KlinkerKing
Man bites dog?
- Location
- The Lion's Den
[X] Whoever surrenders may join the People (-1 Stability, -1 Legitimacy, -1 RA, 2 temp Econ damage, -2 EE, +2 Light Cavalry, Additional Disease Roll, ???)
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- America
Nothing really unites a people like the unity through hate of another. And oh what an enemy these people are to hate. The nomads will not stop coming to destroy us so we should not stop trying to destroy them. Our people will focus all of their grief and anger into hate and we can redirect that hate into an acceptable target, the nomads. The people have a scapegoat to take all of their hate and anger on and an enemy is destroyed. Our war with these weakened nomads will give valuable information on how they fight, their tactics, and strategies. We can probably torture some information out of captives to get that cavalry technology. Are these enough benefits for you?
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
These nomads are coming to us in peace. They're surrendering.
- Location
- America
Not at first.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
- Location
- Staring into the void
If we were playing an "Evil Overlord" quest, maybe. But we're not, so no.
- Location
- Illinois
No, because we literally have everything you listed as a benefit from accepting them already, plus more.
1. Unity is not a problem for us. Our Joyous Symphony gives us strong unity as an inherent trait, and our people already dislike the nomads, to the point where for anyone else, we actually need a reason to attack them, but for the nomads, we have carte blanche to wage war whenever we want.
2. You can't get tech from tortured prisoners. First of all, the tech we need has to be taught over years, and there is no way the captured nomads would show us their secrets if they hate us. Secondly, our people don't know the extent of their training in horsemanship, so there is no way we will even get half as much tech from your plan as we would if we recruit them.
3. I'm sorry, but are you trying to turn us into a stereotypical evil empire? When advocating the use of hatred and torture as part of our national culture, well, you might want to rethink that plan...
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So you want us to annihilate essentially every other polity, because any given one of them will most likely at some point come into conflict with us.
...I'm not going to question the underlying assumptions of this stance, since there are plenty of people doing that already.
Instead, I'll ask the same thing of you that I ask everyone who proposes a new long-term objective: What are you planning to give up to make this happen? War is quite action-expensive, and if we want to pursue it will have to give up something to free up those actions.
So what would you have us give up? Because as it is, we don't even have time for e.g. building up Palace Annexes, which (judging historically) would be on par with an extra stat-drip per action.
Carrion Eaters are interesting imagery.
They inspire both fear and hope. Fear, because they show up during epidemic or pandemic, which means portent of doom.
But they are also a symbol of hope, because they are here to heal people.
So imagine something like a scene in the modern era:
"Sir?"
"I want this bus quarantined now. Nobody in and out of this bus until I say so. Food will be distributed as needed."
Or:
"Don't worry. I am here to help. Take this injection and surgical mask."
They inspire both fear and hope. Fear, because they show up during epidemic or pandemic, which means portent of doom.
But they are also a symbol of hope, because they are here to heal people.
So imagine something like a scene in the modern era:
"Sir?"
"I want this bus quarantined now. Nobody in and out of this bus until I say so. Food will be distributed as needed."
Or:
"Don't worry. I am here to help. Take this injection and surgical mask."
- Location
- Illinois
So, what, if they fight us, no mercy ever again? If they are smart enough to surrender from the get-go, they live?
You really don't see the issue with this line of thought? Like, at all?
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- Location
- Hell
*ponders*
*looks around at all the new empty territory surrounding us*
Well...
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Yeah at this point it's pretty clear Burnie is just a troll who's happy to spin lies and utter nonsense to get reactions, so we should probably stop reacting to them.
@Academia Nut here's an interesting art suggestion:
A Carrion Eater patrolling the quarantine wards.
A Carrion Eater patrolling the quarantine wards.
- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
Oooooh I might do that omake
Can I just mention how grateful I am that the Quest Clock is frozen?
And some catching up
Leather based horse gear I expect the nomads to be superior yeah.
Once they reach capacity, a Colony would expand(lowering defensibility since each new province adds +2 to the martial cap of 8(or 10 for Marches) while doubling the amount of land to cover), whereas a matured March will be sending out scouting, trade and exploratory missions to recon their area of interest.
The Sharing Circle line solves this problem by taking compatible values from other cultures, so they are at a higher chance of fusion due to having NOT been selected for low fusion chance.
Though note that we have a relatively large amount of social mobility, so the spiritbonded, as an elite order, have better chances of promoting into patrician via martial success, much like the chariots did.
Actually they came back FOR that reason.
Nomadic cultures have a few main reasons to wage war with settled cultures:
-Loot - Settled cultures have metal, tools, dye, spices, etc, which nomadic cultures cannot produce in significant quantities. Against smaller states it's easier to take than to trade, which was the fate of the Metalworkers, the original Mountain Horse and basically all the Thunder Horse descendants. Hordes running on this motivation tend to settle down after a while. Against larger states, they avoid the people too strong to loot.
-Prestige - Nomadic horde sizes are based on the prestige of their ruling Khan. Essentially the nomads will beat up each other and trade prestige around, but the bigger they get the harder it is to gain more prestige, as it's not very prestigious to beat on smaller tribes. Enter settled civilizations. Burning cities swells the horde's fame immensely, drawing recruits from the area. Fighting a larger power is prestigious even if you don't win(as long as you don't lose).
Mechanically this is due to how prestige work. Individual battles between peer clans move prestige between them, so theres a limited pool of prestige they can farm before they need to target settled civilizations to get a fight worth prestige. Burning cities, especially wonders and megaprojects, will sear them into history.
