Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
The point of info trading being far more important in the short-middle term than actual trading of goods is a very good one.
It's absolutely true that it's going to be the main avenue to cement continued contact between the ES and the WS.
However, even if it's easier and less costly than transporting goods, info trading will still benefit significatively from road safety.
For example: We have brought Han geomancers experts so they can exchange knowledge and techniques about how to deal with the Grave with the Seared Lands. We would very much like if the could establish a longer term collaboration based on that exchange.
Now, those Han geomancers are going to need to move back and forth from the embassy quite frequently, and they will do so through the main road.
So improving road safety will facilitate info trading, and reduce the chance of political incidents (like a Han group being attacked because the roads are less safe).
[X] Suggest in the interest of authority and further warding against tribal violence that outposts in the unclaimed section be fully shared structures, staffed by personnel from both nations. (-1 WP favorability, -1 PT Favorability. Improved road defenses and further mingling and cultural contact. Better response time to incursions against the road.)
You just had to jinx it.
Aliya
Someone I might become
- Location
- Kazakhstan
- Pronouns
- They/She/It
[X] Suggest in the interest of authority and further warding against tribal violence that outposts in the unclaimed section be fully shared structures, staffed by personnel from both nations. (-1 WP favorability, -1 PT Favorability. Improved road defenses and further mingling and cultural contact. Better response time to incursions against the road.)
Leaning towards this side of the debate.
Leaning towards this side of the debate.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
[X] Suggest in the interest of authority and further warding against tribal violence that outposts in the unclaimed section be fully shared structures, staffed by personnel from both nations. (-1 WP favorability, -1 PT Favorability. Improved road defenses and further mingling and cultural contact. Better response time to incursions against the road.)
Good travel infrastructure is really important to enabling contact between groups. Especially in a death world. This choice is a multiplier: Every trip is now faster and less expensive. Every group that would be interested in sending people over to the otherside but wouldn't because travel risks are a bit high no longer has to worry about that. More people will be willing to carry people along the road, making trips more frequent. Smaller groups means faster travelling times. And more. All of those things will snowball, giving us much better returns down the line.
And regarding the WP loss, I suspect there's a greater chance some disaster would happen with minimal security, thereby harming WP soldiers or ES traveller's, thus pissing off Xia Ren anyhow. Not saying there's a big chance, but I think long run this option could be competitive in favour terms anyhow. Group inclinations towards the project won't be locked in forever past the summit. And increasing the number of shared witnesses helps prevent future skullduggery; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Buuuuutttt favourability also snowballs. The higher it is, the less likely we are to lose it. It would be like if your consumables in a video game improve in quality as you got more of them. Which makes waiting till you have lots before you consume them much more attractive. So I'm going to be wishy-washy and vote for both.
[X] Suggest alternating road outposts along the unclaimed length. But allow basing for patrols at each other's outposts, for rest and recuperation. (Minimal contact, no favorability cost, due to successes thus far.)
Good travel infrastructure is really important to enabling contact between groups. Especially in a death world. This choice is a multiplier: Every trip is now faster and less expensive. Every group that would be interested in sending people over to the otherside but wouldn't because travel risks are a bit high no longer has to worry about that. More people will be willing to carry people along the road, making trips more frequent. Smaller groups means faster travelling times. And more. All of those things will snowball, giving us much better returns down the line.
And regarding the WP loss, I suspect there's a greater chance some disaster would happen with minimal security, thereby harming WP soldiers or ES traveller's, thus pissing off Xia Ren anyhow. Not saying there's a big chance, but I think long run this option could be competitive in favour terms anyhow. Group inclinations towards the project won't be locked in forever past the summit. And increasing the number of shared witnesses helps prevent future skullduggery; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Buuuuutttt favourability also snowballs. The higher it is, the less likely we are to lose it. It would be like if your consumables in a video game improve in quality as you got more of them. Which makes waiting till you have lots before you consume them much more attractive. So I'm going to be wishy-washy and vote for both.
[X] Suggest alternating road outposts along the unclaimed length. But allow basing for patrols at each other's outposts, for rest and recuperation. (Minimal contact, no favorability cost, due to successes thus far.)
