So it seems like we have 3 major goals once we're back into it.
1: Stabilize the damn food in a way that doesn't require our military's constant presence. I recall that we had started with decent progress to domesticating orchards.
2: Pottery. Can everyone, peanut gallery included, start tossing up ideas on how we might go about encouraging that?
3: Either find a way to adapt our methods of war to the grasslands, or find a way to properly turtle the valley against river raiders.
Minor goals include:
1: Sating the warriors war fervor without crippling losses.
2: Population growth and territory expansion, locked behind stable food and pottery.
3: Keep abreast of events in the lowlands without going dark for generations like we did before.
4: Encouragement of technological development.
5: Continue spreading the faith of bones. Maybe Makar might be compatible for influencing, after all they have an ancestor god, not some non-existing water spirits, and enshrined at the core of our faith are our past heroes, Red Wolf (White Wolf), Snow Fox (Black Bear), Skyfather (the elder who led us to the valley and died once we got here in the prologue) and the Speaker, much like Makar is enshrined in their faith.
Our Advantages:
1: A stable climate at home.
2: Specialized workforce, will combo even better with a greater population.
3: Cremation burial rights with sacrificial offerings to a huge flame, good for fire tech progress.
4: Impenetrable home. Remember how bullshit the 4 or 7 makar fanatics were against our elites in our favored method of war? We have 20+ of them in Greenvalley. Also masonry.
5: Did I forget to mention Masonry? We build big things in stone, something that no other local civ does or has a counter for, including the wall around Greenvalley. Although the intrigue hero might have mentioned that we've somehow worked the mountains into our buildings to his people from back when he visited us.
This ought be threadmarked honestly. But yeah, that's basically the ABCs of it. Food is going to be the trickiest thing, because we've got a food-tool dilemma. If you want to grow more food, you need more tools and people to use them, but you don't have those extra pops and tools unless you had a surplus of food for a few turns beforehand, or go raiding for pops. Barring terrible rolls, we shouldn't hit famine this turn but we desperately need to scale up food production while adding a minimum of new tool use overhead. The reality is that certain means of food production are capped by the natural capacity of the land, or by our very very inefficient methods of "farming" (if you can even call it that). This is sadly to be expected as early Neolithic societies did not really have that much excess capacity for artisans, priesthood, woodcutters. In some ways our choice to specialize is swimming against History. More typical societies are like the Makar/Brushcrest, where most everyone is a hunter, gatherer, farmer, or fisher, i.e., a food-producing pop. However this isn't fatal and we've overcome a previous crisis caused by the same food/tool problem so I've faith we can see this through. Every incremental bonii to food-production would nonlinearly, perhaps even exponentially, make us more capable and dangerous. Pottery or food storage would be an absolute godsend, as you've noted; partially by letting us carry over surpluses from earlier seasons and so smoothing out the dangerous tails of fate. Better food preservation would also help us a great deal. In the end being a "real" civilization (e.g., specializing early, preserving a sense of continuity, building big or small things) may lead to us ushering in the Bronze Age, or end with us getting wrecked and disappearing under the murky waters of prehistory.
I thought we were the only civ with anything resembling a professional military.
I guess we are Not!Sino... Jews maybe? A theocratic-ethnic group with a penchant for law making and persevering in the face of crazy odds? We have the walls and a nifty temple complex to boot. AND a secluded valley for a capital, which is an ultra bonus.
I thought we were the only civ with anything resembling a professional military.
I guess we are Not!Sino... Jews maybe? A theocratic-ethnic group with a penchant for law making and persevering in the face of crazy odds? We have the walls and a nifty temple complex to boot. AND a secluded valley for a capital, which is an ultra bonus.
IIRC Our recent military reforms put us way ahead of the other civs in terms of specialization and professionalism. I'd really want us to try and get at least one tributary before we lose this advantage.
IIRC Our recent military reforms put us way ahead of the other civs in terms of specialization and professionalism. I'd really want us to try and get at least one tributary before we lose this advantage.
