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Author Topic: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution  (Read 148416 times)

monk12

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #315 on: June 07, 2012, 02:34:16 pm »

Yeah, in reality, I tried making a character build based around knife-fighting, but I kept getting killed by people with guns.  Guns are so OP in reality.  The devs really need to nerf that.

Don't even get me started on how borked the Auction House is.

Silverionmox

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #316 on: June 07, 2012, 04:05:18 pm »

One of the advantages of reality is that it is balanced.

Actually, it's not.
Entropy and the law of conservation of energy take care of it. No pain, no gain, and no infinite loop exploits.

In practice, you can set up a medieval tech country with villages, a few cities etc. and be assured that no single village is going to conquer the world because the weapons in your world happened to be designed a bit overpowered on the offensive side, without negative feedback loop to limit them.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku
Yeah, in reality, I tried making a character build based around knife-fighting, but I kept getting killed by people with guns.  Guns are so OP in reality.  The devs really need to nerf that.
But they already put in guns to nerf armored knights! They really should do something about the power creep. I bet they just put in atomic bombs to sell DLCs :p
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Draco18s

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #317 on: June 07, 2012, 05:14:59 pm »

In practice, you can set up a medieval tech country with villages, a few cities etc. and be assured that no single village is going to conquer the world because the weapons in your world happened to be designed a bit overpowered on the offensive side, without negative feedback loop to limit them.

...Rome?  China?  Genghis Kahn?

The real world is full of infinite feedback loops.

One of the biggest being that if you have more territory than someone else, you've got more resources than they do, thus have the better (or larger) army, thus conquer them (and continue the cycle).
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #318 on: June 07, 2012, 08:28:01 pm »

Actually, part of the reason all the great empires fell is because those ancient empires were economically dependent upon unlimited conquest to support themselves. 

As in, they didn't tax their own actual citizens, they only demanded tribute from the conquered cities in order to fund their current cities, and it required constant conquest to keep the whole machine going.  This is why Rome needed constant casus belli to declare war on new nations - they had a war-based economy, and the more that established cities had been brought into the fold, the more each war's spoils had to be divvied up. 

Eventually, they couldn't defend their own borders, they relied upon mercenaries in the form of barbarians, and then they couldn't get the money to pay them, so when the mercenaries turned and marched on Rome to demand their pay, there was nobody left to stop them.

The same can be said of many ancient empires, from the Assyrians to the Mongols.  (Although the Mongol downfall was more because it was based upon a cult of personality that couldn't survive the death of the charismatic leaders that held it together.)
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Draco18s

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #319 on: June 07, 2012, 09:11:50 pm »

So essentially what you're saying is:

An empire that is "winning" only dies from within.  Which does nothing to counter the feedback loop, as if an empire was properly funded (say, Rome), it wouldn't collapse.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #320 on: June 08, 2012, 09:50:52 am »

So essentially what you're saying is:

An empire that is "winning" only dies from within.  Which does nothing to counter the feedback loop, as if an empire was properly funded (say, Rome), it wouldn't collapse.

Well, the problem was that its growth was unsustainable.  It needed wealthy conquerable cities that were easily reached along the Mediterranean to expand to.  Marching through the German forests cost too much money, and the barbarians were not profitable enough to conquer, so once they had pretty much wrecked everything in the Middle East, the whole thing started to crumble. 

Saying that an empire that becomes too expansive to sustain itself from within (because of cultural strife, civil unrest, incapacity to sustain its economy, etc.) when it becomes large but could sustain itself when it was small, so that greater and greater resources must be spent upon simply keeping the empire together, leaving a smaller percentage for further conquest is a counterforce.

And that's pretty much the point of the whole Class Warfare thing - getting larger means more internal strife to up the challenge because external threats alone are not going to be able to challenge a well-managed established fortress.
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Graknorke

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #321 on: June 08, 2012, 04:38:35 pm »

I think he was saying that those empires could feasibly have won if they had, at a point, slowed on the military expansion and focused on economics. Just because they didn't doesn't mean they couldn't.

Of course, I have no idea what economics go into running a country, besides that there's probably always a way of doing it better.
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Draco18s

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #322 on: June 08, 2012, 08:09:58 pm »

I think he was saying that those empires could feasibly have won if they had, at a point, slowed on the military expansion and focused on economics. Just because they didn't doesn't mean they couldn't.

Precisely.

Not that I know how an economy works either and how to make it efficient (but I can tell you: giving money to the people who already have it isn't going to do you any good: they aren't spending what they have so what are they going to do with even more?*).

*Also, the super rich aka the 1%, are not "job creators" and reducing the taxes on their personal income isn't a way to "create" jobs.
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Mr. Palau

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #323 on: June 09, 2012, 09:54:45 am »

I think he was saying that those empires could feasibly have won if they had, at a point, slowed on the military expansion and focused on economics. Just because they didn't doesn't mean they couldn't.

Precisely.

Not that I know how an economy works either and how to make it efficient (but I can tell you: giving money to the people who already have it isn't going to do you any good: they aren't spending what they have so what are they going to do with even more?*).

*Also, the super rich aka the 1%, are not "job creators" and reducing the taxes on their personal income isn't a way to "create" jobs.
It has always been my belief that if the Roman Empire knew as much about economics as we do today, they would have conqured the world, or more likely, lasted way longer. So much of what they were doing was terrible economic policy. Debasing their currency, crushing the midle class, slavery, exempting the elite from taxation, forcing people to stay in their old jobs, forcing children to follow in the footsteps of their parents, decreasses in investment in infrastructure, failure to solve a chronic trade deficit with India, all examples of terrible economic policies enacted by the empire.

