[SPOILERS] Dark Savant leads the noble Inca as half-noble Churchiill

[Dark Savant]

Turn 67 (1320 BC) - Part 1

The Great Lighthouse was not built this turn.

International news brings us this:



This might just be a scout passing through, but I wonder if this is WilliamLP killing one of Charriu's "tall scouts".  I'll probably be able to see this on the power graph next turn.

I don't think it's a real war; WilliamLP still has a lower power rating than Charriu even though he's climbed out of the farmer's gambit level.

Also, I suppose wetbandit now suspects we're fairly close to him.



Oh well, stealth of that sort couldn't really have endured.

Here's where our scouting work boat and Stonesnake stand.



I can declare war and try to have both run through 's territory at the same time, but it will still take several turns for both to get into position.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 67 (1320 BC) - Part 2

I realize that my Great Lighthouse plan actually has it complete on turn 74, not 75.

To do that, I need to have a third worker help out for a bit; I wouldn't have had to do that if it weren't for that meddling barb warrior.  Oh well.  Hot Pie is on the way, and builds another turn of that random cottage en route.

• Casterly Rock completes an archer, and starts another.  That city is getting a couple more chops in the next couple of turns.  The archer wanders off to do some exploring as a tall scout, in wetbandit's direction.
  
• King's Landing and Casterly Rock are microed to work tiles other than max food, since they're moving against the happy cap.
  
• Castle Black now works a deer camp in addition to a pig pasture.  It now should only take 3 turns for it to reach size 4 and 2-pop-whip the barracks.
  
• I need to think about somehow getting whales or possibly silver connected.
  
• Winterfell works a 1f2h tile to get the terrace faster.  I realize I don't need a chop for a couple more turns , so I'll connect Winterfell by road first.
  
• Science at 30%; this still gets us Masonry next turn.
  

I'm going to give our archers names of Summer Islanders, since those guys are expert archers in the books.  If I survive much longer, I'm going to run out of Summer Islander names, so I'll have to move on from that.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 67 (1320 BC) - Part 3 (C&D)

signed off on putting EP into us at 48; I do the same this turn, and start putting EP into wetbandit.

Score tally:

• Us: +6 points for +2 pop (in King's Landing and Castle Black; 20 pop in 5 cities).
  
• Charriu: +9 points for 6 land tiles claimed by city #3 for 20 turns; +6 points for a technology researched in 4 turns; -4 points for a 1-pop whip (12 pop in 4 cities).
  
• ipecac : +4 points for +1 pop (16 pop in 6 cities).
  
• JR4: -3 points for a 1-pop whip; +3 points for what looks like a capture of a size-1 barb city (14 pop in 6 cities).
  
• superdeath: +6 points for a technology researched in 8 turns; +7 points for +2 pop; -7 points for a 2-pop whip (16 pop in 5 cities).
  
• wetbandit: +3 points for +1 pop (12 pop in 4 cities).
  
• WilliamLP: +9 points for 6 land tiles claimed by city #3 for 20 turns; +7 points for +2 pop (14 pop in 5 cities).
  
• yuris125:+7 points for +2 pop (14 pop in 4 cities).
  

I wonder what the race for the Oracle is looking like.

[Dark Savant]

I actually have free time in Los Angeles, so I can play ... but the turn has yet to roll, and I'm caught up on reporting.

People get a lot of misconceptions about history from high-ish fantasy like A Song of Ice and Fire.

In some cases, the misconceptions are of modern history.  That's partly because most fantasy fiction is more modern than most people think.

One such facet is the legal age of majority.  That's 18 in most European countries and 47 out of 50 US states.  (The three other states are Nebraska, Alabama, and Mississippi.  Many East Asian countries also have that above 18.)

In fantasy fiction, it's usually lower than 18.  It's 16 in A Song of Ice and Fire, and 17 in the Harry Potter-verse (sort of ... that's when you can get a license to Apparate in Britain).

This gives many people the impression that the legal age of adulthood has gone up in the past several centuries.

Nope.  You'd think at least people here in the US would know about the 26th Amendment.  Elsewhere, the UK age of majority was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1970, and France similarly lowered the age of majority from 21 to 18 in 1974.

And before the early 1970s, there had been a shift from 25 to 21.

