The only person to have cited specific factions here is you. I’ve made no comments about the Laconniers or the Cabelites.
In fact, I haven’t said a single thing about Shayard - I have always been talking about the states outside of Shayard, such as Wiendrj, Nyryal, and Erezza.
@Havenstone a thought to make aristo subfocus stronger: give it riding lessons. Right now learning how to sit a horse is gated behind specifically ‘mentoring’ Auche which is highly niche, but it’s a skill a ton of characters of all stripes would be interested in gaining. Moving it out to a general de Irde route thing (with buffs for Auche rel?) would make the path more attractive, giving it a special ‘thing’ that could come up in both the climax of Irduin and in future games. Putting literacy lessons on the Naos subfocus might be a similarly attractive buff, if you don’t want to make them global at least? Just a thought.
Edit: I now realize this is my Helot focus clouding my judgement. I do think these suggestions still bear merit, though they aren’t solutions in and of themselves due to leaving aristos out in the lurch deservedly. Will think on it some more.
Then what are you basing the idea that most rebels in those countries are secessionists?
But how would you convince people to side with you over the other factions in the first place? Even besides that, how is numerical superiority enough to reunite the Hegemony? You also assume that the collapse of the Hegemony will be a gigantic free-for-all, as though there won’t be alliances, rebellions, and other things that would complicate your snowballing
We… we’ve literally already done this in the first game. It measures your popularity with the various factions.
I assume no such thing. I wasn’t talking pure numbers in attrition warfare, I was talking about more allies and resources, regardless of what they may be.
It’s hard for me to see how the whole thing can be kept together without Phaedra/Phaedros. In order to have an edge on any other factions that are trying to keep the Hegemony together, I really think the MC would need to cooperate with them.
Maybe Sarcifer instead could be an option? Really don’t think it’ll be possible to get enough of the administrative classes on board without the legitimacy afforded by at least having a former Ennearch.
If you don’t, I think ex-Ennearch or the Successor is going to be directly competing with you for a lot of the same constituency with advantages your MC lacks while nationalist rebels are trying to steal archonties out from under both of you.
I mean we know it should be possible to establish the church as the center of an HRE style federation/suzerainty. That’s together enough for me.
I was also planning to get Sarcifer in my corner barring any irreconcilable differences.
It’s really amazing to hear you say this and I think it’s inspiring to meet and see people like that. It reminds me of my grandparents who went out to protest against the dictator Ceauşescu, even tough they were tired, hungry, it was dangerous and highly illegal and even the mere concept of a demonstration was strange for people who lived 40 years under this dictatorship. The human spirit is truly indomitable.
Coincidentally, I’ve been reading and playing a lot of IFs related to people usually fighting some sort of a corrupt or evil regime (who would’ve guessed I’m a fan of this kinda story 
). In most cases, while the would be revolutionaries (who were generally normal people) were indeed fighting a good fight, they’d usually give up halfway trough, due to tiredeness, exhaustion and trauma. I think these kinda stories are also very interesting, as they explore themes of struggle, futility (in some, the gameplay mechanism are designed for the player to purposely fail at some point) and how depressing it is to try to change a society that doesn’t want to be changed.
On the other hand, I’m super glad that XoR is the way it is. It’s much more optimistic, it sends a nice feeling my way of “We will win in the end”. Sure, it’s got sad and agonizing moments, and our MC is not in the best state of mind right now, but they’ll keep on fighting nonetheless. I especially like how in Irduin, they’re still pretty lively when they talk to the folks there, and they flirt with as much energy and humor.
i think my man wants to be like the french revolution except less chaotic.
