New Civilizations [OOC | Always Open]

[Ralnis]

So would Tibet be opened for trade with some guys with pimped out chariots?

[Endem]

Author Applicaiton
Name: Jonas Smith
Age: 20
Height and Weight: 5' 5"
Skin, hair, and eye description: Tan skin, very dark brown hair, brown eyes
( Optional ) Picture: Not doing one

Prior Profession: Wrote up Wendy's roasts (and also worked at Wendy's as a cook)
Level of education ( specify degrees or note worthy classes ): Is in the middle of college and is trying to get a major in Physics
Physique description: Average physical health and strength
Useful skills: Knows what elements can combine into others to make certain essential needs, and can perform the combinations to create things like water

National Origin: New Zealand
What were you doing prior to falling asleep and awakening in the past?: In the middle of writing an essay for Physics on the subject of the possibility of being able to split quarks
Description of personality: Seclusive, not the most talkative of people, but with close friends, many interesting discussions can and will take place
Where in the world are you landing?: The middle of Mesopotamia

Autobiography/Biography ( paragraph minimum ): Jonas was born in Auckland, New Zealand. His father was killed when he was 3, leaving him and his mother by themselves. They were able to survive until Jonas was old enough to get a job at Wendy's. Throughout his school years before getting a job, he was the "weird" kid at school. He never got along with anybody. He would constantly get into fights, but wouldn't share what happened.

His mother started getting worried about him and requested to his teachers in 6th grade whether he could have classes by himself to help him focus. The teachers agreed, and Jonas was given special classes by himself to keep him from getting into fights. He would be given special assignments and quickly became one of the smartest students in 6th grade. He was able to skip 7th grade and got into 8th grade quickly. When he got into college, he easily got into AP classes, and it gave him enough of a challenge that he wouldn't get bored in class.

Just after graduating from high school, he got a job at Wendy's as a cashier. He was promoted after a few months after showing his time management skills. He became a cook and raised the reviews through the roof. He made enough money that with him working a part-time job and his mom working a full-time job as a programmer that they were able to get a better house and living qualities. Jonas continued with school until now, when the story takes place.

Writing Sample: It was midnight and I was running through the woods. I wasn't sure what was chasing me or what they were going to do to me, but I knew that it wouldn't be good. By the way, my name is Janora Francis, but everybody calls me Jan. I'm 14 years old and I'm a runaway. Who I'm running from and why don't matter. All you need to know is that I'm terrified.

I'd been running for 3 days straight. I was wearing a backpack with food, water, and supplies. That's probably why my pursuer was able to stay on my trail, even though I'd been twisting and turning, zigging and zagging. I wasn't sure how much longer I could go, but it wouldn't be long until I had to stop. Suddenly, I ran out of breath. I couldn't go any farther. I was sure I would be caught. But, my pursuer stopped near me, looked around, and left.


( Optional on down)
What are your intentions for this RP, what's the long term goal?:
What people or places are you taking inspiration from?: Mostly Sumeria and stuff like that, there's also a little bit of Greek inspiration in the building style, but the irrigation, agriculture, and law systems are all Sumerian and Babylonian.
Why did you chose to land where you did?: Because of the Fertile Crescent, an ideal spot to create a civilization.
What vibe should we get from your civilization and it's culture?: Formal and peaceful
What are your character's motivations?: Just wanting to survive, hopefully get back to his mom somehow
Theme Song?: Immortals by Fall Out Boy; You Will Be Found by Dear Evan Hansen Cast
What do you wanna see in this RP? What would make it better?:

So, some things to note:

Your skills - are they actually practical? In a laboratory setting, sure. Consider though, if you were naked in the forest with zero instruments and no people around who could provide either insight or tools. Are your listed skills actually useful? Could you give an example?

Second, you are free to land in Mesopotamia if you want, but you should know that it has been radically changed from our own timeline. Another Author named Luther Holly landed there a few decades ago, and he helped to create a more or less unified state, known as the holy dynasty. New technologies and ideas of religion and governance were introduced, heightening the area's overall development. About, I want to say fifteen years ago, a civil war started between various cities, which persists somewhat to this day. luther abandoned Sumeria about five years ago for China ( he's disappeared since ). Sumeria today is under going something i've likened to their own Sengoku Gidai

Just something to keep in mind if you want to land there, it's been touched already

Also, I'm very openly wanting to invade it soon-ishly, so, keep that in mind. However, Palestine and Israel, even Syria are right next door, and are mostly author free, if you want to have the fertile crescent experience, I'd recommend giving those a go. Especially since Egypt, and Arabia are all more or less taken by other authors.

[Joohan]

Again, I AM STILL PRODUCING WEAPONS! They just don’t take literally all of my productive capacity. Iron mines are guarded as are the barges and wagons that move iron ore. Any tribe threatening iron ore producing regions like china’s north would have been destroyed first.

You're having to produce more weapons for more troops who fight more frequently than any armies prior to the rebellion. The demand for iron weapons has at least doubled, if not more than tripled, while the comparative work force has not similarly increased, nor have any new process's increased their productivity.

