EMPIRE! CWBG XIII: F5: Document Spirits F10: Summon Balepig, Keeper of Oaths

[BladeofObliviom]

Clarification. Are resources limited by region and not by empire? So if I had two regions I could only build Shintouite fortifications in one? That seems pretty limiting for the rarer resources. Now you can't really trade because you have to use your stacks just to make sure your own empire has access to the resource.

Note that Shintouite Fortifications aren't unbuilt once built if you redirect the Shintouite elsewhere; the stacks represent a supply, not the presence of a resource in and of itself.


That said, having to choose between trading your excess outward for things you don't have and supplying your own regions is a fairly basic marginal problem. Is it more important to you that all of your regions have stone, or that your capital gets food and blankets and wood or whatever else you'd trade it for? You can't have your cake and eat it too, so to speak.

This is an issue that all of the larger kingdoms in this game have wrestled with. I actually spent a C5 on regular, boring stone so that I could get stone for sewers to all of Glazfell's Core regions.

[SamBurke]

These get my vote.

I vote the same.

As to interprovincial trade... I don't think I can even understand how powerful the tech is. I think it'll improve quality of life fluff-wise for basically everyone, which is nice from a Guilderene ruling perspective. From a tech perspective, it's a very useful one, as it means that I have to worry less about getting Stone and True Ice to my regions. It may end up even helping with bookkeeping in that regard: does a NATION have those resources, as opposed to checking each region.

[Philote]

As far as I know, Steam Power and Trains already require a substantial amount of resources to get going. How would you get those resources in every region to build all the railroads that would be necessary to even benefit from this tech. Not to mention needing other resources on top of that just to do the internal trading. Seems like too much of a hassle to me.

[SamBurke]

As far as I know, Steam Power and Trains already require a substantial amount of resources to get going. How would you get those resources in every region to build all the railroads that would be necessary to even benefit from this tech. Not to mention needing other resources on top of that just to do the internal trading. Seems like too much of a hassle to me.

Steam Power is 2 fuel resources (Oil, Goldfire, etc etc), and trains I believe requires Iron on top of that. For you or me, with few regions, it could be thrown up in just 2 rounds (2/2 per region isn't terribly hard).

[Lord_Burch]

As far as I know, Steam Power and Trains already require a substantial amount of resources to get going. How would you get those resources in every region to build all the railroads that would be necessary to even benefit from this tech. Not to mention needing other resources on top of that just to do the internal trading. Seems like too much of a hassle to me.

Right on the first statement, but wrong on the second: you don't need universal imports. I could see iron, maybe coal, as needing to be universal- which it isn't at this time- but it doesn't really make sense that you'd need to manufacture the trains for the region in the region, although it would help with balance.

That said, yeah, the tech seems pretty powerful, and I'd be against it as it stands, primarily for what Blade has said. Perhaps if it was reduced to just food resources, but at best that would probably just be delaying the tech being applied to other resources.

[BladeofObliviom]

I vote the same.

As to interprovincial trade... I don't think I can even understand how powerful the tech is. I think it'll improve quality of life fluff-wise for basically everyone, which is nice from a Guilderene ruling perspective. From a tech perspective, it's a very useful one, as it means that I have to worry less about getting Stone and True Ice to my regions. It may end up even helping with bookkeeping in that regard: does a NATION have those resources, as opposed to checking each region.

This is true. I've made the case on Skype that if this is desirable, we should consider just overhauling the game's economy to accommodate it rather than haphazardly patching these issues with a tech. As it currently stands, though, this tech deeply punishes people with mundane or duplicate and especially duplicate mundane resources.

Under the current resource system it also heavily strains verisimilitude, as even in a large Kingdom it duplicates one stack of resources up to seven times, and in a federation there is no limit to how many times a single stack can be duplicated. This tech's existence implies that every single region with any resource produces enough of that resource to supply 20+ similarly-sized regions using 1800-level technology, which seems highly improbable.

[Aedilred]

I vote the same.

As to interprovincial trade... I don't think I can even understand how powerful the tech is. I think it'll improve quality of life fluff-wise for basically everyone, which is nice from a Guilderene ruling perspective. From a tech perspective, it's a very useful one, as it means that I have to worry less about getting Stone and True Ice to my regions. It may end up even helping with bookkeeping in that regard: does a NATION have those resources, as opposed to checking each region.

As far as trade tracking goes, I'd have to have a think about how I'd get the tracking to work. As things stand it actually requires arguably slightly more effort to check whether a player has a given import, rather than a region.

Not that that should necessarily present an obstacle to the technology going through, either way. It would be possible to get this to work with the current system, I'm sure.

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I will say however on a related note that the tech tracking is becoming increasingly difficult and time-consuming, especially when there are a lot of trades in a particular round. It's a bit of a running joke that people are making my life difficult, but there is truth to it. This isn't anyone's fault (and although I would request that people don't "save up" their trades and do twenty at once where possible, I'm absolutely guilty of doing that myself), but it is something that is not unlikely to present a problem in future, particularly if I become significantly more busy IRL than I currently am, and/or new technologies start appearing that make the trade system more complex.

