New Civilizations [OOC | Open]

[G-Tech Corporation]

Nyet, myenya zovut Vladimir Kuznetsov ot Sankt Peterburg!

(Translation: No, my name is Vladimir Kuznetsov of St. Petersburg!)

(PS: Half of my family is British, the other half is Russian, and I live in München (Munich))

Nice name. It is worth noting, though, that Ulls is correct. Blackpowder is a rather particular recipe, and local ingredients can drastically alter the results.

[Leninist South Africa]

Fair enough.

Sorry Ulls.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Fair enough.

Sorry Ulls.

Thats not to say you can't have blackpowder, but it will take a fair amount of resources and dangerous experimentation to create a working recipe, even if you know its chemical composition. Not to mention extracting some of the elements like saltpeter is rather finicky.

[Leninist South Africa]

I know a way to extract saltpeter from piss. Also, I understand the dangers of experimenting with gunpowder, but hey, gotta keep up technologically.

BTW, how's my latest post?

[G-Tech Corporation]

I know a way to extract saltpeter from piss. Also, I understand the dangers of experimenting with gunpowder, but hey, gotta keep up technologically.

BTW, how's my latest post?

Das gut. I enjoyed the stone-age warfare.

[The Olog-Hai]

I think I'll really have time to sit down and work on a post after I bullshit my way through this summer assignment. It shouldn't take me too long...

[Leninist South Africa]

I know a way to extract saltpeter from piss. Also, I understand the dangers of experimenting with gunpowder, but hey, gotta keep up technologically.

BTW, how's my latest post?

Das gut. I enjoyed the stone-age warfare.

Yay! My very first post on NS with no complaints!
From G-Tech as well!

[G-Tech Corporation]

Das gut. I enjoyed the stone-age warfare.

Yay! My very first post on NS with no complaints!
From G-Tech as well!

I'm really just your average bloke, to be fair.

[Leninist South Africa]

I'm assuming you're British?

[G-Tech Corporation]

I'm assuming you're British?

Genetically, you betcha. Culturally, the argument could be made. Nationally? Nah, I'm an Americanski.

[Leninist South Africa]

Half of me is saying "Yay! Friends!"

The other half is saying "MUST KILL, MUST KILL, MUST BRING BACK USSR."

Try to guess which half is which.

[Conwy-Shire]

Except we both know that Thunen's theories were both based on some pretty far-reaching assumptions, and unrealistic expectations. Civilizations are neither rational nor organic: his postulates about perfect economic flexibility assume possession of total knowledge on the part of all parties, fair dealings with no aspects of greed beyond reciprocal self interest, and uniform terrain/economic utility of land, with distance from urban centers being the only factor of note. I think we both understand that none of those postulates should be accepted as valid outside of a purely theoretical discussion.

Pastoralists will prefer the lands they know to the lands they do not know. In some places, flexible pastoral displacement will be impossible due to climate/terrain composition. Farmers will lack the funds to compensate pastoralists they displace, but do so anyway in order to bring more land under cultivation, leading to conflict. Take Nigeria's ongoing difficulties as a working example of the conflict between agrarianism and pastoralism; it is neither rational, nor perfectly flexible, nor peaceful.

It seems that we've reached an impasse on Thunen, because I believe that civilisations are both rational and organic, and that theory is designed in essence to be applied. The presence of the author would also provide the economy with complete information on the desires of all parties so as to facilitate perfect economic co-operation, but nonetheless: quid pro quo may be a latin phrase, but it describes a universally human understanding, the agrarians desiring more agricultural land would know that - they're ignorant, not stupid. In terms of having the resources to negotiate the expansion of agricultural territories you have to understand that money is not the only thing an agrarian can provide for a pastoralist, eg. they have produce which could be discounted/lump exchanged/portioned/tributed in exchange for the land, its up to the men discussing the terms of the land acquisition.

