I like the way this is shaping up! Your warrior move toward Muqa was clearly better than the version I put in the tentative microplan - great job improving it on the fly! (I don't even remember now whether I'd forgotten Chubei would be founded and therefore roaded or that we had a road on the plains cow for exactly this kind of thing. Either way...)
As for Buddhism spreading: We can't assume it'll happen at all - especially someplace we need it - but obviously it should. If it spreads to State of Zijin before Oghul Qaimish (nevermind Chubei) though, I'll be pretty disappointed. Seven Mysteries and Gobwin Knob are welcome to adopt our faith if that's what their people demand though!
I wrote a post last night but apparently never posted it - heh. Part of it was about stuff we now know from the turn; this was the rest:
I agree with letting Borte grow, barring emergencies and other critical needs. Growth should happen pretty quickly with the granary it's about to finish, but worker labor is going to be tight. (We now have five workers for five cities.)
In general, things are looking great! Someone getting Circumnav is worrying, though we couldn't have competed for it ourselves (especially after losing our Scout to an early bear) without sacrificing a lot of development.
I have a feeling Krill got circumnavigation (or maybe Gavagai). It`s a bit strange we haven`t met any other players than our direct neighbors yet, though.
As our expenses are very high right now, we have to wait a bit before founding more cities. Getting the whale online will be most helpful for our economy. I agree that 5 workers for 5 cities is a little bit low. Let`s see if we can get another pair of workers soon. There are just so many competing priorities right now! How do you feel about whipping Muqa for 2 or even 3 population for our next settler(s)? I`ve read somewhere that multipop whips are less effective, but Muqa has enough food to regrow quickly. We shouldn`t wait too long founding a jungle city south of Toregene, as Joey would possibly try to settle the area if given a chance.
A spearman in Oghul Qaimish will be needed soon, when Joey connects his horses. We could start on a barracks in Borte soon, as it`s our best hammer city by far and will probably build a few units. It`s still an expensive building and not badly needed just yet. We could wait until Writing completes and start a library instead, to let it grow to its happiness limit. Another option is just building units needed for our southern front.
Many competing priorities indeed! We'll do what we can with the Workers we've got for now in any case, and plan to get more as needed.
Yes, multi-pop whips are less efficient in RtR - this is actually the reason dry-whipping an axe or spear cost 3 pop. Whips give 30 hammers, but then only 20 more fopr each pop beyond the first in RtR. At this point in ther game though, that's still (slightly) better than just turning food into hammers at 1:1 by building Settlers, plus it opens up other options during growth. My tentative plan right now is to whip a chariot in Muqa after finishing its axe, overflow into a 1-turn Workboat, overflow into a Settler, and 2-pop whip that into a 1-turn Worker. Still to figure out of it's feasible and worthwhile to get an axe (or even 2-whip a Galley or Lighthouse) in place of the Chariot though.
I'm pretty sure GJ still doesn't have AH, but I do agree we should get spears in place reasonably soon. The advantage of getting one from a Barracks is smaller than it would be for an axe for a couple of reasons, so I'd suggest getting some out of Toregene (already in production) and Borte (probably right after its Granary).
Luckily, the turn rolled before bedtime, and I got to play the second turn of the day. I met 3 other players in game, so Sunday evening is probably a good time to play civ!
The barb warrior decided to continue NE, so I promoted our own warrior to combat 1 and moved to the forested hill. We are almost guaranteed a win, and if we lose, the chariot will finish it off. As I`m not used to the avoid growth button, I actually had to discover where in the city display it`s situated. Can you tell me why it`s not a good idea to grow this turn? I know the production and the food are processed in separate ways, but as the granary already is finished, wouldn`t half of the food plus the overflow be put into the granary next turn if we`d not used the button?
Still no sign of a Buddhism spread. Not a single one. It`s been 6 turns now..
EDIT: Yes, the plan for Muqa looks good. We`re quite flexible atm, as we don`t have to make units right away. A 10 turn peace treaty is very good for my nerves as well!
Graphs and demos. Our gnp took a hit when we didn`t work the silver for a turn. It should look better in the coming turns. I like the fact that we`re competitive on basically all metrics. We`re only in 6th place on mfg, but the distance up to top mfg is not long at all.
(July 2nd, 2017, 15:30)JR4 Wrote: Can you tell me why it`s not a good idea to grow this turn? I know the production and the food are processed in separate ways, but as the granary already is finished, wouldn`t half of the food plus the overflow be put into the granary next turn if we`d not used the button?
