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Paths of Civilization

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Kiba said:
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.
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That is sensible for 21. century high value cash crops. Less so for BC food crops. At least if they are supposed to be affordable.


Although speaking of ropes, combining Plant Textiles (Hemp) with Build Docks/Warships may advance the development of sails and hopefully smaller crews to reduce costs.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Only problem is that our better ships are, well, triremes. I am not sure how useful they are going to be for interconnectivity purpose.
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The Greeks, Phonecians and Romans (and others) built and maintained massive trading empires that spanned the Mediterranean Sea and reached even the shore of Britannia with ships like those so I don't think we have to worry overly about that. Technology wise you don't really need more than that what we have to get a significant maritime commerce going (though there where of course significant technological advances within these "categories" that our system isn't equipped to handle very well).

I think we simply need more ships more than anything else to "fix" that issue, especially since an increased focus on naval matters could and should result in a narrative "switch" from our civilian population towards it.
 
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Erandil said:
The Greeks, Phonecians and Romans (and others) built and maintained massive trading empires that spanned the Mediterranean Sea and reached even the shore of Britannia with ships like those so I don't think we have to worry overly about that. Technology wise you don't really need more than that what we have to get a significant maritime commerce going (though there where of course significant technological advances within these "categories" that our system isn't equipped to handle very well).

I think we simply need more ships more than anything else to "fix" that issue, especially since an increased focus on naval matters could and should result in a narrative "switch" from our civilian population towards it.
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Naw, triremes weren't used much for trade. Too manpower intensive and thus too expensive. Galleys, longships for bulk. Catamarans for express delivery.
 
Erandil said:
The Greeks, Phonecians and Romans (and others) built and maintained massive trading empires that spanned the Mediterranean Sea and reached even the shore of Britannia with ships like those so I don't think we have to worry overly about that. Technology wise you don't really need more than that what we have to get a significant maritime commerce going (though there where of course significant technological advances within these "categories" that our system isn't equipped to handle very well).

I think we simply need more ships more than anything else to "fix" that issue, especially since an increased focus on naval matters could and should result in a narrative "switch" from our civilian population towards it.
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Roman ships docked in ports ranging from the mouth of the Ganges on the other side of India to the mouth of the Elbe in the North Sea. They carried a volume of trade in the Mediterranean not seen again until the nineteenth century. They, rather than the famous Roman roads, were the heart of the transportation network that held the Empire together. If they could manage the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and North Sea trade, then we should be able to manage the Black Sea.

Now, I don't think we have anything the equal of the greatest Roman round ships, which were one hundred and fifty feet long and carried six hundred tonnes of cargo, but the paucity of recent ship innovations suggests that we're generally the match of classical shipbuilding unless we've been tremendously unlucky. We're probably just lacking things like brail rings that make rigging much easier and less labour intensive.
 
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veekie said:
Naw, triremes weren't used much for trade. Too manpower intensive and thus too expensive. Galleys, longships for bulk. Catamarans for express delivery.
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Barges are way better for bulk.

George said:
Could you speak on what specific effects you expect to show up and how long they should take?
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Expect? As I've said, cheaper and/or better things due to more availiable quality tools and more to experiment with (not science-experiment even). I do not think there will be some qualitative explosion, barring us suddenly discovering a way to mass produce steel....which requires way too much stuff to gun for it now, even if IW spam is one of the ways to do it.

When? Depends. We got Light Cavalry from discovery of "you can ride horses"...uh. Rulwyna was a daugther of dude who allowed riding horses, so, uh, a thousand years or so? That one was a slow burner due to horse breeding requiring time, but it still goes to show that effects can take a lot of time to manifest.

I'd say that ~10 or so levels of combined Ironworks should give something interesting, but honestly, I am not sure what is the "time" or threshhold for the effects to manifest.
 
