We won't get a fixed duration deal. We will get an 'until they think we are weak again' deal, set to expire exactly when it is most inconvenient for us.
Ymaryn Successor Quest (Paths of Civ AU)
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, not like always. That is a lie and that isn't how truces or diplomacy work. You can get deals and agreements honoured rather than broken at the first opportunity. Despite what you think, not everybody is untrustworthy backstabber.
I would also like to point out that Stymyr is unlikely to have modernized their army to gunpowder yet and given time to pick his battles the Dragon General may be the first to introduce them to the horror of attempting to charge a line of artillary.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
It is possible. It is not assured, but neither is it impossible.
Only if they think there'll be consequences. People always have reason to backstab us for our prime real estate, and there are always moments when they see we are embattled with an actual threat and decide there'll be no consequences for nibbling away at the edges. So yes, like always.
For the Ymaryn Empire this is a matter of historical record. You'd be hard-pressed to cite a major war the Ymaryn was involved in that didn't have some lesser power deciding it was their time to shine and attacking from the side.
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Yes, but maybe just this once the other civs will take one look at the - REEE hoard - of Yamrym levi and decide not to eventually end up it's target.
Not with our prestige numbers. People just do not understand what we can do, if they did the likes of Hellas and Styrmyr wouldn't bother trying to take us on 1v1 to begin with. Once we retake our full borders this problem should be solved.
Unless the Khem decide to go full Great Power War, because at that point our smaller neighbors would be perfectly correct to try something.
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- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Right, like how we just kept the Tin Tribes' land instead of restoring their independence or how we gorge the Kus during their famine for maximum profits instead lowering the prices as much as we could. Because diplomacy always works like that.
We are different. You cannot expect everyone else to act like us because they have different incentives. We plan on multi-century timeframes, which they cannot do because they do not know the shape of the future, so they just plan based on what they know.Right, like how we just kept the Tin Tribes' land instead of restoring their independence or how we gorge the Kus during their famine for maximum profits instead lowering the prices as much as we could. Because diplomacy always works like that.
Concepts like 'nationalism' or 'humanitarianism' haven't even been invented In Character. Us considering them when we act is metagaming, which the Ymaryn culture allows because it was created by metagaming to allow for actions compatible with concepts it does not even have.
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- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So your response is goal-post moving then. Because it when from that being how diplomacy always works to being how diplomacy always works if you don't count the Ymaryn. So how do you response to the fact the we had a chance of Styrmyr peacefully giving up Greenshore via diplomacy? Is that another exception to how diplomacy always work?
That was what we call an abnormality, a literal 1/1000 chance of something happening. Also I never moved goalposts, I talked about how other nations will respond to circumstances, not about how we will respond. We are questers so we think differently from the IC medieval people.
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- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The original claim was that it could never happen though I noticed that part of your post is no longer there.
And what about the Freehills? Remember all of the times that they attacked us in a moment of weakness?
Hellas found out that the hard way why you don't invade the Tin Tribes and learned why we are not total wuss. We didn't lose any prestige by white peacing Hellas, just that we didn't continue to gain prestige.
If and when we defeat Stymyr, that won't reinforce our reputation as total wuss, because we crushed them. We appease the Khem, it didn't cost us any prestige. Heck, we humiliated them on the world stage.
If and when we defeat Stymyr, that won't reinforce our reputation as total wuss, because we crushed them. We appease the Khem, it didn't cost us any prestige. Heck, we humiliated them on the world stage.
The Freehills were practically our own creation, they only existed because we spent a stupid amount of time fighting Trelli over their chattel slavery while also not conquering the land, because the players decided to do something anachronistic. So yes, I appreciate their loyalty but doubt we can replicate it unless we feel like creating a Republic of Styrmyr, and it's not like there's an option for that or even people in the Styrmyr territory with those ideas that such an option could prop up.
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This, at least, can be resolved.
@Aranfan: comments on the above?
Our internal cultures already see themselves as Ymaryn; nothing to worry about there. It's the process of digesting conquered cultures that is problematic.
Stymyr may well be more comparable to the now-conquered not!Slavs in Western Wall, who would have "screwed us over" through "ill-timed rebellions". While we're getting into two wars seems like ill/perfect timing for such a rebellion.
You seem to be focused more on possibility and ignoring the cost. We could digest Stymyr, in the absence of distraction. What we cannot do is tank the cost when we're heading into two wars.