Ultimately this is the position of anyone who isn’t a diehard anarcho-pacifist. Any form of statism or territorial control ends up a question of where to draw the line. Is it imperialism to subject a rebellious neighbourhood to the laws of your city-state? I am neither an anarchist nor a pacifist, so the line has to be drawn somewhere, and drawing the line based on “what language do the rebels speak” seems as arbitrary as anything else.
e. of course, “whatever territory the Karagonds had previously conquered is fair game” is also arbitrary, and while ideally I’d say “the more the merrier,” keeping all that land would probably require moral compromises I’m not willing to make. Just making the case that everyone draws the line somewhere
Idk, I think you could have smaller, less populated regions like the Rim forming statelets without having to coerce local communities into joining. Something like a peasent republic
But it would be small, backwards, weak and underdeveloped & landlocked and could likely only exist in the post-Hegemony environment at the complete mercy and sufferance of its wealthier, bigger, more advanced slave state neighbours. The existence and future of a such a state would be bleak. Also all of the historical peasant republics were eventually absorbed into larger states or in some cases split between two or more larger, more advanced states eventually.
Also the de-facto peasant republics Kev mentioned were able only to exist due to medieval limitations on state reach, the Hegemony’s reach is already deeper than that and the timeline much closer to modernity. On paper most of them also de-jure belonged to other states for most or all of their existence it is just that to those de-jure owners the territories were too poor, remote and marginal to effectively control or indeed for any nobles to want to reside there, thus leaving de-facto governance to the farmers and merchants for a couple of decades.
Operative word there being during eventually, one way or another, those conditions will cease and they will extend their grip to your small and backwards territory once more and extinguish the de-facto peasants republic there and enslave 50+% of the population once more. Such a state can maybe last a few decades, but not much longer than that given that the Hegemony and its successors are not bound by many of the medieval limitations that lead to those states existing de-facto in the first place.
Barring, again, a complete commitment to anarcho-pacifism, such a state would also still have to make some decisions about the justified use of force. Do you collect taxes? Enforce laws? Do you do anything to prevent conquest by neighbouring states? What about nationalist rabble-rousers within your territory attempting to claim bits and pieces of it in the name of neighbouring states? Or ambitious weirdos trying to forge their own noble estates in your territory?
Small and backwards yes, but I think there would be ways to stay independent through diplomacy or becoming enough of a military quagmire that you aren’t worth the hassle to conquer. These slaver states will have more important issues to deal with during an imperial breakup and famine
To me, it would be a stretch to say self defense and local communities deciding how they would like to live is a form of imperialism. It is definetly a form of violence, but not imperialism
As would I. My point wasn’t “everything is imperialism therefore nothing is,” more like “every state is paternalistic to some extent, there will never be a world where literally everyone gets to live as they please, so defining imperialism based on whether someone, somewhere, is being tread upon seems like a nonstarter”
I’m not super familiar with the history of Switzerland, but from my understanding it was formed out of a group of communities that voluntarily decided to band together. Quickly reading their wikipedia page it says they did eventually conquer some of their cantons which weren’t allowed self rule, so it wasn’t completely peaceable, but maybe a peaceful unification of communities is a possible way to form a country that has staying power
Ahh ok, that’s my misunderstanding. I can definitely agree on some paternalism being inherent to all governments. I guess I was more reacting to other posts on this thread about using military aggresion in the process of forming a new country, because I think defensivism is also a viable and potentially more profitable path.
Everyone can agree imperialism is a subset of state violence, that’s hardly an interesting point. It is where this latest strand of conversation started, after all:
As you said, the pertinent question is “where to draw the [arbitrary] line” along the gradations towards imperialism.
I think the rest of the conversation circles around this point by making comparisons, especially with the existing Hegemony as a reference point. It’s not really trying to create a hard definition of imperialism, but instead it’s using examples to argue for or against the level of state violence being proposed to keep a Hegemony-scale state together. See how the difference between the United States Civil War and the nationalist wars of secession in modern Europe has been a topic of this discussion. Some of it is the rhetoric of empire: is this the kind of action and justification that the Hegemony – something that people will generally agree counts as an empire – would make, and to what extent is that inherent to that empire and to what extent it can be separated.
Separately, I’ve also said before that I don’t think the wars of secession framing is necessarily going to be accurate. It’s the stage the story is currently in, but by the time we’re able to talk of our own rebellions as potentially empires, it seems more likely that the continent will be in more of a fractured, warring states era – arguably like the world that the Hegemony first emerged from, albeit with a couple more imperial-scale states and not just Shayard. The idea of keeping the Hegemony united would be little different from conquest there.
