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Paths of Civilization

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Omegahugger said:
We're building this damn dam and if we're building this damn dam we need to make it the damned biggest damn dam that ever damn dammed!
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That is the worst reason to go for the expensive option without even mentioning the current winning vote that will double the wealth cost of the dam, and the wealth cost of everything else. I haven't looked at the thread in full yet, so I don't know if doubling wealth and taking the most expensive dam choice will collapse the Ymaryn.
 
Marlin said:
That is the worst reason to go for the expensive option without even mentioning the current winning vote that will double the wealth cost of the dam, and the wealth cost of everything else. I haven't looked at the thread in full yet, so I don't know if doubling wealth and taking the most expensive dam choice will collapse the Ymaryn.
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Long story short: no it will not, unless we're dumb. It means no Megaproject Support or big wealth spenders though.
 
[X] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)

I've been trying to stitch up my life back up ever nearly dying multiple times, since losing my home, nearly losing my engagement with my fiancee, moving back to my home city, dealing with family drama, dealing with a firehose of amnesia, and everything else.

It's been a hellhole I am trying to rebuild my way out of and it's slowly working. I have always survived against everything thrown against me and overcome the seemingly impossible because I listen to my extensive knowledge and my sense of wisdom.

----

You know what both of those parts of myself have always told me? To always listen to my ethical compass.

It's never steered me wrong and I've always come out the better for it.

That compass is telling me that we need to swallow the costs and finally purge away the goddamn plague-ridden trashfire storm of half-exiledom that's been a cancer on this society we made.

I was a determined advocate for the ecological system. I pushed hard for Terra Preta. For Black Soil. That shit is the lifeblood of our society. Without that, we wouldn't have been able to do half the things that we have done. We've built a vast biological forest system but that forest has always been in a symbiotic relation with Ymaryn Society's ethics.

Those Ethics are an ethical forest that has a widespread fungus rot of the institution which is the institution of half-exiledom. We need to purge that shit before it turns everything we've built into a bad joke at best and salted ashes at worst.

We can rebuild but we'll have lost that long line of continuity. Let's not be the weak link in the chain.

-------

I won't lie. We might face tough shit but we'll get through it. We always do.

Let me remind the entire thread of a drought we faced early on.

Academia Nut said:
It was hard. It was so very hard, and yet at the end of the day the Big Man put his foot down and said, "We trust that the rains will return, that only those fated to die will do so, and that we need not hurry along the process along... even by refusing those in need what little can be spared. We will, however, save as much as we can by staying put, not making an extravagant gambles on this."

There was disagreement. There was squabbling and fighting and violence. People within and without the tribe killed each other over scraps of bread to try to feed friends and family wasting away. Travellers arrived hearing of supplies of grain and found that despite the fact that there was barely any to share, they could still get a pittance. People wept and wailed and suffered. Fall turned to winter and the weather was perturbed and uncertain. The equinox passed and thin clouds taunted the people. Thin warriors guarded the storehouses and the chiefs from emaciated people all too eager to get at the remaining supplies. The most vulnerable had all died already and the older children and younger elders were next on the list, and the people knew that if the rains didn't come then maybe one clan would survive.

What fools they had been to trust that the rains would come and that they could afford to be charitable!

They could feel it, they could feel the skeletal presence of death among their ranks, bony fingers flaking away the flint of his sickle with hideous taps. The crop was well tended to, and now it was time to reap what had been sown.

Hunger beyond the mere physical began to gnaw upon the souls of the people. Their Big Man was useless, had done nothing to try to undo all of this, and had just given their food away! He... he was going to take the remaining food and run away, leave them all to starve, wasn't he? They had to get to the food, had to save their families before someone else got there first! Someone noticed that someone else had a rock, what for was unknown, but soon enough people knew that they needed rocks of their own, for self-defence if nothing else.

