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double nine posted:is there, like, a parallel to be drawn between current political affairs and roman uprisings or internal turmoil? With a focus on the equivalent of kapitalists vs labour/99% vs 1%/ancien regime vs revolutionary france...? Eh not really I'd say, a surface reading of what is sometimes called the Roman Revolution* makes it kind of seem like a rich vs poor/people vs nobles kind of thing, but that's not really the case. The Roman populists or the populares, meaning "(men) of the people", were defined not by necessarily being idealists who were out to level the playing field or bring about social justice or welfare, what they were defined by were their political tactics, the populists would try to gain power and enact their agenda by circumventing the senate and instead passing their legislation by going straight to the popular assemblies, often by using the tribunes who had the authority to propose legislation. The Senate you see didn't really have any legal power in and off itself, it was about 200 years of custom which had rendered it pre-eminent in Roman society and politics, this was important to Romans, things that were old mattered and shouldn't be changed. What became the opponents, known as the optimates, "the best ones", in Caesar's time, sought to combat and restrain this tactic of the populares and essentially legalize the Senate's prominent position at the expense of the Tribunes and the popular assemblies. In combating the populares the optimates would often also champion and enact legislation that we might think of as being the purview of the populists, such as when one of the Gracchus brothers (I'm pretty sure) was campaigning for a law that provided subsidized grain to the people of Rome, his opponents in the Senate countered by instead proposing a measure that would provide free grain to the people (and they also killed him and his brother). *Don't get too excited about this term, we aren't talking about  It's a term used by some historians to refer to roughly the 100 year period from Sulla and Marius down to Caesar's dictatorship and Octavian's assumption of power that saw the gradual breakdown of Roman political instiutions along with (and because of) the politicization of the army. With the transition from an army based on a citizen levy to one drawn from (often impoverished) volunteers who essentially served for life, soldiers became the clients of their commanders who provided their equipment, their training and would campaign in Rome (often by using their army as leverage) to acquire land and benefits for their veterans. To put it short in the late Republic soldiers would usually feel more loyalty towards their commander and their unit than to the Roman state, this had profound consequences for Rome's history. If there weren't necessarily guillotines in this "revolution" what you had were what is known is proscriptions, pioneered by Sulla, an anti-populist who enacted extreme reactionary legislation to ensure the future power of the Senate, these were lists of citizens put out in public squares, anyone one the list could be killed by anyone, even a slave, who was then rewarded and their property was confiscated by the state. For many strongmen, populares and optimates, during the Roman Revolution it thus became quite common to proscribe people who weren't necessarily your political rivals but who were wealthy and thus the confiscation of their property would provide the funds to sustain and secure your rule. It became a common saying during this to say something "so-and-so was killed by his nice mansion" or something along those lines, referring to how people would often be proscribed for being wealthy. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 22:34
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yeah i would describe the "revolution" as a sort of revolution by default coinciding with augustus's seizure of power the strife among the upper class led to almost complete turnover in the senatorial ranks by the time augustus became emperor, and by the time the julio-claudian dynasty died out it was essentially the last of the prominent families of the republic - the remnants having killed each other and been purged by paranoid emperors. the old upper class had simply ceased to exist, and the new upper class was tied to the empire, which had - in the transition years - basically given the people everything they wanted, because augustus understood the whole "spend money on the poor to obtain societal prosperity" thing Jazerus fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 22:44
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Jazerus posted:yeah i would describe the "revolution" as a sort of revolution by default coinciding with augustus's seizure of power I'm not sure I'd agree that spending money on the poor was a kind of novel thing that was pioneered under Augustus and the Imperial system. In large part things in Rome and the Empire continued to work as before, the rich and notable spending wealth on public works (temples, aqueducts, festivals, etc.) and handouts (often as part of a religious festival) generally was the agreed upon and normal way of doing things in the Classical World, and served to glorify those who did this. What changed was that in Augustus as the Emperor in essence became the patron of the entire Empire, and thus everything kind of flowed from and glorified him in a network of patronage and clientship that eventually became an imperial household and bureaucracy of sorts, becoming more defined and regulated with passing centuries and especially with Diocletian (who set up an entirely new and thoroughly despotic and centralized empire, the dominate as opposed to Augustus's