Thinking about nautical innovations, if we do a Build Mills while also building docks at some point, it may help develop the capstan, which would allow control of bigger and more efficient sails.

ctulhuslp said:
Barges are way better for bulk.
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I wouldn't want to sail a barge on the Black Sea. You need something with a keel for seakeeping.

The critical innovation we may be missing is round ships. We have galleys, longships and catamarans, but we're missing bulk seagoing cargo carriers, which is what round ships are. You don't use either longships or galleys for bulk trade. They don't carry enough. A sixteen meter longship carries about ten tonnes of cargo. A Roman round ship of the same length carries seventy five, over seven times as much.

However, I think we know that the Khemetri were bulk exporting food into the not Mediterranean, so they must have the appropriate naval technology. Hopefully we can steal it from Freehills, as they'll be seeing examples come through the ex-Trelli Straits.
 
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Alratan said:
I wouldn't want to sail a barge on the Black Sea. You need something with a keel for seakeeping.
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Could you elaborate? At least nowadays it is used freely by barges with less than 2 meters draft, tankers or supertankers and Bosphorus, from brief looking up, is more of a limiting factor for shipping than the Black Sea itself.
 
Alratan said:
Thinking about nautical innovations, if we do a Build Mills while also building docks at some point, it may help develop the capstan, which would allow control of bigger and more efficient sails.



I wouldn't want to sail a barge on the Black Sea. You need something with a keel for seakeeping.

The critical innovation we may be missing is round ships. We have galleys, longships and catamarans, but we're missing bulk seagoing cargo carriers, which is what round ships are. You don't use either longships or galleys for bulk trade. They don't carry enough. A sixteen meter knarr (cargo ship similar to a longship) carries about twenty five tonnes of cargo. A Roman round ship of the same length carries seventy five, or three times as much.

However, I think we know that the Khemetri were bulk exporting food into the not Mediterranean, so they must have the appropriate naval technology. Hopefully we can steal it from Freehills, as they'll be seeing examples come through the ex-Trelli Straits.
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I ran the math. 3 Longships a day can support a True City of 100k. It has no margin of error, but we have a lot more than just three longships coming in a day.
 
ctulhuslp said:
When? Depends. We got Light Cavalry from discovery of "you can ride horses"...uh. Rulwyna was a daugther of dude who allowed riding horses, so, uh, a thousand years or so? That one was a slow burner due to horse breeding requiring time, but it still goes to show that effects can take a lot of time to manifest.
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That was around six centuries ago. We didn't get the spiritbonded until the eleven century. I estimated five hundred years.

Counting the turns narrowed it down to four hundred years.

Alratan said:
Thinking about nautical innovations, if we do a Build Mills while also building docks at some point, it may help develop the capstan, which would allow control of bigger and more efficient sails.

The critical innovation we may be missing is round ships. We have galleys, longships and catamarans, but we're missing bulk seagoing cargo carriers, which is what round ships are. You don't use either longships or galleys for bulk trade. They don't carry enough. A sixteen meter longship carries about ten tonnes of cargo. A Roman round ship of the same length carries seventy five, over seven times as much.
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Those kind of innovations are probably reserved for the next era, especially when we upgrade the Grand Dock to Grand Harbor.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Could you elaborate? At least nowadays it is used freely by barges with less than 2 meters draft, tankers or supertankers and Bosphorus, from brief looking up, is more of a limiting factor for shipping than the Black Sea itself.
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Modern ships have very different sea keeping characteristics than ancient ones. They're also much stronger due to their steel construction, so are less prone to breaking in half.

DakkaMania said:
I ran the math. 3 Longships a day can support a True City of 100k. It has no margin of error, but we have a lot more than just three longships coming in a day.
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Thirty tons of grain a day, divided by 100K. Three hundred grams. Well. It's doable. It wouldn't keep them healthy though. It would also be really very expensive. You'd be a lot better off bring them in with a big round ship carrying six hundred tons in one go.

Note that my initial post was in error. We have longships, not knarrs, so the capacity of a normal sized one is ten rather than twenty five tons.

