Paths of Civilization

Wiadi · Oct 30, 2017

Susano said:
We should definitely try to contact our (former?) subordinates but I remain of the opinion that a secession wouldn't be the end of the world, as they are after still of the People, regardless of political affiliations.

Agreed. Honestly, given how much our prior extent is straining our administration, I'm actively hoping to lose some territory out of this whole deal. Preferably without dinging PSN, because hey, the land is still being tended by good Ymaryn who know how it's done.

Alratan · Oct 30, 2017

Susano said:
We should definitely try to contact our (former?) subordinates but I remain of the opinion that a secession wouldn't be the end of the world, as they are after still of the People, regardless of political affiliations.

The personal is political. They'll rapidly stop being the People if they aren't part of the People.

There's a huge amount of what I can only describe as self-flagellation being talked about, self-harm for the sake of self-harm.

I'll repeat again. Ymaryn is tiny. It's minuscule by contemporary standards. Stop with the self hatred. It's very unhealthy.

Raichu1972 · Oct 30, 2017

PrimalShadow said:
I'm not pushing for "too much infrastructure passives"; 5-7 progress a turn is plenty. We don't have the policy slots for more than that, anyways.

I think 5-7 a turn is too much, personally.

That's enough to finish a level two project a turn, or two level one projects a turn.
These projects will likely be Aqueducts or Baths or Ironworks, since those are the three main things the passive works towards when there isn't a mission giving different priorities.

I have no problems with less aqueducts and baths, since I want less True Cities in general, so to me the Infrastructure policies seem rather useless in excess.

Susano · Oct 30, 2017

Alratan said:
The personal is political. They'll rapidly stop being the People if they aren't part of the People.

There is such a thing as cultural and national identity beyond political borders. We accepted the Western Ymaryn to our games, because they are still of the People - just like with the Ancient Greeks and their Olympic Games. The Ancient Greeks lived in dozens of separate poleis, and yet still managed to maintain a shared identity.

Alratan · Oct 30, 2017

Susano said:
There is such a thing as cultural and national identity beyond political borders. We accepted the Western Ymaryn to our games, because they are still of the People - just like with the Ancient Greeks and their Olympic Games. The Ancient Greeks lived in dozens of separate poleis, and yet still managed to maintain a shared identity.

In several thousand years; after the printing press and vast amounts of cultural development; nationalism will be invented. We might as well ask for a DNA sequencer to analyse the Blood Cough in terms of how far way in the future it is.

8bitBob · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
I have no problem letting Free Cities work on infrastructure, since if they want infrastructure they will work on it anyways.
I don't particularly care if activating other policies first is inefficient, since I value Diplomacy and Intrigue over infrastructure right now.

This just seems completely backwards to me. Look at what our Free Cities chose this turn. Double Vassal and double Infra. If we'd had Infra policies up, those policies likely would have grabbed something else. Like Skullduggery. Or Diplomacy.

There's a certain level of infrastructure a civilization needs and we are clearly not meeting it at the moment. There's inefficiency and then there's just... shooting yourself in the foot.

Wiadi · Oct 30, 2017

Alratan said:
There's a huge amount of what I can only describe as self-flagellation being talked about, self-harm for the sake of self-harm.

I'll repeat again. Ymaryn is tiny. It's minuscule by contemporary standards. Stop with the self hatred. It's very unhealthy.

...you do realize that holding territory is not an intrinsic good, right? I'm not saying we should lose territory because I hate the Ymaryn, I'm saying we should lose territory because it would be actively better for us not to have it. That's not self-harm, nor is it solely for its own sake.

Also: "smaller than the biggest empires of the age" does not equate to "tiny" - there were plenty of contemporary smaller polities as well.

notgreat · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
Too much infrastructure passives = rampant city spamming = low cent threshold, which is pretty bad for us.

That's mostly wrong. It's loss of EE/LTE that causes tons of cities. The extra infrastructure raised the EE limit of those cities by a bit, but once the Aqueducts are built it's relatively inconsequential how much infrastructure there is in there. And right now our lower EE limit is very low, which means more Aqueducts won't even help that much.

Raichu1972 said:
Intrigue has already shown itself useful since we unlocked it, and Diplomacy will be nice when we reconnect with our neighbors.

