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Paths of Civilization

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Publicola said:
"Sure, we've occupied your entire country with our military garrisons, and we desperately need warm water ports, but you can go ahead and keep Crimea and the rest of the Black Sea. And we're a centralized nation-state despite not getting conquered and unified by the Mongols, but sure you can keep your cultural independence and separate administration that will inevitably threaten us in future generations, no biggie."
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They would have the right to garrison in the People's borders, but they have other concerns, most notably the Kielmyr Triple Crown who are their biggest rivals, and the Wyrsyn Federation (Not!Poland) and others in that region. They wouldn't garrison you completely, that would be suicidal for them. There would likely be garrisons in key ports, but you would also have the right to garrison your own cities alongside them. Culturally, they are at a massive disadvantage against you and are know it, but also crave access to your cultural institutions.

Again, the long term calculus is:

  • The Gylruv will go after the warm water ports eventually, even if it costs them significantly, and the strategic reality is that the effort to keep them out will let the Black Sheep pounce.
  • Just surrendering the warm water ports gives them a stranglehold over strategic resource flow that keeps the People's budget in the black, and they would know it, allowing them to leverage control to gain more control.
  • The only way to keep the integrity of their territory is to have a peer military power join forces, but the only two options would require massive incentive to do so - hence a protectorate arrangement that give them considerable access and the ability to dictate foreign policy.
  • However, by going into such an arrangement now, while the People are whole, they can maintain cultural and administrative integrity and leverage advantages in manufacturing and education to wriggle out from under their thumb. If given more time to build up the Monsoon Sea ports and transoceanic trade, they can shift vital supply lines out of the Yllthon Sea, and even the loss of the northern river ports wouldn't necessarily be an economic deathblow. Depending on how things shake out, the People might also be able to culturally transform the Gylruv or Black Sheep nobility into thinking of themselves as Ymaryn instead of their current culture. Either way, they figure that if they can secure a few more generations to sort out how to survive without the Yllthon river ports they can make a bid for independence and retain the majority of your current holdings.
 
Academia Nut said:
and retain the majority of your current holdings
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So we'd be even smaller and lose our dominance of Yllthon as well as our major ports there and Gylruv would have the seaports they wanted and have less trouble taking them?

What the actual fuck.

Is our chief diplomat actually the kings brother who was dropped on his head as a child and only got the post because of royal blood?
 
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McLuvin said:
So we'd be even smaller with and lose our dominance of Yllthon as well as our major ports there and Gylruv would have the seaports they wanted and have less trouble taking them?

What the actual fuck.
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As it currently stands, you die without those ports, no questions asked, you just don't have the ability to function as a government without the trade they bring. In a few decades time, they would be incredibly valuable but no longer critical for your survival. You would obviously try to retain them, but their loss would no longer result in government collapse and your nation being torn apart.
 
Academia Nut said:
As it currently stands, you die without those ports, no questions asked, you just don't have the ability to function as a government without the trade they bring. In a few decades time, they would be incredibly valuable but no longer critical for your survival. You would obviously try to retain them, but their loss would no longer result in government collapse and your nation being torn apart.
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Oh yes, it'd just be the loss of a very large chunk of our ethnic and cultural population, economy and then giving the Gylruv the ability to now beat the shit out of us at sea there.

All whilst the Black Sheep are still a thing and our neighbor as this happens. Likely after a lengthy and costly war of independence.


Tell me again how this isn't exactly like the fight both option except we make them both bleed less and eke out a few more pitiful generations of existence under their boot?
 
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"Let's do this!"

"Let's not do that."

"This is an awesome idea!"

"That is a terrible idea."

"We're the best ever!"

"We're going to regret this."

GM: "That didn't work."

"THE GM MUST BE CHEATING!!!"

:facepalm:
 
ctulhuslp said:
Same here.

If we get Planet Buster, we are totally using it on our own planet too. This place can burn.

#NephandiDidNothingWrong
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I don't want to go out in a blaze of glory. I just want to kill everyone who remembers a time anything negative happened to us and covertly rewrite the history books.

McLuvin said:
Oh yes, it'd just be the loss of a very large chunk of our ethnic and cultural population, economy and the ability for the Gylruv to now beat the shit out of us at sea there.

All whilst the Black Sheep are still a thing and our neighbor as this happens. Likely after a lengthy and costly war.


Tell me again how this isn't exactly like the fight both option except we make them both bleed less and eke out a few more pitiful generations of existence under their boot?
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Look, the QM is making it pretty clear that good things will happen if we take the deal. Never mind whether that make sense and just take it.
 
SeptimusMagisto said:
Look, the QM is making it pretty clear that good things will happen if we take the deal. Never mind whether that make sense and just take it.
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That's why I'm voting Gylruv.

You see, you can trust AN at this point to ignore logic. And when logic says we shouldn't be able to survive this and this shouldn't be the deal offered in the first place you can count on the fact AN will make sure those things happen.

