Horologer
Incertae sedis
- Location
- a risen sea
The Highland Kingdom, I hope.
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
Getting a water powered paper mill means that we basically skip to automating paper production in a process that would normally take centuries.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
Does that mean that something makes it unlikely? Would we need a ridiculous innovation roll plus gilded age? Why did it take Earth so long?
I don't think it takes something like a ridiculous innovation roll given what little I knew of the paper production process, but I don't think it will be long because we are heavily incentivized to find ways to save money on labor.
A King's Thoughts on a Hero
- Location
- Illinois
A King's Thoughts on a Hero
Besides the slight sigh, you had to admit Alyxunmyn hid his frustration well. You would not blame him for a larger reaction to the news you had shared with him.
The two of you sat within a small room in the Royal Library, set aside for the King and his Heir to discuss accounting matters with a degree of privacy, while still allowing you to call for the clerks to fetch the accounts as needed.
"All the clerks agree on the numbers. We truly cannot afford to support the levies, not unless we are willing to allow a significant amount of people to die of starvation." You shrug helplessly as Alyxunmyn sighs again.
He frowns as he looks over another sheet. "This... an expansion to the Great Hall? Surely that can be put off..." He trails off as you shake your head.
"Sadly, several major families have become quite insistent on it. They've been advocating for government reform for several generations now, and they are absolutely certain that the palace must be updated to allow for their plans. They've managed to rally most of the Patrician families to them over the years, and if I were to try to circumvent them to give you the resources you need, I fear that they would take matters into their own hands." Your own frustration was evident in your words. Had your predecessors finished the damn palace before the war began, you could have had a golden opportunity to finally crush the Highlanders. Instead, you would have to become yet another king who put off the problem.
You almost had to wonder at times if Crow thought the whole situation to be funny. It was getting a bit absurd how many times the histories had said the Highlanders had been saved by inconvenient timing.
"Those damned fools," Alyxunmyn grumbled under his breath. You gave him a sympathetic nod.
"You better prepare to deal with those fools then," You smirk, "Their reforms are already somewhat underway. I do see why they think it's necessary, and their suggestions will help streamline rule. Eventually. Unluckily for you, you will be the one that has to deal with the fallout of their reforms. I, thankfully, will likely be safely in my grave by the time they manage to formally submit their plans." Alyxunmyn gives you a good-natured groan, though you expect there was some real dread in there.
Both of you fell silent for a time, the flipping of pages the only sound that filled the room for some time. Even as you read through the accounts (Oh Crow, why did the guilds want that many mills?!), a part of your mind had time to consider your heir.
From what you had come to know of the man, he was serious in his loyalty to the People. He lived and breathed duty in much the same way he did war. He was, you had to admit, a more talented King than you were, in almost every way. His absurd charisma had been well honed on the battlefield, and his ability to manage the legions of clerks was just as impressive.
His martial abilities, well, there was no need to even try to compare them.
From what you had seen of the man, he would be excellent at the job. He would hate every minute of it, of course, but most of the historical accounts of the great Kings of the past mentioned that to not be uncommon. Yshuyn the Great had even been said to have thought that a virtue in a ruler.
Still, you could not help but pity the man. He would go on to do great things, you knew that for a fact, but it's likely he would chafe under the restraints of the crown as well.
You could only hope that he would enjoy the last of his time free from the burden of rule. War may be harsh, but it was a place that Alyxunmyn would be able to feel free for a bit longer. In some ways, you knew, not being able to give the man his final victory, his final grand completion of duty, would be the biggest regret of your life.
Note: Was reading some chapters on Yshuyn again, and I have to find it funny that one of the chapters was named 'Not Alexander'. Which then led to me wondering what our current king thought about the guy, which led to this.
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BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
*massive applause*
I like it a lot. Also a very cool look into the King and Heir relationship.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
So, we have 14 types of passive policy. Would it be worth trying to run one of each type, in case they have hidden effects?
We can probably leave out:
- Expansion, because although it would certainly have uses, we would rather integrate subordinates than make new settlements;
- Armament, because we would be constantly Retraining (which isn't a bad action, but would cut into our action economy too much);
- Forestry, because we'll be taking direct actions, with much better side effects.
So that leaves 11 policy types. Theoretically the king-controlled policies could just about cover that. Faction-controlled policies would help coverage too.