Kiba said:
Those kind of innovations are probably reserved for the next era, especially when we upgrade the Grand Dock to Grand Harbor.
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It's still classical era boat building. Although for the big ships, you may well be right, simply because of the scales involved. A hundred and fifty foot/forty five meter long ship is very different to a fifty foot/fifteen meter one.
 
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Alratan said:
Thirty tons of grain a day, divided by 100K. Three hundred grams. Well. It's doable. It wouldn't keep them healthy though. It would also be really very expensive. You'd be a lot better off bring them in with a big round ship carrying six hundred tons in one go.

Note that my initial post was in error. We have longships, not knarrs, so the capacity of a normal sized one is ten rather than twenty five tons.
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well one birreme can carry 8,5 tons of cargo.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Than stop tunnel visioning on mechanics.
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When people stop making false claims about mechanics, I'll stop correcting them.

8bitBob said:
From what I can tell, you're still ignoring a fundamental part of this quest. That being that we do not get to operate from a perfectly omniscient position that allows us to see the exact results of our actions. You see anything unknown as broken and in need of modification, which is just not how it rolls most of the time. We're simply operating from a position of limited knowledge as is intended. Calculating stat effects and efficient actions is great for not starving or something, but looking at what math we are allowed to see and basing the entire trajectory of the civ off it, while deliberately ignoring non math based information which comes to the exact opposite conclusion is irrational.
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From what I can tell, you are fundamentally not seeing what I've written, whether it is because you are too stuck during in you own frame of reference or just not paying attention.

Please actually READ what I'm saying, instead of attaching claims I didn't make.

I never claimed Ironworks wouldn't start being useful in the future as or Support Artisans couldn't be made to work eventually. I never even claimed Ironworks are bad. I've said:
the current Lvl1 effect of Ironworks is unambiguously terrible for us, and will CONTINUE to be absolutely terrible up until the effect is modified somehow
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I would have thought the claim was practically obvious, but you keep disagreeing. So until you actually start addressing my points instead of whatever made-up straw-men you imagination has conjured, I'm done with this discussion.

8bitBob said:
No one is saying we should completely drop using math to plan things, but using math we know is missing a whole host of hidden factors to justify avoiding something we've been told is beneficial, or know is beneficial from a historical standpoint, goes way too far.
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No one is saying that considering the narrative shouldn't be an important part of planning. But thinking that something that badly screw up our stat economy is NOT bad for us mechanically is either delusional or misreading the question, absolutely regardless of What we think SHOULD be happening based on words of AN or historic precedent.
 
PrimalShadow said:
No one is saying that considering the narrative shouldn't be an important part of planning. But thinking that something that badly screw up our stat economy is NOT bad for us mechanically is either delusional or misreading the question, absolutely regardless of What we think SHOULD be happening based on words of AN or historic precedent.
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By this logic we should not have taken Iron, since it punched us by -4 Stability and -10 Wealth - in time when we had a cap of 12 Wealth no less.
The payout only happened later on, and the one and only reason we went for it was historical precedent.
 
DakkaMania said:
Excellent point. Let's build Academies then.
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Sure. As long as we build Libraries first, I'd be happy to try an academy if we can fit it in. Preferably Lvl1 and Lvl2 Libraries in Redshore or Blackmouth, since it would be pretty great to see a Lvl2 Library somewhere.

DakkaMania said:
Academies themselves, no. But the Tech drip from passives. And the Ironworks demonstrated that infrastructure can improve those passives tremendously. I expect Academies to give Tech Passive a boost the same way Ironworks gave Agriculture and City Support a boost.
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I mean, drip policies are undeniably terrible for providing stats right now, no? They might get better in the future, but at the moment it would be silly to try to rely on something like Industry Policy to try and offset our Tech deficit.

That isn't to say we shouldn't take said drip policies; it has long been conjectured that they give powerful narrative effects, which is why we've been meaning to try them. But if you are taking the action for its narrative effect, then take it for its narrative effect; the mechanical drip is small enough that it shouldn't factor significantly into the discussion.
 