Are not a great many tribes in China currently under going periods of migration in response to your war? Say your armies wiped out literally every tribe which lived along your iron ore routes - what is to prevent one of these new migratory tribes from setting up in their place? If Aaron has only alloted a minimum of security to those routes because he was under the impression land around them is safe, than I would be a fool not to attack his caravans.

[Joohan]

So would Tibet be opened for trade with some guys with pimped out chariots?

You'd have to get there first - and my goodness getting there sucks. In terms of hostile environments found on planet earth, the list goes:

1. Antarctica
2. The Arctic
3. Tibet

You could try though. We've got some of the most easily accessed rock salt on the planet right now, which would easily be worth it's weight in gold, but again, man just getting there blows.

If you're looking to trade with Issac in specific... just hold that thought for about another 2 IC posts. My Nomad life is about to finally start getting interesting

[Orostan]

Again, I AM STILL PRODUCING WEAPONS! They just don’t take literally all of my productive capacity. Iron mines are guarded as are the barges and wagons that move iron ore. Any tribe threatening iron ore producing regions like china’s north would have been destroyed first.

You're having to produce more weapons for more troops who fight more frequently than any armies prior to the rebellion. The demand for iron weapons has at least doubled, if not more than tripled, while the comparative work force has not similarly increased, nor have any new process's increased their productivity.

Are not a great many tribes in China currently under going periods of migration in response to your war? Say your armies wiped out literally every tribe which lived along your iron ore routes - what is to prevent one of these new migratory tribes from setting up in their place? If Aaron has only alloted a minimum of security to those routes because he was under the impression land around them is safe, than I would be a fool not to attack his caravans.

Why would a migrating tribe move to a more dangerous area and why would I put a minimum of security at my most important mines?

Also, recycling broken iron weapons is something I do regularly and probably comprises a lot of the metal I use for iron weapons. It’s the same with tools.

So would Tibet be opened for trade with some guys with pimped out chariots?

You'd have to get there first - and my goodness getting there sucks. In terms of hostile environments found on planet earth, the list goes:

1. Antarctica
2. The Arctic
3. Tibet

You could try though. We've got some of the most easily accessed rock salt on the planet right now, which would easily be worth it's weight in gold, but again, man just getting there blows.

If you're looking to trade with Issac in specific... just hold that thought for about another 2 IC posts. My Nomad life is about to finally start getting interesting

What’s this about valuable resources near china?

[Ralnis]

So would Tibet be opened for trade with some guys with pimped out chariots?

You'd have to get there first - and my goodness getting there sucks. In terms of hostile environments found on planet earth, the list goes:

1. Antarctica
2. The Arctic
3. Tibet

You could try though. We've got some of the most easily accessed rock salt on the planet right now, which would easily be worth it's weight in gold, but again, man just getting there blows.

If you're looking to trade with Issac in specific... just hold that thought for about another 2 IC posts. My Nomad life is about to finally start getting interesting

That's who I'm talking about, see if Issac would trade with Bo's group. Though I don't know if the Xianyun do slavery.

[Orostan]

You'd have to get there first - and my goodness getting there sucks. In terms of hostile environments found on planet earth, the list goes:

1. Antarctica
2. The Arctic
3. Tibet

You could try though. We've got some of the most easily accessed rock salt on the planet right now, which would easily be worth it's weight in gold, but again, man just getting there blows.

If you're looking to trade with Issac in specific... just hold that thought for about another 2 IC posts. My Nomad life is about to finally start getting interesting

That's who I'm talking about, see if Issac would trade with Bo's group. Though I don't know if the Xianyun do slavery.

Xianyun don’t do that, yet.

[G-Tech Corporation]

1. In reference to that I was talking about lining up like ten engines and using them to pull carts by cable. At this point steam engines will mostly be used for pumps and powering workshops. What cable cars I do create will probably be light test lines right now - I can’t just start building something like that without a lot of testing.

That sounds fine to me - just keep in mind that producing large amounts of steam engines is always a question of who you are robbing to pay Paul. More steam engines means less iron tools and less iron weapons.

2. It has been literal years why would it ever take that long? Every town and city in China has a militia and I can see zero reason why bandits near roads wouldn’t have been gotten rid of a long time ago.

See, I think this bandit terminology is getting in the way of this discussion. These aren't stateless entities with no backing and only whatever they can borrow or steal - these are armies deployed by the polities around China seeking to take their pound of flesh and plunder now that they are no longer being paid off by China's bureaucrats to maintain the peace. These are armies unaffected by previous warfare, well armed and numerous, likely better fed and more experienced than China's average soldier due to not having been ground down by the aforementioned previous warfare.

They definitely outnumber any militia by a significant margin, as well as being better led, better armed, and more highly motivated. China's militia aren't going to be winning against them - China's militias are going to be lucky not to be lopsidedly butchered by them, given the effort China has put into creating a centralized military instead of allowing local lords to divert those arms and weapons for the defense of their cities. Sure, most of these polity armies won't be up to the task of taking a city and holding it - sacking is more the tune of the game - but in the absence of China's central armies the YRS's towns and cities live in a state of constant peril.

There are only so many places China's central armies can campaign at once. Where they haven't campaigned, China faces systemic warfare and economic and logistical disruption which might verge towards complete.