Alright @Havenstone I’ve thought on it some more… I think what all the “problem” paths I identified could use are more espionage opportunities. Notably on the yeoman route, even though you aren’t invited to the big setpiece moot that defines the rest of the path, you can spy on it and engage with the content still. Meanwhile, with the de Irde or the Naos residents, you are simply locked out without much recourse. At the risk of turning Irduin fully into spy simulator, the opportunity to unearth some plots (but not necessarily influence them directly through conversation) with a bit more sus than you would get if you were just told/naturally fit into these could spice things up.
Alternative expansions (this is more writing work, and therefore just me spitballing) to fluff up the paths: generalized (and subfocus accessible) Alasais content on the de Irde route? The whichirde paths all leave the matriarch something of a distant figure, a scene or two (before the big advice section, which honestly feels a bit out of left field even for a retainer MC) where Alasais takes the focus and the MC can interact with her wouldn’t hurt (this would also let the MC assess and push her mental state a bit, which should allow some unity nudging). The Naos path could I think go two ways, which is either softening the main trio slightly and making them more willing to share, or letting the MC get in on heresy content even on the subfocus route. Maybe not to the extent of outright discussing it with Ulmey and getting him to promise to show you, but to be aware of it and potentially have plans to snoop on his texts. That way the benefit of making the path your focus becomes having the opportunity to have Ulmey’s guidance and convert him (more) to rebellion, rather than having the heresy stuff completely locked to the focus.
The helotry are the odd ones out that I’m struggling a little with, part of me thinks that maybe the subfocus should be able to access Muran’s plot, or at least part of it? Right now if you have a helot subfocus and are rebelliously minded it kind of sucks, and accessing her plot in general is a little awkward routing wise. Making it more the subfocus equivalent of the Radical Youth, rather than an awkward backstop on the full focus route, could let the content shine more and make the subfocus better.
I don’t want to speak for my audience, but it does feel to me like that’ll be the closest to a self-insert config that the game offers to the average Western reader.
Btw, having checked that “harrower > 0” point you raised, I was reminded that:
(a) I don’t have a variable that checks whether you sabotaged the Harrower or just nosed around it,
(b) I don’t want to belatedly kludge one, and so
(c) that’s why I didn’t say that you were describing your own Harrower-sabotage. So strictly speaking there’s no continuity error. A fair few players who see that text will have sabotaged the Harrower; others have at least taken an interest in it, and were given the explicit choice to not trigger the “horrible reprisals”.
Feel free to tell me that’s lame, but it’s what I’m going with. 
An INT 3 MC will definitely be able to do it without a Cerlota bailout. Maybe a COM 3 one too? We’ll see.
And I’m totally with you on the xaos-echoes in Irduin.
The Inner Voice will catch more readily than either kenon or an “I alone am Eclect” claim, but I think without some dedicated CHA-power behind it – yours or someone else’s – it won’t necessarily spread nation- or continent-wide.
Pretty much, yep.
Most revolutions generate their own new elite. It won’t have the legitimacy of tradition behind it, so it’ll feel different, but it’ll be an aristocracy in all but name.
@apple, appreciate all the thoughts for strengthening the subfoci!
Nah that tracks. We’ve already sent you back to kludge together one variable for theurge-killing, no need for something this minor.
That bredprophet variable haunts me, I’m never gonna be free of them am I.
Thanks! I know its a little excessive with the focus on the endings right now, but I figure I should dump it all here while I have the thoughts. Honestly it’s not anything vital, I think they’re fine as they stand, but they could be better from a player POV. Rather than give in to the “actually I should just be able to take multiple focuses” crowd I figured I’d give some thoughts to bolstering the system as it stands.
Do you think there’ll be any routing where we get some sort of extended conversation with Seichareis, either undercover or in some sort of rebel shouting match/interrogation? As helpful as Cerlota is, “actual Hegemonic Theurge” isn’t a POV we’ve gotten to see. Be curious what he has to say about us and our rebellion.