I thought the real break with the HK came over some religious schism... They adopted some belief system that had arisen in the Ymaryn empire but the players had rejected for some reason...
fasquardon
Ymaryn Successor Quest (Paths of Civ AU)
I thought the real break with the HK came over some religious schism... They adopted some belief system that had arisen in the Ymaryn empire but the players had rejected for some reason...
fasquardon
It is uncharitable of you to accuse me of wanting to kill commoners because I want war with the Khemetri. I prefer not having to spend precious resources fighting a naval or land war with the Khem.
This isn't about some nobles' pride. The cost of influence and treasury are opportunities cost that take away resources from rebuilding and diplomacy
We can tolerate some token payment in exchange for loss of prestige. But that won't go on forever. The Khem will demand more and more and cost will become more intolerable and to our people(not just the nobles). Then we won't be able to fake being weak.
The King of the Khemetri will be found to have no clothes. Than what we will do?
That said, the Khemetri needs to be taken down a peg to stop their obsessive focus on being KoTH. Doesn't have to be us, but we can't exactly neglect our fleet either. It's not sufficient for trade nor for self-protection.
We never rejected the religions.
What we don't tolerate is not Farming Good.
...That is probably a bit extreme...
I mean, I am pretty sure IRL the whole Britain vs France rivalry is not still around in site of having it be strong enough for 100 straight years of war... At least I think so, and I could just be completely oblivious about European politics IRL
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I am not willing to keep up possible friendship and ready to deal with them being an annoyance for centuries. That is a false dilemma that you have come up with and keep asserting. There is plenty of middle ground between the two extremes and I would rather go for that instead as I have previously outlined. You give a binary choice with only two options when it is actually a spectrum of choices with a far wider range of possible outcomes.
Frankly, I don't see your plan as working or being desirable. Beyond my already state position of not rewarding an abuser for their abuse or weakening our own people to strengthen an enemy that make it undesirable, I don't see it working as neither us or the Khem are dependant on trade. Giving up income to appease them won't make them dependant on us whilst strengthening them at our expense. I don't see it as weakening the Khem or otherwise widening the gap between us as in fact, I see it as shortening the gap and making our relations worse.
Nor does it have any guarantee they will continue to like us if we do things that we don't like or does it let us get the trade back if the Khem if our relations go sour. It also doesn't resolve the primary issue between us of that the Khem want to keep the King of the Hill status and us being stronger on fundamentals being a constant threat to that.
Frankly, I am not opposed to improving relations with the Khem. My main objection to your plan is how we are rewarding the Khem for their actions and weakening our own people in the process. If you can find a way that does so without strengthening them at the expense of our own people such as giving our trade and income, then I will fully support it. But as far as I can tell, your plan amounts to conceding to Khem's future demands of submission and giving them favourable trade deals at our expense so I am opposed to that.
The upper classes are going to behind all of our policies. We don't live in a democracy so as far as I am concerned, the impetus behind all of our policies is members of the upper classes. It has been pointed out by the QM that even characters like Bedwyd, Rhys, Dafydd and Brynn are all members of the nobility and have their power bases amongst the nobility unless they are universally loved that even those outside the nobility support them.
Ultimately, I consider humility to be the overriding factor in my decisions and if not submitting to the Khem is the straw that breaks the camel's back in regards to the Ymaryn's arrogance, our revachnism doomed us to that fate long ago because the restoration of the Ymaryn Empire is far worse.
We don't know what the costs or the downsides are to spell out. We are talking who knows how many turns of stuff happening in a quest with unpredictable dice rolls and player choices. I'm not going to give some details specifics about something who knows how far ahead in the future or try to pretend that we know the outcomes of every choice when most of the factors involved in the outcome have yet to be determined.
I'm not going to pretend I know about about the details such happening in an undetermined point in the future well enough that I can spell them out and if you are waiting for that, then you are going to be waiting for an impossibility. I have made my stance clear. I don't want to play a quest where we just submit and to the Khem or whoever else is threatening us and reward them for it just for the sake of avoiding hostilities or being 'humble'. And frankly, there is a difference between willing to resist unprovoked aggression and overwhelming arrogance. If taking action back against a rival who is threatening us unprovoked means we get our overwhelming arrogance back, then we were doomed from the moment we chose revanchism because that is far worse because our restoration of the Ymaryn Empire is far worse than that.