They deviated pretty heavily from the general recomendations of modest inequality, in order to sustain a higher class capable of undertaking private investments, while maintaining a midle class that can consume the benfits of those investments. Most notably in slavery. Slavery is to a midle class, and the economic benefits that brings, what matter is to anti-matter. Look at the south, it never industrialized to the extent the north did primarily because it lacked a midle class. It lacked a midle class because slavery deppressed wages for white-non-slave-owners. Why hire a free man when I can get a slave to do it for me, and whoose employment will cost less over time?

Same thing happened in Rome that happened in the south. You get a upper class who reap the benefits of the slave's labour, and what would have been the midle class havve had their wages suppressed to such an extent that they are now merely poor people.
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Silverionmox

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #324 on: June 09, 2012, 10:05:18 am »

Why build an empire if you don't get to bleed your subjects dry? Maintaining a wealth transfer from the subjects to the core, geographically as wel as socially, is the reason to build an empire.
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Draco18s

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #325 on: June 09, 2012, 10:32:15 am »

Why build an empire if you don't get to bleed your subjects dry? Maintaining a wealth transfer from the subjects to the core, geographically as wel as socially, is the reason to build an empire.

Why don't you ask Muammar Gaddafi?
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10ebbor10

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #326 on: June 09, 2012, 11:14:33 am »

There are better ways to increase the wealth of the core then relying on the income transfer from the conquered lands.

Wealth is basically money being thrown around.
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keyreper

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #327 on: June 14, 2012, 10:16:33 pm »

ive scaned though this post and noticed one big problem, the things you are wanting to do will make it to where df will need a better 800$ computer to operate with out lag for the first 100 years of a fort, after that the plants will cause so much lag that it will be useless to play from the lag D:

EDIT: i read the rest of it :P it sounds good!
« Last Edit: June 14, 2012, 10:18:17 pm by keyreper »
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PainRack

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #328 on: July 01, 2012, 05:11:01 pm »

Quote
It has always been my belief that if the Roman Empire knew as much about economics as we do today, they would have conqured the world, or more likely, lasted way longer. So much of what they were doing was terrible economic policy. Debasing their currency, crushing the midle class, slavery, exempting the elite from taxation, forcing people to stay in their old jobs, forcing children to follow in the footsteps of their parents, decreasses in investment in infrastructure, failure to solve a chronic trade deficit with India, all examples of terrible economic policies enacted by the empire.
Maybe one should actually try reading MORE about the Roman Empire first?

The argument that Rome was a "war economy", reliant on constant conquests is blatently untrue. The WRE, ERE survived for centuries without significant conquests/sacking of enemy towns.

The Romans did "debase" their currency. However, the Romans were facing the unique problem that they weren't producing enough metals to base their currency on. If anything, its a matter of too much "riches" rather than anything.

There was SIGNIFICANT social mobility in the Roman Empire. Barbarians rising to become Emperors, if not trusted generals and nobles, the equesterian class and etc........ there were different trends of course within different dynasties but arguing that people were "stuck" to their old job is absurd.


The idea that "elites" were exempt from taxation is similarly laughable. We know from Republic Rome that the elites were expected to maintain  basic services/utilities/ baths if they were to remain elected and in power. Its a matter of patronage, and certainly nothing like our modern day civil service but just how do you think the Romans maintained their armies, if not via taxation?
No idea about India, but given Rome economic strength and trade, I doubt it.

The decrease in investment did not cause the fall of the Roman Empire. May I suggest that its the inverse which is more likely.

Quote
They deviated pretty heavily from the general recomendations of modest inequality, in order to sustain a higher class capable of undertaking private investments, while maintaining a midle class that can consume the benfits of those investments. Most notably in slavery. Slavery is to a midle class, and the economic benefits that brings, what matter is to anti-matter. Look at the south, it never industrialized to the extent the north did primarily because it lacked a midle class. It lacked a midle class because slavery deppressed wages for white-non-slave-owners. Why hire a free man when I can get a slave to do it for me, and whoose employment will cost less over time?
Except you're laughably wrong. Roman slavery was NOT the equivalent of 17th century slavery.

Slaves in the Roman era could own money, property and etc, and we learn of multiple slaves who did rise up to own property and join the Senator class, much less the lesser ranked equesterian. There's that pesky social mobility again. The inverse of course is that not all slaves were equal. Slaves assigned to work as labourers in mines were lowly paid and unlikely to advance, but THEN again, free coal miners during Industrial England were facing just as horrible conditions and pay.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2012, 05:13:19 pm by PainRack »
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Andeerz

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Re: Improved Farming, Rebooted: Agricultural Revolution
« Reply #329 on: July 01, 2012, 06:18:08 pm »

True dat, Pain Rack.

Mr. Palau, I can see the logic behind what you are saying, but there are so many factors (way more than even the many important things you state) that contributed towards the decline of the Roman Empire, that it is pretty much impossible for us to really know at this point what happened (though there are probably some really awesome mathematical economic models out there that might shed some light).  And it is not entirely certain that all of the things you stated are true.

That said, I hope that things like the "debasing their currency, crushing the midle class, slavery, exempting the elite from taxation, forcing people to stay in their old jobs, forcing children to follow in the footsteps of their parents, decreasses in investment in infrastructure, failure to solve a chronic trade deficit" that you state will eventually be phenomena that could actually arise in DF.  It would be nice for DF to be sophisticated enough eventually that it could actually be used as an economic simulator so that certain ideas as to what leads to the rise and fall of empires can actually be put to the test!  :D

Also... I'd like to emphasize that though economic THEORY has changed among academics throughout the ages, the way economies work has never changed.  We are just still trying to figure out how they actually work.

 
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