DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
No, i distinctly remember AN saying 'the tally system has been getting more complex and can now be used to communicate more and more complex ideas'
Paths of Civilization
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original
Sure, but it isn't there yet. It's still early logographic writings.
But the chiefs and advisers have been using it to communicate and send messages since we evolved it from proto-writing? Haven't they? Hang on I'm trying to find the quote I'm thinking of.
The messenger probably just remember what he is supposed to remember.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
We probably can't convey complex abstract ideas, but basic communication should be easily possible with logographic. We just need to get a bit of an alphabet in there, and we can convey legends and stories easily.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hah!
So what, smash everyone around us into submission and hold a big stick to keep them there? I'd approve if our society was more historically martial.
Um...
This is way back during the war with the blight.
Also, there are current logographic writings, you know. Like Chinese Hanzi and Japanese Kanji. They convey legends and stories easily...
I rather hope that we go about it similarly to the Japanese and develop an alphabet (instead of a syllabary because it would not work with our phonology) to use in addition to and together with the logographic symbols. That always seemed to me to be the best of both worlds. Also, it's similar to how the Egyptian hieroglyphs worked. Redundancy. It's a feature, not a flaw.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
We're early logographic still, those systems are very, very old. And I said we can't record complex abstractions , which are even harder to convey.
- Location
- Austria
As a person who tries to learn Japanese and is hurt by kanji: spirits please no. Rote learning of 5000 of those asshole pictures who change their reading and meaning depending on the phase of the moon* is a paaain. I have no idea how people can learn Chinese.
*Technically, there are rules, but there are so many fucking exceptions "phase of the moon" is not exactly wrong way of describing it
Also, @Candesce makes a good point: it is better to waste an opportunity than to be unprepared when the war comes knocking. Not sure whether it applies here - it can be argued that we are a bit lacking in the diplomatic contacts and trade department and should invest more while there is such a prime opportunity - but the gist of their argument makes sense.
Like we kept saying, it's not fully developed yet.
- Location
- Inner Sol System
Also important to note is that our religion doesn't seem to be having as much of a current effect on our proto-writing as people seem to be thinking. That recent bit that @Eri quoted was the result of our administrators and bureaucrats adapting the language for more and more esoteric subjects. If that trend continues, focusing on our bureaucracy to move our system of writing along should help better than our religion.
Probably won't matter for this vote but for the future
@Academia Nut
If we get a hero unit but don't make him/her high chief (King now I guess) will he still do bonus things in the background while he's alive?
@Academia Nut
If we get a hero unit but don't make him/her high chief (King now I guess) will he still do bonus things in the background while he's alive?
Ah, sorry, Japanese was a bad example. The On and Kun readings are a result of mixing both the native Japanese pronunciation of the word and the original Chinese pronunciation of the symbol and do add some unnecessary complexity. What I meant was I would like us to have some redundancy in our writing as an aid to understanding. For example, both using a logograph for the semantic meaning of a word and adding some additional symbols to express the phonetic sound of the word.
And I'm saying that I think it's a bit more developed than you seem to think. (Although I may have conflated you a bit with the first person who I replied to who didn't seem to think we had a writing system at all, sorry.) I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have it improve or that it's impossible to improve, rather than it can convey complex ideas and, in fact also abstract ones. Like endless/ uncountable and power/fist.
It seems likely that administration strain and a larger need for bureaucratic communication would help the writing system develop, yes. However, I want to point out that the bit I quoted was ages ago. Twenty turns or something.
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I VERY much agree with this. We held off on building up our military with the shaman leader because his martial ability was Poor, figuring the next leader could do it. Mediocre isn't perfect. but the idea we can just wait to get a decent military together is absurd. Time's up, it just needs doing now.
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As some have said, we just have no idea what things are going to look like with our new government and potentially a Wonder done. If we got bonus stability from the Scourge Warding, it'll make Restore Harmony a nonfactor. If Centralization tanks, we'll probably want to main Expand Trails. We'll see.
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- Location
- Austria
Fair enough. I still want more than +1 Stability to actually take 'Take in ALL the refugees for critical stability hit and ludicrous econ boost' option - even if this does not evolve the trait (and it prrobably can), it is still cool as fuck.
So, I am aiming at ~+3 Stability here. But that can wait until after we are sufficiently protected against Dead Priests.
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
Yet again, Papa Panda predicts the future.
- Location
- Austria
Which is why it should be used when we are high enough, so that even utter failure won't lead to crisis; conversely, Festivals, being limited in numbers (only so much days in the year), should only be used on bringing up already really low Stability.
Actually, look at the bolded.
Restore Harmony
-Step 1: Use Blackbirds to observe Disharmonious individuals
-Step 2: Correct Disharmony.
--Martial Chief - Send out the warriors to intimidate or eliminate dissenters
--Admin Chief - Ensure the resource allocations undercut the causes of dissent
--Mystic Chief - Frown at the Disharmonious. Have someone clean up the pee afterwards.
--DIplo Chief - ???
I dare say it's entirely possible for a Restore Harmony to be implemented Diplomatically, for the dissenters to be bribed and manipulated...
...and Trails are trade routes, a Trader chief may be quite good at finding the best places to put them, though probably not quite as good at actually building them.
Alphabet isn't necessarily a given, but that breakthrough likely relies more on making literacy more widespread than anything else.
Current uses of the written language are:
-Shamans - Trained specialists. Largest vocabulary
-Administrators - Trained specialists. Limited vocabulary needed.
-Chiefs - Trained speciaists. Broad but not deep vocabulary.
-Advisors - Elite non-specialists. Likely specialied vocabulary
Most of these people have a job training time of a couple of decades. Logographic complexity would be just accepted as part of the job. Alphabet comes quickly when you want EVERYONE to use the language.
It has major drawbacks in language mastery time investment however.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Erm... we held off on military with Bynwyn because all of our other actions were necessary. In order to finish the megaproject sometime this century we had to actually do the pre-reqs. That he was terrible at working martial stuff was a side-concern that just added to the wall of reasons not to expand warriors while he was leader.
- Location
- Dreiländereck
[X] Yes (Consumes Econ, establishes permanent oversea trade route with Metal Workers)
[X] Twythulmyn (Mediocre Martial, Average Econ, Heroic Diplomacy, probable two turn lifespan)
[X] Large increase to local power (Changes government type to Early Ancient Provincial Kingdom, alters action spread, completes prereqs for Scourge Warding early, miscellaneous effects)
Not that my vote would be necessary now.
[X] Twythulmyn (Mediocre Martial, Average Econ, Heroic Diplomacy, probable two turn lifespan)
[X] Large increase to local power (Changes government type to Early Ancient Provincial Kingdom, alters action spread, completes prereqs for Scourge Warding early, miscellaneous effects)
Not that my vote would be necessary now.