Tinvalley is a... valley on our end, not defensive terrain? If anything, getting troops to Greenshore and Stymyr would be even harder, since we don't share a land border
I might ordinarily accept that good treatment of the masses is enough, but the Tin Tribes vote shows otherwise: if we don't reestablish their political structures (i.e. give Stymyr semi-autonomy to continue doing what they were doing), it's a "trap option" and will eventually screw us over in a way analogous to how the rebelling not!Slavic tribes would have. (Only far worse, since Stymyr is a fully developed state with furthered proto-nationalism.) Even the option to integrate them as full Ymaryn citizens, but not to preserve their power structures, was a "trap option".
I don't like it, but that's the way it is.
...
No, as Stymyr's Personal Stewards of Nature is degraded. We also know they accepted a peace treaty with a territorial loss to Tarta, something we're unlikely to do.
I don't think anyone actually knows history that well. When we White Peaced Hellas, everyone was like "wtf".
The Ymaryn have spent a thousand years being this mysterious shut-in (which is a long time to try to remember anything), and no one really knows what to expect. Counting on milennium-old history to predict behavior is kind of an iffy prospect, anyhow.
"We gave you a chance" is a reasonable strategy of escalation. For all the Stymyr know, we won't give them a second.
Moreover, we ourselves don't know that the next time we won't conquer Stymyr, so it's impossible that the Stymyr would have any true insight as to that. The vote was fairly close even this first time; if the Stymyr do receive any rumors, that will be the message.
Western Wall is feudalizing (so we can expect reduced administrative efficiency) and busy consolidating their northward conquests. I question their ability to do so at the same time as traveling five-hundred miles in the opposite direction to attack into our mountainous center of power, with our minimal supply lines and however-many millions of defenders right there. It's kind of a nonsensical operation.
On the off-chance, our new nomad friends would, hopefully, give us plenty of forewarning.
...
As we've established, the Revaunchists aren't sophisticated enough to argue for a hard border. No vindication; only the same complaints. At most, they might get angrier and throw more fits; but that is different from being strengthened.
In case you haven't noticed, we have lost land: Revaunchism is the result. There's no additional force that will make more land loss death spiral worse than before, or force us into two eternal wars at once.
If we aren't now forced to fight Stymyr and Black Sheep simultaneously, then we won't be after we weaken the revaunchists even further.
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Freehill weren't automatically our friend. Our diplomatic effort, or what little of it, made it that way.
You mean, your model of how they will react. That's the whole point of reaching out to the Hellas(we didn't, but hopefully eventually) and to the Stymyr.
Instead, all we are making are assumption based on Medieval Europe. This isn't Medieval Europe, and we shouldn't expect customs and cultures and society to work like...whatever Medieval Europe was.
For one thing, the PompPomp are controlled by half women, and their neighbors just learned how bad their assumption of a female ruler being weak was.
Er, no, that's not how it happened. See the way it happened was that we lost land, we death spiraled, and then the Core barely scraped out of certain death and that's when the Revanchists appeared. They were caused by us surviving a near collapse. A death spiral itself is a more immediate malus.
We helped those guys fix their bureaucracy, remember? What do you think they were using before we helped? The answer is feudal lords, because that's the easy alternative to functional government. It's what almost everyone is using, and it means they have a lot of the same medieval incentives and limitations.
Like how Hellas really wants the straits of Trelli, because everyone who could project power close enough to grab them would want them. They are a spring of molten gold as far as a feudal state is concerned because they do not have our sophisticated administration and proto-industrial capacity.
By the same logic, the much smaller and poorer Styrmyr is desperate for sea access of any kind and Greenshore is their only hope.
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I think you're underestimating how weak we have to be to to trigger an attack of opportunity. Last time it too the Great Khan breaking the Empire into fragments (fatally bleeding the horde in the process) and the province of Greenshore being an isolated polity without the core reacting to their rebellion for several years before they acted.
Let's consider the possibilities for them attacking Greenshore during the next big war:
A. We go after Western Wall next. Half the massed levy will be based out Greenshore to attack the western end of WW. They can directly hurt our war effort if they coordinate with WW but there's a mobilised force several times the size of the one that just beat them right on their doorstep. Even if they wait until our main force is deep into the enemy it's not like we'll neglect to secure that flank by reinforcing that border.