The warriors tightened their grips on their own spears and clubs. They had better weapons, training, and were only on a third their usual rations rather than the slowly murderous ones of everyone else. People eyed each other warily, hungrily, and knew that the only thing keeping it from immediately exploding was the fact that the first person to strike was almost assuredly dead.

Someone cried out in shock and outrage and the crowd drew in a collective breath as it prepared to strike itself like a maddened serpent biting its own tail, but before that breath could be released as the rabid death scream of a people, that first voice trailed off in confusion of all things. Confusion and then excited, agitated shouting, but not the anger that people expected. A cry went up, a chant.

"Not spit! Not spit! Not spit!"

The chorus made no sense to those further out, until they too started to understand as fat but sparsely spread drops of rain started to fall. The almost riot quickly broke down as the people collapsed into grateful sobs, the rain painting their faces with the tears they no longer had in them.

The rains that year were late and weak, but they came. The harvest was poor, but it was. And the channels and cisterns and forests were all there to catch every last drop, and to slow down the water flowing over the dry soil and keep a blessing from becoming a curse. It was a hard year, a lean year, a year without births, but rations could be increased just a little bit and stockpiles increased.

And with the coming of the next winter, the skies grew darker than they had been in years, and the people knew that the worst was over, for now.

And with the conclusion of the first decent rain in years, came travellers seeking the people not for food or shelter, but something more, something different. Dressed in extravagantly dyed cloth and carrying great canoes over the hills, they were pointed out as being from the fishers to the west by those who had travelled the trails with the traders before. Their presence was strange, but despite the natural wariness of large numbers of foreign men showing up out of the blue, there was some degree of hopeful wonder about what these men wanted.

A man who was probably a chief of some sort - possibly an heir or sub-chief since he probably wasn't their Big Man - approached with a friendly hand raised and a bundle held in the other. Wondering what this was about, the Big Man approached with his own warriors watching out for him and said in the blended tongue of the traders, "Who are you and what business have you?"

"I am of the Sea People, and I come bearing a gift for your people and request," the man said, holding out the bundle for inspection.

Curious, the Big Man approached to examine the bundle, which was a leather wrapped clay pot, that at the other man's prompting was carefully opened to reveal the pot was full of the powdered shell the village was famous for, used for creating the bright red-violet dye that was so prized among every tribe that knew of the village. The sea chief lowered his head at the Big Man's flabbergasted expression and said, "News of your remarkable generosity has reached our ears and has shamed us. We gather the shells while doing other fishing, and we couldn't really catch fish any faster than we could, but with the drought's passing and your story... we gathered together a full season's worth of dye, shamefully gathered when you were starving and we were merely hungry."

The Big Man tried to find the words, before he hung his head as well and said, "Just because we gave grain does not mean we did not send people to their deaths..."

"But you had nothing and you still tried," the foreign man replied, shameful tears upon his cheeks. "And now... now perhaps the curse turns upon us for our greed. The sea seems intent on turning against us for our harvest of its bounty... we come here for many reasons. To thank those who had nothing for their charity, to atone for our own sins, and to ask for your help."

Deciding that this situation ran deeper than he initially thought, the Big Man nodded and summoned his people forward to take the precious, precious gift and to prepare a limited feast to welcome these visitors. Eventually the full nature of the visit is made clear. Not only did they feel compelled to apologize for inadequate action during the drought, but now the fishers are having troubles of their own in the form of storms... an ironic punishment from the spirits perhaps. While there was some direct danger from boats being caught out on the sea during a bad storm or from a house being blown over, the real danger from the fact that the storms were changing the coast, changing the local currents and how to best harvest the fish. They were adapting as best they could, but when they looked at the shores and banks and saw the water cutting them away, all they could think of was of the charitable people of the valley who had mastered mud and water.

They needed help. They needed forgiveness. They needed friends.

They needed your people.