Modern society actually thrusts responsibility into young people's hands sooner than they did historically.  And people wonder why young people do so many stupid things.

This has been a Dark Savant Blog/postcount++ Post.

[CML]

Lurker chiming in. The whole point of LA is: free time. It's intuitive because, duh, the entertainment industry, but there's nothing like living here to make life feel absurd. Which it is.

Can you comment on the legal age of majority in print vs. on TV as it regards Daenerys?

[Dark Savant]

Lurker chiming in. The whole point of LA is: free time. It's intuitive because, duh, the entertainment industry, but there's nothing like living here to make life feel absurd. Which it is.

Just visiting LA from the Silicon Valley makes me half feel like I'm in a different country, even though I'm not even in a different state.

Can you comment on the legal age of majority in print vs. on TV as it regards Daenerys?

Lurker chirps are always appreciated.  

You probably already know this to some extent, but almost everyone gets 3 years added to their age in the TV show compared to the books.

This partly just makes the timeline work better, since George RR Martin did not anticipate writing the books taking nearly this long.  A Dance with Dragons was originally slated to come out in 1998; it was going to be the second book of a trilogy.  The book by that title finally came out 23 years after that.  

It also makes a lot of the younger characters behave in more age-appropriate fashion.  All off the Stark kids, except for Rickon, behave noticeably older than their age in the books, which the TV show mostly fixes.

Now, I don't really think the TV show fixes too many things -- it typically makes things worse than better -- but the age-up is definitely an improvement.

Case in point: Daenerys starts at age 13 in the books.  A lot of people don't realize this, which makes all her sex scenes extra creepy to the modern reader.  (Though they still really ought to be creepy, because the books depict what is pretty much rape by modern standards.  Although that's partly because the concept of spousal rape has only existed for about 50 years.)

Now, age of majority has gone down, but the age of marriageability has generally gone up.  It's just that traditionally, this requires parental consent before the age of majority.  That refers to Europe (see above links); in the US, there's often no lower limit at all, if you have both parental consent and the approval of a judge.  (That's the law in California.)

In Westeros, 16 is the age of majority, and the functional lower limit to the age of marriageability is puberty, whenever that happens.  (It's 13 in the case of Sansa Stark -- she freaks out when she has her first period because that makes her marriageable, without her father around to make a good deal for her.)  Nobles can contract to have their kids married with no lower limit to age; this happens plenty in real life nobility as well.

We know the Westerosi laws and customs about this sort of thing, but as far as I know, not for the Free Cities or among the Dothraki.  It should be noted that "age of majority" doesn't necessarily mean much in noble families; Tywin Lannister can push around his children when they're well into their 30s, for instance.  It doesn't matter that one is Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and another is the Queen Regent.  That's partly just because he's Tywin, but it's true in most other noble families to a significant extent.

Since Daenerys starts as a fugitive, it's not clear whose customs and laws even apply to begin with.

Anyway.  Daenerys starts at age 16 in the TV show, so all those sex scenes are much less creepy.  And it's also no longer rape.  It's long been rumored George RR Martin is a creepy pervert, and the TV show (not to mention the actresses) try to get around that, which I don't blame them for.  (That's very low on the list of author sins, incidentally -- it gets so much worse than that.)

One thing to point out is age of consent being 18 is generally only true in California and for federal US law.  (California has extra-strict laws about this because of the porn industry here. )  For most of the other 49 states, and the rest of the world, age of consent is often 16 or lower.  So Daenerys's age is fine in most of the rest of the world, just not where I live.

Another thing is that a lot of what is depicted fictionally really did happen, but only among the nobility.  Commoners were not under nearly such intense pressure to produce an heir (much of why noble kids were pushed into marriage ASAP), so they would delay marriage and children much more.

[Dark Savant]

just rolled the turn, and of course I don't have time to play now.  

also played his turn right after rolling, so he's not going to declare war to do more than scout or snipe an unguarded worker in the next few turns.

If superdeath or yuris125 are to his west, they're likely much easier targets than we are anyway.  JR4 is another matter.  I'd love to find out who 's western neighbor is, but we really don't have a reliable way of doing so until we can build boats from Oldtown (busy with the Great Lighthouse) or maybe Winterfell (just planted).