B. We go after the Black Sheep next. Simple distance means that the massed levy for this will be mostly drawn from the Core, MoS and Txolla. The regulars and the banner companies will also be committed. The province forces and levy capacities of Hathytta, Tinshore and Greenshore will still be available to us, as will the Ylthon and Saffron navies which can't get at Thunder Plateau.
In both those cases us being inconvenienced is an opportunity to hurt us but it isn't actually much of an opportunity for them to win and keep what they win. Now if we somehow contrive to lose big then that's an opportunity but at that point it doesn't matter where the western border of Greenshore is, someone will come over it in force.
[Citation Needed]
More specifically, the citation that the Revaunchist issue now is not the land-loss death spiral being slowly fought against. Because, as you say, we did lose land, and that's when the Revaunchists appeared... as a result of Personal Stewards of Nature being kept. As we expected.
The Revaunchists are making us lose stability (though not in those exact words) the longer we don't retake the land--it's simply that our turns are much more quicker than in the original Paths of Civilization, so we're seeing the stability loss in stages and can directly counter it.
The Revaunchists' rationale also matches the Personal Stewards of Nature's rationale.
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You have it all backwards. The belief was acquired here. After we survived and became ready to start counter attacking. Whereas a death spiral is something that happens while we are dying. The death spiral is what caused all the provinces to break off instead of fighting with us to the end, because they believed we'd fail because we didn't reconquer our first losses of land immediately. We survived the death spiral. Revaunchism is just a minor side effect.
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The PompPomp are still different from before we made changes. Then we made changes to them. Even then, it was still a more centralized kingdom than whatever the clusterfuck was in Doytch.
And either way, the world is becoming more different each passing year.
Even the Stymyr is not entirely a feudal kingdom. They have an actual Ymaryn bureaucracy. What you're doing is making sweeping and grand proclamination without looking at the actual facts on the ground, even if that is largely, "the Ymaryn probably knows IC more than we do".
The death spiral comes about because Personal Stewards of Nature can't abide land loss: our land, our responsibility. This matches the Revaunchists' rationale (well, for the most part; they've been exceeding that rationale on occasion by wanting more land).
The less we're able to reclaim the land, the less stability we have, and the more random rebellions we'll suffer (leading to more land loss, even when it makes little sense, as when the Revaunchists would have sided with Hat-chan during the Mine Lords issue). This matches what the Revaunchists are doing to us, and the nature of the death spiral.
So, we can track the Personal Stewards death spiral by analyzing Revaunchist behavior. Making visible progress in reclaiming land satisfies the Revaunchists (and incidentally, gives them confidence in our ability to continue doing so), but doesn't make them stronger or weaker. On the flip side, having Greenshore reconquered by Stymyr would incense the Revaunchists, to be sure, but it wouldn't add more power to the group.
We are in fact dying, right now, but swimming against the current (and in time slices short enough that we can combat stability loss); so I contest that we're not actually in said death spiral.
...
Edit: in addition, Revaunchism is supposed to be just the fixation to reclaim lost land, so... seems like a reasonable way for the land-loss death spiral to be represented for our shorter game-turns?
If in PoC we didn't reclaim land for 1 turn, that would be like... 20 years of mostly-failure, and you can imagine what the Revaunchists would do to us in that time. It would about match.
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- Location
- The Deep Blue Sea
I'd be fine with e.g. giving them favorable trading terms through greenshore as long as they keep up their end of the truce
- Location
- Hell
[X] Counter any military thrusts, but do not conquer beyond the traditional Greenshore borders. (Militarily harder, Revaunchists weakened.)
Tennish vote lead. I think I want to theorycraft about something else.
Since some were talking about Ymaryn culture and melting pot, early Ymaryn before Phygrif had Lower Valleyhome as the processing center for new immigrants. Most new immigrants came in from the highly contested Lowlands risking capture from the Highland kingdom, Xohyrissi sacrifice, and Badland deserts, before either through luck or Blackbird escort arriving at Lower Valleyhome and receiving their first glance of Ymaryn Civilization. Even Lower Valleyhome being their first glance is itself appropriate as it is the site of the first major migration into Ymaryn established lands. There they would receive physical checkups, examination for skills, and documented before being sent along to less occupied regions. Noted in story, this was really foreign to outsiders as few others had such clear borders as Ymaryn had, the welcoming culture to encourage outsider immigration, or the beauacratic infrastructure to both make it possible and necessary to do so, let alone all three.