And help they would receive, but how much would be difficult to judge. The rains were still poor in comparison to previous years and there was an intense fear that they might fail again, and that while previous actions had been correct, preventative action might be in order, especially now that they wouldn't be risking mass starvation if things went poorly. A journey to the spirit talkers to get confirmation that their actions had soothed the anger of the spirits was a suggestion. Organizing a punitive action against the lowlanders was definitely high on the list of things to do... although there were also strong voices that if the behaviour of the lowlanders had triggered all of this and charity had solved it, launching a punitive expedition could very well anger the spirits once more. Then there was a suggestion that in terms of preventative action they should have something suitably established for appeasing the spirits closer to home instead of requiring a massive expedition in order to make a meaningful contribution.
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The Early Ymaryn sacrificed so much but that sacrifice was the seed for our entire society.

It'll be hard. It'll be very hard. I won't sugarcoat that. We're clever bastards. We always out-think our problems and we'll out-think whatever comes.

but this sacrifice, I promise you will bring us long-term rewards that will ensure our regional dominance. It'll lead to us becoming a long-lasting empire like China with the same long line of continuity.

Let's be the Ymaryn we've always dreamed ourselves to be.
 
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Marlin said:
That is the worst reason to go for the expensive option without even mentioning the current winning vote that will double the wealth cost of the dam, and the wealth cost of everything else. I haven't looked at the thread in full yet, so I don't know if doubling wealth and taking the most expensive dam choice will collapse the Ymaryn.
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It does not guarantee collapse, but it will make things very painful until we have 7-8 markets.

8bitBob said:
Long story short: no it will not, unless we're dumb. It means no Megaproject Support or big wealth spenders though.
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Point of note: all army actions are big wealth spenders.
 
FeepingCreature said:
I guess what I'm saying is, I can appreciate virtue ethics out of meta-consequentialism, which is a valid and reasonable logic to me, but thorough virtue ethics (ie. first-level and meta-) is just ... freakish and alien to me. I cannot relate to it.

I don't know what to do about the fact that it seems like there's people who either are meta-virtue ethicists or just don't have a meta opinion. Both of our opinions seem to be good=yay, basically, and that should result in relatability, but apparently it's better to collapse from virtue and be replaced than to stand tarnished from vice?

Like, nobody is saying we should not do good things, but it seems like some people are saying we should rather "strive to be good" even if it predictably results in a bad outcome. I don't have an in to that mindset, and it irks me. Again, I can appreciate the meta-consequentialist argument just fine, or the people who say "virtue play is fun". (That's what I meant by virtue-hedonism.) Just not the "plain-virtue" view.
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I mean basically I agree with you on all points. From a consequence-oriented mindset, virtue ethics are fundamentally weird in a way that most other ideological stances aren't, because the divergence point is at the very most basic level - for what reasons do you make decisions? In real life I employ such a consequence-oriented mindset, so I likewise find virtue ethics deeply alien, and I find that fascinating. Basically, I'm employing such ethical standards here because it's an interesting and enjoyable thought experiment in what the world looks like from a viewpoint wildly different from my own. Since this is just a game, it's a safe place for such exploration - without risk of causing any meaningful consequences, my ordinary ethical system is mute on the subject of "what are the ethical non-disruptive ways of engaging in this quest." I've been having a great time so far, and you seem interested in the topic, so personally I'd suggest you give it a try yourself - make a few votes as if you were a virtue ethicist, or at least try and think about how you would vote if that were the case. It's a neat perspective shift!
George said:
Okay, but how are you, practically speaking, deciding what actions are correct or not?
  • If expected consequences aren't considered, then is the King's action here just writing something on a piece of parchment and the consequences of that writing aren't considered?
  • Does he get to claim up to the part where someone reads that parchment and is pissed off at having to pay people to do unclean work, but not further than that?
  • Does he get to claim all the way up to people being paid for that work and less people being made into half-exiles, but no further than that?
  • Does he have to claim all the way to a failure to rebuild the military after a war leading to the collapse of the Ymaryn and therefore the establishment of slavery as the norm in the region?
The actual consequences of a correct action don't matter under the ethic you describe, but from what perspective are you deciding what's correct? This may seem rhetorical, but I really would be happy to hear how you differentiate between these or what paradigm precisely you are using to decide that "[] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)" is correct.
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In terms of "how much of an action's consequences are part of the action," the obvious standard is intent, under the condition that the actor in question has sufficient information (or at least believes this is the case - being wrong is not unethical, just unfortunate) and the reasonable expectation that said intent will be executed on. For instance, AN has supplied information on what addressing the half-exile problem will entail. If on the basis of this information I choose to vote for that option, with the intent of reducing abuse of the half-exile system, this is an ethical act because I have the reasonable expectation that my intent to do so will be followed through on.