In Nigeria, the conflict between settlers and Fulanis have a massive variety of outside factors thrown into the mix which aren't applicable to Helios' post-agrarian setting. The Fulanis live in an environment where they have to fend off Boko Haram attacks on their people, as well as adapt to climate change and the land-seizures/rezoning by the central government. In the League there is no appropriation pastoral land by the government (thought the League government facilitates the exchanges where it can), there are no terrorists committing genocide against pastoralists, and the world is becoming more temperate as opposed to barren and degradated...

In the Nigerian case, the Fulani response is entirely rational.

You raise a fair point about pastoralists being given access to more markets and therefore alleviating the immediate pressures on the economic zones- if we accept the premise that those city-states/settlement areas did not have their own pastoralists competing for land in their peripheries, which seems like a less than likely scenario.

Ultimately, as cities expand, conflict over land use occurs on their peripheries. That's borne out by numerous historical examples, from medieval Germany to modern Africa. Expansion in to virgin land does not solve that issue, because even pastoralists do derive an economic advantage from proximity to markets in time-cost. Expansion in to settled land does solve that issue, but only if it is assumed that the peripheries of the settlements have room for the expansion of their peripheral populations, which isn't a viable scenario. As urbanization occurs, governments have to make value judgments about desireable and undesireable land use, and enforce those judgements- otherwise low level friction and potentially conflict results.

Which is neither here nor there- as I said, my only point for discussion here is whether than event would push Helios to expand, which I would say no due to the aforementioned "more cities don't actually mean less competition for land" which I've laid out.

The premise I'm advancing here is that the new members of the League did not have access to the same herds of livestock, and just as with modern companies when they experience profit/growth/stability, they tend to expand their operations. With pastoralists the same holds true with a different flavour, instead of the mother company opening a branch elsewhere, the pastoralists gain more out of splitting their families and herds amongst children so that instead of having one herd amongst five children, they can have five herds amongst five children. This would give the progeny a better chance of survival should their parents pass away, which is the basis of gavelkind in many cultures. Of course once the hypothetical parents die there are five herds and possibly five children who desire each others' herds as their rightful inheritance, and so some of them might move away if incentivised - say by the government who want to integrate distant lands - and so the children go their separate ways (some probably remain anyway) and have the opportunity to grow their individual hers back to the original size in new lands. It's biological fragmentation and regeneration writ large.

This of course would invite hostility from pastoralists who feel like they are being displaced, but the process works for them too, and up until the point where the League stops growing the process will hold true. When that happens (if we're still RP'ing at that time) there will probably be no pastoralists left, having settled down into ranching where different factors will come to shape their existence.

It's a self-sustaining cycle which will slowly die out as the pastoralists settle down into discrete territories like they have today.

Back to the point of discussion here, the reason why Helios is expanding isn't essentially tied to the spillover from that crisis, it's just that the spillover aids the expansion.

The Imperium hardly forcibly destroys all vestiges of culture- I'm sorry if you've gotten that impression from my posts. Rather, through exposure and relational ties, she deliberately accelerates the process of acculturation so as to render her peripheries more open to integration. It is a process with similar results, but far less overtly malicious than cultural suppression/destruction. Well, most of the time...

As for Rome- certainly the Republic integrated many of her citizens through explicit conquest, but equally she interposed citizenship on a plethora of nominally independent kingdoms and city-states through simple threat of military force, rather than outright warfare. Bilateral treaties with local entities not defeated in war, but near other polities defeated in war, were a hallmark of Roman expansion even through Byzantine times.

Hehehe, I must've fallen into the trap of you 'Show, don't tell' policy, here are a couple of the cultures you explicitly destroyed which I could recall ...
`Poland (Slaver cities from early on)
`North Italy (My old civilisation, which was genocided)
`Cansivar (Put to the torch and its people assimilated)
`Dacians (Dunno what you did to them but they're gone now)
So yeah, that is the general impression.

Concerning Rome I was arguing against your statement that Rome 'hardly' expanded through conquest in Italy, but that seems to be cleared up now.