We can probably leave out:
- Expansion, because although it would certainly have uses, we would rather integrate subordinates than make new settlements;
- Armament, because we would be constantly Retraining (which isn't a bad action, but would cut into our action economy too much);
- Forestry, because we'll be taking direct actions, with much better side effects.
So that leaves 11 policy types. Theoretically the king-controlled policies could just about cover that. Faction-controlled policies would help coverage too.
ThatGazzer
Minds Eye Bind
- Location
- PNW
- Pronouns
- They/Them
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
This is a great omake! I think drawing from the thread instead of the updates really helps it to hit close to home.
how many times
then," you smirk. "Their
His martial abilities
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
At least semi-canon.
- Location
- Australia
Forestry policy improves the innovation chances of Expand Forests. Expand Forests is also something we never take despite occasionally resolving to do so. If we want a reliable way of increase the amount of forests we have, Forestry policy is the only way to do it.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
OK, but it doesn't actually provide any new effects, right? Just a bit more of the same?
There seems to be some agreement to set up a repeated Yeomen action for this. Which would work very very well if we can keep their faction power reined in. Hopefully that will happen well enough that we can keep it repeating long-term.
My own thinking is that the yeomen will frequently ignore the King's agenda, since the players like cities and the yeomen actively oppose them. So it's possible that they'll burn off faction power regularly.
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Forestry policy increases the chances that a generic innovation roll will be forestry related. As far as we know, it does not provide a bonus to any rolls.
Let's take a look at how many stats we can spare for the GA. We don't have any efficient way to raise tech, so we basically survive via overflows. As such, we need to keep our stats near-filled.
We currently have (+5) incoming refunds, which isn't much. However, to keep our cities around we need to double-main Expand Econ, which gives +5 net stats per secondary, for +20 total. Thus, we want to spend 25 stats or so, but up to 40 or so is still fairly safe. If we spend less than 20 we might have problems with overflowing into martial.
My previously stated preferences were (based on costs from Golden Age Lightning Round)
Cultural - Social Value slot (-10 Culture)
Diplo - Reinvite Khemetri (-12 Diplo)
Mysticism - Library Megaproject (???, 6 stats for Ironworks, 10 stats for Dam)
So that actually totals pretty nicely at about 30 stats! I love it when things total up nicely like that.
We currently have (+5) incoming refunds, which isn't much. However, to keep our cities around we need to double-main Expand Econ, which gives +5 net stats per secondary, for +20 total. Thus, we want to spend 25 stats or so, but up to 40 or so is still fairly safe. If we spend less than 20 we might have problems with overflowing into martial.
My previously stated preferences were (based on costs from Golden Age Lightning Round)
Cultural - Social Value slot (-10 Culture)
Diplo - Reinvite Khemetri (-12 Diplo)
Mysticism - Library Megaproject (???, 6 stats for Ironworks, 10 stats for Dam)
So that actually totals pretty nicely at about 30 stats! I love it when things total up nicely like that.
I want to focus strongly on Infrastructure. The various factions should cover most of our bases, but Infrastructure in particular is worth twice as much if player-chosen. Baseline it's a reasonable action, but nothing special. Once doubled, it is by far our best action. If we ever see an AI infrastructure action from a faction, we should be taking that as an indication that we're not doing enough infrastructure. (The Free Cities are inherently biased towards infrastructure for themselves, so that's not quite as big of a deal, but still an indication of an unmet need)
IIRC, it makes it so that if a generic undirected innovation is successful, it has a greater chance of being a forest-related innovation. It doesn't actually help us innovate at all, it just directs the innovation in that direction.
- Location
- Australia
We need them more to build roads. We can't give them both roads and forests or else they'll grow too powerful, which is bad because they are warriors and thus assholes.
- Location
- Somewhere
I thought the Ymaryn are not using paper in widespread use? I know we have it, but it doesn't seem to be something that is mass produced in the amount this line seems to indicate.
Edit: I wish you worked further on the interaction between the King, and Alyxunmyn. Give the King a more badass normal type mentor-ship to the War Hero Alyxunmyn. Instead of using tired discussion from the forum to create the illusion of originality.
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- Location
- United States
I imagine that even if it's not yet mass produced, the King and their Heir would have access to the latest tech and innovations, which includes Ragpaper.