First of all, we are playing as the Ymaryn state, which is a mixture of all the Ymaryn people. Things which hurt the Ymaryn state can hurt all of it because things are abstract enough that we cannot tell what just hurts the nobles and what just hurts the commoners.
Second, who do you think will suffer when we give up trade to the Khem like has been proposed? What do you think will happen when we give our own people when we keeping special treatment to the Khem traders instead of our own? Do you think that weaken the Ymaryn to appease the Khem couldn't possibly have any negative income on our people?
Third, how can you not see the downsides of giving up money and actions on the Ymaryn? It limits our ability to help and look after our own people because we can pay for as much stuff nor can we do as many things.
- Location
- Australia
If the Khemetri increase their demands, then depending on what they are, it may be good to go to war. If they simply ask for what they did last time, we should pursue peace. The treasury cost is negligible. The influence cost isn't, but we can regain influence, and the loss of influence is worth it for the benefits of reducing pride and increasing humility. (One of the benefits I anticipate is reducing influence loss when we give away prestige to gain peace.) We're not going to regain humility without sacrifice and hardship. This is what that sacrifice and hardship looks like.
That said, I will recognise your worries about the opportunity loss of influence as legitimate, even if I think basing your actions around it is wrong.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That made it worse for sure, but it wasn't the cause. It just escalated what was already there.
The Highlanders had a monotheistic religion that promoted . Even tolerating a Ymaryn local variant was too non-believer for the Highlanders
It is not. We joke about it in jest sometimes and any actual rivalry is based in modern concerns than things from centuries ago because who cares about that? Even the for the nationalists, it is far better to complain about immigrants taking our jobs and homes or bemoan the loss of our colonial empires.
The treasury cost to us is negligible right now, because we're a fucking huge state with more wealth than individuals can contemplate spending in their lifetime. A 0.1 treasury is like making someone a billionaire, except billion dollars is minuscule of money to us.
But what about our traders? Farmers? Hell, even our nobles?
Furthermore, the treasury cost will add up even if it just stays at 0.1. These are money that can be used to do the People of the Empire some real good.
How about a loan? We can turn 0.1 income into 1 treasury that can be spent on doing some good or increasing our long term income.
Eventually, this state of affair cannot continue forever.
The Khem lacks fundamentals to be a KoTH and everyone will figure out that we're just humoring them, and the prestige will flow right back. That is when we are at war. Appeasing them won't work long term.
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- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I agree with this except I think the Influence cost is worse and isn't worth the humility it gains us. It has a price of opportunity cost where we can't do as much. It limits our diplomacy, it limits our ability to do infrastructure, it limits our ability to make money and pretty much limits our ability to do anything. Furthermore, we got limited ways to recover Influence. We are in a position to do so last time due to the ongoing wars, but if we don't have ongoing wars or we don't start some new wars, we have very limited ways to recover lost Influence.
Maybe the lost of Influence is due to noble pride, but it still has very real costs for us that we have consider. It is like revanchism in that regard. It might be stupid and preferable to ignore in an ideal world, but in this case, it as a very real cost that can lead to continued harm for the Ymaryn people when ignored. So we have to consider it even if the cause of it is stupid. We could afford it this time, but harsher demands could make the Influence cost and that might not be bearable if we don't have maxed out Influence like we did last time through you did touch upon this when you mentioned the Khem increasing their demands and us reacting to that on a case by a case basis.
Personally I don't it as being any worse than a reduced version of our revanchism.
This is more of a concern with Income over Treasury. Treasury is what is in the banks of state so it is affordable even if it has the potential to add up to something unaffordable as you mentioned. Income is what our people are earning and the state is taxing. While giving up there has a lesser opportunity cost, I do worry about what impact it will have on the average person of the Ymaryn. Even the best case scenario amounts to giving away some of the taxes we collect.
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- Location
- Australia
The 0.2 treasury we lose when submitting to the Khemetri is negligible. This is true when comparing it to our total treasury, but also in comparison to the massive costs of funding the war and espionage actions against the Khemetri you plan to sink Influence into. The opportunity we lose from paying for war far exceeds the opportunity we lose from paying for peace, Treasury-wise.
Honestly, when it comes to accepting the next great power demand or not, we should probably wait until we see what the demands actually are AND the situation surrounding it, rather than bickering over what to do about it now... We don't even know if this whole convo could be rendered moot by a disaster, like, say a populist uprising...