I'm looking for a counterpoint to what the League offers local kings and rulers, but not seeing one. Did you mean to have something about that? As I noted, simple slight economic advantage/access to markets/religious dialogue shouldn't be enough to integrate independent polities- unless, as you say, the League is little more than an EU-esque psuedo-confederation. In that case, I drop almost all of my objections, save to the scale of the integrations. I'm happy to up your land gains to doubling in size, like Ego did in the timeskip. Certainly a disunited entity like the German Confederation could expand relatively rapidly, but she would still face resistance to her expansion, especially as she increased in size and thus newer potential members felt less able to be included in her dialogues at a significant level.

Ah, you mistake me. The Imperium expands largely peacefully- but I completely agree that most of the expansions I have written of are violent. I generally hold to the rule of show, don't tell, if at all possible, and there are some of my posts that include peaceful expansion (down the Danube, in to Germany, in to the Ukraine, if memory serves), but as a rule of thumb I find those posts rather tepid and uninspired due to their lack of events, and so I have made few of them.

I didn't properly articulate myself there sorry, the political expediency is gained through the League being an Intergovernmental institution, meaning that it has the interests of the member-states at hard. Should a revolt happen to arise within a member-state the League would support the member-state and crush the rebels for them, ie. a guarantee of regime continuity in the face of internal and external threats.

I definitely would argue there are close parallels between the League and the EU, though some competencies have been exchanged between the national and supranational pillars. This would not, however, slow down my argued rate of expansion, especially from objections in newer member states. If anything the older states would feel that the nature of their relationship with the League was being weakened, but the costs of leaving would already be too great, and their citizenry would not appreciate both the irresoluteness of their own government as well as the effects on their own day-to-day life. see Brexit.

Tangentially (on the topic of what you write about), I personally love writing about the mundane, because it's the best way for me to explore the human condition... but enough of that.

I'll happily admit that I'm not familiar with the Allee Effect, and a cursory reading did not enlighten me- perhaps you could explain what you see as the issue with the Imperium's scale/population? It seemed as if Allee were concerned about genetic distribution and variance in widely distributed populations.

As for the population estimates, I honestly haven't looked at one in some time. Ranges go anywhere from 10m to 45m, and in-character the Imperium only takes urban censuses, so I'm not fussed one way or another frankly.

I'm not expecting you to be familiar with Allee, as i said earlier theory and academia are my calling. The basic application of Allee in the Imperium's case is that you have so few people spread over such a large area that eventually you will have genetic diversity issues as the fitness (biological fitness that is) of the population decreases (a Strong Allee effect), but my main point about Allee was how it would feed into the extinction vortex. Vortex class F is concerned with the tendency of low population densities to inbreed (even accidental) at a higher rate, whilst class A is about the probability of an offspring having lower environmental fitness than either of the parents and therefore being less adaptable to the environment.

It's a biological/demographic thing that would occur in the extremely low population areas, which is an issue because the Imperium basically has enough land (which I assume is being utillised) for everyone on average to own a small estate, including the women and children too. What I'm assuming by this, because you have industrialised urban areas, is that there are extremely small, even tiny, communities in the middle of nowhere who would be extremely disadvantaged - but then again you might like the idea of Germanic-inbred-redneck-hillbillies consisting your entire non-urban population... I won't judge

The point is you could easily fix this by increasing the population size in your Lore entry, though that may require revising the world population from McEvady's 14 million to HAYDE's 45 million (I don't believe any other demographers bother with going back that far, but I may be wrong).
__

ooh boy, this discussion is getting long-winded isn't it

[The Orson Empire]

I've really dived into Turner's mind in my most recent post.

Turner is becoming more and more ambitious.

[The Olog-Hai]

I'll be able to post soon, I hope... I'm sitting down to work on it now.

[Holy Tedalonia]

So this Allee effect? Is it the reason Russia deals with oppressively idiotic leaders like Stalin?

[Leninist South Africa]

So this Allee effect? Is it the reason Russia deals with oppressively idiotic leaders like Stalin?

Russia is not a dictatorship, but instead, a Constitutional Parliamentary Monarchy.

[Conwy-Shire]

So this Allee effect? Is it the reason Russia deals with oppressively idiotic leaders like Stalin?