The Ymar will come out of this a world power. Even though it makes no logical sense whatsoever that it should happen that way.

It's what I'm counting on.
 
10ebbor10 said:
Orbital rings are vastly larger and more complex than space elevators, or are you not talking about the thing I'm talking off.
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We have the technology to build orbital rings, but not the more well known space elevator which requires technologies we don't have. Moreover, we can bootstrap orbital rings, which we can build with our existing technologies today.
 
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Academia Nut said:
most notably the Kielmyr Triple Crown who are their biggest rivals, and the Wyrsyn Federation (Not!Poland) and others in that region.
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I was under the impression that Kielmyr was Poland-Lithuania. Now I'm wondering if they're Austria-Hungary, or some other nation. Can you clarify?

Academia Nut said:
The only way to keep the integrity of their territory is to have a peer military power join forces, but the only two options would require massive incentive to do so - hence a protectorate arrangement that give them considerable access and the ability to dictate foreign policy.
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That's just blatantly not true. A few options:
  • Incentivize Not!Russia to turn westward and pursue warm-water ports in the Baltics instead of the Black Sea
  • Offer Not!Russia access and 'favored trade partner' status with our Black Sea ports, so they don't need to conquer them to get what they want
  • Utilize our trading partners and allies in Not!Europe to pressure Not!Russia to back down
  • Invite Not!Russian nobles to our universities to culturally 'convert' them before the threat is imminent, before we get vassalized
  • Utilize our industrial base to subsidize and support Not!Russian rebel movements and break-away factions to destabilize their government
  • Approach the Not!Mughals to tell them that we will accept protectorate status with them if they offer a better deal than Not!Russia
  • Approach the Not!Russians to tell them about the new & better deal the Not!Mughal just offered us (rinse and repeat)
In other words, use our strengths -- industrial, commercial, diplomatic -- for advantage.


Seriously, nothing about this is new. Have you ever read Isaac Asimov's Foundation series? In the first book, Terminus finds itself in almost exactly this position: an industrial powerhouse without much of a military, caught between two powerful empires that share its borders. And Terminus resolves the crisis by leveraging the balance of power to keep their independence. More notably, Isaac Asimov was so confident in this solution, that he treated it as inevitable, as the single most obvious response to the dilemma, as something literally dictated by the most basic principles of psychohistory.

You've written the story of a entire civilization built from scratch, a quarter-million words long, spanning from earliest human memory to the height of the Classical Era. It's one of the best, most detailed, most realistic stories I've read on this site.

How it is possible you're not getting this?!
 
Publicola said:
I was under the impression that Kielmyr was Poland-Lithuania. Now I'm wondering if they're more like Austria-Hungary. Can you clarify?
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They're a thinly veiled expy of the Kalmar Union/Swedish empire.

Basically if it sound sounds somewhat similar in name to our timeline you can likely bet it's likely the First Nation you think of with little deviancy.
 
SeptimusMagisto said:
Look, the QM is making it pretty clear that good things will happen if we take the deal. Never mind whether that make sense and just take it.
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QM makes sense to me.

SeptimusMagisto said:
Well, bad things keep happening. And we can't fix them because we have the control of an MMO being played on AOL and apparently no one else in our society is authorized to respond to events as they happen.
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Remember that with our focus on diplomacy and trade we were able to see the train coming from a mile away, which let us course correct.

Publicola said:
You've written the story of a entire civilization built from scratch, a quarter-million words long, spanning from earliest human memory to the height of the Classical Era. It's one of the best, most detailed, most realistic stories I've read on this site.

How it is possible you're not getting this?!
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Hazard of broadstroke timeskips in which things are not being simulated in much details?
 
McLuvin said:
Oh yes, it'd just be the loss of a very large chunk of our ethnic and cultural population, economy and then giving the Gylruv the ability to now beat the shit out of us at sea there.

All whilst the Black Sheep are still a thing and our neighbor as this happens. Likely after a lengthy and costly war.


Tell me again how this isn't exactly like the fight both option except we make them both bleed less and eke out a few more pitiful generations of existence under their boot?
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The calculus here is extremely easy
1) We lose that stuff now, we die
2) We lose that stuff later, we might survive
3) By offering vassalage, we give ourselves that time and a chance to not lose stuff in the first place, plus Hail Mary at cultural conversion
 
Stop: I didn't come here to climb mount salt
  • Staff Post
    • i didn't come here to climb mount salt Yet climb it I will.

    This thread will be locked until tomorrow.

    This thread will calm down. It will calm down and engage with both it's constituent members and @Academia Nut who has spent 260K words on making this thread an enjoyable place for everyone, or I will keep it locked for longer. Stop insulting each other, stop edging close to violations of Rule 3 and stop acting like a single thing going wrong in a Quest is the end of the world.

    Are we quite clear?
     
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  • Staff Post
    • I think our universities are promising for reviving the attractive ideas from the old culture; here's hoping we manage to maintain our lead there into the space age.
     
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