Paths of Civilization

[DakkaMania]

-Trade dominances - Nothing too complicated. We have enough production of certain goods that we more or less can ask whatever price we want and they'd have to pay it. Noting that this will change once production starts saturating demand and the guilds most certainly would bring out the knives when that day comes.

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Funnily enough, we keep pushing that day back by virtue of having a truly gargantuan internal market. They can sell cheap stuff to the poorer segments while the total Patrician population we have probably exceeds that of any three of our neighbours.

After their tantrum they will probably notice that the city markets make up a vastly bigger slice of the pie than the entire external trade combined.

 

[Kiba]

Funnily enough, we keep pushing that day back by virtue of having a truly gargantuan internal market. They can sell cheap stuff to the poorer segments while the total Patrician population we have probably exceeds that of any three of our neighbours.

After their tantrum they will probably notice that the city markets make up a vastly bigger slice of the pie than the entire external trade combined.

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Projected income is:

salt&goldmine 3.5 + 1.5 = 5
luxury 4.5
strategic 3

9.5 + 3 = 12.5 external trade
market 5 + 3 = 8.

Blackmouth will have level 2 block housing soon. So, +1.
We have 3 markets, and four more cities to build markets in. Assume those are built. +8.
Total is 9 potential extra income.

This mean our market income can be 17. We are at the point of diminishing return with external trade, with a few more categories left to dominate or get leading in. i saw four categories that we could maybe achieve dominance. This gives us external trade a further 2.

So, external trade is 12.5 + 2 = 14.5 or ~46% of total trade volume.
Internal trade is 17 and ~54% of total trade volume.
Total trade is 31.5.

By that point, our net income will be 31.5 - 12 = 19.5.

It will be clear at that point that we will earning more wealth than our cap.

 

[ctulhuslp]

Projected income is:

salt&goldmine 3.5 + 1.5 = 5
luxury 4.5
strategic 3

9.5 + 3 = 12.5 external trade
market 5 + 3 = 8.

Blackmouth will have level 2 block housing soon. So, +1.
We have 3 markets, and four more cities to build markets in. Assume those are built. +8.
Total is 9 potential extra income.

This mean our market income can be 17. 17/(17+12.5) is 57.63% of the pie. This is of course assuming that we won't build further saltern and add further trade dominance. Honestly, we are at the point of diminishing return with external trade, with a few more categories left to dominate or get leading in.

By that point, our net income will be 29.5 - 12 = 17.5.

It will be clear at that point that we will earning more wealth than our cap.

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That's a system bug: our profit seemingly does not scale with number of trade partners. So we are not incentivized to (in fact, with Dominance system we are disincentivized from which is seriously fucking wrong) explore distant lands to sell them our bling.

@Academia Nut , why does our profit from dominances not depend on number of people ready to buy our things? This means we profit most from selling goods on local market and never ever exploring unless to get another category in which to dominate. Is this intentional?

 

[Kiba]

I went through the trade list and identified four categories we might dominate in the future:

Silver, Spice, Textile, and Common Pottery. This gives us a potential two trade income, but honestly, this is unlikely to happen.

Textile, we might be outcompeted by the Khemetri. Though with the lowland, the equation dramatically changes. Silver depends on wild luck. Spice, we could definitely do.

Common Pottery requires a few more ceramic kiln actions and we should be set.

About pretty much the only easy way we could grow more income in external trade is by building more salterns, but we will run into diminishing return there.

Internal markets are where all the actions at.

 

[bluefur87]

When Culture overflows to Tech...I'm not really sure about the narrative of this bit. Any ideas?

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Hmm. In this case it would likely look something like the competitive spirit of the people boiling over into making crafts.

@Academia Nut , why does our profit from dominances not depend on number of people ready to buy our things? This means we profit most from selling goods on local market and never ever exploring unless to get another category in which to dominate. Is this intentional?

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For the same reason some people got an early in to the Market group and we didn't. We do not have the right values to actually achieve this or advanced enough financial tech.

Keep in mind the real value of Center of Trade was an early in into the markets. So, with the right value, we can probably advance our trade beyond what our current level looks like. The two options with this are either develop the value ourselves (likely requires a free social slot) or gimp one from our neighbors. The Harm seem to be the most likely ones to gimp from, and if we want to develop ourselves we'll need to do lots of trade missions to multiple different people, perhaps at the same time.