That seems pretty unlikely given population disparities and the sheer size of the territory. My hope would be to humble Brushcrest and perhaps force subjugation on one their allies.
Religious work. Before it was useful as containers our religious practices encourage burning lots of stuff, and it wouldn't take long to realize it could keep a shape, which leads to religious sculpting and from there its just waiting for someone to realize if you had a hollow bit it could hold stuff.
Problem is, as I've said, it's a force multiplier for the kind of linear warfare we do. But down in the lowlands where rivers incentivize fast moving and more lightly armed troops, it may not add as much value as you might expect. Heavy infantry, for example, might not fit in canoes or run a serious risk of drowning if a battle unfolds on a river, whereas more lightly armed infantry are going to have a much easier time, say, swimming. Of course it's not useless either since specialized light infantry can conduct lowlander warfare better than the lowlanders, but we've first gotta train them on canoe warfare and just get them used to thinking more expansively about the possibilities rivers offer. For example you can outflank an enemy by having them swim across a river, advance along the opposite bank, and then swim back so they're positioned at the enemy's rear. For various reasons our armies and strategists aren't used to thinking like this, and so there is a high risk of encirclement.
Problem is, as I've said, it's a force multiplier for the kind of linear warfare we do. But down in the lowlands where rivers incentivize fast moving and more lightly armed troops, it may not add as much value as you might expect. Heavy infantry, for example, might not fit in canoes or run a serious risk of drowning if a battle unfolds on a river, whereas more lightly armed infantry are going to have a much easier time, say, swimming. Of course it's not useless either since specialized light infantry can conduct lowlander warfare better than the lowlanders, but we've first gotta train them on canoe warfare and just get them used to thinking more expansively about the possibilities rivers offer. For example you can outflank an enemy by having them swim across a river, advance along the opposite bank, and then swim back so they're positioned at the enemy's rear. For various reasons our armies and strategists aren't used to thinking like this, and so there is a high risk of encirclement.
Ya but that's if we go with anything but settlement encroachment, and any sort of attack Via water ends when you got ranged units. water landings in any era are hell to pull off much less before metal/advance armors, which no one is going to be swimming in.
Ya but that's if we go with anything but settlement encroachment, and any sort of attack Via water ends when you got ranged units. water landings in any era are hell to pull off much less before metal/advance armors, which no one is going to be swimming in.
I'm not saying that they're necessarily going to attack via the water, I'm saying that because of their more advanced signaling and shipbuilding technologies, they have a greater strategic capacity to maneuver than we do (a nonissue in the highlands, but puts any of our armies in peril if we march into the lowlands). The danger is always that multiple armies sail upriver and disembark some ways away from our forces, and then converge and encircle our armies. Think of this as us sending out an army full of infantrymen out into the steppe. The scouts have horses (the rivers) so the foe will always have a quicker and better idea of the position and progress of our armies than we have of theirs. Their armies will always be able to move faster (by sailing up and down the river) than ours will. And because their signaling tech is better than ours, they don't really run the risk of being defeated in detail.
Yes, if we attack settlements then at least we know we're going from point A to B, but there remains a high risk of being intercepted, surrounded, and killed in some hypothetical midpoint C. Really we should have seen this coming almost from the Battle of the Lakefort. In retrospect it demonstrated classic lowlander tactics: they baited us into attacking a fortified hardpoint, hid a secondary force downriver, signaled the secondary force when they were being attacked, and secondary force successfully got there in time to attack our exposed flanks. We had better troops and better organization in that battle (which saved us) but it's clear that our strategic doctrine in that particular scenario was much more primitive than theirs.
It should be clear that any subjugation attempt on Brushcrest or other river-adjacent peoples risks being the Battle of the Lakefort writ large. I understand that Lakefort was a victory; but strategically speaking we're outnumbered by the lowlanders and any battle where we take equal casualties to theirs is a battle where we've traded our better quality troops for their lower quality troops, and they have a hell of a lot more lower-quality troops. They can afford to make that trade. We can't. Ideally, like the Romans, we'd want to use our high morale and discipline to punch way about our numbers, like the Romans routinely did against Celtic or Frankish troops.
