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Paths of Civilization

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ThrawnCA said:
Well, you could in theory devise a system where the population votes on every major decision. It becomes much harder with a population of millions, but the internet makes it not impossible if you really wanted to do that.

There are arguments to be made about whether this would be good or bad, whether it's more important to have universal participation or to elect the best decision-maker you can find. Not going to wade into those. But regardless, it's not the system that any large nation currently has.
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What you are describing does have a name in political science, direct democracy. It is generally considered rather ineffective for large groups because of the sheer specialization needed to make informed decisions, society would grind to a halt as people scrambled to educate themselves on dozens of fields at once.
 
ExNihilo said:
Kinda sad that building new settlements is one of our only two ways to get Mysticism.
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With Library refunds, I don't think we're too concerned?

-Advantage over just forest-EE gain instead of loss
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Does Expand Forest actually cost EE in the long run? I was under the impression that the "next turn" Econ gain does not cost EE (since it represents the trees growing up, which doesn't take more land than when they're planted). Which makes it LTE-positive.

the narrative for textiles is the best imo.
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Paper FTW.

to generate wealth without losing tons of EE, trade mission is our best bet
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What about Saltern expansions? Not only do they give immediate Wealth cashout, but they permanently increase income. Max them out and we won't need many further Wealth-generation actions.

The centralization is worrisome, but there is really no other option if we want repeated roads.
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Eh, that's why we love PSN.

DragonParadox said:
It is generally considered rather ineffective
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And bowing out now. Sorry, not going to discuss whether direct democracy would be better or worse.
 
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Alratan said:
I disagree. At this level of social development the likely narrative consequences are class war and revolution.

Before we invent nationalism we really, really, really don't want the concept of division of power to become established, as that will lock in class as being the locus that identity is constructed around, which will calcify and magnify internal divisions and conflict.
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That is, narratively, not what Division of Power IS. We took DoP from Freehills, and we saw it in action there. Division of Power pretty much means exactly the modern concept of it: Power is divided between several offices, instead of one having all the power. It has fuck all to do, narratively, with social classes. It's just that such a division of power allows us more easily to balance different interests, as it means politics is no longer an all or nothing game.
 
HeWhoAdds said:
... and now you've got me wondering what a level 4 Academy would do.
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Hmm.
Academy is one of the cases where concentrating in one place has both upsides and downsides.
Upside: so many bright (okay, let's face it, mostly prestigious and from rich families) minds in one place are sure to create a damned lot of progress;
Downside: it will get politicized, fast. We need more than one so that they can develop specializations and access to Academy can be more than a matter of prestige and connection; we do not need Oxford, we need Stanford.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Hmm.
Academy is one of the cases where concentrating in one place has both upsides and downsides.
Upside: so many bright (okay, let's face it, mostly prestigious and from rich families) minds in one place are sure to create a damned lot of progress;
Downside: it will get politicized, fast. We need more than one so that they can develop specializations and access to Academy can be more than a matter of prestige and connection; we do not need Oxford, we need Stanford.
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I can see the upside being represented as a bonus on all innovation rolls.
 
Wiadi said:
I've got no particular stake in this so maybe I'm underestimating but it seems unlikely to get too heated or anything.
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Well, partly because I have no particular stake in it either, and I couldn't be bothered :D

But also, debating the merits of different political systems typically does get heated, yes.
 
ThrawnCA said:
With Library refunds, I don't think we're too concerned?


Does Expand Forest actually cost EE in the long run? I was under the impression that the "next turn" Econ gain does not cost EE (since it represents the trees growing up, which doesn't take more land than when they're planted). Which makes it LTE-positive.


Paper FTW.


What about Saltern expansions? Not only do they give immediate Wealth cashout, but they permanently increase income. Max them out and we won't need many further Wealth-generation actions.


Eh, that's why we love PSN.


And bowing out now. Sorry, not going to discuss whether direct democracy would be better or worse.
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Response to your response to mine-but trying to reduce spaghetti.

You are correct, for everyday use, mysticism drip and refunds are more than enough, but if we need to support sacred orders a lot, or a Theology Philosophy megaproject comes up, we don't have a good way of raising more. In regards to the forests, you are correct, they increase LTE, but the Cash crops take lots, and the forest does not make nearly enough on its own. Paper is one good reason for textiles, by all accounts a great one (Especially if paired with support artisans) but nothing drives industry (other than war and metallurgy) quite like textiles, for instance, the cotton gin and the British textile industry. As for salterns, yeah, good point. Build (7) more, and that's matched the quad main in it's most important output. However, the combo is still great, especially since with Mills it's pretty stat neutral, and has great synergy (with either mills or Support artisans, or luxuries + art patronage, etc).
 