Stalin was from Georgia, so I'm not sure it is applicable. Furthermore I'm not an expert on Russia in particular, and I'm aware that there are several interesting political theories on why Russia is such a bizarre place outside of demography.

[Leninist South Africa]

One of the main ones is geography. Russia always need more land, to help better defend the European section of Russia. As a result, Russian foreign policy always need more land.

[Holy Tedalonia]

So this Allee effect? Is it the reason Russia deals with oppressively idiotic leaders like Stalin?

Russia is not a dictatorship, but instead, a Constitutional Parliamentary Monarchy.

So this Allee effect? Is it the reason Russia deals with oppressively idiotic leaders like Stalin?

Stalin was from Georgia, so I'm not sure it is applicable. Furthermore I'm not an expert on Russia in particular, and I'm aware that there are several interesting political theories on why Russia is such a bizarre place outside of demography.

It was a joke, since this Allee effect was talking about genetic pools and stuff, and since historically Russia is huge it has theoretically more inbreeding if the theory is true.

[Conwy-Shire]

Oh and G-tech (whenever you read this), you can RP the trade legation if you feel like that's still appropriate.

[Holy Tedalonia]

One of the main ones is geography. Russia always need more land, to help better defend the European section of Russia. As a result, Russian foreign policy always need more land.

How I've been taught in school was Russia was just a confederation of tribes, which they united since everybody ignored their borders (basically were kicked around). Peter the great did his culture love thing, then Russia's expands quickly grabbing useless Siberia and useful Ukraine. Then keeps heading east pretty much.

Note: this is what they taught in my school. I haven't looked into Russia that much myself although i do plan to in the future.

[Leninist South Africa]

One of the main ones is geography. Russia always need more land, to help better defend the European section of Russia. As a result, Russian foreign policy always need more land.

How I've been taught in school was Russia was just a confederation of tribes, which they united since everybody ignored their borders (basically were kicked around). Peter the great did his culture love thing, then Russia's expands quickly grabbing useless Siberia and useful Ukraine. Then keeps heading east pretty much.

Note: this is what they taught in my school. I haven't looked into Russia that much myself although i do plan to in the future.

It's kind of true. Russia was a confederation of city-states, such as Novgorod and Muscovy (Moscow). When the Mongols attacked, Novgorod was the last one left. Muscovy after some time, grew strong enough, and the Mongols weak enough, that they managed to remove Mongol, and basically create a state in a state. Muscovy later unified what we now call "Russia", though it was just Moscow and Novgorod. Then Peter the Great comes along, does his thing, so does Catherine the Great, and more or less today's Russia is formed.

That is the quickest history of Russia I could assemble, since I'm way too lazy to write at the moment. If you want to know more, just ask.

[G-Tech Corporation]

It seems that we've reached an impasse on Thunen, because I believe that civilisations are both rational and organic, and that theory is designed in essence to be applied. The presence of the author would also provide the economy with complete information on the desires of all parties so as to facilitate perfect economic co-operation, but nonetheless: quid pro quo may be a latin phrase, but it describes a universally human understanding, the agrarians desiring more agricultural land would know that - they're ignorant, not stupid. In terms of having the resources to negotiate the expansion of agricultural territories you have to understand that money is not the only thing an agrarian can provide for a pastoralist, eg. they have produce which could be discounted/lump exchanged/portioned/tributed in exchange for the land, its up to the men discussing the terms of the land acquisition.

In Nigeria, the conflict between settlers and Fulanis have a massive variety of outside factors thrown into the mix which aren't applicable to Helios' post-agrarian setting. The Fulanis live in an environment where they have to fend off Boko Haram attacks on their people, as well as adapt to climate change and the land-seizures/rezoning by the central government. In the League there is no appropriation pastoral land by the government (thought the League government facilitates the exchanges where it can), there are no terrorists committing genocide against pastoralists, and the world is becoming more temperate as opposed to barren and degradated...

In the Nigerian case, the Fulani response is entirely rational.