On the other hand, we saw that on the defensive or if we can get the enemy into a straight-up slugfest, we just cream them. The Makarite fanatics barely even dented our forces. To put it anachronistically, we're kinda like hoplites: shit at maneuvering, but if we get into a kinetic pushing of lines, well, our way of warfare was basically made to deal with just those situations. Look at all the battles we fought before the battle of the Lakefest. Almost always it's battles where both sides line up and basically push and stab each other until the other breaks.
So if we want to subjugate the lowlands, at a minimum we need to get better at signaling, better at scouting and making canoes, and better at maneuvering troops. That seems like a tall order but it's also an opportunity to introduce a factor into our kinetic style of warfare that will be an OOP to foes used to straight-up pushing contests. But don't count on our military organization and high morale to rectify fundamental problems with our military intelligence and
Yes, if we attack settlements then at least we know we're going from point A to B, but there remains a high risk of being intercepted, surrounded, and killed in some hypothetical midpoint C. Really we should have seen this coming almost from the Battle of the Lakefort. In retrospect it demonstrated classic lowlander tactics: they baited us into attacking a fortified hardpoint, hid a secondary force downriver, signaled the secondary force when they were being attacked, and secondary force successfully got there in time to attack our exposed flanks. We had better troops and better organization in that battle (which saved us) but it's clear that our strategic doctrine in that particular scenario was much more primitive than theirs.
I'm talking about just settling the area, and slowly murder the forces they send against our fortifications. 2-3 fully set up settlements in the riverlands and we can move onto a campaign of raising the enemies towns and taking their skulls back to our temple (or set up a new one in the river lands for their people specifically).
At this stage 100+ years of effort will be needed to expand greatly towards any area. But we need to get out of these mountains before any real siege stuff gets created, cause then it will be game over if we don't.
I'm talking about just settling the area, and slowly murder the forces they send against our fortifications. 2-3 fully set up settlements in the riverlands and we can move onto a campaign of raising the enemies towns and taking their skulls back to our temple (or set up a new one in the river lands for their people specifically).
At this stage 100+ years of effort will be needed to expand greatly towards any area. But we need to get out of these mountains before any real siege stuff gets created, cause then it will be game over if we don't.
Just a note but primitive siegecraft is hard, really hard. It's well into the bronze age before effective siege engines and even then the strategy of just sitting behind your walls and waiting until the enemy needs to return to their farms remains effective. If we are doomed it's probably gonna be because something else incites a societal collapse.
Just a note but primitive siegecraft is hard, really hard. It's well into the bronze age before effective siege engines and even then the strategy of just sitting behind your walls and waiting until the enemy needs to return to their farms remains effective. If we are doomed it's probably gonna be because something else incites a societal collapse.
1 thing, the riverlands has enough food possible to sustain a small army on the offensive for a good long time, we on the other hand have been having be on the verge of starvation from quest start.
Anyone thinks they can siege us leads to a who will run out of food first, which will be us. Cause I'm willing to bet Brushcrest and its allies will already have pottery. and as such can store food due to salt.
1 thing, the riverlands has enough food possible to sustain a small army on the offensive for a good long time, we on the other hand have been having be on the verge of starvation from quest start.
Anyone thinks they can siege us leads to a who will run out of food first, which will be us. Cause I'm willing to bet Brushcrest and its allies will already have pottery. and as such can store food due to salt.
I don't doubt that they have a greater ability to produce food than us. However they are reliant on farming, which is very labor intensive and seasonal work. For them to enact a siege they on us they would have to deploy a noteworthy portion of their labor force far away from their homes (preventing the soldiers from doing farmwork), sustain it for several seasons and hope nothing else pops up that would distract them. I don't see that as being feasible.
This is not to say that they can't fuck us over though. Our own values require us to view others as inferior so them merely visibly surpassing us would likely fuck us over. And if they get powerful enough they can likely recreate Lakefort and lock us into the valley.