HeWhoAdds said:
I can see the upside being represented as a bonus on all innovation rolls.
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Hmm.
Thing is, if we only have one academy, I can see access to it becomind a matter of privilege and not skill, while with several it may or may not stop being the case.
One Academy = Kings are only from here, it's a kingmaking institution, people treat it as such.
Several Academies - king may or may not be from this one academy, so it is still prestigious and puts anyone there into top 0.001% of the country, but is more accessible to people of lower status but higher skill than one high-level Academy.

At least, that's how I see it. Of course, single Academy will homogenize all elites, which is a good thing as it is basically Ymaryn twist on the idea of Versailles, but I imagine benefits from a single high-level academy will be more political than from multiple lower-level ones.
I may well be talking out of my posterior here though.

PrimalShadow said:
We have the megaproject in the Sacred Forest AFAIK, so so as long as we start building our academy anywhere else that is fine.
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What's wrong with theological/ecological academy in Sacred Forest? I thought it and Valleyhome are prime Academy spots.
WIth the next one being Redhills, because it is a place of Ironworks Megaproject and thus will probably be a "technical" academy once we get enough for them to specialize.
 
PrimalShadow said:
We have the megaproject in the Sacred Forest AFAIK, so so as long as we start building our academy anywhere else that is fine.
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Well, after our martial genius rolls some more natural 100s and unexpectedly steamrolls his way into the HK core, we can build it there to help offset their fanatical religious culture ;).
 
ctulhuslp said:
What's wrong with theological/ecological academy in Sacred Forest? I thought it and Valleyhome are prime Academy spots.
WIth the next one being Redhills, because it is a place of Ironworks Megaproject and thus will probably be a "technical" academy once we get enough for them to specialize.
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Nah, he's saying that the Academy Megaproject is already located in Sacred Forest. I'd say Valleyhome and Redhills are the next reasonable Academy targets, although I'd like to get some libraries done first.
 
ctulhuslp said:
Hmm.
Thing is, if we only have one academy, I can see access to it becomind a matter of privilege and not skill, while with several it may or may not stop being the case.
One Academy = Kings are only from here, it's a kingmaking institution, people treat it as such.
Several Academies - king may or may not be from this one academy, so it is still prestigious and puts anyone there into top 0.001% of the country, but is more accessible to people of lower status but higher skill than one high-level Academy.

At least, that's how I see it. Of course, single Academy will homogenize all elites, which is a good thing as it is basically Ymaryn twist on the idea of Versailles, but I imagine benefits from a single high-level academy will be more political than from multiple lower-level ones.
I may well be talking out of my posterior here though.



What's wrong with theological/ecological academy in Sacred Forest? I thought it and Valleyhome are prime Academy spots.
WIth the next one being Redhills, because it is a place of Ironworks Megaproject and thus will probably be a "technical" academy once we get enough for them to specialize.
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A single big is also likely to attract foreign students.
 
ExNihilo said:
You are correct, for everyday use, mysticism drip and refunds are more than enough, but if we need to support sacred orders a lot, or a Theology Philosophy megaproject comes up, we don't have a good way of raising more.
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Even if we Supported Sacred Orders, that would only burn a net 1 Mysticism per main after refunds. Same for Study Alchemy, which is the only other way we have to spend more than 3 mysticism per action at the moment. If we had some sort of theological MP coming up, yeah, maybe we would need more Mysticism - but the action would need to cost SIX mysticism just to match our Myst income, so I find this rather unlikely. In all probability, the only way we are going to get noticeably under cap for Mysticism is multiple uses of Influence Subordinate, a GA Innovation, or some mysticism-heavy non-action choice. And even then, most of those would merely dent our Myst score, which would recover rapidly.

More than that - if we ever had problems with Mysticism, we would ALSO be having trouble with Tech, since overflow into the latter requires the former to be full. Since Tech goes down MUCH faster than Mysticism, we would empty our Tech long before we anything serious started happening with Mysticism. So really, we aren't set up to have a pure Mysticism crunch; at best, we might have a Tech-crunch that starts also seeing a shortfall of Mysticism eventually.
 
ctulhuslp said:
What's wrong with theological/ecological academy in Sacred Forest? I thought it and Valleyhome are prime Academy spots.
WIth the next one being Redhills, because it is a place of Ironworks Megaproject and thus will probably be a "technical" academy once we get enough for them to specialize.
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We already have an Academy in Sacred Forest - the MP itself. Building the Extended project in the same place is likely not even allowed (same as Redhills Ironworks), but if it is and we want diversity among academies I imagine we'd want to put it somewhere else.
 
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