principate where the Emperor in theory was just the First Citizen, the princeps, and everything actually was as it had always been, I promise you!) when the system set up by Augustus pretty much collapsed during the 3rd century AD. The most important change brought about by Augustus was an end to the political, violence, civil war and chaos that had plagued the late Republic, this allowed for stability, prosperity and predictabiity (for instance the shipment of grain from Egypt, Africa and Sicily to feed Rome was now secure, whereas before it had been constantly threatened). Though civil wars over the Imperial succession (largely because both the position of Emperor and the nature of succession had been so nebulously defined by Augustus, thus the only true route to power was through the army) would become commonplace following Augstus's rule, it never really reached the same level of violence and disruption seen in the Late Republic until the 3rd century, when combined with Barbarian migrations and invasions and outright secession in addition to to the civil wars things kind of just went to poo poo. edit: It's also worth noting that Augustus's social agenda was incredibly conservative in nature, and essentially aimed at turning back the clock to before the upheaveals of the Roman Revolution and getting things back to how they always were. Or at least declaring that this was the case. The big excpetion from this was removing political power from both the Senate and the popular assemblies and concentrating it all in the Emperor, at least in practice, in theory the Republic was still in function during the entirety of the Principate, though the Senate by and large became a body from which the Emperor would recruit generals, governors and other officials for the Emperor, while the popular assemblies lost all power except in some cases of local government. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Sep 10, 2018 |
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Sep 10, 2018 23:04
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The biggest difference between modern and ancient Roman politics is that national politics as they are now weren't very feasible. Republics and Democracies tended to only pay attention to people in the capital city. That's why there were a bunch of mass expulsions of people from Rome towards the end of the republic, or why Athens could be brutal to members of the Delian League stepping out of line. Political philosophies were also a lot less developed compared to the modern day where people can talk at you for literal days straight about their unique takes. Naturally, most of the fixtures involved in republican politics dwindled to nothing after the rise of the Empire and city politics became much less relevant compared to Imperial or Army politics Wealth and power was also expressed fairly differently compared to how it is now. The wealthiest Romans would have vast networks of dependents through the patronage system, so there was a system of allegiances in place that would quickly be manifest into factions whenever some crisis started splitting up Rome. But this game seems to be taking a more elitist take on things, which to be fair, most Paradox games are fairly elitist takes. Also there were a number of social divisions beyond just wealthy/poor that aren't really analogous to anything in modern day America, but race as we know it today was not one of them. So there's that.
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Sep 10, 2018 23:12
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Randarkman posted:I'm not sure I'd agree that spending money on the poor was a kind of novel thing that was pioneered under Augustus and the Imperial system. In large part things in Rome and the Empire continued to work as before, the rich and notable spending wealth on public works (temples, aqueducts, festivals, etc.) and handouts (often as part of a religious festival) generally was the agreed upon and normal way of doing things in the Classical World, and served to glorify those who did this. What changed was that in Augustus as the Emperor in essence became the patron of the entire Empire, and thus everything kind of flowed from and glorified him in a network of patronage and clientship that eventually became an imperial household and bureaucracy of sorts, becoming more defined and regulated with passing centuries and especially with Diocletian (who set up an entirely new and thoroughly despotic and centralized empire, the dominate as opposed to Augustus's principate where the Emperor in theory was just the First Citizen, the princeps, and everything actually was as it had always been, I promise you!) when the system set up by Augustus pretty much collapsed during the 3rd century AD. oh agreed spending on the poor was in no way novel. the empire codified it more extensively, though, as you said - everything flows from the emperor - and certainly in the early empire the wealth disparity was somewhat less than in the late republic. the hyper-wealthy plantation magnates of the late republic tended to actively block anything that damaged their own interests, of course, and land redistribution - breaking up the plantations to revive the citizen-farmer and thus relieve the pressure of the urban poor - was the perpetual populist rallying point. as the speed of roman conquest slowed dramatically and the price of slaves rose, the massive slave plantations no longer had such a huge competitive advantage; moreover, land redistribution through imperial appropriation and land grants to veterans allowed for a slow draining of the urban poor into the countryside, ultimately solving the issues that were so contentious in the republic due to a combination of circumstance and centralized power.