1 thing, the riverlands has enough food possible to sustain a small army on the offensive for a good long time, we on the other hand have been having be on the verge of starvation from quest start.
To be fair, it's the Neolithic. Everyone is constantly on the verge of starvation. This won't really change... pretty much ever. Sure, the higher classes will have a much lower risk once states become a thing and increase in complexity, but peasants will remain one bad winter away from a famine pretty much until the industrialization.
To be fair, it's the Neolithic. Everyone is constantly on the verge of starvation. This won't really change... pretty much ever. Sure, the higher classes will have a much lower risk once states become a thing and increase in complexity, but peasants will remain one bad winter away from a famine pretty much until the industrialization.
eh 3 differenting large scale food scores, (farming/fishing/animals) and cultural ties to storing excess turns it from a single bad winter to 3 bad winters in a row. However we barely have 1.
Everyone but those further up in the mountains have 2 by this point. assuming the goat people don't have farming.
So it might be worth expanding that way later, got it.
For now we need to focus on getting food storage and making sure we do not starve. If we can complete these two tasks then we will be in a prime position.
[X] Plan We Need More Pops
-[X] Send the hunters on a raid.
--[X] scout the lowlands, find out what is going on and are there minor settlements like the one at Lakeford or outlying settlements near Bruchcrest. Avoid conflict.
---[X] 1 Light
-[X] Improve the village by construction sturdy longhouses for the people. (2 of 3 Production paid)
-[X] Send a diplomat to someone.
--[X] To the white clans
---[X] Find clans of appropriate size who believe in the Faith of Bones and persuade them to come to Greenvalley, swear oaths of allegiance to the Council of Three (as the Antler Clan chief did), and become part of the Valley People. The size of the clans should collectively number no more than three pops. Preferably we want three gatherers.
-[X] (Optional) Change the focus of the Pilgrim Village.
--[X] Encourage own culture. (+1 Valley People Culture in Greenvalley)
-[X] Attempt to change a Pops culture to Valley People.
--[X] If diplomatic attempt succeeds, convert one of the three White Clan pops to Valley People. Preferably the highest status pop of the three.
"It has been a long time since those days." There was no prompt or reason for the sentence. In fact, the house of the Council had been entirely quiet, all in attendance lost to their own thoughts as they waited for the overdue runner from Antler Rest. All eyes turned to the esteemed Councillor who had interrupted the silence, first among them his two peers. He was an old man, especially by the standards of the hunters, who had earned glory under Blood Sparrows command in the days of the Red Rivers. Unlike many of his peers, he had spent the praise and attention it brought him wisely, weaving ties to other people of influence instead of squandering it with fleeting pleasures and arrogance.
Some claimed he was getting dull in the head in his old days, but few dared so within earshot of him, even if he had developed a habit of occasionally blurting out whatever he was thinking about. Thus nobody paid the odd comment much attention, so the old man coughed loudly to draw attention to himself again. "The low-lands I mean. It's been many days since we sent someone there. Do you not wonder if the people of Makar and the people of Brushcrest still fight among each other?" The spear he still wielded was largely ceremonial and nobody could remember how many years it had been since he had actually fought anything, but the sharp obsidian blade at the top made sure that everyone paid close attention when he gesticulated with it in the vague direction of the low-lands. "We should send some hunters to have a look."
This prompted a few whispers, especially in the third of the crowd that sat behind the youngest of the three Councillors. The woman had earned her spot at the fire with her skill at shaping obsidian and haggling with clansmen, not strength of arms, and so it came to no ones surprise when she scoffed. "Some hunters? Having a look? Maybe half of them and let them scout the huts of Brushcrest?" Then she chuckled mockingly, a good part of her entourage doing likewise, much to the chagrin of the other two groups around the fire. "We need the hunters here in the valley to make sure we have enough to eat. They can't go gallivanting through the world, chasing old tales and past glories."