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I also want to state that we should be building warships regardless of what we do with the Khem because pirates are still a concern. Heck, it might even help with the Khem because of this:
I have no plans for funding or fighting a war if we can help it. Espionage and diplomacy actions are very necessary if we want to take Khemetri down a peg without fighting. Second, you're deluded that we can continue to fool the Khemetri by pretending that we are weak.
Also, the biggest investments we need to make are ships and warships anyway, with or without a war. That is how we are going to improve our income and wealth without having to sell guns.
And I hate selling guns because it seems to always piss someone off.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@noncannon @Andres110 I'm going to bed now so I'm going to say this. If you can find a way to improve relations with the Khem without giving up our Income to them or otherwise weakening the Ymaryn to strengthen our rival, I will almost certainly fully support it. And it is only almost certainly instead of certainly because of the usual caveats about something being a deal breaker like only having the same success chance as our demands to Western Wall.
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Alright. Let's do that.
There is middle ground, but what you've outlined doesn't meet any of that: being unwilling to sacrifice anything that "hurts the Ymaryn", no matter how small, like 0.1 income.
(I assume, if you're going for the middle-ground, that you have dropped the more extreme planks of your policy, such as additional gun sales to Khemetri's enemies; as that certainly is not middle-ground.)
This amounts to doing nothing except that which improves the Ymaryn's short-term interest: hardly a policy to make us seem less as rivals, or more as friends.
You want a free lunch with the Khem. Such a thing rarely, if ever exists in diplomacy: why would they give you anything without you being willing to offer any considerations?
Alternatively: if you're not willing to give them a free lunch, why would they?
Dependent or not, the Khemetri are "trade rivals"; it was surprising they hadn't rivaled us before their humiliation considering our competition in places like Kus.
Positioning the Ymaryn increasingly as middle-men weakens, then eventually drops that rivalry. If that doesn't work, medical cures also help to show the Ymaryn as friendly to them.
(If that's not enough, we also have Aranfan saying it's implausible to have a rival with high Opinion.)
An important note: "giving trade to Khem" is a misunderstanding. A trade deal, most likely, mainly reduces tariffs; in doing so actually increases trade. In particular, it only reduces tariffs between the Khem and the Ymaryn, so a third-party wouldn't be bypassing the Ymaryn to go to Khem: they would still be trading through us, and we would be acting increasingly as middle-men.
This incentivizes the Khem, in fact, to come to us, rather than the other parties, as they are not the ones offering reduced tariffs.
Regardless of absolute dependence, the Khem traders (and the wealthy benefiting from their products) will throw more of a fit if their lucrative Ymaryn deals are threatened by war.
And we will get a narrative of the upper classes ignoring the lower classes' protests, selfishly going to war to preserve their own prestige. It will very much call into mind the lesson of Sherynyt, leading to increased instability in the Ymaryn, along with the enduring moral that:
"Our leaders never listen; even just fifty years after Collapse, they're still making the same mistakes. Out of that same pride."
Narratively, this leads nowhere good.
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OK. If it helps keep the Khem off our back for a little longer. I am willing to do that. But the cost is going to increase, and eventually everyone is going to realize that we're just humoring them. That will cause prestige to flow right back to us. Because it's the truth. We are a superpower that just conquered a Great Power.
So the Khem needs to be taken down by a peg one way or another. We don't need to be the one to do it, much less waged a war to do it.
And also, we still need naval investments regardless of the fact.
So the Khem needs to be taken down by a peg one way or another. We don't need to be the one to do it, much less waged a war to do it.
And also, we still need naval investments regardless of the fact.
...Honestly, I think the best move is to get a better idea of their internal politics.
That required establishing a spy network. That's going to take a while on top of everything we need to do post-war.
...I know, but honestly, currently taking a risk and dice on spying is probably our best option. So we at least get a better idea of who we are dealing with.
...So, I guess the question is if we should throw 2 influence at rebuilding the sacred herd for those returned to the fold and an authority on that, or wait and make the delay to being able to get a bigger picture of them by at least three more turns than we theoretically could...
Sacred Herds come first. In particular, Thunder Plateau basically demands that they will have it ASAP.
Nothing's changed, but updated in response to the peace deal (a foregone conclusion).
Train Thunder Plateau's duration is [Length of Thunder Plateau Campaign+2 years]. Depending on how we're counting, this can be as little as 1614-1617 (4 years + 2 years), counting from when Daffyd actually crossed over from Txolla and not counting this year; or as much as 1612-1618 (7 years + 2 years), counting from the initial Mass Levy and counting this year.