[Suriyanakhon]

Literally Steel Ball Run.

[Orostan]

1. In reference to that I was talking about lining up like ten engines and using them to pull carts by cable. At this point steam engines will mostly be used for pumps and powering workshops. What cable cars I do create will probably be light test lines right now - I can’t just start building something like that without a lot of testing.

That sounds fine to me - just keep in mind that producing large amounts of steam engines is always a question of who you are robbing to pay Paul. More steam engines means less iron tools and less iron weapons.

2. It has been literal years why would it ever take that long? Every town and city in China has a militia and I can see zero reason why bandits near roads wouldn’t have been gotten rid of a long time ago.

See, I think this bandit terminology is getting in the way of this discussion. These aren't stateless entities with no backing and only whatever they can borrow or steal - these are armies deployed by the polities around China seeking to take their pound of flesh and plunder now that they are no longer being paid off by China's bureaucrats to maintain the peace. These are armies unaffected by previous warfare, well armed and numerous, likely better fed and more experienced than China's average soldier due to not having been ground down by the aforementioned previous warfare.

They definitely outnumber any militia by a significant margin, as well as being better led, better armed, and more highly motivated. China's militia aren't going to be winning against them - China's militias are going to be lucky not to be lopsidedly butchered by them, given the effort China has put into creating a centralized military instead of allowing local lords to divert those arms and weapons for the defense of their cities. Sure, most of these polity armies won't be up to the task of taking a city and holding it - sacking is more the tune of the game - but in the absence of China's central armies the YRS's towns and cities live in a state of constant peril.

There are only so many places China's central armies can campaign at once. Where they haven't campaigned, China faces systemic warfare and economic and logistical disruption which might verge towards complete.

1) both of those take priority over the steam engines.

2) that’s absurd. Any bandit tribe that could threaten a city or important trade route would have been one of the first to be attacked! Weapons are not going to be in short supply even for lower priority militia and I don’t understand why you are insisting that I can’t do anything at all and that I have nothing at all. Why can’t I attack these bandits? Why can’t I clear out china area by area? Why, after years, are the most important parts of China still under attack? How can it be that I’ve made no progress?

[Joohan]

(Image)

(Image)

Literally Steel Ball Run.

I feel like this is an insult, but I just don't know

[Joohan]

You'd have to get there first - and my goodness getting there sucks. In terms of hostile environments found on planet earth, the list goes:

1. Antarctica
2. The Arctic
3. Tibet

You could try though. We've got some of the most easily accessed rock salt on the planet right now, which would easily be worth it's weight in gold, but again, man just getting there blows.

If you're looking to trade with Issac in specific... just hold that thought for about another 2 IC posts. My Nomad life is about to finally start getting interesting

That's who I'm talking about, see if Issac would trade with Bo's group. Though I don't know if the Xianyun do slavery.

yeah i'd just wait for another 2 posts before you see what it is i'm about to do

[Ralnis]

[The Hierophancy]

Author Applicaiton

Name: Alexander McClure
Age: 20
Height and Weight: 5'11, 190lb
Skin, hair, and eye description: Fairish, slightly olive skin. Straight, dark brown hair falling to the small of the back / sternum. Medium length, slightly lighter beard (it's got a little red around the chin too), moustache doesn't really connect, sadly. Light brown eyes.
( Optional ) Picture:

Prior Profession: Student
Level of education ( specify degrees or note worthy classes ): College sophomore - anthropology classes, chemistry (not sure how useful it'd be outside of a lab), history
Physique description: Not in shape, kind of... rectangular? Pretty good endurance walking / hiking, pretty poor lung capacity, can lift up heavy things
Useful skills: Having made a few clay pots is probably the most useful one. Literate? Good with animals.

National Origin: USA!
What were you doing prior to falling asleep and awakening in the past?: Probably reading genre fiction.
Description of personality: Stoic to put it politely. Not too expressive. Probably depressed. Enjoys learning things, pathological procrastinator and doesn't often stick to things as dutifully as he should. Grand ambitions he doesn't think are within the realm of possibility. Content in most life-situations he's been in - or, more accurately, generally resigned. Contrarian. Introverted personally, though he enjoys public speaking and debate. He has a pretty bad memory. Humble.
Where in the world are you landing?: Daling River, China

Autobiography/Biography ( paragraph minimum ): Alexanders lived a remarkably uneventful life. He was born and raised in coastal Connecticut, and from a young age was interested in history, renaissance fairs and the little stone arrowhead his mother received from a friend. As most people do, he went to school, made some friends, did some team sports he hated and which his team always lost. His parents got divorced, he kept on going to school, wrote some things, painted some things, sculpted some things. He went hiking and boating, camping and skiing and, a few times in Pennsylvania or at his cousins home in Oklahoma, horseback riding, which he enjoyed quite a bit. Most of his time, though, was devoted to school, reading books, playing games and watching TV shows. In highschool, he found out he had some skill and interest in biology, and 2 years on remains unseemly proud of getting a 5 on his AP Bio exam.