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Sep 10, 2018 23:19
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Hm but have you considered that the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle?
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Sep 10, 2018 23:27
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StashAugustine posted:Hm but have you considered that the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle? The only good roman red, is the kind that makes patricians dead!
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Sep 10, 2018 23:49
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StashAugustine posted:Hm but have you considered that the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle?
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Sep 11, 2018 00:02
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"Volo Esse Xapo" -proverb of the xapo domum captionem
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Sep 11, 2018 10:37
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I was really disappointed to see populism so negatively represented in the factions dev diary. While populism can be a dangerous ideology appealing to a mass of political-nincompoops, generally those same nincompoops are adhearing to that populism for some benefit. I am hoping the factions get an overhaul to give each a positive and negative before the game is shipped. For my NA post-apoc mod, I came up with seven factions and attempted to give them each a pro/con based on what's capable in the dev diary:  Still working on this of course, Socialism's negative attributes are still empty for example, and would love to hear any suggestions you guys might have. As a note Ideology replaces Religion, and Mandates replace Omens.
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Sep 11, 2018 18:25
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Less interesting, but more a "freebie", you could just give it a smaller minus to commerce than communism, like -15% Commerce income or something.
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Sep 11, 2018 18:38
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Give it the -15% Commerce Income and like a 15% More Expensive Ideological Conversion.
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Sep 11, 2018 18:42
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ExtraNoise posted:I was really disappointed to see populism so negatively represented in the factions dev diary. While populism can be a dangerous ideology appealing to a mass of political-nincompoops, generally those same nincompoops are adhearing to that populism for some benefit. I am hoping the factions get an overhaul to give each a positive and negative before the game is shipped. weird giving liberals teh dip rep since the only thing everyone around them can agree with is that they're the worst
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Sep 11, 2018 18:42
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ExtraNoise posted:For my NA post-apoc mod, I came up with seven factions and attempted to give them each a pro/con based on what's capable in the dev diary: i feel like all of those labels and most of the ideologies would be meaningless or absurd in a post-apocalyptic setting like what does conservative mean when the old order literally burned to cinders in nuclear hellfire? is it maoist to go back to plowshares because the tractor factory is glowing green? what's the progressive line on warlordism? equal opportunity marauding?
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Sep 11, 2018 18:53
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Prav posted:i feel like all of those labels and most of the ideologies would be meaningless or absurd in a post-apocalyptic setting I'm not so sure. Even with massive depopulation, the surviving communities that form I believe will rely heavily on social policies carried over from the "old days" and the terminology used with those policies. Economic policy, sure. I doubt that will have much use when you're rebooting civilization. But I doubt people are going to give up their beliefs on things like abortion, women's rights, gay marriage, and etc, quite so quickly and these factions, using old-world terms, are trying to model that. That being said, I would love to hear a counter argument or suggestions.
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Sep 11, 2018 20:53
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OK am i the only one who saw that dev post and read it not as "only the romans can build roads" but as "the romans have a special military ability to build roads"?
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Sep 11, 2018 23:10
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Generally that sort of huge cataclysmic event does change people's beliefs, or at least changes the next generations beliefs as they are born into a new world. Personally, I'm a big fan of weirder sci fi imaginings of future ideologies like After the End's religions or Alpha Centauri's factions, but it's your apocalypse, you can do it how you like. I would say that most of the modern day ideologies that you have up there start to lose a lot of their meaning on the scale that this game is working at. Communism and socialism start to lose their distinctiveness when they're working on the scale of a greek city-state. Conservatism is powered by an idealized view of the past, but what does it mean when the past was objectively a bygone halcyon age? And conversely, what is progressiveism if there's not much left of the old order to progress from? And what's nationalism after the demise of the nation? Do they believe in a new nation of just their little city, or do they believe in an America long gone past? 7+ factions might also be harder than it's worth to wrangle.
