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Paths of Civilization

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Kiba said:
We also didn't decide to back down because that would make us look weak, thus attackable. Our enemies in the lowland decided to attack us anyway.
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We got caught in a Thunderdome fight. If we had backed down, others would have gotten an extra CB on us, plus other stuff. We did make peace as soon as was feasible.
 
Wiadi said:
I'm pretty sure the existence of phrases like "the Ymaryn war machine" is part of what's being found objectionable here.
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It's referring to the entire military resource of the Ymaryn empire.

Believe me when I said I don't want to conquer anyone else in the lowland. But if you haven't notice, we got a nomad chieftain who never heard of our God Fist, a hermit kingdom who still has icy relation with us, and Storm Tribes who we aren't exactly friends with.

We have enemies in the lowland and across the sea. Even if we are friends with everyone in the region, there's always nomads to deal with.

We need to be able to defend ourselves, and MCs are part of that defensive package.

People don't want to be warlike, but we are already as un-warlike we could possibly be barring players stupidity and greed.

Susano said:
We got caught in a Thunderdome fight. If we had backed down, others would have gotten an extra CB on us, plus other stuff. We did make peace as soon as was feasible.
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I already agree with you?
 
2xMachina said:
We really do need to decentralize a bit though.
We can't eat our colonies because they're too far. Even though our nation is quite small.
Decentralization is the only way we can administrate large tracts of land
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This isn't a problem with our government though, it's a problem with our transport and communication technology. If we get better roads and either better ships or horses we can.
 
veekie said:
That said, not mobilizing an MC at all for foreign interests is also not a good idea. The MCs are there to ensure we have actual blooded warriors after all, provided their loyalty and effectiveness stats are maxed out, renting them out makes sense, because that way they can steal tactical innovations from other people's wars(observe how the Trell mercenaries copied our tactics and fighting style after they went home).

There is no one simple adage that deals with everything here, but the correct term should be that battered companies should be withdrawn home, or they will burn Loyalty to regenerate Effectiveness.

Xohyr was a really funny situation in hindsight since we bought into the Patricians bullshit.

Valleyhome Patricians: "Oh no, the Redshore Patrician is going to take all our Valleyhome power and put it in the Crown. We are doomed if he wins!"
The North: "We don't actually care, to see how serious we are taking this, see this here Nomad chief that nobody in their right mind will elect."
The Traders: "On the other hand look at this idiot with SHITLOADS of money from falling into a gold filled river!"
Valleyhome Patricians: "Maybe we can pretend the baby girl is her mother instead?"

Players: "The Redshore candidate will piss off the North, the idiot is an idiot, the baby is a horrible precedent, lets back the Northern candidate."

*Burning City Noises*
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I don't think he was a Redshore candidate but a man who want to consolidate his power by taking over the natural dye trade in Redshore.
 
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Kiba said:
I don't think he was a Redshore candidate but a man who want to consolidate his power by taking over the natural dye trade in Redshore.
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Not that it matters now, but the joke is that we bought into the Patrician internal politics so hard we not only didn't pick the candidate best for improving crown authority at the expense of the nobles, we picked the too crazy to be real candidate.
 
So, to increase intercommunication and interconnection, we want to increase the Density (Amount) and Quality (Level) of Roads, Horses, and Boats.

Boats is the easiest. Increase quality is accomplished over time by grand docks, and I'm pretty sure Build Warships has an innovation roll.

Density of roads is likewise obvious, Build Roads. But how to get road innovations? I'm not sure. Building more probably helps.

Stables is probably the best way to boost horse communication. If every governor's palace had stables, it'd probably increase interconnectivity. More Spiritbonded probably also helps-more warhorses trickles down to normal horses, and some innovations in saddlecraft and bridlecraft, etc., are useful for messengers (but stuff like armor isn't.)
 