I'm honestly rather surprised we haven't managed to get a diplo value from all the stuff we're doing with The International Games, though. That's some next grade bs. I guess we need a slot open for it to happen, probably honor.

 

[ctulhuslp]

Hmm. In this case it would likely look something like the competitive spirit of the people boiling over into making crafts.

For the same reason some people got an early in to the Market group and we didn't. We do not have the right values to actually achieve this or advanced enough financial tech.

Keep in mind the real value of Center of Trade was an early in into the markets. So, with the right value, we can probably advance our trade beyond what our current level looks like. The two options with this are either develop the value ourselves (likely requires a free social slot) or gimp one from our neighbors. The Harm seem to be the most likely ones to gimp from, and if we want to develop ourselves we'll need to do lots of trade missions to multiple different people, perhaps at the same time.

I'm honestly rather surprised we haven't managed to get a diplo value from all the stuff we're doing with The International Games, though. That's some next grade bs. I guess we need a slot open for it to happen, probably honor.

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It's not about the values though.
If you have more people to trade with, you get more profit and more trade goods, no? It just makes sense that for more distant people some of your goods will be rare and thus in high demand cue profit. Case in point: glass beads.
This is not rocket science, profiting from different places having different supply and demand is pretty much the thought behind the idea of trading itself.

As is, we profit about as much from having one trade partner as from having 10. Which is kinda weird.

Although. When we were restoring connections after the plague, trading with only one partner had us at "Disrupted Trade" status. So it seemingly does have some sort of connection?

 

[bluefur87]

It's not about the values though.
If you have more people to trade with, you get more profit and more trade goods, no? It just makes sense that for more distant people some of your goods will be rare and thus in high demand cue profit. Case in point: glass beads.
This is not rocket science, profiting from different places having different supply and demand is pretty much the thought behind the idea of trading itself.

As is, we profit about as much from having one trade partner as from having 10. Which is kinda weird.

Although. When we were restoring connections after the plague, trading with only one partner had us at "Disrupted Trade" status. So it seemingly does have some sort of connection?

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It's not that it's unrelated, it's that we don't have the level of control or knowledge to make it into a truly powerful thing.

The current market is that we have the most of something so people come to us to get it.

We don't, however, carefully pick what goods they give us and then turn around and trade them to other people. That is, while this happens on the local level, sure, our society doesn't function like that. We'd likely need a lot of markets, and from the description of it, at least the next megaproject coming from having lots of markets, so that we can co-ordinate trade on that level.

Otherwise we need a value that lets us hit above our weight class.

 

[Kiba]

We should be mindful of acquiring more expensive tastes, or imbalancing our trade income. Current projection is likely to leave us 'diversified'.

For example, if external trade income is 90% of our income. A disrupted trade status will destroy 50% of that income, leaving us with 55% of our original total income, and external trade is much more vulnerable to external disruption.

Internal trade income is great for us, since we are less likely to be disrupted, but if it makes 90% of our income, it means that our trading partner will have less of a qualm attacking us.

Trade doesn't prevent war, but in all likelihood reduces the probability of war all factors considered, which is what we want.

 

[ctulhuslp]

We should be mindful of acquiring more expensive tastes, or imbalancing our trade income. Current projection is likely to leave us 'diversified'.

For example, if external trade income is 90% of our income. A disrupted trade status will destroy 50% of that income, leaving us with 55% of our original total income, and external trade is much more vulnerable to external disruption.

Internal trade income is great for us, since we are less likely to be disrupted, but if it makes 90% of our income, it means that our trading partner will have less of a qualm attacking us.

Trade doesn't prevent war, but in all likelihood reduces the probability of war all factors considered, which is what we want.

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Yyyes, but since world is big and people all over it do productive things, internal focus risks going full China and calcifying instead of looking around and seeing what other countries have worth having too.
Don't get me wrong, "market in every city" is absolutely a goal worth striving towards, but too much internal focus can be rather problematic down the line.

 

[veekie]

After their tantrum they will probably notice that the city markets make up a vastly bigger slice of the pie than the entire external trade combined.

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And then as in Ancient China and Medieval Europe the merchant class jumps onto the urbanization pony and rides away.