Skullduggery is a nice policy, but Diplomacy is mostly useless aside from the narrative effects (which we didn't get to see because of how quickly we had to shut it off)
Once the plague ends we'll have massive Diplo income and frequently be overflowing.

Wiadi said:
Agreed. Honestly, given how much our prior extent is straining our administration, I'm actively hoping to lose some territory out of this whole deal. Preferably without dinging PSN, because hey, the land is still being tended by good Ymaryn who know how it's done.

This means losing actions. Why would we want to do that?
If you're worried about admin strain, build more roads and get more Centralization tolerance. If you're worried about cities, we have plenty of Subordinate slots to fill with Free Cities if we really need a lot more and those give all the benefits of normal cities at a very minor cost.

Raichu1972 said:
These projects will likely be Aqueducts or Baths or Ironworks, since those are the three main things the passive works towards when there isn't a mission giving different priorities.

Markets give a lot of income relative to their investment once trade starts back up. Academies are likely to be very useful though we don't actually know what they do.

More Governor's Palaces would likely be very nice, especially as we add more annexes that add effects to all of them. Each one costs 9 progress.

Every {S} infrastructure action we take is 6 stats. That's a lot. We want to avoid doing so as much as reasonably possible.

Susano · Oct 30, 2017

Alratan said:
In several thousand years; after the printing press and vast amounts of cultural development; nationalism will be invented. We might as well ask for a DNA sequencer to analyse the Blood Cough in terms of how far way in the future it is.

Once again: Ancient Greece, which very much had a cultural and national identity beyond their state borders. That isn't a modern invention. And what's more, we straight up showed the exactly same attitudes as the Greeks in regard to the Western Ymaryn and our games.

Alratan said:
I'll repeat again. Ymaryn is tiny. It's minuscule by contemporary standards. Stop with the self hatred. It's very unhealthy.

Odd that in this "contemporary standards" are supposed to matter... not that you're right in terms of territory. With vasalls, we're controlling the Caucasus, Northern Iraq and Eastern Turkey. That's sizeable even by modern standards. In any case - I do agree. We should keep territory. But it is much more important that we keep the Lowlands than we keep the Black Sea. If the Lowlands go independent we'll have a powerful and foreign state at our border. With the Black Sea, even if it went independent, we have ties of culture and identity. We should still of course take action to get them back into the flock - I'm just saying if that doesn't work out it isn't the worst in the world.

Alratan · Oct 30, 2017

Wiadi said:
...you do realize that holding territory is not an intrinsic good, right? I'm not saying we should lose territory because I hate the Ymaryn, I'm saying we should lose territory because it would be actively better for us not to have it. That's not self-harm, nor is it solely for its own sake.

You have to be big enough to play. Ymaryn is currently on the edge of not being so.

Wiadi said:
Also: "smaller than the biggest empires of the age" does not equate to "tiny" - there were plenty of contemporary smaller polities as well.

The Ymaryn Core is tiny by any standards. It's ancient Colchis.

Raichu1972 · Oct 30, 2017

8bitBob said:
This just seems completely backwards to me. Look at what our Free Cities chose this turn. Double Vassal and double Infra. If we'd had Infra policies up, those policies likely would have grabbed something else. Like Skullduggery. Or Diplomacy.

There's a certain level of infrastructure a civilization needs and we are clearly not meeting it at the moment. There's inefficiency and then there's just... shooting yourself in the foot.

We don't need the infrastructure that Infra Passive gives us.
Out of these:

