probably with less than half of that being freeman warriors. It's why the Talkers could raid so easily, but also why their efforts always fall flat; their population is set up ablatively, so that any one raid can only do so much damage at a time, and it only takes a mediocre effort to replace the losses of any one village.
 
Powerofmind said:
It does take work to restore, but their poor management of the land is also potentially a strong motivator for our people's Gardener philosophy to get a bonus in a proper invasion (even if we can't take that choice yet). Even our low farmers like Dwi take note of non-local forestation and land quality.

There was also no specific mention that the land itself was naturally poor, just that they tended to it in a poor way (which would make it poorer, but doesn't necessarily mean that it's salted desert).
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Probably, but invading wouldn't play to our strengths and does play to theirs.

I suspect we're going to need the ability to do a Motte and Bailey equivalent before expanding into the lowlands is an option for more than pain. Probably more feasible to build a wall across the border over time until then.
Powerofmind said:
It has increased. Since the drought, they have actually continued expanding as far as our old farmland borders before the drought! They've done this by spreading their people around, instead of bulking up. A single village is likely to hold less than a hundred people, probably with less than half of that being freeman warriors. It's why the Talkers could raid so easily, but also why their efforts always fall flat; their population is set up ablatively, so that any one raid can only do so much damage at a time, and it only takes a mediocre effort to replace the losses of any one village.
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It does mean their ability to penetrate into our lands is crap until they unify though. Villages that size would find raiding us an unprofitable endeavor due to terrain advantage...

...which actually does say something for diplomacy, because the best bet for getting honest diplomacy out of these people is an opponent they can't crack and who has no interest in hitting them in turn. Which means trade. Which also means the border people if they can establish trade would have a more stable food reserve and thus become more dominant in the region.


If our diplomats can resist spitting at them.
And have food to spare.

redzonejoe said:
I'm still not entirely convinced, but I'm willing to accept that it's a possibility now. Progress!

*eats foot*
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Progress!
Evidence Based Arguments!
Civility!
*hi5*
 
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veekie said:
Progress!
Evidence Based Arguments!
Civility!
*hi5*
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The biggest point in your favor was when I was going to raise an objection, then I double checked the facts and realized I was completely wrong, and that led to me remembering that I generally know nothing and love talking out of my ass.

But, like, I have a gut feeling? That's evidence in my favor right? :p
 
veekie said:
...which actually does say something for diplomacy, because the best bet for getting honest diplomacy out of these people is an opponent they can't crack and who has no interest in hitting them in turn. Which means trade.
If our diplomats can resist spitting at them.
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They are literally everything we hate. The only trade is going to be blows, the only negotiations will be aggressive.
 
veekie said:
It does mean their ability to penetrate into our lands is crap until they unify though. Villages that size would find raiding us an unprofitable endeavor due to terrain advantage...

...which actually does say something for diplomacy, because the best bet for getting honest diplomacy out of these people is an opponent they can't crack and who has no interest in hitting them in turn. Which means trade.
If our diplomats can resist spitting at them.
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That is true, but arguing that they can't penetrate is like early England saying "The Picts would never unify, they're too busy with internal feuding." There's a fair degree of similarity there; in that as long as we hold land, they're unlikely to unify, but as soon as we try to permanently claim theirs, we'll have problems.

I think, though, that if we can influence their proto-religion towards us, that it wouldn't be so hard to convert them to our way of thinking. There's some grind between their culture and ours, yeah, but it's like any sufficiently backwards society, culturally or scientifically, having Renaissance Europe pushed up in front of their face; if a group displays wealth and plenty that you've only ever dreamed of, you try to emulate it. And if that means you have to do as their spirits will and not yours... Well, sacrifices have to be made, right?
 
Oh, @veekie, I've just managed to find the compromise between our positions!

A lot of my reluctance to believe they have a professional army comes from how the original option was formed.

Either the whole tribe would rally to punish their foes, or a small core would seek to punish the actual offenders.

We chose the second, and developed that small core into an elite warrior class.

Based on their aggressive behaviour, I firmly believe that they chose the other option. The sent the whole tribe out for revenge, which was the option that led to raising the levy in times of need.

The problem is that they never put the levy back into the fields. They just kept going.

It's not so much that they created a dedicated warrior class like we did, its more that they became a warrior tribe. To be a lowlander is to be a warrior. There is no distinction.

Which still isn't to say that they're as elite in training as our standing army, but they're all pretty experienced and that makes up for quite a lot.

Yeah. That works.
 