I don't actually know what a solution to this would be, short of dedicated software, or some kind of database (which come with drawbacks of their own not least of which is that someone would have to build it). A system of multiple trade commissioners would help spread the load a little but probably cause at least as many problems as it solved, and likely lead to delays on trade for everyone. The current system is the best I have been able to think of given the resources at my/our disposal, although there are issues with it...

I'm open to suggestions on this score. However if the current system is to be changed, it should probably result in a significant time saving in terms of trade updates, given how big a job any overhaul would be. It is a difficult situation.

As far as I know, Steam Power and Trains already require a substantial amount of resources to get going. How would you get those resources in every region to build all the railroads that would be necessary to even benefit from this tech. Not to mention needing other resources on top of that just to do the internal trading. Seems like too much of a hassle to me.

This is one of those things where it essentially gets handwaved, and as with Shintouite you can bump resources between regions easily enough that it wouldn't actually present an obstacle to construction in every region. It could conceivably present an obstacle to building in two regions simultaneously, but I don't think anyone's going to care about that.

Steam power is pretty much one of those technologies where once you have all the resources somewhere you have it everywhere, I think. The only restrictive resource factor on the trains, even if it were tracked region-by-region, would be the iron, and that's not that hard to come by.

[QuintonBeck]

New Thread

I will discuss my opinions on the technology there after thinking on it some more and reading opinions and ideas.

Spoiler: Ruler Stuff Record 39 & 40

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Round 39; Round 40

Praeclarus: +2 Diplomacy, +2 Curiosity, new ruler - Duc Fozik

Kingdom of the Carmine Sea: +2 Diplomacy +1 Curiosity; +2 Diplomacy

Caramel Kingdom: +2 Curiosity; +2 Military, new ruler – Mirian Freeform!

Faedas Freehold: +1 Diplomacy +1 Military +1 Faith; +1 Curiosity +1 Faith

Hurosha Empire: +3 Faith; +1 Curiosity

Holy Kingdom of Sycia: +1 Military +1 Curiosity; +1 Faith

UJR Legislator: +2 Curiosity +1 Diplomacy; +2 Curiosity +1 Diplomacy, new ruler – Cheyna Sisvul!

Maur: +1 Military +1 Diplomacy

Salterri Imperium: +1 Curiosity +1 Faith; +3 Curiosity

Caercian Consortium: +1 Diplomacy +2 Curiosity; +1 Curiosity +1 Diplomacy, new ruler - Augustai Caercia

An Nádur: +1 Diplomacy; +1 Diplomacy +1 Military

Guilder: +1 Diplomacy +1 Military; +2 Diplomacy

Mularuhm: +1 Diplomacy +1 Military; +1 Military +1 Curiosity

Chivalric Republic: +1 Diplomacy +1 Curiosity; +1 Curiosity +1 Faith, new ruler - Yfa Da'at Zwei (rolls unassigned)

Seaborne Confederation: +1 Military +1 Faith; +1 Curiosity +1 Faith, new ruler - Elizabeth Grant

Kingdom of the Isles: +1 Diplomacy +1 Military; +2 Diplomacy

Everburning Horde: +1 Military +1 Faith; +1 Military +1 Diplomacy

Kingdom of Serendel (EoD): +1 Diplomacy +1 Military +1 Faith; +1 Military +1 Faith

Glazfelli Hegemony: +1 Diplomacy +1 Military +1 Faith; +2 Diplomacy +1 Faith

Kingdom of Celero: +1 Military +1 Curiosity; +1 Military +1 Curiosity

Thalman Legacy: Inactive 2 rounds

Trandar: Inactive 3 rounds – NPC!

Sovereign Principality of Niskovia: +2 Faith; +1 Faith +1 Military

Kingdom of Ashenia: +1 Military +1 Curiosity +1 Faith; +1 Military +1 Curiosity

Tzlateclan: +1 Faith +1 Curiosity, Luck 10 used; +2 Curiosity

UJR Executor: +1 Military +2 Curiosity; +1 Military +2 Curiosity

Empire of the Silver Moon: +1 Military +1 Curiosity

New Crima: +2 Curiosity; inactive

Kingdom of Calorum: Inactive; +1 Military +1 Faith

Tuvaak: (NPC); +1 Diplomacy +1 Military

Great Sharixian Republic: +1 Diplomacy +4 Curiosity

UJR Judicator: +1 Military +2 Faith; +2 Military +1 Faith

Kingdom of Dekboard: +1 Military +2 Curiosity +1 Faith, new ruler – Telk'Hazar Duriduo

Kemuliaan: +3 Faith, new ruler – Red Pharaoh

Kingdom of Kuldran: Inactive 3 rounds - NPC!

Kingdom of Faelthalas: Inactive 3 rounds - NPC!