I will be honest every time you talk about peace with khemetri and High kingdom it rustles me for some reason @noncannon Its like you expect our country to ravish everything when in basically every way that matters their lives would get better under ymaryn rule, not that i am advocating we declare war on everyone, but our welfare state is hands and ladders and maybe even skyscrapers above most other places currently in existence Maybe that changed due to us being around as an example but i kind of doubt it.
Ymaryn Successor Quest (Paths of Civ AU)
The reason why the Khem gave us a chance with KoTH is because we're scary and they fucking know it. View in that light, it wasn't the Khem trying to be magnanimous, but trying to take advantage of the situation so they can keep KoTH a little longer.
It would do you some good to learn how to use periods.
Also, the reason why we don't conquer countries is because it is more trouble than it's worth. We're also too large to rule. Look at the megaprojects for Thunder Plateau, and they're Ymaryn.
Part of the reason why Ymaryn is a relatively nice empire is that we don't see conquest as a generally legitimate goal, which necessarily entails all kind of nasty behaviors.
It would do you some good to learn how to use periods.
Also, the reason why we don't conquer countries is because it is more trouble than it's worth. We're also too large to rule. Look at the megaprojects for Thunder Plateau, and they're Ymaryn.
Part of the reason why Ymaryn is a relatively nice empire is that we don't see conquest as a generally legitimate goal, which necessarily entails all kind of nasty behaviors.
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Alright dude if you look I said I am not advocating for war. I understand that when welfare states conquer land they have to pay for the people living their its pretty obvious. None of what you said relates to my point.
- Location
- Australia
Your position seems to be quite literally that going to war for prestige is better than humiliation, which is a fully bad position. We should always submit to the Khem if the price is the same as last time. Going to war for prestige is one of the stupidest reasons to go to war, and your plan intrinsically involves restoring the Ymaryn's pride and lust for status to at least some extent. We need to become more humble, not less, and if the hits we took after last time is what it takes, that's a good price to pay.
Mounting death toll aside, Thunder Plateau benefit more from the conquest than we do. In fact, we have to pay Thunder Plateau to remain with us.
Even Black Sheep kinda win from the deal in the sense that they can be their nomads self and yet be able to roam the empire as long they secured grazing agreements with farmers or local officials along the way.
This is a silly argument. We don't care for the prestige if not but the cost of having to submit to humilation every time we do that, and it will get worse and worse. It won't just be a token 0.2 treasury. Next time it will be 1 treasury, plus one of our legs. Or a number of ships we built. Or maintaining Khem fleet at our shipyards without paying their fair share.
It's better to just get it over with so we can focus on other priorities.
Even Black Sheep kinda win from the deal in the sense that they can be their nomads self and yet be able to roam the empire as long they secured grazing agreements with farmers or local officials along the way.
This is a silly argument. We don't care for the prestige if not but the cost of having to submit to humilation every time we do that, and it will get worse and worse. It won't just be a token 0.2 treasury. Next time it will be 1 treasury, plus one of our legs. Or a number of ships we built. Or maintaining Khem fleet at our shipyards without paying their fair share.
It's better to just get it over with so we can focus on other priorities.
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- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm willing to try a start over.
Because the Khem don't have a secret group of 21st Humans influencing them behind the scenes, they are going to act like any other nation in their position, selfishly with no regard for neighbours and they will only look at the immediate future that they'll be around for rather than planning stuff that will come to fruition decades or even centuries down the line when the current ruling generation is no longer around to reap the rewards. Since can be seen in how they tried to gouge the Kus and they declared war on both the Abyss and Berba to shore up for the crown after suffering domestic issue (this failed and resulted in their civil war ). This ties into the King of the Hill (KotH). On a normal basis, the Ymaryn are a stronger and more powerful polity than the Khem, but due to circumstances that have seen the former temporary weakened and the latter temporary strengthened, the Khem have taken KotH. Now they want to keep that and its influence will have a toxic effect on the Khem that isn't going to be migrated by the influence of the players like it would be for the Khem.
Incidentally, I also agree with you when you say that the Khem will try to take restraint with us that they don't with smaller powers. I just disagree that restraint comes from good relations rather then the Khem being wary of their power and going for the most they can get away without actually getting into a fight with us.
Between the first two things, the Khem are going to keep trying to knock us down whenever we threaten their status of KotH because they consider that in their self-interest. They weren't going to consider long term and peaceful relations to be beneficial so long as the Khem consider us to be a threat to their KotH status (and we are so long as we remain the more powerful nation) and so long as that is an issue, we are a potential foe not a potential ally to them. Because of this, I feel any attempt at long term diplomacy is doomed to failure because the KotH issue will get in the away as the Khem will prioritise that more than good relations with the Ymaryn for as long as it is within their grasp. As a result, I am not advocating that we don't attempt peace or diplomacy with the Khem, I am advocating that we get rid of the deal breaking issue before attempting to make a deal so it isn't doomed from the start.