Sure! The trick is that the granary doesn't actually store half the food you produce as you produce it. After the granary is complete, it puts all of the food you produce into the granary, up to a maximum of half of what you need to grow a size. So after this turn, if I did my math right, there should be 28/28 food in the food bar and 7 food in the granary (not displayed). When we turn OFF avoid growth next turn, we'll be growing to size 5, putting 7 more food into both the food bar and the Granary, with the result that the following turn, we'll have 21 food in the food bar: A completely full 14 food granary plus the 7 food we'll be making next turn. If we didn't use Avoid Growth this turn, we'd grow to size 5 next turn to the exact breadslice, and so have only 7 food in the bin (because we're putting 7 into the granary this turn). Then we would work the horse next turn and still make 7 food, so the following turn we'd have 3 more hammers (and another coin) than we'll have using Avoid Growth - but only 14 food in the food bar (because the granary doesn't add to the food bar except on the turn when you grow a size.) I'll definitely trade 3 hammers and a coin for 7 food!
Also, it's been way too long, and even after a very long story here, I'm way behind the action. But here's what I wrote many turns ago, unintentionally (and very imperfectly) presaging our more-recent border conflict, among other things.
The people of prehistoric Muqa, making their homes along the coast and riverbanks near the estuary of the river Khagalakh, were a breed apart from those of Borte and the heart of the Khatunate. Though united in their veneration for the legendary Izabyella Khatun, and continuously exchanging goods, stories, and even immigrants along the ancient Alph-Khagalakh road, the two great centers of Khatunate tradition were physically distant, and increasingly distinct in their cultures: Clamshell jewelry and preserved beef came down the Eastern Alph and up the road in exchange for cornmeal and popping corn, but the people of Muqa - nearly all farmers and foresters in its earliest days - had never eaten clams taken fresh from the waters of Dood Tusgal Nuur, nor walked among the cattle of the Toli Plateau and performed the ancient rites bound up with them, no matter though there were wild cattle grazing in plenty among the upper valleys of the Khagalakh, not far away. Rice was unheard-of among them, though long a staple of the Borte diet - and Muqa's lowest farmer knew, as not even the elders and Udgans-in-training of the palace could, the delicious flavor of fresh-picked ears of maize, baked in their husks under the coals of a cooking fire.
Central though diet has always been to any culture however, these differences were far from the greatest threat to Muqa's cultural identity. The holy spirits, as Izabyella Khatun might have said herself - or as a young Udgan might have, once selected, made up, and dressed to stand in for the legendary Eternal Empress - would accept offerings of maize and mutton as gladly as of beef and rice. But eat and offer what they might, the people of Muqa lived under a shadow that could hardly touch Borte and its palace: The river Khagalakh had its source in the region's East Banana Lake, and never a year passed without refugees coming down the river to Muqa from the lake's northern shore, bearing tales of the terrible Zulu whose high forests grew within sight of their homes. Raised in a culture of ruthless violence and constant paranoia, in perpetual dread of the spirit or demon they called d'tay - traditionally slow to act but always swift when it came time to strike - the Zulu people haunted the high forests like ghosts in terror for the lives they already had lost, apart from a select few who marched in tight formation: Soldiers scanning the surrounding terrain for hostile parties or victims, or press gangs rounding up locals to die fighting for place in the military or slaving for the governors of SpaceRock and Gobwin Knob. The threat of the Zulu was palpable, and the farmers and foresters of Muqa were convinced that they could not hope to survive the threat from beyond the northern horizon without adopting some of the Zulus' martial ways - but it would not be in Muqa that the means of doing so would be discovered.
A lone woodswoman out of clan Beldmelüüd - one of several groups of traditional nomads based among the cattle pastures below Deed Tusgal Nuur - had brought a sample back to Borte of a strange ore she had found among the lakeshore rocks of the forest that overlooked the pasture lands. Those woods had long held an evil reputation - a dark and mysterious place, filled with Siberian larches, spruce, and firs, and long avoided by most of the Khatunate cattleherds - but when certain Borte traders recognized the ore, brown but shiny and malleable if heated with intense fire, as the valuable metal copper, the discovery led to a sensation throughout Borte. In honor of the discoverer, clan Beldmelüüd was given first right to lay claim to the ancient forest, and within a few generations, they were truly making the place their own - and a more welcome home for others as well - by sending such copper as they could back to Borte, and returning with a portion of it fashioned by fire and tin into axes to turn the dark and mysterious forest itself into a landscape of empty stumps, together with a great store of building materials, tools, and firewood.
