Okay, lets see...
Free cities. Which do we free?
-
Lower Valleyhome
--Distance: Low
--Connectivity: High(same river as capital)
--Block Housing: Pending Lowland Canal. Capped at 2 due to lack of Harbor option
--Harbor: No.
--Key facilities: None
Lower Valleyhome is the 'duh' option. No downsides, easily controlled.
-
Sacred Forest
--Distance: Low
--Connectivity: High(geographically nearest city to capital)
--Block Housing: Pending major Canals. Capped at 2 due to lack of Harbor option
--Harbor: No.
--Key facilities: Temple, Sacred Forest, Stone Age Canal, Library
Sacred Forest meanwhile is the religious capital, but power had been drifting away from them over time. At this point Freeing them is unlikely to cause trouble due to their limited growth and should help draw religious power back to the center.
-Blackmouth
--Distance: Medium(ocean dependent)
--Connectivity: Medium(ocean dependent)
--Block Housing: Yes
--Harbor: Yes
--Key facilities: Place to the Stars, Governor Palace, Iron Mines
Blackmouth is somewhat problematic to free on the other hand. It's far enough that if there is a trade disruption from weather, pirates or invasion, they'd briefly lose contact, but that's minor.
The bigger problem is that Blackmouth as a Free City would remove our ability to control the spawn thresholds for non-free cities via Block Housing cascades. If all valid Block Housing cities are Free Cities we'd find it very hard to make it work.
-
Stallionpen
--Distance: High
--Connectivity: Low(ocean dependent)
--Block Housing: Pending Triangle Canal/Harbor
--Harbor: Not listed(
@Academia Nut isn't Stallionpen on the Black River, which according to the Northern Trade Post is big enough to build a Harbor on? ).
--Key facilities: Temple, Natural Wonder
Stallionpen is a bad idea here. Freeing Stallionpen would migrate our religious center far away from our core territories, it's too far away to control, it's exposed to nomads...overall freeing Stallionpen would be a huge pain in the ass.
Updated statuses:
Moderate Pirate Presence: Losing 2 Wealth a turn due to Saffron Island Pirates spilling out of the Trelli strait. Can be hunted through Sailing Mission but their home bases are currently outside your reach.
So we have Mediterranean pirates plaguing us. Sailing Missions(like our King's Agenda would allow our factions to take) to quell them locally would be necessary to maintain colonial loyalties...well fortunately Sea Control is leading.
Life of Arete
A well lead life is one of excellence in all things, from the stitch of cloth to prowess on the battlefield to skill in oration. The best and finest is thus demanded of and by all to show their virtue and honour.
Pros: Increase Martial gain from raising elite units; bonus Culture, Tech and/or Mysticism for certain actions; effect of criticals and doubles greatly increased
Cons: Increased potential Martial loss in fighting, increased social stratification, increased costs
Divinely Glorious Elites (Maxed Development)
A well lead life is one of excellence in all things at all levels, from the stitch of cloth to prowess on the battlefield to skill in oration. The best and finest is thus demanded of and by all to show their virtue and honour, in the knowledge that those that rise to the top will be supported by excellence below.
Pros: Increase Martial gain from raising elite units; bonus Culture, Tech and/or Mysticism for certain actions; effect of criticals and doubles greatly increased; ruling faction gains an additional faction power
Cons: Increased potential Martial loss in fighting, increased social stratification, increased costs, dominant faction can no longer be suppressed, -3 Culture/ turn (need more academies)
Power: Add or subtract their faction power from factions they are supporting/opposing and add half their power to maximum Econ value.
Comparison of Before and After for our evolved value:
-Elitism is no longer considered solely the pursuit of the elites. Everyone MUST be the very best, even if they haul shit, they must haul it beyond compare.
--While theoretically more equitable, this favors the Patricians because
everyone is spending their time and resources on doing their best, which also means that nobody but those who already ARE the elites have any time to do anything else.
-Patricians regain their Clerk/Administrator faction power, which is the whoppingly valuable power to raise the Econ cap. This is particularly valuable because the Patricians can simply shift their support from themselves to the guilds to convert Econ to Wealth via overflow when we are at high Econ and need Wealth, and bank Econ highly at other times to take advantage of our extra powerful Expand Economy.