[X] Confederate, develop a new position to manage the relations of the tribes

[X] Go reason with the spirit talkers not to do something terrible
 
Powerofmind said:
That is true, but arguing that they can't penetrate is like early England saying "The Picts would never unify, they're too busy with internal feuding." There's a fair degree of similarity there; in that as long as we hold land, they're unlikely to unify, but as soon as we try to permanently claim theirs, we'll have problems.
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Oh yes, similar. The tricky part is finding the sweet spot where they are both satisfied that they can't get onto our side AND we have Eye for an Eye satisfied so we're open to trading.

Powerofmind said:
I think, though, that if we can influence their proto-religion towards us, that it wouldn't be so hard to convert them to our way of thinking. There's some grind between their culture and ours, yeah, but it's like any sufficiently backwards society, culturally or scientifically, having Renaissance Europe pushed up in front of their face; if a group displays wealth and plenty that you've only ever dreamed of, you try to emulate it. And if that means you have to do as their spirits will and not yours... Well, sacrifices have to be made, right?
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That does require some peaceful interaction and cultural osmosis though. They have their own spiritual beliefs going by the whole sacrificing thing, but they are not getting that from the Spirit Talkers, and we don't have any organization for ours to actually propagate our beliefs in coherent form.

redzonejoe said:
Oh, @veekie, I've just managed to find the compromise between our positions!

A lot of my reluctance to believe they have a professional army comes from how the original option was formed.

Either the whole tribe would rally to punish their foes, or a small core would seek to punish the actual offenders.

We chose the second, and developed that small core into an elite warrior class.

Based on their aggressive behaviour, I firmly believe that they chose the other option. The sent the whole tribe out for revenge, which was the option that led to raising the levy in times of need.

The problem is that they never put the levy back into the fields. They just kept going.

It's not so much that they created a dedicated warrior class like we did, its more that they became a warrior tribe. To be a lowlander is to be a warrior. There is no distinction.

Which still isn't to say that they're as elite in training as our standing army, but they're all pretty experienced and that makes up for quite a lot.

Yeah. That works.
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That sounds about right. Once they hit the other tribe, killed all the adults, and then took the women and children, it went to "why not put them to work instead of our people?"
And then a generation later "why not get more so we can all get better at taking people?" and it's working.
 
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Guys, reminder that integration is better for our people than a confederacy.

Confederate moves the balance of power away from ourselves.

The biggest downside of integration is that it'll take time to adapt, which synergizes well with the fact that we're going to stay home and prepare ourselves.

Frankly, in my opinion, voting to form a confederate is the same as voting to hand over power for no particular reason, unless the 'do nothing' option is overthrown as the leading action for this turn, and it has quite a lead.
 
Personally I think it's better for all if we Integrate, so that we can tip the scales and produce the combined martial pressure from outside, internal post-drought resource management, choosing to hunker down, and add a village organization action to it to crush it all into creating a basic bureaucracy, to have Small Men to help the Big Man make decisions like where to place the homes, the workshops and the ditches so that it's all defensible and functional, across our peoples as a whole.

Nothing like making the Big Man overloaded to have him finally give in and ask someone to help him make all these choices.
 
redzonejoe said:
Oh, @veekie, I've just managed to find the compromise between our positions!

A lot of my reluctance to believe they have a professional army comes from how the original option was formed.

Either the whole tribe would rally to punish their foes, or a small core would seek to punish the actual offenders.

We chose the second, and developed that small core into an elite warrior class.

Based on their aggressive behaviour, I firmly believe that they chose the other option. The sent the whole tribe out for revenge, which was the option that led to raising the levy in times of need.

The problem is that they never put the levy back into the fields. They just kept going.

It's not so much that they created a dedicated warrior class like we did, its more that they became a warrior tribe. To be a lowlander is to be a warrior. There is no distinction.

Which still isn't to say that they're as elite in training as our standing army, but they're all pretty experienced and that makes up for quite a lot.

Yeah. That works.
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This is why i voted for War back then. .i wanted us to be a tribe of warriors.
 
Btw, when the Persians attacked, the Greek City-States stopped their conflicts for a while and fought them off.
 
Power said:
This is why i voted for War back then. .i wanted us to be a tribe of warriors.
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Yes, and why some of us didn't. Warrior led cultures tended to be aggressively expansionistic to justify their leadership
Power said:
Btw, when the Persians attacked, the Greek City-States stopped their conflicts for a while and fought them off.
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Also true enough. A few raids here and there wouldn't change anything, but a serious common threat would unify
 
Just to clarify, the warriors tend to get practical experience serving as caravan guards for the traders. The valley itself tends to not suffer from wife raids anymore as the small tribes in the surrounding terrain learned that that effort was simply way too high given that the farmers had very tough men protecting them and if you just asked them you could probably find a job and a wife, with the drought then wiping out the majority of the independent groups of any great size through death, displacement, or absorption. New groups of hunter-gatherers from outside the effected region are starting to move into the places left behind by the loss of other groups, but its harder than in millennia past as the settled groups are exerting zones of influence where the hunter-gatherers are strongly discouraged from staking out hunting zones. Work with the fishers has also given the warriors other things to do, but its the really long range travellers who tend to be the ones who get into fights.