During his last summer as a highschooler, he worked with a rare bookseller in his hometown, entering data into a computer, taking and editing pictures, and talking to his boss. He enjoyed that quite a bit too, and got to hold and leaf through some very, very old books. It was the first time he'd really felt as if he were actually touching history - odd shaped rocks, despite being thousands of years older, didn't really compare to stiff old vellum and beautifully inked Latin.

After a few experiments in truancy he graduated high school with decent grades and was shipped off to a relatively prestigious university in frigid upstate New York. Once, his entire dorm had to evacuate into the freezing night because - he suspects - of olive oil he'd haphazardly poured onto a would-be loaf of bread.

Writing Sample: ehhhhh


( Optional on down)
What are your intentions for this RP, what's the long term goal?: Bring peace and prosperity to the world, or just survive
What people or places are you taking inspiration from?: Ursula le Guins translation of Tao Te Ching, maybe some Mesoamerica stuff
Why did you chose to land where you did?: There's a very interesting temple here which was active around the current time in the RP, and presumably an interesting culture which built it. Interacting with China and not-Japan also seems like it could be fun.
What vibe should we get from your civilization and it's culture?: If I do end up forming some sort of civilization, I'd like it to be a nice, agrarian and free. The Shire?
What are your character's motivations?: Survival, raw ambition, but I'd imagine mostly boredom
Theme Song?: N/A
What do you wanna see in this RP? What would make it better?: the inevitable Neolithic World War

[Joohan]

Why would a migrating tribe move to a more dangerous area and why would I put a minimum of security at my most important mines?

Quite - thousands of miles of road and river passages, as well as tens of thousands of rowdy slaves to keep in order would require thousands of soldiers in order to patrol for Aaron to have any security of that area. Thousands of soldiers who are not elsewhere defending China's borders from her enemies.

Also, recycling broken iron weapons is something I do regularly and probably comprises a lot of the metal I use for iron weapons. It’s the same with tools.

This isn't really practical. As Dan Bourlotos, a Mat-Sci engineer and forged in fire finalist put it:

" In theory, yes. In actuality, no. There are quite a few variables that need to play out in your favor in order to have this work well and if we look through history it wasn’t generally done. However, I will list some hurdles that need to be conquered.

The first issue is actual loss of material. Even if you are running an argon-shielded induction melter and you melt the material into molten steel, you are going to have some loss (output material is less than input material) from material sticking to the wall of your crucibles. At least the chemistry would be roughly the same though. If you didnt have the latest and greatest in casting technology, lets say a blast furnace or remelt furnace, not only would your losses go up (maybe as high as 50%), but your chemistry would also likely change.

In a blast furnace or remelt furnace you are using coal/charcoal and air to generate heat. In burning the coal/charcoal, you are combining it with oxygen to create CO and CO2. In order to prevent your carbon content from increasing or decreasing, you need to very carefully balance the fuel to oxygen ratio. If you dont, you might end up puting in more carbon resulting in cast iron instead of steel.

As I mentioned previously, throughout history we rarely see a whole lot of remelting blade steels. Usually, they just consolidated the various pieces and fused them into one ingot. Way less effort, and way less loss. "

What’s this about valuable resources near china?

Tibet may be cold, but if you come round looking for trouble you'll be catching heat, on Pho

[Joohan]

Author Applicaiton

Name: Alexander McClure
Age: 20
Height and Weight: 5'11, 190lb
Skin, hair, and eye description: Fairish, slightly olive skin. Straight, dark brown hair falling to the small of the back / sternum. Medium length, slightly lighter beard (it's got a little red around the chin too), moustache doesn't really connect, sadly. Light brown eyes.
( Optional ) Picture:

Prior Profession: Student
Level of education ( specify degrees or note worthy classes ): College sophomore - anthropology classes, chemistry (not sure how useful it'd be outside of a lab), history
Physique description: Not in shape, kind of... rectangular? Pretty good endurance walking / hiking, pretty poor lung capacity, can lift up heavy things
Useful skills: Having made a few clay pots is probably the most useful one. Literate? Good with animals.

National Origin: USA!
What were you doing prior to falling asleep and awakening in the past?: Probably reading genre fiction.
Description of personality: Stoic to put it politely. Not too expressive. Probably depressed. Enjoys learning things, pathological procrastinator and doesn't often stick to things as dutifully as he should. Grand ambitions he doesn't think are within the realm of possibility. Content in most life-situations he's been in - or, more accurately, generally resigned. Contrarian. Introverted personally, though he enjoys public speaking and debate. He has a pretty bad memory. Humble.
Where in the world are you landing?: Daling River, China

Autobiography/Biography ( paragraph minimum ): Alexanders lived a remarkably uneventful life. He was born and raised in coastal Connecticut, and from a young age was interested in history, renaissance fairs and the little stone arrowhead his mother received from a friend. As most people do, he went to school, made some friends, did some team sports he hated and which his team always lost. His parents got divorced, he kept on going to school, wrote some things, painted some things, sculpted some things. He went hiking and boating, camping and skiing and, a few times in Pennsylvania or at his cousins home in Oklahoma, horseback riding, which he enjoyed quite a bit. Most of his time, though, was devoted to school, reading books, playing games and watching TV shows. In highschool, he found out he had some skill and interest in biology, and 2 years on remains unseemly proud of getting a 5 on his AP Bio exam.

