Distinct lack of those so far. Something narratively good is going on, I believe, but we don't see any mechanical effects besides stated.
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- Austria
We are never warned about effects of annexes beforehand and must figure it out purely by what already exists+what we think will happen.
Concrete was a side effect of snails, which will have mechanical effects...once we start producing cement. >_> Still counts for my point.
We only learned of IW2's effect of City Support and Agriculture policis after...I think after passives already started building it or something along those lines.
Academy removing most of Philosopher Kings' penalties was, well, a thing stated once beforehand by AN but not an explicit part of Academy megaproject description. Given that we are now discussing, among other things, possible effects of Academies on Tech, this is quite a pertinent example.
So I firmly disagree about "lack of those", both in general and specifically with regards to Academies and Ironworks.
Right, now, please state those effects in Ironworks 1, the thing we were actually talking about. Because I don't disagree that sometimes actions can have unexpected benefits, or that we don't know mechanical benefits of the things we didn't built yet.
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- Austria
Hm? My speculation is that spamming those will eventually make everything Econ-cheaper due to better tools making things require less work to produce. If that's what you are asking about.
To be clear, most people weren't discussing IW1 benefits. The discussion clearly started by speculating on the benefits and potential uses of IW2 and above. IW1 is a part of that discussion about the effectiveness of Ironworks in general, but is not the point of it.
Agreed, tech is more valuable then econ (not just as raw numbers but as specialists are more valuable than peasant farmers) so a 1 for 1 exchange is a bad return. However without ironworks we would not have mass levy, the thing that let out genius drown a nomad horde in numbers, so there is a mechanical benefit of level 1 ironworks.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
Um...the fact that Tech refunds exist, whereas Econ refunds don't, makes the +Econ -Tech potentially an improvement if used correctly.
What this discussion has convinced me of is that getting more Governor's Palaces is even more important than I realised. Getting a Tech refund of two rather than one would make a big difference, and a Tech refund of three would be huge.
We'd need a lot of roads to be able to get that though. If we had it, a couple of Ironworks upgrades Agriculture policies would indeed be amazing.
We also need to consider what else could give centralisation tolerance. Other things should logically improve connectivity apart from roads, we just haven't found them yet. I'd expect canals* would, but I'd also expect getting better and more horses thanks to Stables annexes to, along with building more docks.
* I do wonder if we're going to get a measure for canals in the same way that we have for roads.
We'd need a lot of roads to be able to get that though. If we had it, a couple of Ironworks upgrades Agriculture policies would indeed be amazing.
We also need to consider what else could give centralisation tolerance. Other things should logically improve connectivity apart from roads, we just haven't found them yet. I'd expect canals* would, but I'd also expect getting better and more horses thanks to Stables annexes to, along with building more docks.
* I do wonder if we're going to get a measure for canals in the same way that we have for roads.
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- Location
- Austria
Yes.
Governor Palace per major region sounds reasonable enough. We have one in, hm, Redshore. One in Western Wall city we did not integrate, and...that's about it.
I think we need one of those in Gulvalley, and then, after we integrate Txolla, one or two in their lands - Lowlands are pretty big.
Although Lowlands are also mostly empty yet (5 provinces in Txolla compares to our 17 despite us being roughly similar size on the map), so maybe putting one into Blackmouth or Stallionpen would make more sense.
After it finished, we only learned the next turn actually.
Sure, perhaps later that will happen. So far, it didn't, so it's not a mechanical benefit now.
Then we're talking past each other, since I'm saying how mechanically terrible the effect of Ironworks 1 is.
Well, first, I think there were other ways to supply a levy, second, we don't need more Ironworks, to create it, so that benefit is ran out already. But I guess it counts, in a roundabout way?
Mm, no, even with the refund tech is vastly more valuable than econ, at least until we build like 40 GP or some other way to refund and/or generate it.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
I had forgotten, and it's a fair point, but even the base rate for an infrastructure policy is still a good deal. And more infrastructure -> higher city levels -> more policies.