Most warriors will have at least one major fight under their belts by the time of retirement, but since the tribe is not aggressive they don't go looking for multiple fights. The most aggressive thing that tends to happen is if a trade caravan gets treated particularly badly by another the warriors will perform a light terror raid to inflict payback. This rarely crops up as the threshold for that sort of thing is basically 'caravan has to flee with the warriors providing cover because the locals have decided to chase them off their territory', but about once a generation someone decides to be stupid. In a terror attack the warriors approach under cover of darkness and set fire to things for a bit and skirmish with anyone who protests.

As for the lowlanders, there is a bit more structure I can provide. They have three general castes: slaves, freemen, and nobles/warriors. Social credit in their society is gained through success in raiding, which is counted by the number of enemies killed in battle, slaves taken, and more recently sacrifices offered. The most common fight is the warriors heading out to steal people from other communities, but upwardly mobile freemen will also do that at times. This usually won't elevate them in their lifetime, but having slaves work the farm for you means that you can have your sons focus on training to be warriors instead of farming, which will hopefully give them the edge to be elevated to full warrior status. The major settlements will also organize major expeditions where they will call up all the freemen and go out as a mass group. When two of these blocks meet... usually there's just a lot of yelling at each other, a few warriors get killed in semi-ritual combat, and some plucky freemen get smacked in the face and taken as slaves. Since the drought these battles have resulted in more of the freemen getting clubbed and taken as sacrifices.
 
Academia Nut said:
Just to clarify, the warriors tend to get practical experience serving as caravan guards for the traders. The valley itself tends to not suffer from wife raids anymore as the small tribes in the surrounding terrain learned that that effort was simply way too high given that the farmers had very tough men protecting them and if you just asked them you could probably find a job and a wife, with the drought then wiping out the majority of the independent groups of any great size through death, displacement, or absorption. New groups of hunter-gatherers from outside the effected region are starting to move into the places left behind by the loss of other groups, but its harder than in millennia past as the settled groups are exerting zones of influence where the hunter-gatherers are strongly discouraged from staking out hunting zones. Work with the fishers has also given the warriors other things to do, but its the really long range travellers who tend to be the ones who get into fights.

Most warriors will have at least one major fight under their belts by the time of retirement, but since the tribe is not aggressive they don't go looking for multiple fights. The most aggressive thing that tends to happen is if a trade caravan gets treated particularly badly by another the warriors will perform a light terror raid to inflict payback. This rarely crops up as the threshold for that sort of thing is basically 'caravan has to flee with the warriors providing cover because the locals have decided to chase them off their territory', but about once a generation someone decides to be stupid. In a terror attack the warriors approach under cover of darkness and set fire to things for a bit and skirmish with anyone who protests.

As for the lowlanders, there is a bit more structure I can provide. They have three general castes: slaves, freemen, and nobles/warriors. Social credit in their society is gained through success in raiding, which is counted by the number of enemies killed in battle, slaves taken, and more recently sacrifices offered. The most common fight is the warriors heading out to steal people from other communities, but upwardly mobile freemen will also do that at times. This usually won't elevate them in their lifetime, but having slaves work the farm for you means that you can have your sons focus on training to be warriors instead of farming, which will hopefully give them the edge to be elevated to full warrior status. The major settlements will also organize major expeditions where they will call up all the freemen and go out as a mass group. When two of these blocks meet... usually there's just a lot of yelling at each other, a few warriors get killed in semi-ritual combat, and some plucky freemen get smacked in the face and taken as slaves. Since the drought these battles have resulted in more of the freemen getting clubbed and taken as sacrifices.
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So they are a society where upward mobility and success is literally built on how many people they can kill and enslave a year...
Lovely.

Alright guys, next vote we take the Martial development route, no agriculture or infrastructure, martial, martial, martial is the only thing on the menu
 
McLuvin said:
So they are a society where upward mobility and success is literally built on how many people they can kill and enslave a year...
Lovely.

Alright guys, next vote we take the Martial development route, no agriculture or infrastructure, martial, martial, martial is the only thing on the menu
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great we DE wannabes on our borders, time to rouse up the Space Marines men!
 
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