Many raised their voice to murmur their agreement, even some of the old mans followers chiming in, but he just tapped his spear on the ground to quiet them before the chamber could get too rowdy. "The low-landers are not stories like the Goat People. They are there and they have always been there, no matter if we looked for them or not. It would be folly to forget them." Again voices rose, yet this time he snuffed them out immediately and continuing to speak before the young woman could interrupt him. "I know you care more for our trades with the clansmen, but this is important too. Important enough to spare a hand full of hunters to travel the low-lands and see what the people there are doing. Nothing more and nothing less."
It was then that the messenger arrived in the chamber, but now it was his turn to wait for the discussion sparked by the idle though would turn to be a long one.
In the end, a small group of hunters was indeed sent to the low-lands. There were not all that many hunters to spare, for in these years the game was not as plenty as it used to be. The winters were mild, but the summers dry, and while the orchards of the Valley people easily withstood the harsh heat, other plants did not so well. The grass often turned yellow in the midst of summer and the small herds of goats and deer roamed far and wide to see their bellies full, making the hunters work for every body they brought home. Though the few scouts were all that the Council wanted anyway as nobody was interested in raiding in these years and others felt secure that such a small force would not get any ideas to start a conflict on their own. What they returned to tell about though was strange indeed.
There was no sign of the low-landers near the Gentle River, at least until you came close enough to Brushcrest that the scouts had to be wary about being ambushed. Of the Valley People's eternal foe, they thus had little to say. Some boats they spotted in the river itself, likely fishers and traders, and around the northernmost of the small villages near Brushcrest they saw a palisade, but that was all they could report on. Of the gathering hordes of mad warriors and dozens of fortified settlements that some of the more belligerent hunter sometimes spoke of, nothing could be found. On the Winding River, the scouts saw far more boats though.
Many of them were filled with baskets and the scouts were sure that the people of Brushcrest were trading with someone on that River, but they could not follow them far enough to find out with whom. On a hunch by one of the hunters, a few scouts crossed the river and made it all the way to the place where the settlement of Great Hearth once stood and here they found something surprising. Where generations ago stood a village was now only a few scatterings of a huts, each one with it's own palisade as if it was a tiny village. Two of them were occupied all the time, one the destination of the boats coming from Brushcrest, the other receiving boats that came from further up the Cold River. The other three tiny villages though seemed to belong to no one, for the scouts saw groups of travelers on foot going to them now and then, staying there for a moon or two as if it was their own, and then travelling on, leaving the huts behind for the next group to use.
For the people of Greenvalley this story made for nothing more then a strange tale about weird low-lander customs, but for the Council it was worrisome. There seemed to be no more fighting in the low-lands, instead the people of Brushcrest trading with a group living in lands that once belonged to the Makar. Again voice clashed over what to do, but this time no compromise was reached. Many felt this knowledge was of no concern, for the valley was all that the Valley People needed, while others felt threatened by the mere idea of the low-landers not fighting among each other. A tiny group though, quietly supported by the youngest member of the Council, was speaking about something entirely different though. Trade. If the people of Brushcrest could make peace with the Makar, they argued, then why not with the Valley People? It was an unpopular opinion, the grudge against Brushcrest far too ingrained into the peoples minds, but a few kept arguing for it none the less.
With another group though, trade was already happening and both sides flourished for it. Every year, more of the clansmen came into the valley to visit the White Halls, for the Faith of Bones was slowly but surely spreading along all of them. With them they brought the azurite dye found deep in the mountains, wood carvings in the clan styles and tasteful herbs plucked from passes and mountain sides. When they went, they took along tools, trinkets and cloth from the valley, often accompanied by a few enterprising Bone Tenders who wanted to see the mountains for themselves and preach to the people that made them their home. Quite a few clansmen also did the opposite and stayed in the valley, quickly merging with the people of Greenvalley. The council tried to encourage this, sending well spoken people to the White Halls to convince Clansmen to settle in the valley. There was some success with this, though much less then the Council had hoped for.
Gained 1 Worker Pop (Gatherers), which immediately converts to Valley People culture.