During his last summer as a highschooler, he worked with a rare bookseller in his hometown, entering data into a computer, taking and editing pictures, and talking to his boss. He enjoyed that quite a bit too, and got to hold and leaf through some very, very old books. It was the first time he'd really felt as if he were actually touching history - odd shaped rocks, despite being thousands of years older, didn't really compare to stiff old vellum and beautifully inked Latin.

After a few experiments in truancy he graduated high school with decent grades and was shipped off to a relatively prestigious university in frigid upstate New York. Once, his entire dorm had to evacuate into the freezing night because - he suspects - of olive oil he'd haphazardly poured onto a would-be loaf of bread.

Writing Sample: ehhhhh


( Optional on down)
What are your intentions for this RP, what's the long term goal?: Bring peace and prosperity to the world, or just survive
What people or places are you taking inspiration from?: Ursula le Guins translation of Tao Te Ching, maybe some Mesoamerica stuff
Why did you chose to land where you did?: There's a very interesting temple here which was active around the current time in the RP, and presumably an interesting culture which built it. Interacting with China and not-Japan also seems like it could be fun.
What vibe should we get from your civilization and it's culture?: If I do end up forming some sort of civilization, I'd like it to be a nice, agrarian and free. The Shire?
What are your character's motivations?: Survival, raw ambition, but I'd imagine mostly boredom
Theme Song?: N/A
What do you wanna see in this RP? What would make it better?: the inevitable Neolithic World War

In the middle of the action eh? I dig it

Accepted

[Orostan]

Why would a migrating tribe move to a more dangerous area and why would I put a minimum of security at my most important mines?

Quite - thousands of miles of road and river passages, as well as tens of thousands of rowdy slaves to keep in order would require thousands of soldiers in order to patrol for Aaron to have any security of that area. Thousands of soldiers who are not elsewhere defending China's borders from her enemies.

Also, recycling broken iron weapons is something I do regularly and probably comprises a lot of the metal I use for iron weapons. It’s the same with tools.

This isn't really practical. As Dan Bourlotos, a Mat-Sci engineer and forged in fire finalist put it:

" In theory, yes. In actuality, no. There are quite a few variables that need to play out in your favor in order to have this work well and if we look through history it wasn’t generally done. However, I will list some hurdles that need to be conquered.

The first issue is actual loss of material. Even if you are running an argon-shielded induction melter and you melt the material into molten steel, you are going to have some loss (output material is less than input material) from material sticking to the wall of your crucibles. At least the chemistry would be roughly the same though. If you didnt have the latest and greatest in casting technology, lets say a blast furnace or remelt furnace, not only would your losses go up (maybe as high as 50%), but your chemistry would also likely change.

In a blast furnace or remelt furnace you are using coal/charcoal and air to generate heat. In burning the coal/charcoal, you are combining it with oxygen to create CO and CO2. In order to prevent your carbon content from increasing or decreasing, you need to very carefully balance the fuel to oxygen ratio. If you dont, you might end up puting in more carbon resulting in cast iron instead of steel.

As I mentioned previously, throughout history we rarely see a whole lot of remelting blade steels. Usually, they just consolidated the various pieces and fused them into one ingot. Way less effort, and way less loss. "

What’s this about valuable resources near china?

Tibet may be cold, but if you come round looking for trouble you'll be catching heat, on Pho

1) Again, local security is handled by local militias which are there to stop small raids and make larger ones prohibitively expensive. China has ten thousand soldiers, five thousand of which are probably doing patrols and that sort of thing while the rest are field armies actively clearing out bandits.

2) I get material from it and G-Tech has said to me in the past that recycling would help me a lot.

3) I don't want trouble, I just want resources for my industrial revolution!

[G-Tech Corporation]

2) that’s absurd. Any bandit tribe that could threaten a city or important trade route would have been one of the first to be attacked! Weapons are not going to be in short supply even for lower priority militia and I don’t understand why you are insisting that I can’t do anything at all and that I have nothing at all. Why can’t I attack these bandits? Why can’t I clear out china area by area? Why, after years, are the most important parts of China still under attack? How can it be that I’ve made no progress?

I don't think I said anything about 'no progress'.

I'm merely noting that China can't be everywhere at once. Riddle me this: if all of China's cities and important trade routes are under threat, where do her two campaign armies deploy for their first campaign season? Everywhere that isn't those two places where the armies are is likely actively being raided.

Unless I forget my timescale, China has only been at war for two years. Call that four campaign seasons, during which each campaign army is capable of completing one 'campaign'. I already gave you the broad figure of five hundred miles in a swathe being capable of being pacified per campaign, which is fiercely generous. So, four thousand miles of China's borders have been fully pacified and returned to quiessennce.

How many miles of border does China have?

[Orostan]

2) that’s absurd. Any bandit tribe that could threaten a city or important trade route would have been one of the first to be attacked! Weapons are not going to be in short supply even for lower priority militia and I don’t understand why you are insisting that I can’t do anything at all and that I have nothing at all. Why can’t I attack these bandits? Why can’t I clear out china area by area? Why, after years, are the most important parts of China still under attack? How can it be that I’ve made no progress?