We'll have -1.4 income until we retake Western Wall (after which I estimate income at -0.3; +1 from Western Wall, +0.1 from Amber Road).
1618 Post-Thunder Plateau Peace Snapshot of frequently-changed stats (1618 Start)
Additional Stats (1618 Post-Thunder Plateau Peace)
Prestige:: 58
Authority: 1
Influence: 2 (+1 pending)
Estimated Stress (unknown start point): 9.0
Other Notables: Personal action unavailable in 1618
Revaunchists Appeasement: Mass Levy
Txollan Concerns Met: Train Thunder Plateau Administrators
Num Profitable Markets: 3 (2 without Probable -Amber Road Opinion)
Num Semi-Profitable Markets [Estimated Treasury]: 4 [1.875]
(These estimates are probably out of date. see 1613 Start for latest updates)
Next Guild Income Within: 1618
Treasury: 5.3 (-1.4 mid-1620,1625... ; +1 mid-1618,1620,...; -1 mid-year from Mass Levy)
Loans Taken: 4
Unoccupied Banner Companies: Both on Western Wall front
Action [Investment]: Scheduled Investment Return Year (Estimated Return Year)
Spreading the Warding, Amber Road [1 Influence]: 1620 (1621)
Create Sleeper Cells, Black Sheep [2 Influence]: our choice
Train Thunder Plateau Administrators, Elective [1 Influence]: (1.4 * [6-9 years] = 1625-1628)
Revaunchists Weakenings: 4 + (1 gravely) - 1 = 3 + gravely?
Sacred Warding Notes: Can provide to three nations after Hung delegation returns (1616-1618). (Source)
All dates are tentative estimates; they can change in response to circumstances (e.g. failures, crits). +/-1 in [year] means that an extra +/-1 will be available for us during Turn [year]. I believe that income is added during the Initial Results part of a year, though the exact ordering within that stage is unclear.
Train Thunder Plateau's duration is [Length of Thunder Plateau Campaign+2 years]. Depending on how we're counting, this can be as little as 1614-1617 (4 years + 2 years), counting from when Daffyd actually crossed over from Txolla and not counting this year; or as much as 1612-1618 (7 years + 2 years), counting from the initial Mass Levy and counting this year.
We'll have -1.4 income until we retake Western Wall (after which I estimate income at -0.3; +1 from Western Wall, +0.1 from Amber Road).
1618 Post-Thunder Plateau Peace Snapshot of frequently-changed stats (1618 Start)
Additional Stats (1618 Post-Thunder Plateau Peace)
Prestige:: 58
Authority: 1
Influence: 2 (+1 pending)
Estimated Stress (unknown start point): 9.0
Other Notables: Personal action unavailable in 1618
Revaunchists Appeasement: Mass Levy
Txollan Concerns Met: Train Thunder Plateau Administrators
Num Profitable Markets: 3 (2 without Probable -Amber Road Opinion)
Num Semi-Profitable Markets [Estimated Treasury]: 4 [1.875]
(These estimates are probably out of date. see 1613 Start for latest updates)
Next Guild Income Within: 1618
Treasury: 5.3 (-1.4 mid-1620,1625... ; +1 mid-1618,1620,...; -1 mid-year from Mass Levy)
Loans Taken: 4
Unoccupied Banner Companies: Both on Western Wall front
Action [Investment]: Scheduled Investment Return Year (Estimated Return Year)
Spreading the Warding, Amber Road [1 Influence]: 1620 (1621)
Train Thunder Plateau Administrators, Elective [1 Influence]: (1.4 * [6-9 years] = 1625-1628)
Revaunchists Weakenings: 4 + (1 gravely) - 1 = 3 + gravely?
- Tin Tribes Independence
- White Peace with Hellas
- Amber Road Independence
- Refrain from conquering Stymyr to mountains
- Strengthening: Blame Western Wall
- "Gravely weakened": Khemetri Concession
Sacred Warding Notes: Can provide to three nations after Hung delegation returns (1616-1618). (Source)
All dates are tentative estimates; they can change in response to circumstances (e.g. failures, crits). +/-1 in [year] means that an extra +/-1 will be available for us during Turn [year]. I believe that income is added during the Initial Results part of a year, though the exact ordering within that stage is unclear.
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Which was why I suggested throwing multiple dice at that action. The herd is gonna need done regardless, the only question is if we should stack influence to make the chance of failure reasonably low, or not take any risk and likely extend the time it takes to even get a rumor mill on the local king of the hill, by at least 3 more years... 🤷♂️