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Sep 11, 2018 23:11
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Mans posted:OK am i the only one who saw that dev post and read it not as "only the romans can build roads" but as "the romans have a special military ability to build roads"? This would make a lot more sense since as mentioned, lots of people knew how to make roads but the idea of having soldiers build roads as they marched to aid military campaigns was a particularly unique Roman one.
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Sep 11, 2018 23:20
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Mans posted:OK am i the only one who saw that dev post and read it not as "only the romans can build roads" but as "the romans have a special military ability to build roads"? The Cheshire Cat posted:This would make a lot more sense since as mentioned, lots of people knew how to make roads but the idea of having soldiers build roads as they marched to aid military campaigns was a particularly unique Roman one. The problem with that is: wasn't this the dev diary about roads? I mean, sure it makes sense that there's non-military ways to do it, but why isn't that in the diary? Or even in the responses with people asking that same question?
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Sep 11, 2018 23:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:7+ factions might also be harder than it's worth to wrangle. It might be interesting, if you only got a subset of them turning up in any particular senate. So you have dramatically different political landscapes in different polities. I'm with you generally. I also prefer the weirder post-apocalypses, and I think it's... bizarre, honestly, to imagine a world in people's politics are so independent of material conditions that the end of the world would leave them mostly unchanged. If ExtraNoise really does want to emphasise continuity, I think it'd be a lot more interesting to take these ideologies and ask how the apocalypse has changed them- what are the new concerns, how do they respond to them? What resources are most important, who controls them, how are they collected and distributed? What are the interest groups and how do they relate? Are there new coalitions? Divisions? ExtraNoise: how post is this apocalypse, and how exactly did it happen?
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Sep 11, 2018 23:43
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Some great discussion here and plenty for me to mull over. I'm thinking that maybe instead of using modern terminology, that I use more abstract descriptors ala Stellaris, but that may open the collectivist can-o-worms again... The setting of the post-apoc is both a pandemic flu (resulting in most loss of life) and nuclear attacks on several cities (Dallas, Washington, and Albany) leading to a period of starvation and famine. The mod will begin 13 years after this event and continue for approximately 400 years. I've outlined almost 200 unique nations so far. A handful of those I've done worldbuilding for: A United States revivial group, a brtual mask-wearing cult obsessed with fire, Los Angeles under the control of a street gang cooalition known as The Viole(n)t Alliance, a free Texas republic, a Mormon theocracy based in Salt Lake, a strange collective called The House of Mouse in Orlando, and a few others. The end goal is to have around 400 nations with about two dozen really outlined and expand on that periodically as DLC for the base game is released.
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Sep 12, 2018 01:02
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Albany?
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Sep 12, 2018 01:12
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Have they mentioned how many tags there'll be in the base game, incidentally?
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Sep 12, 2018 01:50
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Who the gently caress would nuke Albany?
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Sep 12, 2018 02:35
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ExtraNoise posted:I've outlined almost 200 unique nations so far. A handful of those I've done worldbuilding for: A United States revivial group, a brtual mask-wearing cult obsessed with fire, Los Angeles under the control of a street gang cooalition known as The Viole(n)t Alliance, a free Texas republic, a Mormon theocracy based in Salt Lake, a strange collective called The House of Mouse in Orlando, and a few others. The end goal is to have around 400 nations with about two dozen really outlined and expand on that periodically as DLC for the base game is released. Ofaloaf Presents: After the End 2
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Sep 12, 2018 02:39
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dublish posted:Ofaloaf Presents: After the End 2 Is Ofaloaf the next Sid Meier??!