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
Well, if one person would have the luxury of using paper, it'd probably be the king.
edit: Blackbird'd
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
we have parchment and vellum, but not 'paper' as the modern world knows it, these are probably parchment pages
Parchment is made from calfskin, which thanks to the sacred warding, we have an abundance of
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ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
Well, that's a possibility. But having +2 Cent every turn would be risky.
Also, the mechanics of Expand Forest are ideal for a repeated action. Being done every turn smooths out the "lose some this turn, gain more next turn" angle, and it only spends resource types that it refunds.
And faction power is the only reason we would ever want to stop a forestry action, whereas roads have connectivity and Cent caps.
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Crude ragpaper as an administrative tech indicates that it's good enough to count as said tech, as opposed to parchments which doesn't show up at all.
So, yeah, ragpaper is cheap enough.
We just have yet to perfect the mass production of paper.
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Let's see...
14 Policies sounds like a lot, but it's really not.
Things we need to fulfill our current lifestyle:
Skullduggery x2
We haven't even managed to break even on Intrigue so far, we've been using it faster than we gain it. We want to build up a bit of a stockpile both so we can use it in the future without worry and because it gives us passive defence against the Highlanders screwing with us.
City Support x1
City Support is going to be necessary going forward in order to offset cities costs. I think that after Ironworks upgrades we're good with 2 total, but we could potentially use another one here.
Vassal Support x 2
We now have more vassals to look over and deal with. Hopefully we'll be able to stop culture drift with just two policies. It won't do a lot, but it should help keep us unified in the face of Storm Ymaryn expansionism. These don't do a lot, but they prevent things from getting worse. 2 Policies are about as effective as an undirected [Sec] Influence Subordinate (i.e. not very, but not zero).
Stuff that will immediately save us actions:
Agriculture x3
Gaining 12 Econ, -12 EE, and -6 Tech per turn hurts, but it's necessary. It's about as good as a [Main] Expand Econ action every turn. That means that we can reassign that to something else. The easiest is obviously Expand Forests as our PSN action choice, but having an additional Main action each turn is extremely helpful.
Industry x1
We need more Tech. The long and short of it is that we are now a civilization with highly skilled workers with no real effective way to train more effective workers. I don't want to use policies here, but it's going to be necessary to offset costs until we get more Ironworks Lv. 3 or get a few more Govenor's Palaces to give us a better Tech refund. We're doing okay now because of massive overflow, but that could pretty quickly change. Hopefully Industry's narrative effects help us come up with something to deal with our Tech issue, that's really the only reason I'm taking it. Taking a bunch of these isn't a terrible idea, though. Ideally, Ironworks would change our Industry policy to be +3 Tech/-1 Econ like Ironworks Lv 1 did to Agriculture.
Stuff we need to get overdo projects done:
Defence x3
We've basically been treading water with regard to finishing Significant Walls at this point. Sure, we've got more done every turn, but we've constantly hovered around 50% completion for a long time. Hard mode Nomads have arrived and they have nearly rekt us both times. The only reason they didn't was because we were extremely lucky. Since we can't contest them in the field, we need these in order to actually keep our stuff defended. Even with 4 Defence policies, we're going to take at least 5-6 turns to fill up Significant Walls and 20+ to get Massive Walls everywhere that needs them.
If people want to be Caucasus!China, these policies are necessary. Once we've filled up on Significant Walls, they should become standard in every New Settlement like shrines have been since the Starpox cure.
Infrastructure x2
Highly useful in general. I won't cry if these end up getting cut, however. Markets, Aqueducts, Temples, Baths; there's a lot of things we need to get done in this category. I personally want another GP, some Libraries and Academies, but the policy doesn't seem to actually take these. Once we've finally gotten a few more markets, I'd be okay with changing these to something else.
I haven't picked any Forestry policies since I don't think we need them yet. The Yeoman are likely to use their actions to Expand Forests. Once they're done with that, we can lock in Forests as a repeating action for a few actions to get more on top of that. As for the other drips policies, they'll probably be tried out by our Factions. Only Tech and Agriculture are really pressing enough that they're a constant concern when it comes to dealing with our stats.
Since they've got a quest to plant forests, I suspect they'll use some of their actions of their own initiative to plant forests over the next few turns.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No update tonight, can't get it writing today.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
Actually that's the number of policy types that exist, not the number of policies we will have.
We should have closer to 20, but half will be faction-controlled.