Bronze tools were slower to reach Muqa than Borte's immediate surroundings, but when they did arrive at last, they were put to heavy and immediate use. More training camps, military schools, and weapon stockpiles were assembled over the course of just a generation or two than had been built across the whole of the Khatunate across all the prior centuries, completely consuming the forests south of Muqa to gather the materials needed - but still it was not sufficient for the spiritual and secular elite of the city, frankly frightened as they were of the Zulu forces in the north. Convinced that their only hope lay in emulating the ruthless and warlike Zulu ways, they set about pressing as many as they could of the poor and friendless - beggars and refugees along with an astonishing number of families who in that period still hunted, foraged, or harvested wood in the surviving forest west of the city - into service "for the greater good." Those who were pressed into service this way rarely saw any good from it whatever, for like the victims of the Zulu, most of those who did not escape and flee the area were driven to death from injury, fatigue, and simple malnourishment, under the whip. The intense concentrations of labor that before had been impossible with or without such slaves as these were becoming almost routine around Muqa, where the Ulamjlal clan was already hard at work creating pens and fenced-in pastures for the local flocks of sheep with the help of their new bronze tools. The independent Ulamjlal were largely immune to the fit of Zulu-like impressment that swept the city, but they certainly witnessed the events as they unfolded, not without a certain amount of dread.
They saw the first poor refugees who began to stream from Muqa itself toward the center of Khatunate power in Borte, seeking sanctuary and succor, and some among them in due course brought the matter before the thrones in the Palace of the Eternal Empress, where Izabyella Khatun - or a young udgan selected and trained to represent her, for those who take the Khatunate legends as myth - sat in judgment over her people. The case was not a simple one; whispers had reached even the Palace itself of the deadly Zulu, and of warlike tribes who dwelt in the wilderness, growing increasingly jealous of the wealth of the Khatunate. When the merchant-princes and military leaders most responsible for the situation in Muqa made the long pilgrimage to Borte and made their own case before the thrones, they were backed by many clan heads and even udgans from the Muqa region, who spoke of the hope and strength their people felt thanks to the new military barracks and training grounds, and the way they drew in strangers from neighboring lands to learn more of the Khatunate and bring themselves under its staunch protection. There was a nervousness and a wariness in the air, naturally - no one wanted to be pressed into service under the conditions that prevailed for the slaves who had built Muqa's new military infrastructure - but better, Muqa's leaders argued before the thrones, that their people be unsettled than that they perish at the point of Zulu spears. And the clan leaders and merchants who increasingly ran the western copper mines and led the crafters who shaped bronze tools and weapons for the people of Borte added their voices to those of Muqa, calling for better control over their workers and their labor, the better to distribute its fruits for the good of the Khatunate. So the Empress retired to consider of the matter and to consult with the holy spirits - or with the other udgans and elders as the case may be - but she needed no advice to know on which side justice lay, nor the right and the wrong of the case.
Eternal Empress or young udgan though she might be, the Izabyella who sat in judgment knew well enough that there was no excuse for enslaving the proud people of the Khatunate. What good was it to protect her people from conquest by the Zulu - a conquest that as far as she or any of them knew might never yet have been contemplated even in the twisted minds of their enforcers in the name of the terrible d'tay - if she and those who served her treated her own people as badly as ever the Zulu could? Would it not have been better to let the people of Muqa build such training camps as they needed at their own pace, though it might take centuries to complete the work that had been accomplished within the lifetimes of some of the udgans and clan heads? Would it not have been better to trust distance and perhaps greener pastures in other directions to keep the Zulu away? She knew the answers to these questions - and she knew they didn't matter. Izabyella Khatun, or whoever it may have been who acted in her fashion and claimed her name, was not an all-powerful, benevolent philosopher-queen, and she did not rule over a peaceful people who valued kindness of heart above the ability, at time of need, to rip someone else's out. She was deeply committed to the guidance of her holy spirits, whoever or whatever they might be, and their desire accorded with hers to expand her influence to as many lands and people as she possibly could reach. In the future, perhaps, with her borders secure, she could afford to play the benevolent monarch; there was time, after all: If the legends were true, she had an eternity. But for the present, her grip was tenuous on a far-flung Khatunate that took years to traverse. If any of the clan heads from Muqa were attached to their old home, the mere act of summoning them to her presence may have been punishment enough. Yet no punishment would return life to the slaves who had died of hunger, and in any case what she had before her was not a true case for judgment, nor for mercy, nor for right and wrong. She was faced with a question of politics, lest her people fracture and perish in slavery or in other terrible ways. For the Khatunate and its traditions ran long and deep, all the way back to the time of the ancient would-be Khans Kabul Ach Khüü and Shizu, and as had been true then, so it was true in her time: Say what she might, they were the clans of Mardocin Toli, and be it theirs or an invader's or some other hapless neighbor's, she knew that sooner or later, there would be blood.
