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To Establish Peace - A Romance of the Three Kingdoms Quest

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Spotted another contradiction (or at least a retcon) while going through the Info posts;

Gaz said:
It's unique to Liang Shu, but other "Determination" Traits exist.
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Gaz said:
Because a couple of people asked me this via Private Message or elsewhere, yes, some Traits are unique to certain historical personages. No, Liang Shu does not currently have any unique Traits. This means that Break the Cage is actually not exclusive to Liang Shu alone. At least one other person has it.
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Was there an explanation for this at some point?
 

I thought this was a neat creation of one Fornadan, although he says it tends to underestimate the populations of areas where barbarian tribes pay tribute collectively rather than as individual or household taxpayers and aren't counted so effectively such as in the south. For a reference versus the province level, there's also a handy colored map here that mostly matches up although there apparently is some blurriness about the very edges between these maps:


Bing is pretty desolate as northern provinces go but Shangdang itself is surrounded by some of the highest density populations around.

Edit: Just reread the dates and realized that this map is based on a census about 200 years before our situation. I still find it interesting but as to accuracy, eh...

Double Edit: I found one from ~140 AD by the same folks, this is only about six decades-ish off! Seems that the intervening nonsense with Wang Mang's Xin (New) Dynasty and the decline of the following Eastern Han did rather bad things for the population.

 
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Yep, I used one of Fornadan's maps in the map informational, they're pretty neat!

Regarding population, it is generally agreed that the Han population was burgeoning by the 180s - it may even have reached over 70 million, by some estimates. The problem was a lack of accurate censuses as well as people doing whatever they could to avoid tax. The overpopulation was considered one of the reasons for the Han's decline, as due to neglect by governments on both the local and national level, the huge growing peasant population was getting unsustainable. This meant that the commoners were especially vulnerable to sudden famines and diseases, and there was often not a lot of work to go around. Because of this, the last decades of the Han lead to huge amounts of commoner migration and the movement of vast quantities of people as they searched for work and food. This made accurately doing a census even more difficult, especially as huge numbers of commoners left their home counties and started migrating south of the Yangtze. Foreign raids on the border, banditry, rebellions, uprisings, and the eventual civil war caused an incalculably large quantity of people of all social classes to migrate and flee south.
 
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Officer Satisfaction
  • Informational
    • As a leader increases in power, expanding their land and influence, they require more and more followers in order to ensure their court, administration, logistics and army are all managed smoothly. As talented men and women are recruited in greater numbers, it becomes near impossible for their overlord to personally forge friendships and bonds with every single one of them. Whilst, so far, Liang Shu has made use of personal friends and family to form his core circle of followers, there will be many who join his ranks for reasons other than their closeness and friendship with him. These retainers are crucial for the expansion and growth of your increasingly large faction, but their loyalties must be closely maintained. Disatisfaction in the ranks can lead to corruption, sabotage, neglect, betrayals and defections.

    Every officer that Liang Shu lacks a Bond with will have a stat called Satisfaction, that represents how loyal they are to his cause and how happy they are with their current lot in life. The talented and ambitious strive for promotion and challenges, and will not be happy for long with menial duties or acting as mere assistants.
    Satisfaction is measured on a 0-100 scale, with 100 representing a officer who is fully content in their role and truly loyal to Liang Shu's regime. The higher one's Satisfaction, the more likely they will perform actions on their own to benefit the faction. The lower Satisfaction falls, the more your officers will be susceptible to rumours and gossip spread by your enemies, as paranoia sets in. They may even purposefully neglect their duties or sabotage the efforts of others if they are truly unhappy. Betrayal is guaranteed should Satisfaction drops to zero.
    As well as rewarding your hardworking and faithful followers, there are other ways to manage Satisfaction. Liang Shu can use his own Actions to monitor the happiness of his court and see what issues may be arising. Tasks seen as important or highly valued will also help maintain the Satisfaction of your more talented officers. However, each individual has their own hidden modifiers and characteristics and some may be difficult to keep happy no matter what you do. Sometimes, weeds must be extracted and destroyed, to allow the rest of the garden to fully blossom..
     
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  • Informational
    • Was going to be an addendum to a previous informational, but gave it it's own Threadmark for visibility.

    Officers being recruited from this turn onwards that do not have some personal connection, friendship or relation to Liang Shu will have Satisfaction.
     
    Gaz said:
    Officers being recruited from this turn onwards that do not have some personal connection, friendship or relation to Liang Shu will have Satisfaction.
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    Is it possible for an Officer to start with the Satisfaction system and then develop enough of a connection with Shu that they switch to the Bond system?
     
    As we reach that scale of officer corps, is Liang Shu nearing the power of an appointed official like a prefect, at least on an informal basis?
     
    Himmelhand said:
    As we reach that scale of officer corps, is Liang Shu nearing the power of an appointed official like a prefect, at least on an informal basis?
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    He has the loyalty and respect of most of the county and a sizable army at his back. All he needs is legitimacy. Luckily for him, with the current crisis, the Han is more likely to reward people like him than risk further rebellion. Also as central control cracks further, having a big stick will matter more than titles.
     
    Gaz said:
    He has the loyalty and respect of most of the county and a sizable army at his back. All he needs is legitimacy. Luckily for him, with the current crisis, the Han is more likely to reward people like him than risk further rebellion. Also as central control cracks further, having a big stick will matter more than titles.
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    And does being betrothed to the Inspector of the Province's granddaughter get us any legitimacy? Does the rank in the military he was promised by Lu Bu get any either?
     
    McLuvin said:
    And does being betrothed to the Inspector of the Province's granddaughter get us any legitimacy? Does the rank in the military he was promised by Lu Bu get any either?
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    Shu was officially instructed by Ding Yuan to deal with the bandits in Xinshen, which is why he was allowed to personally raise such a large force in the first place.
     
    Erzherzog_Karl said:
    ..and he still harmed our efforts against the bandits more than anything else, we needed Dong to get rid of him and I would not dare to think how horrible our situation would be if we would still need to deal with him.
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    If you didn't take the Dong option but also remained passive regarding Leng Jun (i.e you didn't take drastic measures) you likely would have been up shit creek at the moment.
     
    Erzherzog_Karl said:
    ..and he still harmed our efforts against the bandits more than anything else, we needed Dong to get rid of him and I would not dare to think how horrible our situation would be if we would still need to deal with him.
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    To be fair, we didn't put any effort into getting rid of him and instead chose to prioritise raising forces for the bandits. If we'd prioritised getting rid of him we almost certainly would have and the County would be in better shape, but our personal forces would be weaker.
     
    Any chance of getting a reactions interlude after the current defense arc is over? I'd like to see what the notables like Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Gongsun Zan, Zhang Jiao, Sun Jian, and others think of our public actions.

    Also we need to get that +2 against bandits option soon.
     
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