Saltern - Northshore Saltern Expansion (0/3), Southshore Saltern Expansion (0/3). Each {S} committed consumes 3 Econ and 3 Tech for 3 Progress. Completion gives additional Wealth and every 2 salterns or expansions increases the per turn Wealth by +1
Aqueduct - Stonepen (0/3), Hatmouth (0/3), Yellowshore (0/3). Each {S} committed consumes 3 Econ and 3 Tech for 3 Progress. Completion adds +1 Econ Expansion, increases City Attraction by 1, can allow for the formation of another True City, and decreases disease roll penalty for True Cities
Bath - Any city with an aqueduct may have a bath. Each {S} committed consumes 3 Wealth and 4 Tech for 3 Progress, and then ties up 1 Sustainable Forest once complete. Completion adds +1 Econ Expansion, increases City Attraction by 1, and decreases disease roll penalty for True Cities further. Redshore (0/6), Stallionpen (0/3), Valleyguard (0/3)
Temple - Progress listed below, each {S} committed consumes 3 Econ and 3 Culture for 3 Progress. Completion increases Religious Authority
Observatory - Certain temples can have astrological observatories, with each {S} committed consuming 3 Econ and 3 Mysticism for 3 Progress
Governor's Palace - Every palace lowers Min. Centralization by 0.5 and adds +1 to max interconnectivity, Temp Econ damage resistance, and adds +1 to max Martial, but also reduces Max. Centralization by 1 and can serve as the core of a breakaway state in a civil war. Each {S} costs 3 Econ and 3 Culture and produces 3 Progress
Library - Any location with a temple and/or True City status can have a library, with each {S} committed consuming 3 Culture and 3 Mysticism for 3 progress. Completion grants Mysticism, every 2 libraries past the first increases the Mysticism refund by 1. Sacred Forest (0/3), Redshore (0/3), Redhills (0/3), Stallionpen (0/3), Blackmouth (0/3), Valleyguard (0/3)
Colossal Walls - True Cities can support truly gigantic walls. Each {S} committed consumes 3 Econ and 1 Martial for 3 Progress. Redshore (0/9), Redhills (0/9), Valleyhome (0/9), Sacred Forest (0/9), Blackmouth (0/9), Stallionpen (0/9), Valleyguard (0/9)
Block Housing - Multilevel housing that allows for many, many people to be stuffed into a small area. Can only be built in locations with sufficient shipping to bring in enough external food to keep the locations fed, but can allow for Level 2 infrastructure to be built. Block Housing increases the city's EE limit by 5, but decreases the limit for cities without Block Housing by (5+total number of block housing). Each Block Housing also increases the Econ tax of a True City by 1. Every {S} cost 3 Econ and 3 Tech for 3 progress. Redshore (0/6), Blackmouth (0/3), Valleyguard (0/3)
Ironworks [Guild] - Huge, centralized centers of iron production, these facilities make high quality iron tools cheaper and more widely available. Every facility adds +1 Econ, -1 EE, -1 Tech to the Expand Economy action. Level 2 and higher also increase the effect of Agriculture and City Support policies at the cost of additional Tech. Each level increases City Attraction by 1. Every {S} cost 3 Econ and 3 Tech for 3 progress, and each completed level of Ironworks also consume an additional 2 sustainable forest. Valleyhome (0/3), Redshore (0/6), Redhills (Wonder), Blackmouth (0/3)
Marketplace - A more significant section than what is typically found in most settlements, these sorts of markets are meant to service massive urban populations, transforming half of the Econ spent on a True or Free City into Wealth income. Each level increases City attraction by 1. Each {S} costs 3 Wealth and 3 Culture for 3 progress. Redshore (0/3), Redhills (0/3), Valleyhome (0/3), Sacred Forest (0/3), Blackmouth (0/3), Stallionpen (0/3), Valleyguard (0/3)

Infrastructure Passive only build these:

Aqueduct - Stonepen (0/3), Hatmouth (0/3), Yellowshore (0/3). Each {S} committed consumes 3 Econ and 3 Tech for 3 Progress. Completion adds +1 Econ Expansion, increases City Attraction by 1, can allow for the formation of another True City, and decreases disease roll penalty for True Cities
Bath - Any city with an aqueduct may have a bath. Each {S} committed consumes 3 Wealth and 4 Tech for 3 Progress, and then ties up 1 Sustainable Forest once complete. Completion adds +1 Econ Expansion, increases City Attraction by 1, and decreases disease roll penalty for True Cities further. Redshore (0/6), Stallionpen (0/3), Valleyguard (0/3)

Unless there is a quest that calls for the Building of another extended project.
I don't want more aqueducts or baths, and I also don't want a level 3 City like the Guild want us to make Redshore into.

If Infrastructure Passive won't build the majority of the extended projects, the ones I actually want, then it's value is heavily decreased for me.