As such, the typical result of totally annihilating a Nomad clan through pursuit is inspiring the next great Khan to think "Meh, I can take em."
While calorie wise it's completely irrelevant, the resultant nutritional diversity(and the significantly smaller local air quality improvement) helps.
And of course, for those with the cultural values for it, it also reduces stress.
Got what we expected. Though better than what we dared hope for
Crows, after all, are scavengers.
Not really that big a gap. Mentioned many times, settled civilizations can develop much bigger horses than nomadic civilizations due to reliable food availability. But the genetic diversity and introducing a second breeding line should help speed things up a lot yes.
IIRC the Mountain Horse had some ceramic techs, and since you needed ceramics to get into ironworking, we might have a few of those.
Leather based horse gear I expect the nomads to be superior yeah.
Ash Faced referring to skin color or to their tendency to burn stuff?
It sounds like we get detailed stuff for both extremes. As it approaches 100 or 1, we get a very specific explanation. Around 40-60 it's just standard "results hazy, give stock parable". When its low the priests don't have a prediction and just say whatever they want.
Also a march would spam towers, walls to 100%. Colonies prefer a wall level of around 50% I think, and they never build massive walls. Marches are very good in chokepoints as a result, since they'd fast track to True City and be able to afford Colossal walls.
Once they reach capacity, a Colony would expand(lowering defensibility since each new province adds +2 to the martial cap of 8(or 10 for Marches) while doubling the amount of land to cover), whereas a matured March will be sending out scouting, trade and exploratory missions to recon their area of interest.
We had the explanation for this a while ago. AN had explained that most of the time traits which CAN fuse will fuse pretty soon, so fusions of advanced values are rare because if they can fuse they'd already have done so.
The Sharing Circle line solves this problem by taking compatible values from other cultures, so they are at a higher chance of fusion due to having NOT been selected for low fusion chance.
Though note that we have a relatively large amount of social mobility, so the spiritbonded, as an elite order, have better chances of promoting into patrician via martial success, much like the chariots did.
FYI we did that before. It lasted I think...3 turns? Then they came back again.
Actually they came back FOR that reason.
Nomadic cultures have a few main reasons to wage war with settled cultures:
-Loot - Settled cultures have metal, tools, dye, spices, etc, which nomadic cultures cannot produce in significant quantities. Against smaller states it's easier to take than to trade, which was the fate of the Metalworkers, the original Mountain Horse and basically all the Thunder Horse descendants. Hordes running on this motivation tend to settle down after a while. Against larger states, they avoid the people too strong to loot.
-Prestige - Nomadic horde sizes are based on the prestige of their ruling Khan. Essentially the nomads will beat up each other and trade prestige around, but the bigger they get the harder it is to gain more prestige, as it's not very prestigious to beat on smaller tribes. Enter settled civilizations. Burning cities swells the horde's fame immensely, drawing recruits from the area. Fighting a larger power is prestigious even if you don't win(as long as you don't lose).
Mechanically this is due to how prestige work. Individual battles between peer clans move prestige between them, so theres a limited pool of prestige they can farm before they need to target settled civilizations to get a fight worth prestige. Burning cities, especially wonders and megaprojects, will sear them into history.
As such, the typical result of totally annihilating a Nomad clan through pursuit is inspiring the next great Khan to think "Meh, I can take em."
This is definitely true for keeping gardens, especially fruit and vegetable gardens, in urban areas.
While calorie wise it's completely irrelevant, the resultant nutritional diversity(and the significantly smaller local air quality improvement) helps.
And of course, for those with the cultural values for it, it also reduces stress.
We do? block housing make cities more attractive at the expense of other. BUT I am not sure if that improves the problem if it just make our city population bigger.
What we need to do is space out our cities. For example, build block housing in blackmouth.
- Location
- Huezil
DO EEEET!
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
...yes, which is what we want to avoid. The question is, how can we shove more people back into the rural regions again? We had a ~25% urbanization rate before the plague, which is frankly insane. But we have no real way of driving that rate down.
Ancient Scholar
Amateur Editor/Beta
- Location
- United States
I wish we will get a Hero like this in the future. Can we try the same tactic with our mercenaries?
...
'Maybe he has a point? The ancient records did say that people thought it was crazy to ride horses at first after all. If we were to breed the sheep as we do horses...'
'Oh gods, It's spreading.'
Wouldn't War Goats be better?
- - -
Anyway what's the damage? Do we still have most of our territory?
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wish we will get a Hero like this in the future. Can we try the same tactic with our mercenaries?
Wouldn't War Goats be better?
- - -
Anyway what's the damage? Do we still have most of our territory?
Ehhhh. Thunder Speakers are gone, but our other Lowlands holdings seem mostly intact. Thunder Horse are gonna need a lot of help.
Gulvalley was successfully integrated. As to the stuff in the far north and around the sea? We have no idea.
- Location
- Illinois
We lost the TS, who were holding the pass into the Lowlands from the Steppes, and the TH were hurt pretty bad, but will survive.
Eastern redhills and Txolla took some minor damage, but survived mostly intact.
We came out much better from this than we thought, honestly.
We have long known the answer to this quest; raise our LTE.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Txolla is untouched, Thunder Horse is badly damaged, and Thunder Speaker just... gone. We'll need to entirely repopulate that area, though TH and Txolla will probably do that on their own. We could lose that territory if somebody else moves in there quicker, but it doesn't seem likely. For now it's just that we have to basically build it up again from the ground entirely.
As for the Black Sea colonies, we still have no contact with them. They could be all dead, they could be forming own polities, they could be rejoining us in the future, we just don't know.