This does of course presume that the action I intend to perform is itself ethical. As for what determines which actions are ethical, my basic answer is that while this is a fun thought experiment, it is fundamentally a game and I'm playing it to have fun. Thus far I haven't bothered deriving/researching a specific virtue-ethical framework for evaluating actions, because that hasn't seemed fun/interesting enough to be worth the effort, so I've just been using more or less gut feelings on the matter. I recognize this is the weakest point here, the reason being that I am not actually a virtue ethicist and so haven't bothered putting enough thought into this particular problem to resolve it, but this discussion is interesting enough that I'm considering working out something more detailed to proceed from henceforth. I dunno, we'll see how it goes. Input welcome, obviously, if anyone has suggestions for interesting schema to try out; otherwise I may or may not find one on my own.

Addendum: sorry if this is starting to clutter up the thread too much, but I figure it is germane - if somewhat tangentially - to the quest, insofar as it concerns voting behaviors in said quest. Let me know if it's bothering people though, I can take it to PMs or something (trickier with 3 participants or I might have tried already).
 
On a sidenote, let's not take the expensive dam choice. Purging the institution of Half-Exiledom will be bloody expensive. The expensive dam choice will put us waaaaay too close to the edge and we need all the buffer we can get to get through the hard shit that is to come.
 
Marlin said:
That is the worst reason to go for the expensive option without even mentioning the current winning vote that will double the wealth cost of the dam, and the wealth cost of everything else. I haven't looked at the thread in full yet, so I don't know if doubling wealth and taking the most expensive dam choice will collapse the Ymaryn.
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Why is "I want the most expensive option" a bad reason to vote for the most expensive option? You might as well say that not wanting Hald-exiles essentially being slaves is the worst reason to go for the reforms.

We only have one shot at making this dam grand, and I'm taking it. Even if it means tactically unwise voting.
 
minerva-n-memes said:
On a sidenote, let's not take the expensive dam choice. Purging the institution of Half-Exiledom will be bloody expensive. The expensive dam choice will put us waaaaay too close to the edge and we need all the buffer we can get to get through the hard shit that is to come.
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Not really.
Textiles planting, once you factor in all the overflows, is something about +11 wealth. Taking two of those will cap our wealth.

And grand dam is really a megproject (a Wonder at this point) worth the pains: it will open up better avenues of canal, will impress people, will find new architecture techniques for us, and so on.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Point of note: all army actions are big wealth spenders.
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In reality, we can of course take one or maybe two big wealth spenders if we need to, including Raise Army. We just can't take anything else if we want to. No Kilns, Roads or anything else. At least for this turn. Entering in with low wealth is a nightmare for us now, and something we need to avoid for the immediate future. So no spending down to the bottom of the barrel trying to eke out every advantage.
 
minerva-n-memes said:
On a sidenote, let's not take the expensive dam choice. Purging the institution of Half-Exiledom will be bloody expensive. The expensive dam choice will put us waaaaay too close to the edge and we need all the buffer we can get to get through the hard shit that is to come.
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We are not purging the Half-exile system, merely reforming it.
 
Omegahugger said:
Why is "I want the most expensive option" a bad reason to vote for the most expensive option? You might as well say that not wanting Hald-exiles essentially being slaves is the worst reason to go for the reforms.