So when next she sat in judgment upon the subject of the slave-takers, she didn't ask the merchants or the clan-heads to step down, and she didn't ask her people to be other than themselves. There was a certain ring of truth to what they had said in any case: The Khatunate could hardly hope - even with the help of their holy spirits - to defeat the violent peoples who revered the likes of d'tay and Krill Gamefinder through purely peaceful and humanitarian activity: Not in the world of Mardocin Toli. Still, when she spoke, she declared, sharp and clear, "No words of mine shall call back the dead, nor free the broken and weary of their injuries - nor will any judgment I may pass upon you who have made this difficult choice. Let us instead make such compensation as we can to those who spent their strength and health in service, and the families of those who perished for the greater safety of our people. Let us celebrate them for the sacrifice they made, and be sure to ask no like sacrifice unless and until the day may come when a known and immediate threat is apprehended to all our people. For though we shall do what we must to survive, let us not in resisting the Zulu become Zulu ourselves! And when we fight them, as I have no doubt that one day we must, let it be in our way, and on our terms."
No sacrifice like the Muqa slaves' was asked again for at least a century and a half after that day, and Muqa's population swelled again with children and families from the countryside and refugees from the north, but it would be long ere the excesses of the impressment campaign were forgotten, told and retold down through the centuries. Only after they faded - and only after Borte's potent influence began to be felt much closer to the people who dwelt around Muqa - would the fisherfolk and cattleherds and peoples of the hills surrounding Muqa at last accept the protection of Muqa itself, with its many martial training grounds built in its early days, as a better alternative than the depradations of wild beasts, wilder men, and the Zulu. As for what was meant by fighting in the Khatunate's way however, and on its terms, that became clear much sooner, as the clans who best knew the ways of cattle and sheep searched everywhere for beasts of burden that could accompany or carry them into battle, much as their cattle had long accompanied their nomadic ancestors upon their journeys or borne them along in bullock carts.
The Khatunate was seeking out its own way of making war - but in the meantime, as bronze became ever more vital to the lifestyles of Borte and Muqa and all the tribes of their subordinate lands, the clan heads and merchants who controlled the copper mines - and especially those who conducted or oversaw the bronze trade between the cities - grew increasingly wealthy and powerful, unchecked, unchastised, and almost unnoted in the Palace at Borte. These power brokers, increasingly known collectively as the Khürel Noyod, were often the descendants - and in effect exclusively the spiritual descendants -- of the clan chiefs and merchants who had argued for slavery in Muqa in the Palace itself, and before the thrones. Culturally, traditionally, the power and leadership of the Khatunate still rested in the person of Izabyella Khatun, but as its population grew and diversified, the day-to-day management of its affairs was increasingly left to the offices of deputies and appointees, which thanks to the inexhorable drive of politics ultimately fell almost exclusively, as if but of course not at all by coincidence, into the hands of the Khürel Noyod copper lords. Slaves were no longer pressed into service, but a system was put in place over the course of several decades that established a form of voluntary slavery, in which citizens unable to provide for themselves in any other way could yield their labor and lives for a certain term to a master who provided for the slaves and their families.
Despite the strenuous efforts of the Khürel Noyod, the system never caught on among first-generation immigrants, especially refugees, but there were citizens -- some would say far too many -- especially, as it happened, among second-generation immigrants and the very poor, who willingly exchanged all meaningful control over their lives for the security of knowing that they and their nearest kin would always have at least food, shelter, and clothing. To many in the Khatunate, the very idea was abhorrent; some said they would far rather fight to the death for the things they needed than surrender their freedom -- but this too was an option, in a certain sense: Another means of escape from the terrors and uncertainty of poverty, especially popular in Borte during the early Khürel Noyod period, was enlistment in the military. Still, as slave agreements became more common, and as slave labor displaced regular citizens from work they had previously offered in trade for goods of their own selection, to be used according to their own wishes, a wave of migration began away from Borte itself: By some estimates, on the order of 20% of the city's population departed over the course of two generations as the Khürel Noyod cemented their power, and as the Palace -- still a center of spiritual guidance and of study -- became more and more a cultural center, less and less the true seat of government. Most of those who departed Borte remained loyal to the Khatunate and to their legendary Eternal Empress, dearly though they wished to escape the Khürel Noyod aristocracy, and the vast majority settled along the river just south of the traditional borders of the Khatunate. At first the settlers existed as a people apart, fiercely loyal to the Khatunate though not to the Khürel Noyod hierarchy, but contact and comingling were inevitable, particularly in the rice fields where most of the migrants made their livings in the new settlement's early days and the sable-rich woodlands in between.