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NoxOfUmbra
Shadow of the night
- Location
- Colombia, South América
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Proceeds to vote for the same one anyway
[X] Suggest in the interest of authority and further warding against tribal violence that outposts in the unclaimed section be fully shared structures, staffed by personnel from both nations. (-1 WP favorability, -1 PT Favorability. Improved road defenses and further mingling and cultural contact. Better response time to incursions against the road.)
kfrar
Aspiring Encyclopedia
While I'm sure the shared infrastructure will help against Cloud-related incidents, I'm less confident that it'll help with Polar-related incidents. Or Imperial ones, looking at things from the other side.
We've seen issues crop up with shared infrastructure already, setting up a massive amount of shared infrastructure between Polar warrior women and Imperial warrior men far from any central oversight is going to cause us a constant stream of issues while everyone is so unfamiliar with each other. And constant petty conflicts between our military assets represent a drain on our time and on the appeal of increased cross-cultural interaction, whereas inefficiencies in Cloud response give us additional leverage to push for increased integration in border security after our two nations have had more time to grow used to each other.
...Also, the implication that we're hoarding our elixirs or whatever when we have a whopping three points of PT favor total and we've still got more than half of the summit left to spend them in is wild. The Culture section isn't even the hypothetical last boss we're saving our consumables for in this analogy, it's literally the next thing we're doing, with an entire mystery fourth arc to spend our remaining chips on coming in after that.
We've seen issues crop up with shared infrastructure already, setting up a massive amount of shared infrastructure between Polar warrior women and Imperial warrior men far from any central oversight is going to cause us a constant stream of issues while everyone is so unfamiliar with each other. And constant petty conflicts between our military assets represent a drain on our time and on the appeal of increased cross-cultural interaction, whereas inefficiencies in Cloud response give us additional leverage to push for increased integration in border security after our two nations have had more time to grow used to each other.
...Also, the implication that we're hoarding our elixirs or whatever when we have a whopping three points of PT favor total and we've still got more than half of the summit left to spend them in is wild. The Culture section isn't even the hypothetical last boss we're saving our consumables for in this analogy, it's literally the next thing we're doing, with an entire mystery fourth arc to spend our remaining chips on coming in after that.
I'm honestly surprised at how contentious this vote has become.
When I first saw the options in the update I thought, "oh, this is one of those votes that end up at 70vs20". Instead we are almost at a tie and each option constantly overtaking each other.
It was presented as "Jaromilla's revelation has granted you an unique chance to advance your objectives even further. Will you take the risk?". I was sure people would jump right into it. It doesn't even cost MoI favor! That alone is already crazy.
Even leaving aside the "be ambitious" selling point, the shared option has so many benefits on all terms.
Short term: increased safety of the soldiers. More collaboration in setting up, organizing and manning those bases.
Middle Term: less incidents to burden the judical system. Safer and more stable routes for dignataries. Increased cultural mingling.
Long Term: facilitate trade in the future. Yes, I know it will take maybe centuries to have actual, developed trade. But at some point the relevant parties are going to look into if it's profitable or even viable at all to develop the roads even further. A good record of minimum raids will be invaluable there.
One of the most frustrating aspects is that there is no way to quantify how beneficial "safer" is.
Look at the Fief Mechanics. The fief has a Defense rating which determines the chance of negative effects happening, so we can weight options based on how they improve that rating.
There is nothing like that here. If the shared option said it increased "Road Defense" from 85 to 95 we could argue that the improvement isn't so significant as to warrant sacrificing WP and PT favor.
If it increased from 60 to 85, the shared bases would be far more attractive.
And of course there is the big mystery box of the PT demands on the cultural section. If we somehow miracously end up with PT favor of 5 at the end of it, we won't be able to retroactively change this vote, so we would have missed the chance to improve soldier's safety over nothing.
It's maddening, truly.
When I first saw the options in the update I thought, "oh, this is one of those votes that end up at 70vs20". Instead we are almost at a tie and each option constantly overtaking each other.