[Dark Savant]

I just rolled the turn -- I logged out right away to report, but I'm going to try to play the next turn as well once I post a report.

I just came back from dinner at Yuk Dae Jang.  Great food for the price (much better ratio than any Korean restaurant I know of in the San Francisco Bay Area), they just don't serve many banchan dishes (three, rather than the usual 8-10).

Turn 68 (1280 BC) - Part 1

The Great Lighthouse was not built this turn.

Charriu and WilliamLP are having 10 turns of enforced peace.



I think Charriu just approached WililamLP with another one of his tall scouts.  If that's the case, I don't think Charriu realizes just how aggressive he's actually acting.  

He's getting no lurker help, is he?  I was expecting him to get it, but it doesn't seem to be happening.

He does have a granary in his capital, after a 2-pop-whip.



I'm not positive it wasn't there before, though.

Over to the west, is doing ... some combination of paranoia and posturing. 



He moved his axe and impi in kwaDukuza to cover his worker on the marble.  It isn't really any more aggressive than before, since it doesn't change the amount of time it takes to invade me, and there's nothing else behind it I can see.  I can whip archers in both Castle Black and Casterly Rock in an emergency if I really need to.

I'm not quite sure what the impi is for.  should be aware I can't build chariots.

Wait, does even know we can trade resources?  I wonder what he thinks of me not offering non-aggression -- that's only because I may declare a scouting war in a few turns (if he kills my scout ... not a big deal), and I do not want to offer a deal in bad faith.  I'm still not sure how to read the meta here, so if that's some kind of significant offense, please let me know.

Here is the narrow island between and wetbandit.



Notice how close it is to the mainland in both directions (in fact, I don't have 100% proof that is an island just yet).  I'd expect any island plant to produce serious tension with our mystery ocean neighbor rapidly, so we should garrison any island cities more heavily than normal.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 68 (1280 BC) - Part 2

Our archer Xhondo Dhoru pushes east from King's Landing and discovers there is food in that single fogged tile.



I'll still probably plant close enough to Winterfell so I can borrow its corn as well.

Core overview:

• Masonry research is complete.  Writing up next, though I'm going to set science to 0% for at least a few turns.  No point in researching Writing until we have enough gold to get it at full-blast science: (1) if someone completes the Oracle soon, we can squeeze an extra flask or two out of the KTBs it will enable; (2) we can divert to going for Judaism if we choose to.
  
• Now that I can whip emergency archers at both potentially threatened cities, I'm going to have place chops at Casterly Rock go into a settler.  I just realized I could have grown Casterly Rock into unhappiness for a little extra production on the settler , oh well, it's not going to change the speed of the settler though.
  
• Black Balaq the archer moves north of Casterly Rock to scout the isthmus between us and wetbandit.
  
• Oldtown grows to size 7; it can sustain that because it currently has no unhappiness.  I'll start the whip overflow chain for the Great Lighthouse next turn, so it'll soon have a lot of unhappiness.
  
• Hot Pie helps out with some of the Great Lighthouse micro preparation, which continues.  In a couple turns, he'll start preparing a road to city #6.
  
• Yoren the axe is resting near King's Landing; he'll be at full health next turn, and I'll need to decide whether to send him west or to support city #6 (probably the latter).
  

[Dark Savant]

Turn 68 (1280 BC) - Part 3 (C&D)

Score tally:

• Us: +6 points for researching Masonry in 4 turns; +4 points for +1 pop in Oldtown (21 pop in 5 cities).
  
• Charriu: -7 points for a 2-pop whip (10 pop in 4 cities).
  
• ipecac : -4 points for a 1-pop whip (15 pop in 6 cities).
  
• JR4: No change (14 pop in 6 cities).
  
• superdeath: +3 points for +1 pop; -3 points for a 1-pop whip (16 pop in 5 cities).
  
• wetbandit: +7 points for +2 pop (14 pop in 4 cities).
  
• WilliamLP: No change (14 pop in 5 cities).
  
• yuris125: +7 points for +2 pop; +3 points for planting city #5 claiming 5 new land tiles (17 pop in 5 cities).
  

wetbandit is also noticeably starting to fall behind in population and city count.