The tales that came from the mountains though were strange. Since time immemorial, the clans had spent the summers in the fertile valleys, hunting the goats and yaks and gathering the bounty of the earth, but it appeared that this was about to change. It was thought that no man could survive in these valleys when the winter snows hit, for the snow would pile higher then even a longhouse in the mountains and neither hunting nor gathering were possible under these circumstances. Yes a few people had apparently done so in recent years. It was not uncommon for the old, the sick and the lame to be left behind in the valley, they themselves knowing that they would not survive the trek to the their clans winter quarters and thus deciding to not burden them, but to the surprise of many, quite a few of those had been found hale and healthy a mere year later. Some claimed that the winters were not as harsh in some of the valley as the people were thinking, others speaking of their ancestors guiding them to their shrines and gifting them roots and other foods that had lain there for months without rotting.
Now there was talk among some of the younger clansmen to try and brave the winters in the mountains on purpose. There was even talk about building a whole village and a great temple for the ancestors, so that they may bless the endeavor. It would be a long and risky thing to attempt, that much was clear to even the most wild eyed dreamer among the clansmen, but it was a goal worth striving for in their opinion and the idea certainly found ample support. In the valley, many were supportive of it, having grown fond of the visiting clansmen and likewise being enamored by this new vision. Others were skeptical about it, preferring to see the clans as the nomads they had always been and fearing that they might grow bold and arrogant if they founded their own village. However, it was not their choice to make. It was the Council of Three that ruled Greenvalley and it would be their judgement that would determine if the Valley People would be helping the clans or ignoring their efforts.
The Valley People
Symbol: The heads of a bear, a wolf and a man.
Government: Absolute Directorial Despotism - Mandate of the Ancestors
General rules
- Meetings of all Councils will be held in private. However, each person attending the council may bring an additional guest, who may listen but not speak unless invited to speak by the council.
- All groups setting out to interact with outsiders must contain a representative of the their Council. Low Council representatives can only do so for groups smaller than their own community with larger groups being the domain of the High Council.
- All matters affecting more than two communities must be brought to the High Council. Matters between two communities may be resolved by their Low Councils if they can come to a consensus, or otherwise be brought to the High Council for arbitration.
- Disputes between individuals and families within a community are to be resolved by the Low Council of the community.
- High Councilor, Low Councilor, Mediums, Priests and Vice-Councilors positions are exclusive. Upon gaining one title they lose all others of the list
Organization structure
- High Council:
-- The High Council will be the highest authority of the state, referring to the three who comprise supreme authority.
-- The High Council is advised by Mediums, one selected by each Low Council. The Mediums can be a member of any community.
-- The High Council can appoint representatives from any community to speak with their authority for specific tasks when the Council cannot be present themselves.
-- Each member of the High Council must maintain at least one, and no more than three Vice-Councilors for their council duties. These Vice-Councilors must be taught how to perform and assist with the duties of a High Councilor. They can be chosen from anyone under the authority of the High Council, except for High Councilors, Low Councilors and Mediums.
- Low Council:
-- The Low Councils refer to the local authorities, each governing one permanent(lasting at least one full lifetime from birth to death) community comprising of at least three population units of adults. Such a community may be fixed or mobile in nature, so long as someone can be born into it and die belonging to it.
-- Each Low Council consists of two leaders chosen by the community, and one leader chosen by the High Council. The community leaders must be members of the community, but the High Council can choose either a local or send a representative.
-- The Low Council can appoint representatives from their community to speak with their authority for specific tasks when the Council cannot be present themselves. They may appoint representatives from other communities with the agreement of either the High Council or the other community involved.
- Priests
-- The priests must maintain an advisor to the High Council at all times, who will be allowed to listen to and advise any decisions.
-- The priests may send one advisor to any Low Council, who will be allowed to listen to and advise any decisions.
-- The priests must preferentially raise their new initiates from the orphans of the People where available. Where there are more orphans than need for new initiates, they will be chosen by lot.