Is it me or those that sound similar to what happened in New York City and San Francisco in the second half of the 1800s? As I mentioned, most people were sent elsewhere, but they probably took some time to process so there were probably temporary housing where people lived and thus neighborhoods where they congregated. Would Lower Valleyhome have been a melting pot of the time? Maybe even a cultural center because of it?
Of course, we did not stay that small and eventually Lower Valleyhome was no longer at the edge of Ymaryn but part of its center, but it makes me wonder if there is a Little Txolla, a Thundertown, a Northern Highlands, still there where they speak Xohyrssi, Highlander, and West Nomadic?
Then what about after? We always struggled with administration, but immigration and welcoming new people has always been a core part of Ymaryn culture. Did new immigration centers pop up after our big expansions? In places like Xohyr, Trelli, or Southern Hathytta? Did they also become melting pots over time?
In New York and San Francisco, the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge became symbols of a new start and a new life. Did we have any sort of monuments in Lower Valleyhome that gained similar meanings? Would we have built similar monuments when immigration centers went up or would we go for something new? Maybe they even became part of our belief system. Maybe a spirit, or maybe even a god? In Egyptian mythology, Set was the god of foreigners, but he was also the god of storms and the desert. Would it have been a goddess of the forest and magic, welcoming as a cool shade? God of hearth and children, relaxing as warm soup? Or would it have been a goddess of the sea and merchants, hopeful as a new horizon?
The migration process also makes me believe that the Core Ymaryn is probably highly homogeneous. Since we are always moving immigrants to new towns to care for new lands, that makes me think that there is little change in the core who have already been filled from the beginning. This means that from top to bottom, from the King to the stable boy, most of the core has truly ancient pedigrees.
I got questions, let us make some answers :3
Tennish vote lead. I think I want to theorycraft about something else.
Since some were talking about Ymaryn culture and melting pot, early Ymaryn before Phygrif had Lower Valleyhome as the processing center for new immigrants. Most new immigrants came in from the highly contested Lowlands risking capture from the Highland kingdom, Xohyrissi sacrifice, and Badland deserts, before either through luck or Blackbird escort arriving at Lower Valleyhome and receiving their first glance of Ymaryn Civilization. Even Lower Valleyhome being their first glance is itself appropriate as it is the site of the first major migration into Ymaryn established lands. There they would receive physical checkups, examination for skills, and documented before being sent along to less occupied regions. Noted in story, this was really foreign to outsiders as few others had such clear borders as Ymaryn had, the welcoming culture to encourage outsider immigration, or the beauacratic infrastructure to both make it possible and necessary to do so, let alone all three.
Is it me or those that sound similar to what happened in New York City and San Francisco in the second half of the 1800s? As I mentioned, most people were sent elsewhere, but they probably took some time to process so there were probably temporary housing where people lived and thus neighborhoods where they congregated. Would Lower Valleyhome have been a melting pot of the time? Maybe even a cultural center because of it?
Of course, we did not stay that small and eventually Lower Valleyhome was no longer at the edge of Ymaryn but part of its center, but it makes me wonder if there is a Little Txolla, a Thundertown, a Northern Highlands, still there where they speak Xohyrssi, Highlander, and West Nomadic?
Then what about after? We always struggled with administration, but immigration and welcoming new people has always been a core part of Ymaryn culture. Did new immigration centers pop up after our big expansions? In places like Xohyr, Trelli, or Southern Hathytta? Did they also become melting pots over time?
In New York and San Francisco, the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge became symbols of a new start and a new life. Did we have any sort of monuments in Lower Valleyhome that gained similar meanings? Would we have built similar monuments when immigration centers went up or would we go for something new? Maybe they even became part of our belief system. Maybe a spirit, or maybe even a god? In Egyptian mythology, Set was the god of foreigners, but he was also the god of storms and the desert. Would it have been a goddess of the forest and magic, welcoming as a cool shade? God of hearth and children, relaxing as warm soup? Or would it have been a goddess of the sea and merchants, hopeful as a new horizon?
The migration process also makes me believe that the Core Ymaryn is probably highly homogeneous. Since we are always moving immigrants to new towns to care for new lands, that makes me think that there is little change in the core who have already been filled from the beginning. This means that from top to bottom, from the King to the stable boy, most of the core has truly ancient pedigrees.
I got questions, let us make some answers :3