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Sep 12, 2018 02:41
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Gaius Marius posted:Who the gently caress would nuke Albany? who wouldn't? ExtraNoise posted:I've outlined almost 200 unique nations so far. A handful of those I've done worldbuilding for: A United States revivial group, a brtual mask-wearing cult obsessed with fire, Los Angeles under the control of a street gang cooalition known as The Viole(n)t Alliance, a free Texas republic, a Mormon theocracy based in Salt Lake, a strange collective called The House of Mouse in Orlando, and a few others. The end goal is to have around 400 nations with about two dozen really outlined and expand on that periodically as DLC for the base game is released. would you describe the brutal mask-wearing fire cult as largely libertarian, or are they more conservative? the answer isn't to use less specific language, but more specific. you're gonna have to answer the question of how the hell does the nuclear plague apocalypse affect the social and material needs of the people who survive it; how do they think and act in response - those are the politics that they follow, that matter to them. daunting. the good news is, you get to just make that poo poo up.
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Sep 12, 2018 02:47
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DrSunshine posted:Is Ofaloaf the next Sid Meier??! No, this is the President Donald J. Trump timeline.
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Sep 12, 2018 02:48
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Prav posted:who wouldn't? Albany could be bombarded by the entire world's arsenal of nukes x10 and literally no one in America would give a poo poo.
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Sep 12, 2018 03:07
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Funky Valentine posted:Albany could be bombarded by the entire world's arsenal of nukes x10 and literally no one in America would give a poo poo. The people in Albany would probably be thankful.
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Sep 12, 2018 03:24
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Funky Valentine posted:Albany could be bombarded by the entire world's arsenal of nukes x10 and literally no one in America would give a poo poo.
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Sep 12, 2018 03:26
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Funky Valentine posted:Albany could be bombarded by the entire world's arsenal of nukes x10 and literally no one in America would give a poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVK39HyjjdY
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Sep 12, 2018 05:30
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Prav posted:the answer isn't to use less specific language, but more specific. you're gonna have to answer the question of how the hell does the nuclear plague apocalypse affect the social and material needs of the people who survive it; how do they think and act in response - those are the politics that they follow, that matter to them. daunting. the good news is, you get to just make that poo poo up. A good point. The nations themselves are defined by Culture and Ideology (Ideology replacing Religion), so the scary mask cult as a nation will be primarily defined by those two attributes. Inside of it will be political factions (as much as we understand how that works right now in the game, which isn't much). I need to have more generalized factions that most countries can draw from, while Johan has said that specific factions can exist within specific countries. In my mind, the base factions will exist in most nations and a few nations will have factions specific to their nation or ideology, such as the scary mask cult nation. That being said, this may be totally moot if there are no political factions in non-republic nations, which the scary mask cult nation would be.
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Sep 12, 2018 05:41
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the vickying of stellaris continues apace
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Sep 14, 2018 09:08
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Cease to Hope posted:the vickying of stellaris continues apace There's a dedicated Stellaris thread here that has been talking about that diary for a few pages: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3850079
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Sep 14, 2018 17:55
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That thread is bad tho
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Sep 14, 2018 18:01
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I dont think the thread is necessarily bad, I just cant keep up with it.
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Sep 14, 2018 20:28
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ulmont posted:There's a dedicated Stellaris thread here that has been talking about that diary for a few pages: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3850079 the stellaris thread is full of noise and this is the de facto vicky thread
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Sep 14, 2018 20:33
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Cease to Hope posted:the stellaris thread is full of noise and this is the de facto vicky thread Cool - just wanted to be sure you knew, although now I realize that the Stellaris thread is linked in the OP. Re: Vicky: let me just lift this exchange from the other thread: Nevets posted:You might even find it more profitable to let a neighboring empire maintain it's sovereignty and continue buying all your surplus whatever so you can afford more whatever you are buying, rather than invading them and making your scarcity / surplus even worse. Agean90 posted:What if there was a way to directly integrate them into your internal market, some a sort of... Sphere of influence
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Sep 14, 2018 22:17
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space victoria would seriously own.
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Sep 16, 2018 22:48
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