Rakuhn · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
I have no problems with less aqueducts and baths, since I want less True Cities in general, so to me the Infrastructure policies seem rather useless in excess.

Look at the extended project tracker. Our current hardest to form True City, Lower Valleyhome, has an EE limit of 7*. That means that we have to have below 3 or 4 EE to form all of our cities.

The next true city candidate will have an EE limit of 1 (8-8+1). The one after after that will have an EE limit of -7 (1-9+1). We've reached the point where building more aqueducts and baths are far more likely to improve the health of our civilization than they are to encourage the formation of true cities.

*By the way @Abby Normal, shouldn't the increasing penalties for cities be -4, -5. -6, -7, not -4, -5, -6, -8?

Alratan · Oct 30, 2017

Susano said:
Once again: Ancient Greece, which very much had a cultural and national identity beyond their state borders. That isn't a modern invention. And what's more, we straight up showed the exactly same attitudes as the Greeks in regard to the Western Ymaryn and our games.

No. It really, really didn't. That's part of the mythological ethnogenesis sponsored by modern Greek nationalists. The early 'Greeks' had certain standards that were required to count as a real person, but it was only conincidentally overlapping with what we'd now call a national identity.

ExNihilo · Oct 30, 2017

So I assume when we find out how to treat the plague and we get the option (which we probably will) our choice will be to Share it with everyone?

Raichu1972 · Oct 30, 2017

notgreat said:
That's mostly wrong. It's loss of EE/LTE that causes tons of cities. The extra infrastructure raised the EE limit of those cities by a bit, but once the Aqueducts are built it's relatively inconsequential how much infrastructure there is in there. And right now our lower EE limit is very low, which means more Aqueducts won't even help that much.

Skullduggery is a nice policy, but Diplomacy is mostly useless aside from the narrative effects (which we didn't get to see because of how quickly we had to shut it off)
Once the plague ends we'll have massive Diplo income and frequently be overflowing.

This means losing actions. Why would we want to do that?
If you're worried about admin strain, build more roads and get more Centralization tolerance. If you're worried about cities, we have plenty of Subordinate slots to fill with Free Cities if we really need a lot more and those give all the benefits of normal cities at a very minor cost.

Markets give a lot of income relative to their investment once trade starts back up. Academies are likely to be very useful though we don't actually know what they do.

More Governor's Palaces would likely be very nice, especially as we add more annexes that add effects to all of them. Each one costs 9 progress.

Every {S} infrastructure action we take is 6 stats. That's a lot. We want to avoid doing so as much as reasonably possible.

Diplomacy is "mostly useless aside from narrative effects" in the sense that is's super useful but "stat inefficient"
I don't care that we have diplo overflow, since it obviously doesn't help up make relations with our neighbors. I'm voting for Diplo Passive solely because of the important narrative effect of actually talking to our neighbors.

I don't want more cities in general, both because every city we make is another decrease to cent tolerance (and we hardly build roads to increase it) and because it takes up vassal slots (which iirc decrease the value of Vassal Support)

All of those extended projects you listed are nice, but it doesn't matter because our Infra Passive doesn't build them.
It will keep building aqueducts and baths and more aqueducts and more baths.

Unless we get a bunch of quests to build academies and gov palaces whenever we want one, it's pointless to try and rely on Infra passives to build them.

Susano · Oct 30, 2017

Alratan said:
No. It really, really didn't. That's part of the mythological ethnogenesis sponsored by early Greek nationalists. The early Greeks had certain standards that were required to count as a real person, but it was only conincidentally overlapping with what we'd now call a national identity.

That's some extreme semantic distortion to get an ideologically desirable result, to the point of being wrong. The ancient Greeks very much had a concept of peoples, and of them being a people. Hence the entry requirements for the Olympic Games, which had nothing to do with "being recognized as people" - the ancient Greeks very much did also recognize non-Greeks as people. Hence the foolhardy Athenien and Euboean support for the Ionian Rebellion. Hell, hence all those Greek writers comparing Greeks and "Medians". The thought that the Greeks had no conception of themselves as a people is complete nonsense!

PrimalShadow · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
I think 5-7 a turn is too much, personally.