Succession
- High Councilors are elected with a majority vote by the High Council and the Mediums of each Low Council from the pool of Vice-Councilors. At least two thirds of the Mediums must be present to pass such a vote.
- Mediums are selected with a majority vote by the Low Council they represent. Their status can be revoked by the same process.
- One Low Councilor seat of each community is fixed to the High Council's appointment, if this Low Councilor is removed by any means, they will be replaced by the next appointed representative of the High Council.
- The remaining two Low Councilor seats are chosen by the community they govern. Groups with preexisting selection methods may use their traditional methods, or permanently change their process to a simple majority of their community.
- High Councilors will step down in the following events:
-- Voluntary abdication, which will start the process of raising a new councilor while they remain a councilor until their successor is chosen.
-- Death
-- Incapacitation such that they are no longer able to perform their duties for more than a season.
- Low Councilors will step down in the following events:
-- Half or more of the community they govern votes to replace them.
Religion: Faith of Bones
Capital: Greenvalley
Cultural Ideas
At the dawn of time, the people were lost and separated. But in these trying times emerged three great persons that led them together again to build a brighter future. Like the Mountain Father, the Black Bear and the White Wolf, the Council of Three rules to this day, the wisdom of the ancestors guiding them on their path. No higher authority can there be in this world.
Effects:
- gain +2 on combat morale
- gain +2 on stability checks
- troops will never disobey orders or join revolts, but may participate in civil-wars normally
- allow the deployment of military units to temporarily raise stability
- may use Subjugation actions even outside of wars with that war-goal
-- can destroy Pops to eliminate cultural values of a Faction
-- can destroy Pops to eliminate a Faction entirely
-- can forcibly resettle Pops
- using subjugation actions or deploying military units to establish order raises mood
- weaker polities receive -1 Morale when facing someone with this value
- must always treat other polities as lesser and can't interact with them as peers
- Council of Three must always be the highest authority in the state
- factions unable to alter social order or political system, but can still try to gain control of the government
- social change occurs slower, but sometimes breaks violently
- during a civil war, other groups can claim the Mandate of the Ancestors to gain legitimacy
- this idea will be destroyed when the government collapses or the polity is absorbed by another polity
Challenges come and go, but only the steadfast will remain in their wake. Neither directionless action, nor hiding from them will save the people from these trials. One must face these challenges no matter how daunting they seem, and though the price they reap might be dire one will grow stronger for these losses.
Effects:
- gain +1 on stability checks
- gain +1 on Inspiration stat of all commanders
- stability loss when radically changing a started course of action due to difficulties
A man might build himself a home. He can stack stone and wood to find shelter against the elements and make a place he can call his own. Yet many man can build many homes, and with dedication and effort, even greater works they can accomplish. The world is there for man to shape and to make it more pleasing for himself.
Effects:
- bonus to development of landscaping technologies
- large-scale landscaping projects increase mood
- diplomacy malus of -1 with all groups who venerate nature
- malus to stability checks and increased mood loss from natural disasters
Blood is life. It is shed when we come into the world and all too often it is shed when we leave it. To willingly give it to another, be they living or dead, is the highest gift one can make, for the giver offers nothing less then a piece of his life. Never should such a deed be done lightly and gravest misfortune will come to those who befoul such sacred acts.
Effects:
- gain +1 on stability checks
- religion more likely to spread to populations who have no codified rites
- religion less likely to be subsumed by other faiths
- lower risk of betrayal by oath-sworn subjects sharing this value
- factions more resistant to size and influence loss, except when caused by population drop
- lower chance to detect faction plots
Current Factions
Hunters
Description: Be it the Days of Blood, the Reign of Bear and Wolf or the many battles that followed these legendary times, they always revolve around the valiant warriors of the tribe. As the might and greatest food procurers of Greenvalley, the hunters are undeniable the most important and beloved group in the entire tribe.
Size: 2 (Tiny)
Influence: 10 (Overwhelming)
Mood: 8 (Good)
Main Issues: Glory, Destroying or Subjugating Brushcrest
Secondary Issues: Exploration
Artisans
Description: Having their support chiefly among the miners and artisans of Cliffside, Crackhome and Greenvalley itself, this group is second in prestige only to the hunters and more numerous too.
