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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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SakSak said:
If funding is the cause, the question then perhaps should be should EIC found its own military arm in competition to the official armies, or should it perhaps channel funds to the Stirland Military?

As far as I see it, the purpose of the EIC is to facilitate trade in order to generate wealth for the good of the Empire. What benefits the EIC is secondary, and to be sought after only if it can proportionally increase the resources the EIC can in turn provide to the Empire.

If a military in the Empire is lacking funds, and this lack is impacting EIC operations, then the natural solution is the fund the Empire. To divert resources and goods where they are needed.

And not necessarily to expand operations sufficiently to outgun the legitimate local navy.
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Ehm, small issue: The current countess of Stirland is slightly obsessed with Silvania and pumps all her available funds into conquering and pacifying it.
For all that we know her better and like her more now, she's still the same person with the same flaws, who paid extremly little attention to Western/Southern Stirland.
 
SakSak said:
If funding is the cause, the question then perhaps should be should EIC found its own military arm in competition to the official armies, or should it perhaps channel funds to the Stirland Military?

As far as I see it, the purpose of the EIC is to facilitate trade in order to generate wealth for the good of the Empire. What benefits the EIC is secondary, and to be sought after only if it can proportionally increase the resources the EIC can in turn provide to the Empire.

If a military in the Empire is lacking funds, and this lack is impacting EIC operations, then the natural solution is the fund the Empire. To divert resources and goods where they are needed.

And not necessarily to expand operations sufficiently to outgun the legitimate local navy.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The legitimate local powers are the EIC. Well, one of them. The other legitimate local powers are the pirates, because the pirates and the nobles who should be stopping the pirates are synonymous, that's why there's a problem. The EIC is run by the nobility who aren't murderers and thieves. The EIC is intimately connected with the governing structures of the areas in which they trade, that's one of their main focuses.

And the military of the empire is lacking funds because they've spent them all, with the EIC, in order to acquire military resources in order to keep stomping on Sylvania. The EIC is doing all it can to help the military of the Empire by giving them those resources at very favorable rates, it's just that the military of the Empire is using everything it has right now on something else, and if they were to expend all their resources at once the company would cease existing before the problem they're trying to address could be solved.

The EIC needs to make money because money isn't arbitrary, it's a representation of the movement of the resources the Empire needs in order to do what it does, and helping people make money means that they're helping people more efficiently and productively move resources to the areas that need those resources.
 
Like, how serius a threat are pirates for well armed merchant vessels?
Because i have no problem with making our ships the most well armed merchant vessels in the empire with marines onboard.
I'm leery about dedicated warships and/or patrol vessels for pirate hunting.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Do the Dwarves make small patrol ships?

You always hear about the big Ironclads, I'm not even sure they have escorts.
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*Rolls up the shirt to the elbows* Let's see what Dreadfleet™ has to say about it.
... Alright, very little. How about Man o'War.
...bit better. Here's the (dwarven) model types from 1d4chan
  • Ironclad: A steam-powered floating metal fortress, with rotating gun turrets and paddlewheels for moving. Like other dwarf ships (and dwarfs themselves) it is slow and difficult to maneuver, but also very resilient and powerful.
  • Monitor: Just like the real life monitors, it's an armoured ship with a very low profile, making it difficult to hit. It also has a penchant for ramming, perhaps as a tribute to that period of naval warfare when ship's armor plates where so superior to their guns, that ramming was almost the only way of sinking them.
  • Nautilus: Yes, Dwarfs have *censored* submarines. Sadly, and unlike the one from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, it cannot ram, but can still submerge and be invulnerable for a turn, and fire torpedoes.
  • Dreadnought: An even bigger and nastier Ironclad, with better armour and dakka. Basically, what a real life Dreadnought would be in a medieval, magical, gritty fantasy world.
  • Gyrocopter: A steam Dwarf helicopter, of course. This one also has a gatling gun, for good measure.
  • War Balloon: What it says in the can. It has bombs and a gatling canon, but cannot board ships.
 
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I guess we're all in agreement on raising diplomacy. Anyone up for going for the relevant classes or raising specific skills next turn?
 
Valmond said:
Like, how serius a threat are pirates for well armed merchant vessels?
Because i have no problem with making our ships the most well armed merchant vessels in the empire with marines onboard.
I'm leery about dedicated warships and/or patrol vessels for pirate hunting.
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There's a large number of potential threats that could endanger shipping. You have goblins and orcs from the surrounding forests, skaven from Karak Varn, monsters in the water alive or undead, and dead last a huge explosion of banditry from a new shipping lane being opened. If the EIC is being too militarized is your concern, it's unlikely to amount to much. The focus is going to be on a small(compared to a navy) number of riverine escorts to maintain a balance between effectiveness and budgetary constraints. The EIC only needs a limited amount of vessels to protect it's shipping, and between Barak Varr and the rest of the Empire it will only be a drop in the ocean.
 
From a narrative standpoint, I actually like having low dip. It makes our character interesting to have weaknesses to work around. Instead of shoring up weaknesses, I would rather improve strengths.
 
I'm not sure i'd want to spend a trait on diplomacy, unless it has stuff other than raw skill bonus i like.
But spending some AP to study diplomacy or do diplomacy related stuff would be a good idea.
 