That's enough to finish a level two project a turn, or two level one projects a turn.
These projects will likely be Aqueducts or Baths or Ironworks, since those are the three main things the passive works towards when there isn't a mission giving different priorities.

I have no problems with less aqueducts and baths, since I want less True Cities in general, so to me the Infrastructure policies seem rather useless in excess.

Once we have a city in place, Baths are a good choice; we kinda need it so that we don't get punched in the face with plagues. I do agree with your objection to Aqueducts; I would prefer that our policies stop setting down new sites if at all possible.

However, I also expect our policies to spend time building:

Marketplaces
Academies
Ironworks (which hopefully become better thanks to Academies)
GPs (which are suddenly awesome, thanks to our annexes)
Colossal Walls (which would be cool to have one of)

I mean, they've got a LOT to do.

Or looking at it from another perspective. Having our policies do ~6 progress a turn is generally barely enough to keep up with putting baths in our cities and resolving the Quests we get. Any less and we have to do all that work ourselves, and that is severely suboptimal.

8bitBob · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
Unless there is a quest that calls for the Building of another extended project.
I don't want more aqueducts or baths, and I also don't want a level 3 City like the Guild want us to make Redshore into.

This is incorrect, and asserts a reality that is by no means a given. We don't know how policies will behave with our new amazing extended projects. At the very least, AN has told us that Ironworks are in demand, so that's something they'll build.
Not building baths is a terrible idea.

No, seriously. After this Plague I cannot imagine a single reason why we would not want Baths in every place we can put them. If you do not want cities, then argue against votes that take us to ridiculously low EE. That is how you keep cities from popping up. You don't delay or withhold key infrastructure so enough people die that we don't spawn more cities. We have like, a bunch of facets of society that make that a bad idea.

notgreat · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
We don't need the infrastructure that Infra Passive gives us.
Out of these:

We've also seen them build Libraries and Governor's Palaces without any bit of prompting.

Raichu1972 said:
Diplomacy is "mostly useless aside from narrative effects" in the sense that is's super useful but "stat inefficient"
I don't care that we have diplo overflow, since it obviously doesn't help up make relations with our neighbors. I'm voting for Diplo Passive solely because of the important narrative effect of actually talking to our neighbors.

We have insufficient information to actually say if it works that way or not. It might be the equivalent of a trade mission each turn. Or it could just be talking to our subordinates more (that's what the diplo cost for integration comes from)

Kiba · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
If Infrastructure Passive won't build the majority of the extended projects, the ones I actually want, then it's value is heavily decreased for me.

I argue that it was focus on our baths that saves our bacon, and I would want them to focus on building aqueducts and baths first before building anything else.

bluefur87 · Oct 30, 2017

8bitBob said:
This just seems completely backwards to me. Look at what our Free Cities chose this turn. Double Vassal and double Infra. If we'd had Infra policies up, those policies likely would have grabbed something else. Like Skullduggery. Or Diplomacy.

There's a certain level of infrastructure a civilization needs and we are clearly not meeting it at the moment. There's inefficiency and then there's just... shooting yourself in the foot.

They'll still do infrastructure. True Cities have much more invested in helping true cities than other policies. I'm not going to say we shouldn't take any infrastructure policies, but all those policies are going to do for the most part is help true cities be better. They do not value many of the other infrastructure passives we want like Salterns and colossal walls.

PrimalShadow said:
Academies

It was said this is an action and not an infrastructure project. So no.

PrimalShadow said:
Colossal Walls (which would be cool to have one of)

And yet they haven't built these yet, despite having ample reason to.

I think getting some infrastructure policies is good, but let's not kid ourselves, the cities will always find more to build. That is an endless hole that will only demand even more infrastructure policies as we build them, and other policies are very important for narrative effects by comparison. It means we have a group of clerks dedicated to that task.

Raichu1972 · Oct 30, 2017

8bitBob said:
This is incorrect, and asserts a reality that is by no means a given. We don't know how policies will behave with our new amazing extended projects. At the very least, AN has told us that Ironworks are in demand, so that's something they'll build.

Not building baths is a terrible idea.