Ultimately, I don't think the Khem are capable of holding onto KotH. They didn't really earnt it as they didn't take it and keep it from us by becoming more powerful, but because of us being in weaken position that we have ultimately recovered from. They originally got it while we were still reeling from the Collapse and struggling to take on Hellas of all people. They would have lost it recently and it was only because we were currently fighting both the Black Sheep and Western Wall at the same time that they were able to keep it. If we hadn't been at war, we could have easily said no and the Khem knew it hence why they jumped the gun instead of waiting until we had actually passed them as they knew they had a limited window of opportunity.
Frankly, the Khem just need to be taken down a peg. It doesn't have to be us, it could be them losing another war with Abyss or Berba or Hellas. It could be the Khem falling into another civil war.
@bobbya1 I am confused, as I have never suggested our country "ravish" anything. Perhaps you've mistaken me for one of the more pro-war posters?
I don't see this as being very different in practice. In practice, you're talking about giving them no olive branches until we humiliate them in a Great Powers War (in maybe 50 years) and only then starting with diplo?
Same question as with Kiba: how do you prevent those earlier actions from forming a long-term grudge, and permanently coloring our relations?
If we want diplomacy to actually work, the foundation needs to be built up beforehand. The people of Khemetri have to see the Ymaryn as a rival friend who otherwise has their interests at heart, not a rival who takes advantage of them under the guise of making it up after.
A rivalry is not a grudge. You keep forgetting that the Khem have barely below Neutral Opinion of the Ymaryn.
Rivalry is when they see their interests as opposed to ours'. I've proposed a long-term plan to change that, helping to align said interests.
A grudge is more similar (albeit far deeper in degree) to how you're feeling right now: built on moral outrage, and the general feeling that the other has wronged us unjustly while our own actions were reasonable. It probably comes with very low Opinion, difficult to change, and involves actively inconveniencing us even at cost to themselves, similar to the alt timeline with us and the Vortuga.
A major war + humiliation is a good recipe of causing a grudge, if not mitigated beforehand. Who was justified or not justified usually gets lost, as the other nation is considered "the enemy".
The comparison doesn't work because there are different remedies to the issue. A nation cannot pack up and leave the house. We will be dealing with the Khemetri, for better or worse, for the next few hundred years.
On the other hand, as a nation, we don't suffer from as much trauma from Khemetri wronging us, and can well afford to placate them with minimal grants.
If the comparison does work at all, it is only on the moral outrage level, which doesn't tell us what to do about it (and worse, actively misleads us on what to do).
I don't see this as being very different in practice. In practice, you're talking about giving them no olive branches until we humiliate them in a Great Powers War (in maybe 50 years) and only then starting with diplo?
Same question as with Kiba: how do you prevent those earlier actions from forming a long-term grudge, and permanently coloring our relations?
If we want diplomacy to actually work, the foundation needs to be built up beforehand. The people of Khemetri have to see the Ymaryn as a rival friend who otherwise has their interests at heart, not a rival who takes advantage of them under the guise of making it up after.
A rivalry is not a grudge. You keep forgetting that the Khem have barely below Neutral Opinion of the Ymaryn.
Rivalry is when they see their interests as opposed to ours'. I've proposed a long-term plan to change that, helping to align said interests.
A grudge is more similar (albeit far deeper in degree) to how you're feeling right now: built on moral outrage, and the general feeling that the other has wronged us unjustly while our own actions were reasonable. It probably comes with very low Opinion, difficult to change, and involves actively inconveniencing us even at cost to themselves, similar to the alt timeline with us and the Vortuga.
A major war + humiliation is a good recipe of causing a grudge, if not mitigated beforehand. Who was justified or not justified usually gets lost, as the other nation is considered "the enemy".
The comparison doesn't work because there are different remedies to the issue. A nation cannot pack up and leave the house. We will be dealing with the Khemetri, for better or worse, for the next few hundred years.
On the other hand, as a nation, we don't suffer from as much trauma from Khemetri wronging us, and can well afford to placate them with minimal grants.
If the comparison does work at all, it is only on the moral outrage level, which doesn't tell us what to do about it (and worse, actively misleads us on what to do).
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Look, I am willing to not piss off the Khem more than we have to. Key word being "more than we have to". And we only pissed them off once, and it was their fault.
As of right now, I am disfavoring gun sales.
Why? Because we keeps pissing people off even when we thought we were in the clear. However, it is still the only method we have for reliable gain in treasury, which is required to pay for government expenses of resettling and rebuilding the empire.
As of right now, I am disfavoring gun sales.