Wiadi said:
Counterpoint: maybe if having an empire leads to collapse, it shouldn't be regarded as a success. Like...there's not some sort of victory point system we're working with here. "Doing well" is ill-defined and if something leads to bad outcomes then it probably shouldn't be thought of as "doing well."
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Except we basically became a great power by not getting conquered by outsiders or shattering, i.e. good management. If we operate on your logic we should have allowed ourselves to be subjugated or deliberately have created a social fracture. Because it would have been the only way to stop us from becoming a great power and thus entering the "inevitable collapse" stress system.

NotThe1st said:
In my opinion, it's more like you get straight A's doing 16 credits worth of classes in one semester, so then you take 20 the next and get mostly A's and B's. Then *next* semester you take 26 and start getting C's and D's because no matter how smart you are or how much you study you still have limited time and ability to deal with that much
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More like you get straight A's doing 16 credits worth of classes. Your teacher decides to have you take 20 next semester, which you pass with B's. Next semester your teacher decides to have you take classes worth 26 credits, which you pass with C's. Then your teacher decides to enroll you in 34 credits worth of classes and gets angry when you fail every single one.

Redium said:
If we stop being an empire, then we'll just get kicked from the opposite direction. The Nomads last turn wouldn't have cared if we were an empire or a small kingdom, they would've slaughtered us either way. Empire stopped that. If we weren't an empire, than Trelli likely would've turned their slavers on us like they did the region's minor powers and the Saffron Isles. Empire stopped that. If we stop being an empire, then that means the Highland Kingdom is going to kick over our particular anthill. Empire is all that's going to stand between us and constant domination by Nomad war bands conquering us and kicking each other out, just like what happened to China.

Not being an empire any more carries just as many problems, the only difference is that instead of being internal, they're external. The act of empire is like the act of flying; it's falling in just the right way so that you never actually hit the ground. It's tough, but ultimately it's the state of not losing. Breaking apart would mean we have just as many problems, but it would be caused by other people causing us problems. How many times were the Thunder Speakers dominated before they were finally destroyed? Five times? The only reason that wasn't us was because the Lowlands was a mosh pit between the Highland Kingdom, Xhoyr, the Harmurri, and the Thunder Twins constantly knocking each other down like the proverbial crab bucket. That crab bucket is gone, we fracture and someone is going to dominate the lowlands and then look on the fertile fields of Ymaryn with hunger.

The days of being a minor agrarian power have long been over. Going back to that is giving up power in the most base sense of the word; there's a reason that it was the Classical Greeks coined the phrase: "Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." Minor agrarian kingdoms are the people that constantly get stepped on and that's a hundred times truer next to steppe Nomads.
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To add an observation to this. Your can redirect or dodge external threats via diplomacy, trade and intrigue. You cannot do this with internal threats because that just causes the problems to worsen.

veekie said:
More that it's about determining WHAT to decentralize.
Look at the past:
-Stone age -> Copper Age was the development of delegation. The High Chief had far too many details to manage, so they had to relinquish control to governors with their level of authority to command the many things that must happen daily to function, but said governors had no ability to set policy.

However, this led to the problem that the crown had no idea what the fringes were doing and policy set could not be realistically obeyed.

-Copper Age -> Iron Age was about reporting and organizing(technically this was the Bronze Age and Iron Age revolution both happening at once), after control was relinquished it happens that the Crown needed to know things to be able to issue proper policy, and that once you got all the information you needed to be able to make sense of it.

However, this led to the problem that there were people other than the Patricians who had real power and this power needed outlets.

-Iron Age -> Early Classical Age was then about partitioning power. The Patricians continued to hold onto the central authority, the Guilds were the first faction to gain their own significant powers and privileges to do their thing, followed by the Cities. Then we had the priesthood gaining their own actions, the factions all started gaining real power and influence.

And now we have our present situation.
We have factions with naturally arising power and authority, but none of them are recognized. Likewise, the more distant colonies could leverage this power to do things they aren't supposed to be able to.

Every step was about both letting go of power in ways that did not matter to the big picture and gaining new power in ways that did.
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Mhhhm. While it would depend on the way the senate is implemented, if I had to take a guess I'd say the next step would be some manner of representation and demands/needs of regions.
 