So. I can see two main methods of dealing with the factions going forward. Either we can try to limit their power, or we can try to appease them and exploit their power. The latter has potential to achieve a lot more, at the cost of being quite volatile. The former might perhaps push us toward a more centralised government form.
But with a full refund, the tech cost effectively goes away, leaving a more powerful Expand Econ.
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We should look at Integrating Western Wall's Governor's Palace (and possible True City?) as soon as we can. We were told it was gated behind two of more roads, better horses, and better ships. We have the better ships now, so that's just more roads, which we need anyway to compensate for the reduced centralisation tolerance of the Governor's Palace.
That would hopefully also strengthen our hold on the remaining Western colonies, as I suspect they've been expanding (have expanded?) to link up.
If we Integrate Txolla as well, I suspect we'll find ourselves massively short on roads, although as I say in my previous post, there's a fair chance that mass canal building may be a better way of increasing the connectivity of the Lowlands than mass road building.
I'd say that six Palaces is a fair long term target to aim for:
Valleyhome
Redshore
Blackmouth
Current Western Wall Capital
Xohyr
Gulvalley
That would reduce our Max Centralisation Tolerance by a further three. To counteract that we'd need nine more Interconnectivity, which is nine actions spent on them, which is a huge amount, just under a third of the total amount we've spent so far. As I mentioned above, I do hope that at some point we'll start getting interconnectivity from things like Build Docks, as the sea is a giant superhighway linking up coastal regions. This becomes even more true as we start getting more canals or canalising rivers.
Well, the highest Tech cost we have on any action is four, for a Main Build Ceramics Kiln. That would take seven Governor's Palaces to fully refund.
At the level we're at I think that more tools means better tools, as we can transition to using metal versions of wooden and stone tools, which are much better.
This does have limits though. We probably don't have decent ploughs, or proper horse collars, or seed drills, or even most classical agricultural innovations.
- Location
- Austria
Quantity is a quality of its own; I sorely doubt every last farmer can afford iron tools, for example. Besides, the more we have, the cheaper they get and the more likely it is people risk using it for other purposes and invent something new.
Sounds quite reasonable to me.
Only problem is that our better ships are, well, triremes. I am not sure how useful they are going to be for interconnectivity purpose.
For that, you need two GP's for every Ironwork, which is not really sustainable.
It depends on what precisely contributes to interconnectivity/the ability to integrate. We know that there's plenty of low level disorder below the level of abstraction of the game, things like banditry and minor rebellions. Small scale piracy could well be part of this. If interconnectivity includes the ability of the state to project force to reinforce local authorities so they can deal with these kind of problems, which would make sense, then triremes would help with this, as they're a kind of ship that local troublemakers who decide to get into the piracy or extortion business simply couldn't compete with.
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Remember that even a warship can carry a fair amount of cargo. So they could be used by merchants in peacetime, if nothing else. It is likely that they will just use a sail and a much lower number of sailors and call it a day.
Ships are bullshit like that.
If people want a tech refund, they might want to consider building a library in Redshore to see what it does. At some point, trade secrets stop being trade secrets.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Anyway, given that we ended the levies right now, I suppose we'll be paying for the Overmax know rather than later. I wonder what the effect'll be.
In narrative terms, we're releasing an enormous number of semi-experienced soldiers back into society. Given the length of the campaign, they'll have no real skills beyond their military ones, and I don't think we have pensions or anything like that.
- Location
- Austria
Mills+Ironworks probably will have some interesting effect when combined with it: we have a lot of strong young mostly men going back to find lots of jobs in mechanized (for the time period) areas. Should be an interesting combination.
Well, we do have a Megaproject in progress to soak up labour. We also probably have an enormous pent up demand for labour in the hopefully reforming true cities, as well as in our infrastructure projects.