I don't think I said anything about 'no progress'.

I'm merely noting that China can't be everywhere at once. Riddle me this: if all of China's cities and important trade routes are under threat, where do her two campaign armies deploy for their first campaign season? Everywhere that isn't those two places where the armies are is likely actively being raided.

Unless I forget my timescale, China has only been at war for two years. Call that four campaign seasons, during which each campaign army is capable of completing one 'campaign'. I already gave you the broad figure of five hundred miles in a swathe being capable of being pacified per campaign, which is fiercely generous. So, four thousand miles of China's borders have been fully pacified and returned to quiessennce.

How many miles of border does China have?

You said it would take me ten years to beat the bandits, I have been at war for 20% of that and as such the most important 20% of the country is totally secure at minimum. It's not about borders it is about actual territory. China's borders are only the rough line where someone crossing it starts to be China's problem, what actually matters is controlling routes between cities and important iron producing regions. I think it is absolutely reasonable to say that China has at least that under control. Besides that massacring entire bandit tribes is still reasonably common and bandits who know what the Chinese are doing would not want to provoke them into finding and killing them all. Raiding iron ore shipments is a fast way for a tribe to immediately become China's number one priority and get killed off.

I don't understand what you want. Should I post about nothing but bandits? Should I post nothing at all for the next two time skips? Why, after two years of fighting, can I not have the bare minimum I need to keep China functioning under my control? Why would these bandits even be so determined to destroy everything like you say? Raw iron ore is of no use to them, only refined iron ore and even then they lack the skills to turn that into weapons and tools.

I agree with you that bandits are going to be worse in areas where Chinese armies aren't but I don't think they're going to be literally everywhere stealing everything.

[G-Tech Corporation]

This isn't really practical. As Dan Bourlotos, a Mat-Sci engineer and forged in fire finalist put it:

" In theory, yes. In actuality, no. There are quite a few variables that need to play out in your favor in order to have this work well and if we look through history it wasn’t generally done. However, I will list some hurdles that need to be conquered.

The first issue is actual loss of material. Even if you are running an argon-shielded induction melter and you melt the material into molten steel, you are going to have some loss (output material is less than input material) from material sticking to the wall of your crucibles. At least the chemistry would be roughly the same though. If you didnt have the latest and greatest in casting technology, lets say a blast furnace or remelt furnace, not only would your losses go up (maybe as high as 50%), but your chemistry would also likely change.

In a blast furnace or remelt furnace you are using coal/charcoal and air to generate heat. In burning the coal/charcoal, you are combining it with oxygen to create CO and CO2. In order to prevent your carbon content from increasing or decreasing, you need to very carefully balance the fuel to oxygen ratio. If you dont, you might end up puting in more carbon resulting in cast iron instead of steel.

As I mentioned previously, throughout history we rarely see a whole lot of remelting blade steels. Usually, they just consolidated the various pieces and fused them into one ingot. Way less effort, and way less loss. "

To be fair to Orostan, I did actually sign off on this, and will stand by it - predominantly because the iron the YRS is using is so variable in material properties and her desire to use whatever she can get her hands on is so high that remelting/recasting her iron won't actually make an appreciable difference to the quality of said iron.

I would never recommend doing this with steel. But hey, the YRS doesn't have to worry about that yet. Their only major problem would be the rate of use of fuels for their smelters and forges, but if you're willing to deforest the world to feed the fires of industry that's a problem for next generation.

[G-Tech Corporation]

You said it would take me ten years to beat the bandits, I have been at war for 20% of that and as such the most important 20% of the country is totally secure at minimum.

Actually I said it would take you twelve years to beat the bandits, with steadily increasing rates of pacification as your armies actually secure territory and build their numbers towards the 10k you quoted - though that figure assumes you are essentially dedicating all of your soldiers to campaigning. If you want to leave men on defense to protect cities and infrastructure, that will significantly prolong the conflict.

It's not about borders it is about actual territory. China's borders are only the rough line where someone crossing it starts to be China's problem, what actually matters is controlling routes between cities and important iron producing regions.

Sure - and China's cities are spread out very wide, across an area of ~eight hundred thousand square miles. All of that area that isn't her cities and is along her trade routes is area that has to be pacified before her logistics will work without threat and her cities don't risk a sacking whenever the central armies march away.

I think it is absolutely reasonable to say that China has at least that under control.

That's a fine assertion, but what is your reasoning?

Besides that massacring entire bandit tribes is still reasonably common and bandits who know what the Chinese are doing would not want to provoke them into finding and killing them all. Raiding iron ore shipments is a fast way for a tribe to immediately become China's number one priority and get killed off.

Ah, but how many number one priorities does China have? Like I said earlier - the vast majority of polities around China haven't even seen a hair on a Chinese soldier in the last two years, only fighting lightly trained militia and likely winning handily. Why should they stop fighting when they are winning, seizing lucre and valuable resources for their own? Certainly if you want to say that China's first priority was her iron mines then I can't see any reason why some of those aren't fully secured, but securing iron shipments comes at other costs elsewhere - cities left to fend for themselves, or outright abandoned to enemy investment.