Why? Because we keeps pissing people off even when we thought we were in the clear. However, it is still the only method we have for reliable gain in treasury, which is required to pay for government expenses of resettling and rebuilding the empire.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First of all, saying that my position is going to war for prestige is good is wrong and I consider it about as correct as your position is that accepting being abused is better than standing to your abuser. Which is technically true from a certain reading, but very uncharitable to the point of being wrong.
Ultimately, I don't want want to just take the Khem's humiliations every time they come after us. This is because I don't want to play a quest where whenever an NPC decides to abuse us, we are supposed to just take it to keep the peace and then try to appease them in the hopes that their abuse will stop.
Actually, we have the Guild Industry which gives us +1 Treasury every couple of turns.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Our response to provoked abuse shouldn't be to just take it to keep the peace and then try to appease them in the hopes that their abuse will stop. We shouldn't reward the Khem for being evil and we shouldn't hurt our own people to try and appease them.
In the original timeline, the Khem got a trait that let them retain most of the benefits of KoTH even if they were only the second most prestigious nation.
Next time that we are asked to concede KoTH, I'll bet it will have less of an influence cost. Our people will be able to point to how being willing to forgo KoTH gained them Trelli, and how doing so a second time allowed them to recover both the Western Wall and the Thunder Plateau.
Next time that we are asked to concede KoTH, I'll bet it will have less of an influence cost. Our people will be able to point to how being willing to forgo KoTH gained them Trelli, and how doing so a second time allowed them to recover both the Western Wall and the Thunder Plateau.
- Location
- Australia
I don't believe it'll ever stop. What I imagine is a cycle where we go up in Prestige, they ask for a token of submission like last time, and we give it to them. I don't think they'll like us for it or that we can build good relations with the Khemetri. The purpose of my plan is to sacrifice our pride and the occasional loss of Influence and Treasury to regain humility.
Own up to the nature and consequences of your plan. Admit that it's to go to war so that we can spare ourselves giving tokens of submission, admit that in-narrative it'd be a war for prestige driven by our nobles' pride (and very much against the desires of our commoners, going by the invisitext), and admit that it'll make progress towards restoring the Ymaryn's overwhelming arrogance. Do not keep hiding behind the imagery of an abuser-abusee relationship to disguise the ugly realities of your proposal.
...The problem is, well, at what extend is a rivalry just a rivalry and at what point does it become a grudge or vice versa?
And also, simply throwing them bones to try to establish the door to friendly relations could have unexpected consequences, because we are the inscrutable ancient civilization with unfathomable practices. So they could possibly view our olive branches in a different light than we do. 🤷♂️
So why does the Highland kingdom hate us so much? I don't remember the Ymaryn doing something really bad to them in the past, but maybe I'm missing something.
@Kiba: I agree with that sentiment: avoid pissing people off, and gun sales have been problematic in that regard.
The Ymaryn have better fundamentals. The Khem will end up weaker than us in the long-term (assuming the usual caveats that we don't collapse or some shit); that is a fact.
The only question is: do the Khem end up a weaker, subordinate friend (which we need to build up the foundation for by giving them considerations before the humiliation), or do they end up a weaker annoyance trying to constantly backstab us, like Hellas but far more powerful?
Again, if your position is that you are so morally outraged at the present Khem, you are willing to give up possible friendship and ready to deal with them being an annoyance for centuries, this is a sound position. But, if you want their friendship--and to influence them into becoming better--the process needs to start before the abject humiliation.
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Concerning @Andres110's view: you have to admit that is one of the more likely narratives for belligerence when Khem. The Ymaryn weren't actively hostile against the Khem (even the gun sale to their enemies was when cash was really needed) until the Khem asked for submission. Then, they start discussing pointlessly hostile acts like gun sales to more enemies, building up Navy for a war now seen as inevitable, cutting off diplomatic efforts because the Khem are obviously so evil as for there to be no point...
Who, in-universe, is the likely impetus behind such a policy? Certainly not the commoners.
This is also where the comparison arrives at misleading remedies. In normal, personal circumstances, appeasement should not be the response. With the Ymaryn, on the other hand...
The Ymaryn have better fundamentals. The Khem will end up weaker than us in the long-term (assuming the usual caveats that we don't collapse or some shit); that is a fact.
The only question is: do the Khem end up a weaker, subordinate friend (which we need to build up the foundation for by giving them considerations before the humiliation), or do they end up a weaker annoyance trying to constantly backstab us, like Hellas but far more powerful?
Again, if your position is that you are so morally outraged at the present Khem, you are willing to give up possible friendship and ready to deal with them being an annoyance for centuries, this is a sound position. But, if you want their friendship--and to influence them into becoming better--the process needs to start before the abject humiliation.
...
...