We only have one shot at making this dam grand, and I'm taking it. Even if it means tactically unwise voting.
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Preventing 8 more wealth loss in the long run by not taking the most expensive option after doubling wealth should be a more logical choice than emotional when we might be dragged into a war within 5 turns. People say we can have both, then fine we can have both! Do be prepared to shatter if we take both though. And you are aware that our most likely successor would be the Storm Ymaryn, a bunch of slavers right?

Edit: my math is probably wrong, I don't see how many turns left are needed for the dam to add the amount on the update onto.
 
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[X] [Dam] Make it as big and impressive as possible (2 Wealth and 2 Tech per action added to remaining costs, requires an additional 3 actions to complete)
[X] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)
[X] [PP] City Support (4 Econ cost for True Cities offset each turn, -1 Tech)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn)
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn) x2
[X] [PP] Infrastructure (+1 Free Progress to an infrastructure project (Aqueduct, governor's palace, saltern, etc.)/turn) x3
 
ctulhuslp said:
Not really.
Textiles planting, once you factor in all the overflows, is something about +11 wealth. Taking two of those will cap our wealth.

And grand dam is really a megproject (a Wonder at this point) worth the pains: it will open up better avenues of canal, will impress people, will find new architecture techniques for us, and so on.
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I hope so. My main concern is removing the institution of half-exiledom. It's been a huge pet peeve of mine for a looong time and I would like to end it once and for all.
 
Marlin said:
Preventing 8 more wealth loss in the long run by not taking the most expensive option after doubling wealth should be a more logical choice than emotional when we might be dragged into a war within 5 turns. People say we can have both, then fine we can have both! Do be prepared to shatter if we take both though. And you are aware that our most likely successor would be the Storm Ymaryn, a bunch of slavers right?
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It's not like I am trying to go for both, so I'm not entirely sure where that fervor came from. My plan is asking the spirits for guidance, because when have they* ever lead us wrong?
*The spirits, not the priests

And no way our only successor would be the Storm Ymaryn unless we shatter so terribly there's literally no one left. Which is statiscally unlikely.
 
Biggest Dam will cost us 5-7 actions and 40-56 stats, as opposed to 4-6 actions and 20-30 stats of not so big Dam. If you're willing to pay that cost in the midst of everything else becoming super expensive, then go for it.
 
DkArthas said:
We are not purging the Half-exile system, merely reforming it.
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True, but I want to cut away as much as possible of the rot as we can.

Ehhh, there's a million other kinds of labor systems we could establish to fill the labour shortage left by a mostly reformed or abolished half-exile system. Systems that would work far better than half-exiledom.

Plus, we're likely to discover more labour saving devices on the way that'll fill in part of the gap. Labour shortages usually have a way of encouraging innovation.

---

Tally:
Adhoc vote count started by minerva-n-memes on Nov 14, 2017 at 4:54 AM, finished with 128750 posts and 111 votes.
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DragonParadox said:
The winning vote does not remove it, just makes it far less slavery by another name.
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More to the point, it yanks out the system by the root cause: making it so that half exiles aren't profitable to use removes all the forces intent upon maintaining a supply of half exiles.

Its like the root of any prison system reform, if the prison is for profit they'd expend absolutely no effort to actually ensure the prisoner doesn't come right back.
 
veekie said:
Which actions? Rural/Yeomen actions:
-Black Soil - Unaffected
-Roads - Increased
-Watchtowers - Unaffected
-Expand Economy - Unaffected
-New Settlement - Unaffected
-Textiles - Unaffected
-Luxuries - Unaffected
-Survey Lands - Unaffected

So only roads are impacted, and roads are both rural and urban.
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Huh...

Is Econ basically our corvee labor stat? So the Yeomen pay with corvee labor instead of coin?
 