I don't understand what you want. Should I post about nothing but bandits? Should I post nothing at all for the next two time skips? Why, after two years of fighting, can I not have the bare minimum I need to keep China functioning under my control?

Do you think your posts are reflective of a China fighting a serious war which is only operating at the bare minimum of Aaron's control?

Why would these bandits even be so determined to destroy everything like you say? Raw iron ore is of no use to them, only refined iron ore and even then they lack the skills to turn that into weapons and tools.

Like I said above, why would an enemy quit while they are winning?

I agree with you that bandits are going to be worse in areas where Chinese armies aren't but I don't think they're going to be literally everywhere stealing everything.

Everywhere stealing everything isn't exactly what I mean, to be sure. But I think we can agree that the populated regions around China are fairly contiguous, no? That is to say, China isn't surrounded by empty space with no inhabitants. Given those inhabitants were being bribed by China's bureaucrats, and given those bribes were stopped, both events which have already happened, a significant proportion of China's neighbors now have a vested interest in looting the Chinese state for the luxuries, tools, weapons, and more with which they were previously being bribed.

[Orostan]

You said it would take me ten years to beat the bandits, I have been at war for 20% of that and as such the most important 20% of the country is totally secure at minimum.

Actually I said it would take you twelve years to beat the bandits, with steadily increasing rates of pacification as your armies actually secure territory and build their numbers towards the 10k you quoted - though that figure assumes you are essentially dedicating all of your soldiers to campaigning. If you want to leave men on defense to protect cities and infrastructure, that will significantly prolong the conflict.

It's not about borders it is about actual territory. China's borders are only the rough line where someone crossing it starts to be China's problem, what actually matters is controlling routes between cities and important iron producing regions.

Sure - and China's cities are spread out very wide, across an area of ~eight hundred thousand square miles. All of that area that isn't her cities and is along her trade routes is area that has to be pacified before her logistics will work without threat and her cities don't risk a sacking whenever the central armies march away.

I think it is absolutely reasonable to say that China has at least that under control.

That's a fine assertion, but what is your reasoning?

Besides that massacring entire bandit tribes is still reasonably common and bandits who know what the Chinese are doing would not want to provoke them into finding and killing them all. Raiding iron ore shipments is a fast way for a tribe to immediately become China's number one priority and get killed off.

Ah, but how many number one priorities does China have? Like I said earlier - the vast majority of polities around China haven't even seen a hair on a Chinese soldier in the last two years, only fighting lightly trained militia and likely winning handily. Why should they stop fighting when they are winning, seizing lucre and valuable resources for their own? Certainly if you want to say that China's first priority was her iron mines then I can't see any reason why some of those aren't fully secured, but securing iron shipments comes at other costs elsewhere - cities left to fend for themselves, or outright abandoned to enemy investment.

I don't understand what you want. Should I post about nothing but bandits? Should I post nothing at all for the next two time skips? Why, after two years of fighting, can I not have the bare minimum I need to keep China functioning under my control?

Do you think your posts are reflective of a China fighting a serious war which is only operating at the bare minimum of Aaron's control?

Why would these bandits even be so determined to destroy everything like you say? Raw iron ore is of no use to them, only refined iron ore and even then they lack the skills to turn that into weapons and tools.

Like I said above, why would an enemy quit while they are winning?

I agree with you that bandits are going to be worse in areas where Chinese armies aren't but I don't think they're going to be literally everywhere stealing everything.

Everywhere stealing everything isn't exactly what I mean, to be sure. But I think we can agree that the populated regions around China are fairly contiguous, no? That is to say, China isn't surrounded by empty space with no inhabitants. Given those inhabitants were being bribed by China's bureaucrats, and given those bribes were stopped, both events which have already happened, a significant proportion of China's neighbors now have a vested interest in looting the Chinese state for the luxuries, tools, weapons, and more with which they were previously being bribed.

1) They already have ten thousand men - it's been two years. Their numbers have built to all that is needed. I don't think protecting my stuff will prolong the conflict, if anything it will shorten it as bandits are forced to get into larger and larger groups to steal shit - and those large groups can be defeated by a Chinese army.

2) I do not need a guard every ten feet along a road, I need enough people protecting convoys so it is prohibitively expensive to attack them. Cities have walls and the bandits have no siege equipment, it is not possible for the bandits to successfully attack an important city. Only towns or small cities with no big stone wall or less fortifications could be attacked and that's where most of the bandits would be.

3) I have explained my reasoning multiple times. 50% of the bandits were defeated already and those were the 50% in the closest contact and proximity with Chinese settlements. Convoys are well protected and there has been a campaign of genocide aimed at the bandits unlike anything else in the world at this point.

4) No cities are left to fend for themselves like that. Chinese armies are not clearing the country province by province, they are going road by road and city by city. All major cities have had their surroundings cleared out and when bandits move back into that territory they're going to all get killed by the next Chinese army.

China is not fighting an organized insurgency with a central authority. it is fighting tribes of bandits that don't even speak the same language across the country and raid targets of opportunity. They don't want to set up kingdoms, they want easy loot.

5) Yes.

6) Because if they don't they get killed to the man and attacking protected convoys full of shit they can't even use doesn't make sense.