No, seriously. After this Plague I cannot imagine a single reason why we would not want Baths in every place we can put them. If you do not want cities, then argue against votes that take us to ridiculously low EE. That is how you keep cities from popping up. You don't delay or withhold key infrastructure so enough people die that we don't spawn more cities. We have like, a bunch of facets of society that make that a bad idea.

Baths require Aqueducts
Aqueducts create more True City sites.

Expand econ brings us down to low EE super quickly now.
we can easily create multiple new True Cities through a few expand econ actions.

Our cent is hovering at the cap, meaning that any True Cities formed would immediately make us overcentralized.

More True Cities right now is a bad thing, not a good thing.
I'll believe that Infra Passive will build those new projects when I see them start building them. Until then I'll go off of what I've seen them do so far.

Kiba said:
I argue that it was focus on our baths that saves our bacon, and I would want them to focus on building aqueducts and baths first before building anything else.

Baths saved our bacon, but it's only because we had so many True Cities that our disease roll malus was so bad and cause the plague to come about in the first place.

Candesce · Oct 30, 2017

PrimalShadow said:
Are people going to complain if I say that we need our Infrastructure Policies back?

PrimalShadow said:
Maybe since we have Invested actions (hopefully) on the way, we can drop our Forestry Passive Policies?

Especially if we can commit a Forestry action, I'm all for 2-3 Infrastructure policies. The increased cost of level 2 infrastructure is what really makes me open to the third.

My problem with infrastructure policies is that too much progress at once can be dangerous, but you're quite right that too little is a problem, too.

And a committed Forestry action is so much better than the Forestry passives; I'm sure we can find something for those two passives to do.

In the short term, I'm also open to spending actions on infrastructure ourselves, but I'd really prefer not to need to; that gets expensive, and we really need to rebuild our military.

Wiadi · Oct 30, 2017

notgreat said:
This means losing actions. Why would we want to do that?
If you're worried about admin strain, build more roads and get more Centralization tolerance.

"Why would you want to lose actions when you could instead still have those actions but be obligated to spend them keeping all your sprawling territory properly managed?" Less flippantly, I seriously feel that while greater territorial control is useful up to a point, it also does eventually start adding more problems than it contributes ability to solve. I'd much rather be a smaller state with fewer actions but also fewer demands on those actions, especially since I suspect losing territory will do nothing to tamp down on the thread's perennial adventurism, leaving us back at our current holdings (or equivalent) sooner rather than later.

Alratan said:
You have to be big enough to play. Ymaryn is currently on the edge of not being so.

Okay, you have got to be joking here. We're called "King of the Hill" for a reason - within our contacts, we're the most prestigious polity around. If you view maintaining that status as some sort of minimum, I can only ask what obligation we're under to be the biggest fish in every pond ever.

Alratan said:
The Ymaryn Core is tiny by any standards. It's ancient Colchis.

Now you're changing the subject. The size of our core was never in dispute, we were discussing our total territorial extent. I'm not saying I want Redshore to up and secede, I'm saying I wouldn't mind losing Tinriver.

notgreat said:
We have insufficient information to actually say if it works that way or not.

And we'll never acquire sufficient information if we don't put the policy back in place and leave it there long enough to find out.

8bitBob · Oct 30, 2017

Raichu1972 said:
Baths require Aqueducts
Aqueducts create more True City sites.

Expand econ brings us down to low EE super quickly now.
we can easily create multiple new True Cities through a few expand econ actions.

Our cent is hovering at the cap, meaning that any True Cities formed would immediately make us overcentralized.

More True Cities right now is a bad thing, not a good thing.
I'll believe that Infra Passive will build those new projects when I see them start building them. Until then I'll go off of what I've seen them do so far.

Yes, they create more sites. They also literally saved us from a Plague apocalypse by existing.

At worst, random Aqueducts, which haven't been built in ages because they have more important things to do, get us one, maybe two more cities than we were ready for. That is how the EE math works. It becomes increasingly difficult to spawn additional cities without substantial infrastructure in all of the other ones.

Ultimately though, that doesn't really matter because the baths are getting built whether you like it or not. FCs and our remaining policy are going to get it done. If you don't want more cities, your only option at this point is to keep EE up. Not putting up Infrastructure policies doesn't even get you what you want on top of being horrifically inefficient.

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