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Omegahugger said:
It's not like I am trying to go for both, so I'm not entirely sure where that fervor came from. My plan is asking the spirits for guidance, because when have they* ever lead us wrong?
*The spirits, not the priests

And no way our only successor would be the Storm Ymaryn unless we shatter so terribly there's literally no one left. Which is statiscally unlikely.
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You are advocating for the most expensive dam choice the "[] [Purity] If slavery is so bad in comparison, maybe even the half-exiles need to be addressed (-1 Stability, the next Patrician, Guild, and Trader quests are all spite quests, all Wealth costs are doubled going forward)" choice has such a strong lead that nothing can stop this choice from winning. Your choice however can impact things if other people choose to vote for the most expensive dam choice due to an emotional outburst, as you were encouraging.

Yeah, yeah personal feelings, that isn't necessarily what others feel. Others who might feel I'm picking on you and vote for the most expensive dam choice out of spite. Others who might agree that we should go for the most expensive dam choice because we can, and the Ymaryn should have the bestes best Dam evah! Others who might not even exist after we have more than 100 voters already. The vote usually can't be changed after 125 voters. I can't remember a time we had near 200 voters.

What is the highest amount of voters the thread ever had in one vote?
 
veekie said:
Which actions? Rural/Yeomen actions:
-Black Soil - Unaffected
-Roads - Increased
-Watchtowers - Unaffected
-Expand Economy - Unaffected
-New Settlement - Unaffected
-Textiles - Unaffected
-Luxuries - Unaffected
-Survey Lands - Unaffected

So only roads are impacted, and roads are both rural and urban.
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Which shows to me that the reforms are going to be counterproductive.

The only permanent solution to the Half-exile issue is to improve productivity. But the thing we're doing now cripples those productivity improvements. At the same time, it will force us to take rural Wealth producing actions that rely on mass labor.

So, we create an illusion of equality in the city, and mass inequality in the rural areas. Combined with panem, that coukd get ugly.
 
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Ok we have a problem, with this vote winning we all agree that the only way out of this wealth hole is markets and cities. The problem of course is plagues, not only do we not have any technological advances in hygiene and medicine since when the last plague started, it's basically impossible to get much better then what we have technologically speaking. In fact as much as some people might not want to admit it i'm pretty sure that a lot of the cultural advantages to disease rolls we had, have been from the Proto-Purity we've been building for quite a long time.

What this means is that I think, that if we remove Purity our disease resistance will go down compared to where we were at at the start of the last plague. Now I was willing to go through with it anyway, as I thought the risk was worth it but with us going all in on Urbanization I think we need it.

Now it does not mean we can't do anything with Purity there are two different plans I have to deal with it.

1 upgraded it, the most reliable way would be mega-projects. This is a bit hit and miss and would take a while with the worst case being we upgrade it to something worse.

2 we finish the Urban poor quest as soon as possible to get the social value slot and then use Pride in Acceptance Linking to find a spiritual value to fuse with Purity. if you thought the first plan was hit and miss this one is ridiculous, we could find a value that would fuse with something else or not fuse with anything or as a worst case scenario we could find a value they makes Purity a lot worse. But this will be a lot quicker, in fact if we luck out by next midterm we could have something we could live with.

Neither of these are good options but I think if we lose the disease resistance from Purity while going all in on cities it would be the death of us.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Which shows to me that the reforms are going to be counterproductive.

The only permanent solution to the Half-exile issue is to improve productivity. But the thing we're doing now cripples those productivity improvements. At the same time, it will force us to take rural Wealth producing actions that rely on mass labor.

So, we create an illusion of equality in the city, and mass inequality in the rural areas. Combined with panem, that coukd get ugly.
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Not really. The urban poor can make angry mobs and storm our centers of power, they have training and weapons. The rural poor are untrained, not concentrated enough to organize large-scale rebellions and basically helpless in the face of proper armies in the field. The worst peasant rebellions could do at this tech level was scorched earth tactics, but that is blasphemy to the Ymaryn.
 
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