Not going to be an issue given our quarantine of animals.
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
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Not going to be an issue given our quarantine of animals.
Profit is the driver here. It would give the guilds demand for cheap labor they can switch to the task of picking cotton bolls immediately after harvest.
That and the minor issue that cotton bolls can be stored with difficulty due to the vast variety of vermin which finds the fluff delicious, and the cotton bolls themselves make it difficult to eliminate said insects until it has been processed because many of the vermin lay eggs in the bolls themselves.
Both of this basically says that there is a strong incentive to process the cotton as soon as it is harvested due to the loss of usable and valuable fabric, though a smaller incentive than say, Saffron or Tea. This means a large number of unskilled labor available for a seasonal, tedious job. Which means the Guilds and Traders are incentivized to create a large pool, because otherwise seasonal labor costs will rise and cut our profits.
That said, cotton is a benefit because it ALSO improves the quality of life of the urban middle class by making better quality clothing more available. This is in contrast to Opium, which would cap out on its medical demand fairly soon, and would then be going into a mild opiate habit amongst the lower classes to indulge once the cost goes down from saturation.
Which would have effects, as if our Wealth is sourced heavily from materials that improve quality of life, baseline living quality goes up, while sourcing Wealth mainly from drugs has consequences of low level drug abuses.
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Given that planting cotton and poppies are being combined, we won't be able to distinguish between those two cash crops.
It may sucks compared to an action, but if the thread don't consistently take Expand Forest action, we're going to fall behind keeping up with demand for hot water and charcoal.
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
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S
-quality of life increase
-less problems than cotton
-no drug problems for a long while yet
So what you're saying is, we should plant hemp instead for fabric
-quality of life increase
-less problems than cotton
-no drug problems for a long while yet
I wonder if repeated Main Hemp actions (or a double Main), would expand the uses of hemp and so increase the number of stat points it gives. Given its use in making clothing, you could see it become a poor man's cotton. If medicinal strains are developed, I could see it gain value as a drug.
Repeated Hemp actions might also help improve our shipping, particularly if paired with Build Docks.
Investing a secondary forest action as a repeated action rather than having Forest policies seems pretty much a no brainer to me at this point.
Repeated Hemp actions might also help improve our shipping, particularly if paired with Build Docks.
Investing a secondary forest action as a repeated action rather than having Forest policies seems pretty much a no brainer to me at this point.
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Eventually we should check out what's on the northern shores of our sea. Historically the north-south exchange between our area and Eastern Europe ended up almost as important as the silk road for the places involved. Also, since we're seeing more types of cloth I want to see if we can add flaxen fabric to the mix.
Also, about the dam - is anyone else worried that due to the weird foibles of our society the canal and its access to vast tracts of land will totally drain all our cities?
Also, about the dam - is anyone else worried that due to the weird foibles of our society the canal and its access to vast tracts of land will totally drain all our cities?
Why not both? Don't those two crops have different uses and applications?
- Location
- Austria
Poppies are only mild drug for people who can afford it - which, before industrial-like technologies, is not lower classes as far as I know. Bohema poets, priests, nobles - sure, definitely. Although "epidemic" would be a misnomer, unless you consider IRL tobacco usage to be an epidemic.
But yeah, it's only uses IIRC are in medicine and as a recreational drug.
Sure. It would be even better to invest a Main action because eventually Warships and Docks are going to start costing forest slots, and Ironworks are only going to speed up on proto-industrialization train and Tech costs be damned, but at least secondary is good enough for a time, yes.
Ghostdevil
The Devil of Ghosts
- Location
- United States
Got to remember though, Gathering cotton and then making it of any use is Difficult, its why the Cotton gin was so damn brilliant.
Guys we are not even sure we are getting repeated actions. The last time @Academia Nut talked about the re-structuring he said there will be more actions in the vein of guild actions that we can just use ourselves as secondaries or let the factions use as mains.
I thought he was thinking about integrating Repeated Action and invested Action into the game structure.