Though it took a century and a half, the people of the growing city that came to be known as Toregene in time joined in regular commerce with Borte and even distant Muqa, and the city itself began to thrive as its hunters supplied the pelts of red fox and sable that were coming into high demand among members of the Khürel Noyod ruling class. The fears that led to the flight of Toregene's founders did not quite die with them, but the traditions of the Eternal Empress were stronger than any fear, and over the course of a few centuries, Toregene would come to adopt ever more of Borte's culture and social structures as the two cities' populations mingled freely. The road up to the ferry across the upper Alph, just below Deed Tusgal Nuur, was short and well-traveled, soon with regular hunting camps and eventually the cottages of what would become Greater Borte along the way.
In the early days however, while the migrants who would found Toregene were still traveling from Borte and finding their home along the river Urgamlyn Khana, the people of Borte proper were distracted by more pressing matters: The words of Izabyella Khatun two centuries before still echoed down the generations, and her people at last had found the means, in accordance with tradition, of conducting war in the fashion of the Khatunate.
The horses of the wild grasslands beyond the floodplains of the east had long been ignored by the cattleherds of Borte, as they strenuously resisted domestication, and - though hunting the swift-racing beasts with their flying hooves was an old tradition in some clans, as a kind of rite of passage - they had never been staples of Khatunate life until the time of the great migration from Borte to what would become Toregene: A lazy rice farmer, tired of the manual labor involved in the annual tilling and leveling of the soil for planting and flooding from the lake, too poor to afford any cattle, set out to catch a wild horse and break it to the yoke. He was surely not the first to invent the idea, or to try, but he was certainly the first in the Khatunate to succeed, and when word of his success came to the Palace of the Eternal Empress in Borte, two of the great clans were sent at once to learn what the farmer had discovered and to harness the horses' considerable power and speed: The Beldmelüüd clan, by long tradition the shapers of weapons and bronze, joined by the Als Badarchin who had lately overseen the completion of pasture enclosures for Muqa's numerous shepherds.
The Khürel Noyod aristocrats looked on with a mixture of approval and disdain, reigning supreme over the Khatunate cities, as they would continue to do for generations. But the seed had been planted from which their successors would one day spring: The Horse Lords of the Khatunate.
Photo and image credits:
Corn roasted in the husk: Steven Raichlen
Lakeside forest with copper-colored rocks: Todd Bielby
Clear-cut forest: Mick Garratt
Slavers and slaves: 19th century engraving; engraver unknown
Mongolian Court: Painting by Rachid Ad-Din, 14th Century
Mongol Warriors: Painting for Fireforge Games
Tuvan women in regal costume: Tuva Online
Mongolian horses: Filip Singer for the European Pressphoto Agency
Impoverished Mongolian children: myagmartsetseg of twitter.com
River and forest: James Wheeler
Chariot: Painting by Angus McBride
(July 2nd, 2017, 15:45)RefSteel Wrote: Sure! The trick is that the granary doesn't actually store half the food you produce as you produce it. After the granary is complete, it puts all of the food you produce into the granary, up to a maximum of half of what you need to grow a size. So after this turn, if I did my math right, there should be 28/28 food in the food bar and 7 food in the granary (not displayed). When we turn OFF avoid growth next turn, we'll be growing to size 5, putting 7 more food into both the food bar and the Granary, with the result that the following turn, we'll have 21 food in the food bar: A completely full 14 food granary plus the 7 food we'll be making next turn. If we didn't use Avoid Growth this turn, we'd grow to size 5 next turn to the exact breadslice, and so have only 7 food in the bin (because we're putting 7 into the granary this turn). Then we would work the horse next turn and still make 7 food, so the following turn we'd have 3 more hammers (and another coin) than we'll have using Avoid Growth - but only 14 food in the food bar (because the granary doesn't add to the food bar except on the turn when you grow a size.) I'll definitely trade 3 hammers and a coin for 7 food!
Ah, that`s the way it works. Good to know! A half full granary is very good, as we want to grow Borte quickly. I agree that trading 3 hammers and a coin for 7 food is a good deal every day a week.
Building missionaries is (an expensive) option, but we`d much rather have the free spreads, of course. As a chess player, I`m used to all information being available at all times and there is no element of luck. Some of the beauty of civ is the variance. It adds flavor to the game, and I`m actually not opposed to it. I still reserve the right to complain, though!
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