--Pity its AI controlled though
-Patricians cannot be suppressed, which means they can't lose faction power except by disobeying King's Agenda. This would be annoying, but
for the most part the Patricians are the most strongly invested to maintain state stability.
--Basically to counter this we'd have to minimize faction suppression, delay Patrician quests as much as possible, and meet Urban Poor and Priest faction quests more promptly.
--On the other hand they're going to be extremely likely to follow King's Agenda to protect their lead.
Repair Damage - The earthquake in Hatvalley caused considerable damage, and numerous mines are offline and the farms are only just recovering in places. Aid would help sort that out.
*S: -5 Econ, -3 Tech, -2 Wealth, +4 EE, +2 Econ next turn, mine output restored, other effects
*M: -6 Econ, -4 Tech, -3 Wealth, +5 EE, +4 Econ next turn, mine output restored, other effects
A Main here would be narratively highly appropriate if we want to evolve Loyalty. Finding the resources would be a pain though.
If people are hoping to set up an information system to catch Patricians abusing their subordinates, why are they voting for Hunt Troublemakers over Develop Intrigue Web?
To me, the narrative of developing informant ties while Enforcing Justice will push us closer to an internal police model. Hunting Troublemakers roots out existing problems while Develop Intrigue Web sets up a passive scanner that allows us to trigger it later on. This seems, by narrative, more useful than simply trying to eradicate problems that do not yet exist.
If people are hoping that Hunt Troublemakers will help us smite some of the Patricians who were threatening civil war, then I don't think that's too likely. Remember, the issue that the Patricians were going to fight over was the arbitrary tyranny of the king and his ability to instantly demote people at his sufferance. Trying to do that isn't exactly going to make them like us right now. Thanks to Divinely Glorious Elites, we need to make them like us. Patricians are much more likely to redirect the smite towards the Guilds. After all, the Patricians basically have what they want now. The Guilds are threatening economic shutdown and haven't yet been appeased.
We're likely better off setting a snare so that when the Patricians do try to test their limits, it can snap taught in a generation or two.
Not how it works here. Develop Intrigue Net is building the intrigue infrastructure in general.
It won't affect this in time because its the ultra long term process of spreading out informants.
Hunt Troublemakers is the process of
using said web to spot abuses as we implement, which allows us to adjust the law as it gets made, before it becomes precedent.
We have to trust not only the Guilds, but EVERYONE ELSE. Why? Because if anyone decides to use up some wealth, suddenly we can't afford Warships any more.
Action ordering loosely goes by:
-King - Our spread
-Faction power(below are loosely predicted spreads, I'd have to do math to get a closer lock)
--Patrician - Distribute Land x2(quest, desire), Main More Warships x1 OR Main Sailing Mission x1(King's Agenda)
--Guild - More Warships x2(King's Agenda) or Cash Crop(Wealth) or Tech(Quest resources)
--Traders - More Warships x1(King's Agenda, Quest, Desire) or Sailing Mission(King's Agenda)
--Priest - Study Stars x1(Quest), [Priest] action x1(Quest)
--Yeomen - New Settlement x1(Desire), Plant Forest/Expand Econ x1(General priorities)
--Urban Poor - Sailing Mission(King's Agenda) or Aqueducts(General priorities)
We don't really have to worry about running out of Wealth for warships unless we didn't leave any wealth for warships at all. The Patricians have been confirmed to be likely to do it to keep the power in their hands.
Honestly, the fact that we've gotten away with no private land for as long as we have is only due to our stone age momentum carrying over into our government. There is literally no other histroical example that I know of that managed to avoid land ownership like we have, and even with all the momentum we managed to build up, there was going to come a point where it just wouldn't be enough. We've just finally reached that point due to DGE.
Pretty much pure momentum and continuity yeah. One of the unavoidable causes for privatized land are civil wars, as, while you can deal with land being managed less efficiently centrally, there is basically
no answer to land being impossible to hold centrally.
@Academia Nut
What happens if we're on Megaproject Support and manage to finish all currently active projects? Does it turn off automatically?