Ah, but there's the catch, in essence. Practically, even the best supported theory of social interaction is prone to inapplicability in particular circumstances, especially as your sample size decreases and thus individual variance increases. Thunen's theory is an excellent one to be aware of, but should not be used to argue except from the abstract- and given the size of Helios and her rather dissimilar circumstances to Thunen's ideal case, variance from his predicted outcomes should be taken as axiomatic. We can point to essentially all of history if we want examples of conflicts between pastoralists and sedentary agriculture over land use; Philistines and Israelites, South Sumerians and Akkadians, Manchu and Song, and so on. There were other dynamics to those conflicts, of course, but land use contributed to them all.

The premise I'm advancing here is that the new members of the League did not have access to the same herds of livestock, and just as with modern companies when they experience profit/growth/stability, they tend to expand their operations. With pastoralists the same holds true with a different flavour, instead of the mother company opening a branch elsewhere, the pastoralists gain more out of splitting their families and herds amongst children so that instead of having one herd amongst five children, they can have five herds amongst five children. This would give the progeny a better chance of survival should their parents pass away, which is the basis of gavelkind in many cultures. Of course once the hypothetical parents die there are five herds and possibly five children who desire each others' herds as their rightful inheritance, and so some of them might move away if incentivised - say by the government who want to integrate distant lands - and so the children go their separate ways (some probably remain anyway) and have the opportunity to grow their individual hers back to the original size in new lands. It's biological fragmentation and regeneration writ large.

This of course would invite hostility from pastoralists who feel like they are being displaced, but the process works for them too, and up until the point where the League stops growing the process will hold true. When that happens (if we're still RP'ing at that time) there will probably be no pastoralists left, having settled down into ranching where different factors will come to shape their existence.

It's a self-sustaining cycle which will slowly die out as the pastoralists settle down into discrete territories like they have today.

Back to the point of discussion here, the reason why Helios is expanding isn't essentially tied to the spillover from that crisis, it's just that the spillover aids the expansion.

Hmm, so, as I said, your essential premise is that access to the League's superior herds allows for greater economic productivity on the part of the new elements of the League that are pastoralists- so even though the absolute access to markets remains constant, the displacement from agricultural expansion is outweighed by the expansion of access to better livestock. I'm not an expert on domestication, but I don't believe the League has made any strides in that area that you have noted... it is also worth considering that any improvements to livestock that are simply from genetic diversity are assuredly marginal in the span of ten years.

So, that doesn't really follow?

You're saying that the displacement cost borne by pastoral society is counteracted by superior economic opportunities for growth- but there's nothing the League has done to encourage such opportunities for growth in a significant manner. Rather, as I noted initially, you'd see friction between pastoral groups that are bearing long term costs, and sedentary farmers, who are bearing short term costs. Assuming, of course, that those pastoralists can be displaced from their prime herding ground with short term costs. Everyone has their price, of course, but that price might not be feasible to meet in a significant amount of cases.

So, that's speaking of internal conflict, which tends to be a weight on expansion rather than an impetus.

I didn't properly articulate myself there sorry, the political expediency is gained through the League being an Intergovernmental institution, meaning that it has the interests of the member-states at hard. Should a revolt happen to arise within a member-state the League would support the member-state and crush the rebels for them, ie. a guarantee of regime continuity in the face of internal and external threats.

I definitely would argue there are close parallels between the League and the EU, though some competencies have been exchanged between the national and supranational pillars. This would not, however, slow down my argued rate of expansion, especially from objections in newer member states. If anything the older states would feel that the nature of their relationship with the League was being weakened, but the costs of leaving would already be too great, and their citizenry would not appreciate both the irresoluteness of their own government as well as the effects on their own day-to-day life. see Brexit.

Ah, I see. That's logical, but it also begs the question of political sovereignty- a power which can prevent the change of rulership can also effect the change of rulership. Consider the old feudal system; she enforced the rule of certain nobles against revolt, certainly, but one of the fundamental dynamics of the medieval era was the interplay of lord and vassal and their relative ability to depose the other. A vassal who felt his lord might move against him would commonly raise his banners in revolt, whereas a lord who felt his vassal might revolt would move to strip him of his titles. Such would be the danger for your average tribal chieftain/autocrat integrated in to the League, for his rule is no longer his province alone, but a matter of interest to many other powers which might object to his actions or policies and thus depose him in favor of a more convenient leader. Obviously that isn't a problem with the EU, but the EU is also, I assume, a polity of far fewer members with far more individual strength as compared to Helios.