Anyway, for now, I am going to assume we need forestry policies unless the thread can commit to voting forestry action every turn, even if it's only a secondary. This of course, is on top of our desire to build roads and finish the Dam megaproject so we can progress toward the canal megaproject.
Hemp does have a lot of uses, though if you're looking at cash crops the snails are probably socially the best bet.
The northern shore we know. It's steppes, Western Ymaryn and Storm Tribes.
As for the latter, not for very long. We've just unlocked a whole bunch of city attraction boosting infrastructure again...
That was with reference to saturating the upper class market. Remember our saturation point for opium is much lower than most cultures due to Life of Arete and the forbiddance of passive income sources to our population. the rich work hard, and so they cannot take enough to impede their work.
So the price will drop relatively quickly with increased supply, and coincidentally, our middle class artisans will have various permanent ailments and pains from their work hazards, with just enough money to spring for tincture of poppy once a month.
...hmm, put in that light its a quality of life improvement, and we'd put poppy abusers under the same bracket as wine abusers. Eh, would be fine.
Which is why I fully intend to invest the next two Passives we open up again into Forestry. We can change it to infrastructure once we get the repeated actions at least, unless further ironworks also improves the efficiency of tree planting passives(which it might, it's basically agriculture)
Based on what I remember, the northern shore of the Ymaryn Sea consists from east to west, of core Ymaryn provinces in the north east, then the Western Wall colony in the middle, and then the Storm People in the north west corner. There are no steppes on the northern shore of the sea, which makes sense, as the climate would mean the biome doesn't work.
It's a real shame we didn't absorb the Western Ymaryn back when we had the chance. It wouldn't have overstretched us particularly, and it would have denied having yet another future enemy owning part of the coast. It would also have allowed us to have contiguous territory to Greenshore.
The Ymaryn Sea is going to a gigantic mess for centuries now, which is such a waste.
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The cities already increase labor costs due to Panem, which acts as something like a minimum wage. If the Guilds can't make it worthwhile for the Rural Poor to do the job, they just head to the city where the other Guilds have a huge demand for unskilled labor, you earn more, have access to urban amenities and so on. The lack of roads hampers that a bit, which is another reason to push more roads as people can move around if they want to.
There is also the issue that if the Guilds could, they'd be all over the cotton gin and as the link I showed a few pages back demonstrates, cotton gins are fairly old. This is because labor is always expensive. Even slave labor needs to be fed and clothed. It's the reason why classical tradeships used sails instead of the faster rowers like the military. Every body cuts into your profits. Be it wages or basic supplies. So both traders and Guilds have a huge incentive to come up with a way to get rid of the labor costs associated with cotton as that increases their profit margins. And while machines are expensive, they are fairly durable and once you have them, maintainance isn't that hard. Certainly cheaper than feeding and housing a huge number of workers.
Another issue I have been noticing in the thread is that people apply modern day expectations on lifestyle and think something horrible is up when it isn't met. These unskilled laborers that process cotton or the other cash crops? If it wasn't for the cash crops, they'd be unemployed (which is shitty without a modern safety net, even the Ymar Dole isn't perfect).
So while we consider the job tedious, monotonous and all around bad, for the time it's a bog standard job. No one would think it noteworthy that people do this stuff. And more importantly, it puts food on the table. If those jobs didn't exist, the people still would, but there would be even less demand for their work, leading to a lower income all around.
The solution to the Cotton issue (and similar cash crops) isn't to refuse to plant them. The opposite, really. Plant lots of it. But throttle the supply of labor.
We can't easily throttle the supply of cheap labor, though. So we ramp up demand in every sector of the overall economy. Expand Economy so basic farmhands are in demand everywhere (which is just as tedious as working on a cotton farm in this age). Do construction projects out the ass. As much as the Dam for example needs a lot skilled labor to build, for every artisan, there will be a hundred unskilled people acting as muscle. Plant Cotton, Hemp, Wine and poppies. If we get the option to plant saffron do it!
(@Academia Nut according to the trade table we are producing some spices, presumably saffron we aquired. Will it be added to the action list?)
Create a huge labor demand everywhere in the economy until even the refugee waves barely keep up.