@8bitBob
We had this one before.
If you are on megaproject support and can't afford to take a megaproject action, the provinces will generate stats for the action instead.
If you are on megaproject support and there are no active megaprojects the provinces will take actions which generate stats for the next preferred megaproject:
-Classical Law – Mysticism & Culture
-Lowland Canal - Econ & Tech
Personally i feel theres a bit of dissonance in the trait like it's two traits kludged together.
one trait about excellence at all social levels from the lowest to the highest.
another trait about how every level of society should be bent to the excellence of the highest strata.
You cannot have the former without the latter. That's how social values work. Excellence is
expensive, which means the pursuit of excellence requires such a concentration of resources that the elites would have enough unquestioned access to resources that they can enforce their will(but would mostly spend it staying elite).
As others have said already, if you want to mitigate this, you make excellence cheaper. More academies, more libraries, and more gymnasiums.
Unless part of an objective of theirs, the Patricians are unlikely to take Main Distribute land all that frequently, and will tend to avoid crashing the government via under-centralization. However, if they feel the need for a quick infusion of cash they will take DL (sec or main) whenever they feel like it.
Hmm, so we'd want to keep Wealth income high to avoid that so there's little demand for it?
More markets!
It's very usefull to know why people picked the options that they did, did people think that is wouldn't increase stratification or is an unequal society something that they would like.
If you had been reading the discussion at the time it was all about improving the quality of our military. We've laid the groundwork for the Non-Comissioned Officer chain with that value, it should emerge the next time we use our army on something.
See, this is why everyone thought you were being petty and argumentative
The problem with your insistence that the upper classare evul and never going to help the lower class falls flat here because the ruling class is dependent on influence, favors, and appearances to rise here.
Which means Nobless oblige even as propaganda has impact because the nobles have to maintain that pretence and can use that to attack others who don't go through the proper motions of supporting their subordinates. It's not simply a case of expecting the patricians to be virtuous, but altering the system to reward the (at least) appearance of certain virtues and letting them use that as leverage to undermine those who don't have even that much.
Keep in mind, we've already established the quality of one's subordinates reflects on ones own qualities. So naturally the King's closest subordinates should have quality subordinates, and etc. Just establish that one's holdings and those on them are also a reflection. Use said obligation not as an appeal to their better natures, but societal and cultural pressures that can open and close doors for them.
Sure, being petty and over taxing your holdings might give you money for gifts and bribes, but if it reflects poorly on you personally? Or is a vector your enemies could use to shame you? Than suddenly higher taxes and exploits become less attractive, because they're now as much a potentially liability than anything else.
Important addendum, one of the primary means of ascension for our Patricians is to successfully accuse their superior of abuse of power. Overtaxation potentially brings up the
deliberately causing the starvation of your subordinates charge.
Which IIRC the punishment is being stripped of their post and made half exile. And promoting the whistleblower.
The first action that works towards the king's agenda gets doubled. Since the Patricians are not letting any of their power slip away, they are going to comply with the king's agenda and use one of their actions to do that, and the other two to Distribute Land.
This bit is important. We can assume the Patricians will be taking 1x Sec More Warships if finances allows.
This will make the math complicated indeed.
It's also convenient since we can drop our Sec Warships because the Patricians WILL take it if there's the Wealth for it.
Kinda, but he's just so damn charming and inspiring that he has lots of friends on the council! Even if he also tends to piss people off if he doesn't immediately charm them...
Love him or hate him sort of guy huh?
He kind of sounds like a Solar
Basically, if you deliberately tried to trigger a civil war this turn, it would be too out of character for Alyx or the pro-distribute factions to do it. If you kept dragging your feet, you would then be presented with "Make Alyx heir?" question, and if you did he would take over a turn and distribute all the land the patricians want. If you didn't and then pissed off the patricians, he would be leading the pro-distribute faction, and bringing most of the military and food with him.
Pretty much everything I expected. The King is in favor of Distributing. The Heir is in favor of distributing. The only reason Distribute Land would fail would be if the Urban Patricians decided to block it in the name of the (somewhat confused why it matters) People.
The priests were the nearest thing to opposition, and thats only because they want you to distribute to them instead.