Concerning @Andres110's view: you have to admit that is one of the more likely narratives for belligerence when Khem. The Ymaryn weren't actively hostile against the Khem (even the gun sale to their enemies was when cash was really needed) until the Khem asked for submission. Then, they start discussing pointlessly hostile acts like gun sales to more enemies, building up Navy for a war now seen as inevitable, cutting off diplomatic efforts because the Khem are obviously so evil as for there to be no point...
Who, in-universe, is the likely impetus behind such a policy? Certainly not the commoners.
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- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Khem have committed unprovoked and unnecessary hostile actions against us for selfish reasons while we have done nothing to provoke or deserve that such hostilities. I would rather stand up to an abuser and get hurting the process than just accept the abuse to keep the peace and avoid getting hurt or to see an abuser get rewarded for their abuse. I do not see it learning to accept and tolerate abuse as desirable growth and if the risk of increasing our arrogance is the price of resisting an abuser, then so be it. I would risk arrogance over giving to an abuser and rewarding their abuse.
To use your own words, own up to the nature and consequences of your plan and do not keep hiding behind the imagery of the greater good to disguise the ugly realities of your proposal.
We kept almost destroying them by draining their lands of people by taking them in as refugees. This also had the side effect of leaving the hostile Highlanders behind while the friendly ones migrated to our lands.
Huh, that actually makes a lot of sense.
- Location
- Australia
Excuse you.
Here I say we get nothing, we lose Treasury, Prestige, and Influence, and the situation with the Khemetri will not improve. I'm not disguising anything about my proposal. I was really fucking upfront about what it'd cost.
You, and only you, have actively avoided spelling out the downsides and nature of your plan, which I had illustrated in my post. Don't project your failings onto me.
- Location
- Australia
Another thing, @Oshha, the Khemetri aren't abusing us, they're abusing our nobles. It's the nobles who care about prestige, who are willing to burn lives and the economy to not pay 0.2 Treasury for peace, who withdraw 4 Influence worth of support out of spite for not appealing to their vanity and pride. The commoners do not care about the 0.2 Treasury and 20 Prestige we lose whenever KMT gets insecure; what they care about are the very real consequences of war they'll have to suffer through for the sake of vainglorious nobles who only care about status.
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@bobbya1 I think I understand now: you were suggesting that we should increase our territories because Ymaryn rule is better. Regardless of the merits of that thought, there are severe practical reasons not to increase our territory: Personal Stewards of Nature brings us into a death-spiral if any territory is lost (aka what's been happening the past twenty years, which we're just managing to swim out of), so overextended territory is risky. The possibility of nationalism also makes diplomatic annexation preferable to conquest--again, no part can break away without causing a Collapse.
Aranfan has suggested that a rivalry with high opinion isn't really plausible, so that's one argument for it to be dropped. Another argument is that our efforts to increase opinion all have the side-effect of making the Khem see our interests as more aligned.
A grudge is something deeper, more self-destructive (and incidentally, implies lower Opinion). Considering the Khemetri demanded minimal tribute even during the ultimatum, I wouldn't worry at all about the Khem already having a grudge. (Whether our future policies cause one, on the other hand, is a very open question.)
Anyway, there is an agenda behind the olive branches. If the Khem do think as short-term as some of us believe, they won't notice it. If they don't... what are they gonna do, reduce their own tariffs in response?
Aranfan has suggested that a rivalry with high opinion isn't really plausible, so that's one argument for it to be dropped. Another argument is that our efforts to increase opinion all have the side-effect of making the Khem see our interests as more aligned.
A grudge is something deeper, more self-destructive (and incidentally, implies lower Opinion). Considering the Khemetri demanded minimal tribute even during the ultimatum, I wouldn't worry at all about the Khem already having a grudge. (Whether our future policies cause one, on the other hand, is a very open question.)
Anyway, there is an agenda behind the olive branches. If the Khem do think as short-term as some of us believe, they won't notice it. If they don't... what are they gonna do, reduce their own tariffs in response?
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That isn't a good way to learn humility. Humility isn't about appeasing someone in the hope they are acting differently. That is the wrong lesson to acquire. I would say that's false humility. That isn't the right way to lose our arrogance.
Being humble is about acknowledging our strength and weakness, no more no less. We are strong. We should act like it. But we should also know the cost of hubris is and that we can make mistakes and missteps and that our ancestors aren't always right.
Don't be a wimp, but know how to fold.
Though, I think it might be a good idea to at least try and keep the relations from falling into solid enemy territory...
- Location
- Australia
You misread my post. Like I said, I have no expectation the Khemetri will act differently. Like I said, I expect this'll be a cycle of them asking for Prestige and Treasury when we get too big. Like I said, I do not expect us to ever make friends with them or for them to ever stop.
Please, what you want is to kill commoners and make them suffer through a straining economy so that the nobles won't withdraw their Influence because they took a hit to their pride. Don't even pretend that going to war because we can win and it'll save us our pride is somehow an act of humility.