That's a system bug: our profit seemingly does not scale with number of trade partners. So we are not incentivized to (in fact, with Dominance system we are disincentivized from which is seriously fucking wrong) explore distant lands to sell them our bling.

@Academia Nut , why does our profit from dominances not depend on number of people ready to buy our things? This means we profit most from selling goods on local market and never ever exploring unless to get another category in which to dominate. Is this intentional?

Click to shrink...

We don't actually have that much economic sophistication.

For us the only things that matter are:
-There are enough external markets to buy our goods past internal consumption. If we don't thats Disrupted Trade, where we saturate the demand of smaller economies beyond the cost of shipping stuff there.
-We produce enough goods to determine the market price and use goods availability to force the prices of lesser goods in our favor.

Complex economic thought came very late because nobody had the mathematical tools or data to compare value. We're in the era where the epitome of sound finance was zero sum trade and where production is the means of wealth.

 

[DakkaMania]

And then as in Ancient China and Medieval Europe the merchant class jumps onto the urbanization pony and rides away.

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Urbanization is also a good reason to get as many Study Health actions from the priests as we can manage.

We can fail to get steel often enough. But we can only afford to fuck up health once before shit hits the fan as we saw with the last plague. And this is only going to get worse before it gets better, so we will want to get at least the tools that don't need modern technology.

 

[Kiba]

Urbanization is also a good reason to get as many Study Health actions from the priests as we can manage.

We can fail to get steel often enough. But we can only afford to fuck up health once before shit hits the fan as we saw with the last plague. And this is only going to get worse before it gets better, so we will want to get at least the tools that don't need modern technology.

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I am not sure what we can do against infectious diseases at this point, since we don't have optical glass. What we need and can do is get an agricultural revolution to get more meat, fruit and veggies. Nutrition will improve the health of urban dwellers so that they can resist diseases more easily.

It would be helpful if someone compile a list of medical tech that we can acquire in classical antiquity and current trajectory of our technological progress.

 

[ctulhuslp]

And then as in Ancient China and Medieval Europe the merchant class jumps onto the urbanization pony and rides away.

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Yeah, I suspect that when we get financial investments and other economic tools traders and guilds will either share a lot more than they do now or outright merge.

We don't actually have that much economic sophistication.

For us the only things that matter are:
-There are enough external markets to buy our goods past internal consumption. If we don't thats Disrupted Trade, where we saturate the demand of smaller economies beyond the cost of shipping stuff there.
-We produce enough goods to determine the market price and use goods availability to force the prices of lesser goods in our favor.

Complex economic thought came very late because nobody had the mathematical tools or data to compare value. We're in the era where the epitome of sound finance was zero sum trade and where production is the means of wealth.

Click to shrink...

Hm. Okay then, fair enough.

If we put Division of Power into a new social slot, I suggest taking Harmurri trade-related value.
Granted, I am most likely not the first to suggest it.

 

[notgreat]

Here's hoping the Blackmouth lvl2 palace counts twice for the purposes of our GP bonuses, particularly the Tech Refund. Improving the refund would be a lifesaver. Assuming we [PSN] Expand Econ+[React] Aqueduct, it would've been worth 10 stat points of tech. That's a lot.

If we can keep our income high enough, we'll be able to stay on Mass Levy for a while and survive via passive income, which would virtually guarantee success in all major wars.

If we put Division of Power into a new social slot, I suggest taking Harmurri trade-related value.
Granted, I am most likely not the first to suggest it.

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It's still an open debate between
1) Harmurri trade value
2) Khemetri Spiritual value (if religious incompatibility warning is removed)
3) Freehills if they have something else we can take
Though it should be noted that we might fail the Urban Poor quest. Depends on how things go over the next couple turns.

 

[bluefur87]

Hm. Okay then, fair enough.

If we put Division of Power into a new social slot, I suggest taking Harmurri trade-related value.
Granted, I am most likely not the first to suggest it.

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A reminder that when we got the Temple, Palace, and Mountain megaprojects, we were told that they were usually gated behind values. We, again, just brute forced stuff do to iron tools.

It is likely that a lot of tools and sociological developments are locked behind various values. We should, absolutely, consider taking value slots more often.

Side note, I think the values would have been something like.