7) Okay, then I hope they enjoy being killed off. China has already extended an olive branch to many of these groups and at this point most of them have three choices: 1) get out of china 2) surrender and deal with the Chinese as actually productive parts of their economy or 3) get exterminated.

What do you actually want this to look like? Just tell me what you want and get to the point so we can talk about this in terms that actually make sense. What do you think China should look like right now?

This isn't really practical. As Dan Bourlotos, a Mat-Sci engineer and forged in fire finalist put it:

" In theory, yes. In actuality, no. There are quite a few variables that need to play out in your favor in order to have this work well and if we look through history it wasn’t generally done. However, I will list some hurdles that need to be conquered.

The first issue is actual loss of material. Even if you are running an argon-shielded induction melter and you melt the material into molten steel, you are going to have some loss (output material is less than input material) from material sticking to the wall of your crucibles. At least the chemistry would be roughly the same though. If you didnt have the latest and greatest in casting technology, lets say a blast furnace or remelt furnace, not only would your losses go up (maybe as high as 50%), but your chemistry would also likely change.

In a blast furnace or remelt furnace you are using coal/charcoal and air to generate heat. In burning the coal/charcoal, you are combining it with oxygen to create CO and CO2. In order to prevent your carbon content from increasing or decreasing, you need to very carefully balance the fuel to oxygen ratio. If you dont, you might end up puting in more carbon resulting in cast iron instead of steel.

As I mentioned previously, throughout history we rarely see a whole lot of remelting blade steels. Usually, they just consolidated the various pieces and fused them into one ingot. Way less effort, and way less loss. "

To be fair to Orostan, I did actually sign off on this, and will stand by it - predominantly because the iron the YRS is using is so variable in material properties and her desire to use whatever she can get her hands on is so high that remelting/recasting her iron won't actually make an appreciable difference to the quality of said iron.

I would never recommend doing this with steel. But hey, the YRS doesn't have to worry about that yet. Their only major problem would be the rate of use of fuels for their smelters and forges, but if you're willing to deforest the world to feed the fires of industry that's a problem for next generation.

we do a little ruthless industrialization its called we do a little 99% of all carbon emissions will be from china in ten years.

[Joohan]

This isn't really practical. As Dan Bourlotos, a Mat-Sci engineer and forged in fire finalist put it:

" In theory, yes. In actuality, no. There are quite a few variables that need to play out in your favor in order to have this work well and if we look through history it wasn’t generally done. However, I will list some hurdles that need to be conquered.

The first issue is actual loss of material. Even if you are running an argon-shielded induction melter and you melt the material into molten steel, you are going to have some loss (output material is less than input material) from material sticking to the wall of your crucibles. At least the chemistry would be roughly the same though. If you didnt have the latest and greatest in casting technology, lets say a blast furnace or remelt furnace, not only would your losses go up (maybe as high as 50%), but your chemistry would also likely change.

In a blast furnace or remelt furnace you are using coal/charcoal and air to generate heat. In burning the coal/charcoal, you are combining it with oxygen to create CO and CO2. In order to prevent your carbon content from increasing or decreasing, you need to very carefully balance the fuel to oxygen ratio. If you dont, you might end up puting in more carbon resulting in cast iron instead of steel.

As I mentioned previously, throughout history we rarely see a whole lot of remelting blade steels. Usually, they just consolidated the various pieces and fused them into one ingot. Way less effort, and way less loss. "

To be fair to Orostan, I did actually sign off on this, and will stand by it - predominantly because the iron the YRS is using is so variable in material properties and her desire to use whatever she can get her hands on is so high that remelting/recasting her iron won't actually make an appreciable difference to the quality of said iron.

I would never recommend doing this with steel. But hey, the YRS doesn't have to worry about that yet. Their only major problem would be the rate of use of fuels for their smelters and forges, but if you're willing to deforest the world to feed the fires of industry that's a problem for next generation.

I guess that's acceptable then

But it wouldn't be enough to actually be meaningful in terms of replacing lost weapons and gear. It's simple chemistry that input just isn't going to equal output

[Orostan]

To be fair to Orostan, I did actually sign off on this, and will stand by it - predominantly because the iron the YRS is using is so variable in material properties and her desire to use whatever she can get her hands on is so high that remelting/recasting her iron won't actually make an appreciable difference to the quality of said iron.

I would never recommend doing this with steel. But hey, the YRS doesn't have to worry about that yet. Their only major problem would be the rate of use of fuels for their smelters and forges, but if you're willing to deforest the world to feed the fires of industry that's a problem for next generation.

I guess that's acceptable then

But it wouldn't be enough to actually be meaningful in terms of replacing lost weapons and gear. It's simple chemistry that input just isn't going to equal output

yes it would, why wouldn't it? I have a lot of broken weapons and recycling them would absolutely be a significant part of Chinese iron production going to weapons.

[Joohan]

I guess that's acceptable then

But it wouldn't be enough to actually be meaningful in terms of replacing lost weapons and gear. It's simple chemistry that input just isn't going to equal output

yes it would, why wouldn't it? I have a lot of broken weapons and recycling them would absolutely be a significant part of Chinese iron production going to weapons.

From material lost while out in the field and then more material lost inside the furnace itself