Our vassals are also doing things. I'd expect that retired soldiers will take the boat across the sea to the new settlement in Tinriver, go looking for adventure in Amber Road, or do whatever they're doing in Memory of Spirits.
AFAIK we do have Iron ploughs. Horse collars are iffy. It's possible that we have them for animal welfare as we do actually care for that and the other stuff we don't.
It should be noted however that the Ymaryn are very good at using symbiotic plants and the like as that is a part of Greater Sacred Forest.
What really hurts productivity is that we are still mostly stuck with terrace farming, which is a bitch to mechanize and takes serious amounts of manpower to even set up compared to the lowlands where you only need to dig some irrigation ditches but otherwise, no major earth moving is required.
So every time we do Expand Econ, part of the payoff goes to feed the people that build and maintain the retaining walls and the like.
Transportation is difficult as well. Moving a ton of wheat downhill is easy. If you then need to go up again, it becomes significantly tougher and thus takes longer, increasing transportation costs.*
Once we do have Txolla integrated and the Canal is up and running, I expect +2 to our Expand Econ Action simply by freeing up labor and having more fertile soil available.
*I imagine that Roadbuilding in the Lowlands will be significantly easier as flat terrain is easier to work with than having to account for all those bloody hills. Also hoping Road actions get a bonus from the level 3 Ironworks as they need a lot of tools to make quick progress and it makes little sense that only agriculture benefits from more tools.
Edit: For connectivity, Watchtowers may help as well as they make roads safer and probably act as nucleus of new villages. In the same vein, the internal reorganization that makes us denser could help as well as average distance between settlements shrinks.
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I wonder if we're going to see more urban mills. We have canal building technology, and are simultaneously working on a giant dam. We know that the initial Ironworks used Redshore's aqueducts to carry water for water powered drop hammers. I'd expect to see a lot more of that. Particularly as one of the interesting narrative things about our Mass Levy is that it's an urban phenomena. Our rural population won't be suffering from anything like as acute a labour shortage. They're not the area that particularly needs mechanisation. The cities do.
We've also recently started to import large amounts of iron ore from the Storm Ymaryn (as a side note, snubbing the Storm Ymaryn King could imperil this trade) directly into Redshore. That means that increasing volumes of it need to be processed there. We've also significantly increased domestic iron production, as well as export. Another thing to consider is that ships will be arriving carrying heavy iron ore and leaving carrying a much lower volume and weight of iron tools. Those ships are going to need to find other cargo to fill their holds with, which should itself start a significant export boom, as it should result in a collapse in the local cost of outwards shipping.
Taking this together, there's a chance we'll see spillover from the mechanisation of iron working into other urban trades that are also suffering from a massive labour shortage. Cotton mills, anyone? Is Redshore damp enough?
Well, taking this together, remember that not all our core is hills. Only about half, if I understand the map correctly. We've integrated the north east Yllthon Sea coast, which is relatively flat and should be significantly more productive than the Lowlands (this region in the real world has some of the most fertile farmland in the world, thanks to the presence of chernozem soils), We also have the huge benefit that we can use riverine and coastal shipping to transport the produce rather than inferior roads or canals. If having exceptionally good farmlands in our core with good transport links to the rest improves the Expand Econ action, we should have gained the benefit when we integrated some of the Western Wall colony's provinces, or when we integrated the Stallions.
We also have the issue that while we may integrate Txolla, all our cities are still in or on the other side of the hills from there. While it's going to be much cheaper to ship things down from the current core down into the Lowlands, it should be no or very little cheaper to ship it back up. I'm not even sure we've invented proper locks yet to make it actually possible, rather than having to portage the boats back up the hills rather than having to somehow go against the current.
On Watchtowers, yes, I agree. It seems like the kind of thing that might increase the maximum amount of high centralisation tolerance that roads can give.
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We could benefit from water mill powered cableway, which will requires rope. The core's terrain is basically well suited for it. It would also make traversing to the other hill a piece of cake if someone is crazy enough to do it.