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2xMachina said:
We really do need to decentralize a bit though.
We can't eat our colonies because they're too far. Even though our nation is quite small.
Decentralization is the only way we can administrate large tracts of land
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Kiba said:
Upgrading our government from a Bronze age to a classical one literally did demand we decentralize how we did things. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to function.

As we upgrade, I expect that in some way we will further decentralize, because it's more efficient, but it doesn't mean we can't retain a strong central bureaucracy.
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Or we could, you know, increase the strength of our bureaucracy by giving the advisers more power to act on things that they are supposedly advisers of in running much of the day to day minutia, effectively creating departments so that the King doesn't become responsible for everything.

Decentralizing does not mean the King loses power, decentralizing means that the central government loses power and the local governments gain power. About the only thing the local governments need for more power is the ability to enforce the law so that people don't travel all the way to central authority to have their cases heard and we want to solve that problem by creating an entire new branch of government, not by giving the power to the Patricians, because that is when abuses start getting ripe.

The only thing we need to make central authority work is for the governors to get their requests for actions processed and for the Kings to have nice concise reviews given to them so they don't have to do nearly as much legwork just to make sure the Ymaryn don't blow up. We already have the structure to do this with our advisers even, we just need to expand and streamline it.
 
bluefur87 said:
Decentralizing does not mean the King loses power, decentralizing means that the central government loses power and the local governments gain power. About the only thing the local governments need for more power is the ability to enforce the law so that people don't travel all the way to central authority to have their cases heard and we want to solve that problem by creating an entire new branch of government, not by giving the power to the Patricians, because that is when abuses start getting ripe.
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wait, what if the 4x great hall isnt a senate chamber, but a court? as in, specifically a law court with a designated magistrate instead of the king, and then the GPs emulate this and have their own independent courts?
 
DocMatoi said:
wait, what if the 4x great hall isnt a senate chamber, but a court? as in, specifically a law court with a designated magistrate instead of the king, and then the GPs emulate this and have their own independent courts?
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Courthouses are WELL past the Classical age. Though our ridiculous urbanization may trigger their development relatively early.

A senate chamber makes more sense for the next step in government though. You really DO need that much room for early representation to emerge as a concept(though naturally all the representatives are patricians as it happened in Rome as well, China funny enough used the Imperial Harem for an alternative).
 
Dutch said:
If we operate on your logic we should have allowed ourselves to be subjugated or deliberately have created a social fracture. Because it would have been the only way to stop us from becoming a great power and thus entering the "inevitable collapse" stress system.
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As an alternative, we should now let the Western colonies break off, since they aren't especially critical to our polity, while contributing administrative strain.
 
In all serious though, we're probably going to want to fill the last two annex slots with library upgrades so that the central government admin burden is lessoned.

What's the limit on them anyways? I thought it was determined by province number, but that has gone up recently and I don't think the annex count has.
 
Killer_Whale said:
Roads is how we administrate large tracts of land.
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Only if you want to order everything. Then the King is the bottleneck.

No, the way to administrate large tracts of land is to:
"You, take care of it. General policy is as such"

That's how it is done in modern nations anyway.
The prime minister/president does not order every school/road etc build.
He has people do it for him.

The King sets direction. The governors try to fulfil the vision
 
Question.

Sorry if this had been answered already... but what is the "git in mah belly" tag supposed to mean?!
 
PrimalShadow said:
As an alternative, we should now let the Western colonies break off, since they aren't especially critical to our polity, while contributing administrative strain.
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I'd disagree. They are critical to Ymaryn culture.

I'd also say that asserting control of the Ymaryn Sea would be a massive benefit. Thanks to having catamarans, all the cities on the sea are effectively closer to each other than anywhere more than hundred miles from the shore. As soon as we have a monoploy on the sea and pirates and privateers are eliminated, this becomes even more true.

The sea is a giant superhighway. It makes trade and administration vastly easier. Compared to the Lowlands, the western parts of the People will always be vastly closer. Orders of magnitude closer. It should always be tens or even hundreds as times as hard to administer the Lowlands as the coastal regions.
 
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