I know I parroting myself, but whether or not it would be good or bad to set up a paramilitary navy is not relevant yet, the important question is can we handle the politics of it? and right now its a no.

and yes, turning economic power into military power, even for something as limited as river patrol is a political action. the forces of power in the area and our bosses will start side-eyeing us no matter how nice we act or pure our intentions.

because watching out for rising star's and snuffing them out before they outstrip you is how the powerful stay powerful, it's a survival instinct at this point.

if you still are advocating for a paramilitary then I hope you advocate for Diplomacy training, because getting military power of any kind is jumping into the deep end of that pool.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
the important question is can we handle the politics of it?
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Yes, because the EIC is run by a passel of high level Stirland nobility, for whom this is precisely the sort of action enabled by the mandate given to them by the Elector Count of Stirland, and even if we ourselves can't solo any issues that crop up it's about time they pulled their weight anyways. This is a team effort.
Jyn Ryvia said:
because watching out for rising star's and snuffing them out before they outstrip you is how the powerful stay powerful, it's a survival instinct at this point.
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The Grey college doesn't keep people they don't trust around, they just stab them. If they were like that, we'd already be either dead or censured.
 
Abhorsen said:
From a narrative standpoint, I actually like having low dip. It makes our character interesting to have weaknesses to work around. Instead of shoring up weaknesses, I would rather improve strengths.
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I actually don't want DIP to be equal to are other skills, I just think we are hitting the stage where it needs to be 'ok' for the level we are on (14-16)
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
I actually don't want DIP to be equal to are other skills, I just think we are hitting the stage where it needs to be 'ok' for the level we are on (14-16)
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I like being bad at some things though. It makes us more of a character and less of a perfect ideal. Our disdain for Sigmar, and our shoddy diplomacy are two of the things that make her interesting.
 
What I am saying, is that the EIC is NOT the legitimate authority on making military decisions in Stirland. That authority belongs to the Countess and those she chooses to invest with that authority.

In thinking if the EIC should fund its own navy, a choice of opportunity must be made: What benefits Stirland and the Empire more?
All resources needed to create a navy from nothing, expended to create a private navy in the hands of a private corporation, to protect their own interests?
Or using all those resources to keep pacifying Sylvania (or for something else)?

That protecting river trade would help the EIC is a given. And that this would, over time, lead to greater resources for the Empire, likewise.
But would that same trade protection help Sitrland or the Empire more, over the funneling of those same resources to other venues? We hardly know, because we're not handling Stirland official business any more.

What we do know, is that what benefits the EIC is completely irrelevant. The EIC is a facilitator, a tool. Not the end goal.
And we have neither the authority, nor the up-to-date intel, to make decisions on behalf of the Empire on what benefits the Empire, on internal logistics and military issues like these.

Protecting trade vessels with some soldiers onboard is one thing and frankly should be already happening in the background.
Creating a navy is an entirely another.
 
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Abhorsen said:
From a narrative standpoint, I actually like having low dip. It makes our character interesting to have weaknesses to work around. Instead of shoring up weaknesses, I would rather improve strengths.
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I think we already have a lot of things to work around besides our diplomacy such as our hate for Sigmar, the various enemy factions arrayed against us, the various 'friendly' factions arrayed against us and others. Given this quest is all about Mathilde's journey through life, I'm fairly against keeping a low diplomacy just for the narrative.

Even for the Disdain for Sigmar trait, the problem wasn't to keep the trait to work around but more getting over it organically and in a satisfying manner. We aren't going to be raising diplomacy out of nowhere. We're going to be spending actions on it, learning about things and it'll be a struggle to bring it to a level where it'd be useful. That's narratively satisfying, not sabotaging ourselves.
 
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Speaking of Trade in the Empire, 2'nd Ed "The Old World Armoury - Militara & Miscellania" has a lovely extensive map of major trade routes in the Empire. It's easy to see how Marienburg screws everyone over by pretty much straddling the river outlet into the sea.
 
Abhorsen said:
From a narrative standpoint, I actually like having low dip. It makes our character interesting to have weaknesses to work around. Instead of shoring up weaknesses, I would rather improve strengths.
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I would like to be at least good enough to understand when we've screwed up or smashed it out of the park as a character as that's kind of important. Especially if we've aspirations to be a wizard lord which I do.
 
SakSak said:
What I am saying, is that the EIC is NOT the legitimate authority on making military decisions in Stirland.
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What I'm saying is that, as the nobility of Stirland, they are.

Enabling trade in the Empire benefits everybody more. As the suppliers of the current military efforts, expending resources to increase their military efforts is trivial and will be recouped in increased efficiency; Pirates are an operating cost, like utilities or taxes.
SakSak said:
But would that same trade protection help Sitrland or the Empire more, over the funneling of those same resources to other venues?
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Yes, because trade is how people eat, and it keeps the company working to provide more benefits elsewhere. If they went and gave all their money to charity that might be nice for some people, but it'd be disastrous for the prosperity of the Empire.
SakSak said:
And we have neither the authority, nor the up-to-date intel, to make decisions on behalf of the Empire on what benefits the Empire, on internal logistics and military issues like these.
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Yes, we do, that's why we're running this at all. The fundamental premise that our control over the organization isn't legitimate is faulty, because otherwise the Bursar would have told us so. It's our job to make the company the best it can be, and it being our job means it's our responsibility to determine what that actually means. There's nobody providing oversight here; the buck stops with us, and our nineteen Stewardship and twenty three Martial.
 
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My perspective on 'EIC Navy' is very simple: opportunity cost.
Are there other things we can do with our next (few) EIC actions that would be more useful? Yes. Undoubtedly and inarguably.
When we have made some inroads into turning the EIC into an information-gathering mechanism we can consider giving it an offensive military capability.
 
I have no problem with characters having weaknesses, though i don't think they are necessary for one to be interesting.
I do have a problem with a character having a weakness in a fairly central part of their job, and never taking steps to fix that weakness or work around it.

Diplomacy as a skill is important for a Grey Magister, especially someone aspiring to become a Lord Magister.
Mathilde is not stupid, she knows this, and she knows she could be better at it.
 
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