And then, I can asure you, the Guilds will start whining about getting more laborers.
Instead of indulging them, Support Artisans. I'd even try and fit in Support Artisans every other round because the synergy effect will exist with practically every action you'd care to name.
Incidentally, if we do get more mechanic solutions, the unskilled get shat upon again as they are suddenly obsolete.
But one thing I'm certain of is that it won't lead to a demand of slavery.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
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I mean, i think you are right, Kiba:
It's basically "another spirit channel, but defensible without building hadrians wall size defenses";. It does after all say "route between the steppes and lowlands", not "route between the western core and eastern lowlands", like it seems veekie is interpreting as? I suppose it could mean "the west-east route is south of the steppes and north of the lowlands", but that seems like an odd way to word it? So i'm pretty sure its a north-south passage connecting the lowlands to the steppes
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
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Cotton is actually the worst of the cash crops, IIRC. The labor to work with it doesn't need to be skilled at all, but it's a ridiculous amount of labor. Every seed has to be pulled from the fibers by hand. There is a reason the southern US relied so heavily on slave labor up to the 19th century. It wasn't until the cotton gin was invented that cotton actually became viable.
Wikipedia said:
As you can see, the tech is within reach and the incentive exists and is colossal.
But of course, if we refill our other stats we can try to get at wealth via overflow, which should have some narrative effects as well.
And again, I want to remind people that all those people that are employed at minimum wage exist in the game one way or another. I think letting the refugees die outside our border is an objectively worse social response than creating minimum wage jobs that they can work in. We have a lot of control on the labor demand side. Much less so on the supply side as we can't control how many children people have (excepting when we are facing famine and the King asks the people to slow down a bit).
We don't go on slaving raids or participate in the slave trade. The only similar source are the refugees, which need to be integrated and employed anyway. But they are still more expensive than slaves, whom are still more expensive than technical solutions that are already within reach.
Edit:
@veekie
I forgot an important point regarding pests:
A lot of pests in agriculture got dragged around due to trade. As trade right now is fucking slow, any pest is unlikely to make the migration easily. As in, it's really fucking hard for pests to change habitats.
So a lot of those cotton eating insects that would eat our cotton are unlikely to have arrived yet and won't until very significant and fast sea trade develops or we create a landbrige of close proximity cotton fields that they can migrate over. Neither is easy.
For comparison, a pest that nearly wiped out european wine growers was imported from NA in the 19th century. The damage was horrific. But it still took centuries of heavy trade to import the things. Recently another pest as imported from Japan/China after god knows how many millenia of trade.
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pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
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Ok, sure, but what's the point of growing vast amounts of cotton when we can grow saffron which is often worth its weight in gold? Or even opium if you don't mind the effects. Cotton never really gets there, even with the cotton gin.
In any case, eschewing food production (we were given a warning) or production of more valuable crops just to spur the possible invention of a cotton gin is ridiculous. This is likely to cause more problems than not, especially as we recover from the plague.
Food and spices should be the name of the game. We can outcompete even the saffron isles for spices because of our agricultural primacy. If you want us to be a big(er) name on the Silk Road, spices is going to be the name of the game.
Cotton can very easily be processed into very high quality paper, which would be absurdly valuable if discovered this early.
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Absurd being the key word there.
Let us not set our hopes on sudden tech advances.
It's not absurd in the least. Cotton is one of the easiest plants to process into paper, never mind its quality. With our level of industrial tech, the process is well within our reach, provided an abundance in material and a desire for the product.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
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Linen and hemp can be worked into paper of similar quality just as easily and with far less fuss on the agricultural side. Not to mention, that much cotton would likely dent our food production severely.
Try something else that might make mass production of cotton a good idea.
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Hemp is not similar quality at all, and was often discolored and rough without extensive chemical treatment, and growing any cash crop dents our food production. Hemp is a good option for discovering the tech, but we currently have little need of the stats it gives. Given the choice between Poppies and Cotton, I'd take Cotton every time if given the option because its value comes from its usefulness, rather than it's desirability. Unfortunately, poppies is winning due to continued econ problems from that minor little civilization ending plague.