• Temple: A reason or methodology to worship the divine (purity might qualify for this, or perhaps an upgraded version. I don't know, though. It doesn't scream 'religious' enough to me)
• Mountain: A trait for gaining prestige (we have none)
• Palace: A trait for the legitimacy of the ruler (I think Philosopher Kings now counts for this now)

 

[DragonParadox]

If we can keep our income high enough, we'll be able to stay on Mass Levy for a while and survive via passive income, which would virtually guarantee success in all major wars.

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The words "virtually guaranteed success" send a chill down my spine. If there is some mechanical combination that looks like it is solving all our problems it means we are not seeing all the problems.

 

[bluefur87]

Another thing that occur and amuse me.

When was the last time someone sent a trade or diplomatic mission to us?

I mean, we think we're doing bad, but apparently no one else can be bothered to come out of their little corner to see what we're up to outside of visiting the games.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Yeah, thia turn kinda proved my fears of Infrastructure, which at this point should b3 renamed Urbanization: The Policy.

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What did you expect, when we have a Guild Quest for Ironworks lvl3?

 

[notgreat]

The words "virtually guaranteed success" send a chill down my spine. If there is some mechanical combination that looks like it is solving all our problems it means we are not seeing all the problems.

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Well, it hurts us a ton to do it. Means we do pretty much nothing else during those turns. It can very much be a pyrrhic victory. Also we'd still lose if the enemy has us locked down enough to disrupt our passive income. Or if they have so much cavalry/naval that even with obscene levels of martial we can't even get to the battlefields.


Also we might not be able to once we get the upgrade. Right now when we switch to mass levy, all the actions will be war-focused. Afterwards, half the actions are reserved by the factions who won't be helping and will instead be eating all those stats we needed.

 

[ExNihilo]

Another thing that occur and amuse me.

When was the last time someone sent a trade or diplomatic mission to us?

I mean, we think we're doing bad, but apparently no one else can be bothered to come out of their little corner to see what we're up to outside of visiting the games.

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The Highland Kingdom a couple turns back? I think? Right before the Plague, when they requested the Mercs?

 

[bluefur87]

The Highland Kingdom a couple turns back? I think? Right before the Plague, when they requested the Mercs?

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Ah yes...

That doesn't make me feel better about the situation.

 

[DragonParadox]

The Highland Kingdom a couple turns back? I think? Right before the Plague, when they requested the Mercs?

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So the last time someone sent a trading mission to the King of the hill was 60 years ago. OK you can say the plague distracted them, but what about before that.... the only thing I can think of is way the hell back when we first established the law, highlanders again. People seem oddly reticent to talk to us.

 

[PrimalShadow]

A thought about our Infrastructure Policies.
Some people have rightly expressed worries about them building up Block Housing and not going for Aqueducts/Baths/etc. We actually have a (partial) solution to this, especially for lvl3 cities: build the FIRST level of Baths/Aqueducts manually. We know our policies will follow our lead, which means that we can mostly guarantee that they will finish said aqueducts/baths without our input.

Obviously, this doesn't help with Markets, which are the biggest issue of all. What we really want to push are lvl1 markets, but once you've spent a secondary on them they are done, so that is a moot point.


Still. If we find that redshore is still without aqueducts/baths in 2-3 turns, this is how we fix it.

 

[notgreat]

So the last time someone sent a trading mission to the King of the hill was 60 years ago. OK you can say the plague distracted them, but what about before that.... the only thing I can think of is way the hell back when we first established the law, highlanders again. People seem oddly reticent to talk to us.

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Right after Epic Age the Khemetri did a bunch of diplo with us.
The Xoh traded with us just a bit before we killed them, giving us Chinampas and medical knowledge.
Aside from that... Yeah. Trade missions just don't have much payoff so few people do them.

 

[bluefur87]

So the last time someone sent a trading mission to the King of the hill was 60 years ago. OK you can say the plague distracted them, but what about before that.... the only thing I can think of is way the hell back when we first established the law, highlanders again. People seem oddly reticent to talk to us.

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Oh, there was the whole dead priests thanking us for telling them how to deal with cholera thing.

Nomads... Yeah, Heaven's Hawks.

Trelli... I don't think so?
Hath... No
Khemetri. If you count a war mission, sure!
Edit: Oh yeah, the Khemetri did do some with us afterwards.
So, yeah.

I think the last time was when we hired the Heaven's Hawk, which was around when we first got currency.