It was presented as "Jaromilla's revelation has granted you an unique chance to advance your objectives even further. Will you take the risk?". I was sure people would jump right into it. It doesn't even cost MoI favor! That alone is already crazy.
Even leaving aside the "be ambitious" selling point, the shared option has so many benefits on all terms.
Short term: increased safety of the soldiers. More collaboration in setting up, organizing and manning those bases.
Middle Term: less incidents to burden the judical system. Safer and more stable routes for dignataries. Increased cultural mingling.
Long Term: facilitate trade in the future. Yes, I know it will take maybe centuries to have actual, developed trade. But at some point the relevant parties are going to look into if it's profitable or even viable at all to develop the roads even further. A good record of minimum raids will be invaluable there.
One of the most frustrating aspects is that there is no way to quantify how beneficial "safer" is.
Look at the Fief Mechanics. The fief has a Defense rating which determines the chance of negative effects happening, so we can weight options based on how they improve that rating.
There is nothing like that here. If the shared option said it increased "Road Defense" from 85 to 95 we could argue that the improvement isn't so significant as to warrant sacrificing WP and PT favor.
If it increased from 60 to 85, the shared bases would be far more attractive.
And of course there is the big mystery box of the PT demands on the cultural section. If we somehow miracously end up with PT favor of 5 at the end of it, we won't be able to retroactively change this vote, so we would have missed the chance to improve soldier's safety over nothing.
It's maddening, truly.
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Woops! Thanks for that, I changed my vote.Proceeds to vote for the same one anyway
kfrar
Aspiring Encyclopedia
That's half of what happened. As a reminder of what Ling Qi actually thought -
So the fact that our first option reads like this -
Is already a benefit from Jaromila's and our own work. Without her help, this vote would've looked something like this:
Which is clearly much worse. As things stand, we're guaranteed a moderate level of security at minimum, and in terms of favor benefits, either way, we're getting our money's worth.
The question of whether we should go with the stretch goal or stretcher goal comes down to the long-term outlook of each option, as well as our willingness to spend 1.3 of our scarcer favorability points now when we've still got half the summit to go.
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Oh, you shouldn't have bothered!
That's a likely possibility.
But I prefer to read it as "you can get the great option at minimal cost" over "you can get the good option for free".
It's certainly a plus we have skipped the ok option, though.
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Jiven
With the power of the moon...
- Location
- Strasbourg, France
[X] Suggest in the interest of authority and further warding against tribal violence that outposts in the unclaimed section be fully shared structures, staffed by personnel from both nations. (-1 WP favorability, -1 PT Favorability. Improved road defenses and further mingling and cultural contact. Better response time to incursions against the road.)
I know this is hyperbole, but the sentiment behind it is frustrating because I feel as though it misrepresents the sentiment behind playing it safe on this one vote.
Preserving leeway for the Culture segment of negotiations isn't out of some kind of fanatical obsession with banking favorability. It's almost the opposite. It's so that when we do spend to the bone, we'll have more to show for it, and hopefully come out of the summit with fewer unstable concessions that hamper our political activities moving forwards.
And if do end up with leftover favor, then, well, that's fine? It's not like it doesn't mean anything outside the context of the summit. A faction leaving the summit barely tolerating us is a worse outcome than a faction leaving the summit somewhat tolerating us. It does, or should, to some degree represent their practical willingness to engage with us in the future. A small boon when compared to the more tangibles we're trying to lock in from the summit itself, but still a boon.
Again, this isn't the goal of myself or, I believe, others looking to reserve flexibility for the next leg of talks. The goal is to have more points to spend on things not exploding. But if we did exit the summit with a surplus, that would not be a zero value proposition, and I think it's important, is honest, to include that in our accountings of outcomes.
Edit: oh, and the White Plumes' favorability probably doesn't matter for the next stretch anyway. Mitigating the loss is nice, but not really important. It's the guaranteed penalty to Polar Theocracy that hurts us, because they're gonna be in conflict with the MoI over shit so much.
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friggin close
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
wow, sudden lock-up
Now is when all the shared option lurkers start to pop up
(I know it's not, but still)