I'm not expecting you to be familiar with Allee, as i said earlier theory and academia are my calling. The basic application of Allee in the Imperium's case is that you have so few people spread over such a large area that eventually you will have genetic diversity issues as the fitness (biological fitness that is) of the population decreases (a Strong Allee effect), but my main point about Allee was how it would feed into the extinction vortex. Vortex class F is concerned with the tendency of low population densities to inbreed (even accidental) at a higher rate, whilst class A is about the probability of an offspring having lower environmental fitness than either of the parents and therefore being less adaptable to the environment.

It's a biological/demographic thing that would occur in the extremely low population areas, which is an issue because the Imperium basically has enough land (which I assume is being utillised) for everyone on average to own a small estate, including the women and children too. What I'm assuming by this, because you have industrialised urban areas, is that there are extremely small, even tiny, communities in the middle of nowhere who would be extremely disadvantaged - but then again you might like the idea of Germanic-inbred-redneck-hillbillies consisting your entire non-urban population... I won't judge

The point is you could easily fix this by increasing the population size in your Lore entry, though that may require revising the world population from McEvady's 14 million to HAYDE's 45 million (I don't believe any other demographers bother with going back that far, but I may be wrong).
__

ooh boy, this discussion is getting long-winded isn't it

Hmm, interesting. I can see why that would be an issue, but it is important, in that context, that I point out that the Imperium's population is very densely clustered for the ancient world. Most of her citizens live in the heavily settled vales of the Danube in Austria/Czechia/Romania/Hungary, with the areas that you see painted in on the map largely a case of possession rather than occupation. Certainly there are cities elsewhere, like Byzantium, Thrace, Northern Italy, Germany, and the Ukraine, but between urban centers you might cross vast swathes of territory and wild country where there might be nothing more than the odd pit-mine or logging camp for fifty miles.

There is also the (amusingly, unintended) mixing effect of the Ministry of Relocation. Restive locals, either conquered or rebellious, are often split apart from folk of their ethno-cultural group and settled across the Imperium. That process, like what happened to the people of Fenis by and large, means that the genetic diversity of the Imperium I would postulate is quite high. Still, an interesting theory to learn of.

As for total population, I'm not really fussed about it either way. Until it becomes necessary, all I really feel a need to say about the Imperium's size is to say it is large enough to support thirty five thousand professional soldiers in the field, which I think is a degree of militarization that is reasonable for either two million citizens or twenty million citizens.

You're right, this is getting longwinded. Let me break this down to nuts and bolts then.

1) I let Ulls double his territory in ten years through fairly unpopulated areas, but slapped him with some instability due to that rate of expansion being higher than any in the rest of the RP.

2) I think, as a general rule of thumb, that expansion in populated areas should be commensurately more difficult than expansion through unpopulated areas, peaceful or warlike.

3) You're asking for a quadrupling of your territory in the same ten years, through a populated area.

Logic would dictate that you should face a far more difficult task than Ulls, and thus even more ramifications. We can talk around what is or is not good for expansion until we are blue in the face, but the truth is that it is far from a precise science. Therefore, I think it would be fair for the purposes of this RP for you to either: a) tone back your expansions or b) really get fucked by instability.

[G-Tech Corporation]

Oh and G-tech (whenever you read this), you can RP the trade legation if you feel like that's still appropriate.

Cool, cool. I'm putting together a collab with Kelmet right now, so I'll probably get to it tomorrow some time.

[Aidannadia]

a) tone back your expansions or b) really get fucked by instability.

If I may, it actually doesn't sound that bad if the league were to split in the expansion, due to the individuals being spaced out and acting under the belief that they didn't need the league anymore, which puts the author is a position to play internal politics and go through a nice conquer, expand, develop kind of roleplay if that's something they're into.