Size: 4 (Small)
Influence: 6 (Average)
Mood: 6 (Content)
Main Issues: Stability, Ressources
Secondary Issues: Trade
Fishes
Description: Named after a joking answer to the question who they support, the fishers of Laketop have slowly drifted apart from the rest of Greenvalley to form their own distinct group. While wielding little direct influence in Greenvalley, the amount of food they contribute to the valley gives them still some leverage.
Size: 2 (Tiny)
Influence: 5 (Average)
Mood: 5 (Content)
Main Issues: Peace, Stability
Secondary Issues: None
Serfs
Description: Once the term for conquered people brought to Greenvalley, these days many others are counted as serfs. They represent the marginalized professions that most of the tribe has little appreciation for.
Size: 6 (Average)
Influence: 2 (Negligible)
Mood: 5 (Content)
Main Issues: Safety, Recognition
Secondary Issues: Representation
Settlements
Greenvalley
Location: Clearing in the forest near a river bend.
Size: Large Tribe
Development: Sturdy wattle and daub Village
Minor Villages:
- Crackhome - Limestone Quarry Village
- Cliffside - Obsidian Quarry Village
- Laketop - Fishing Village
- White Halls - Holy Site with Pilgrim Village
- Rivercrossing - Village
General actions:
[] Reassign some of the workers to different tasks.
-[] Let the simple workers produce some other resource.
--[] Write-In
-[] Tell the artisans to focus on something else.
--[] Write-In
[] Send the hunters on a raid.
-[] Write-In target.
-[] Write-In what troops to take.
You have 1 Production to spend this turn:
[] Erect menhirs to clearly mark the lands the Valley People claim for all to see. (Cost: 2 Production per map hex)
[] Train some of you workers in other trades. (Cost: 1 Production per Pop)
-[] Train Hunters
--[] Heavy Infantry
--[] Regular Infantry
--[] Light Infantry
--[] Archers
-[] Train Artisans
-[] Train Bone Tenders
[] Increase resource gathering slots.
-[] More orchards (Cost: 1 Production)
-[] More fishing boats (Cost: 1 Production)
-[] More cattle pens (Cost: 1 Production)
-[] Expand the clay pits (Cost: 1 Production)
-[] Expand the logging camps (Cost: 1 Production)
-[] Expand the obsidian mine (Cost: 2 Production)
-[] Expand the limestone quarry (Cost: 2 Production)
-[] Build a silver mine (Cost: 3 Production)
Note: This just increases the available slots. You still have to assign workers before something is produced.
[] Create a new village to claim more land for the Valley People. (Cost: 1 Production per Pop settled in the new village.)
-[] Write-In which Pops to settle there.
-[] Write-In where to build the village.
-[] Immediately build a palisade around the village. (Cost: 3 Production, new village must have at least 3 Pops)
You have 1 Culture to spend this turn:
[] Attempt to change a Pops culture to Valley People.
-[] Write-In which Pop
-[] Write-In how much Culture to spend.
[] Try to influence a faction.
-[] Write-In which faction.
-[] Write-In goal.
-[] Write-In how much Culture to spend.
Pick an action for the High Council:
[] Gain +1 Production to spend this turn.
[] Gain +1 Culture to spend this turn.
[] Send a diplomat to someone.
-[] Write-In target of the visit.
-[] Write-In goal of the visit.
[] Support the White Clans in establishing their first village. (Gives +1 Production to the White Clans)
-[] Offer further assistance: Write-In
Others:
[] (Optional) Change the focus of the Pilgrim Village.
-[] Encourage own culture. (+1 Valley People Culture in Greenvalley)
-[] Encourage White Clans culture. (+1 White Clans Culture in Greenvalley)
-[] Bring Valley People Culture to the White Clans. (+1 Valley People Culture in the White Clans) - Current focus
AN: You might remember the drill. Plan-voting only please.