Malevolo said:
They could be adapted for that, replace the rowers with another mast and put two lateen sails on it.
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There's no point though. A bireme just has a bad hull design for a cargo ship. You'd be much better off spending the huge amount of investment that a ship represents on something that's actually good at the job.
 
ctulhuslp said:
By this logic we should not have taken Iron, since it punched us by -4 Stability and -10 Wealth - in time when we had a cap of 12 Wealth no less.
The payout only happened later on, and the one and only reason we went for it was historical precedent.
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That was a trade off. Everybody was well aware what having early iron would mean. But we can't judge such trade-offs if we just outright ignore the mechanical side of things!
 
PrimalShadow said:
Sure. As long as we build Libraries first, I'd be happy to try an academy if we can fit it in. Preferably Lvl1 and Lvl2 Libraries in Redshore or Blackmouth, since it would be pretty great to see a Lvl2 Library somewhere.


I mean, drip policies are undeniably terrible for providing stats right now, no? They might get better in the future, but at the moment it would be silly to try to rely on something like Industry Policy to try and offset our Tech deficit.

That isn't to say we shouldn't take said drip policies; it has long been conjectured that they give powerful narrative effects, which is why we've been meaning to try them. But if you are taking the action for its narrative effect, then take it for its narrative effect; the mechanical drip is small enough that it shouldn't factor significantly into the discussion.
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After Oni poked me, I think I misinterpreted your arguments. My apologies.

Susano said:
That was a trade off. Everybody was well aware what having early iron would mean. But we can't judge such trade-offs if we just outright ignore the mechanical side of things!
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Thank Crow we are not outright ignoring them then.
 
ctulhuslp said:
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.
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We knew that a Lvl2 ironworks would have different effects than a Lvl1, though, so the fact that there was a change was entirely unsurprising.

And indeed, we know that Lvl3 ironworks will do some unspecified stat-changing as well - and depending on what it is, it might be tempting enough for us to try to build Lvl3 Ironworks when we can. But that doesn't change the fact that the Lvl1 effect kinda screws us over the more we use it, at least right now.

DragonParadox said:
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.
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The mechanical benefits of lvl1 Ironworks for levies was that it increases our Levy martial by 1. That is it.

Now, we did use Ironworks to get Mass Levy, but I think it was enough to have one Lvl1 ironworks in general; I don't believe it is dependent on the number of Ironworks levels.
 
Alratan said:
You wouldn't be using a bireme to transport cargo around though. They're specialised warships.
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While that is certainly correct I think it is important to remember that shipping capacity wasn't the only consideration when it came to ships. A major worry was also pirates and the like, especially in the earlier eras but it remained a threat throughout the ages, so choosing a more military capable ship wasn't the worst of ideas.

Plus when it comes to luxury goods space is also less important and there is also the consideration that rowing (generally a disadvantage since you need to pay or at least feed your rowers) can be useful in a sea like the med where the summer period, normally the best time for ships, is famous for having "calm" periods with no wind.
 
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Erandil said:
While that is certainly correct I think it is important to remember that shipping capacity wasn't the only consideration when it came to ships. A major worry was also pirates and the like, especially in the earlier eras but it remained a threat throughout the ages, so choosing a more military capable ship wasn't the worst of ideas.

Plus when it comes to luxury goods space is also less important and there is also the consideration that rowing (generally a disadvantage since you need to pay or at least feed your rowers) can be useful in an des like the med where the summer period, normally the best time for ships, is famous for having "calm" periods with no wind.
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The way, historically, you deal with the danger is two ways:

Firstly, by having galley escorts for high value shipments.

Secondly, you track down the pirates and burn down their home ports. This only works on relatively minor pirates though, ones that don't have state or pseudo-state sponsorship.

Thirdly, and historically the much more successful approach, is to rule the entire coast and make sure that there are no ports that harbour pirates or buy their stolen goods.
 
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