Tuesday Tidbits on a Friday

[autosave36]

 

 

--Hello, how are you doing today? I hope I find you feeling healthy. I'm so glad our paths crossed this time today, on our way into the night.

 

 

Pursuant to the following clauses in our treaties-
 

 

Article V Mutual Defense:

An attack on one member shall be considered an attack on all members. Should any member come under attack, it is mandatory that all members come to the assistance of the defender. Assistance shall be defined as military, financial, intelligence, and all other form of aids other members are able to provide. All members coming to the aid of another will use all means available to them to aid the attacked member.

-Assistance, Zeal, Technology, Economics, and Cowboys Treaty
 

 

3. Warfare

It's important to note the role that warfare played in early civilizations. The main difference to remember between civilized and uncivilized warfare was that in uncivilized warfare, dozens and scores of men would die violent deaths every year, whereas in civilized warfare, hundreds and thousands of men, women, and children would die violent deaths every year. It is because of civilization that we as a race were able to invent tools for killing each other that were greater than the pointy stick. But that took a while - the pointy stick in its various forms dominated civilized warfare for thousands of years.

Warfare had a very important role in early civilizations because it was one of the easiest ways to make a tribal society become a civilized society. The tribal society would go awandering, come upon a well built civilization, and pretty soon decide that they wanted it for themselves. This happened a lot in early civilizations. It seems as though the more complex and historical your civilization is, the easier it is for horsemen to show up and completely dominate it. Civilization never really invented a good way of dealing with this problem until the advent of our own age, in which we have machine guns and barbed wire. Even now, it's hard to know if it would really work if the central asian hordes broke loose again.

On the subject of pointy sticks, it's hard to overemphasize how many times this invention revolutionized warfare over and over again. Examples include the greek phalanx, the roman legion, medieval pikemen, horse archers of various tribes, the english longbowmen, and the list goes on. It's a devilishly simple answer to the question "what's a relatively low tech way I can kill my enemies" and in many ways we're very fortunate that civilizations never ran out of ways to make more. The spear, the arrow, the pike, the lance, the javelin, the dart, the pilum, and all their many variations ensured that even cultures without the benefit of civilization could give warfare a try. If you could find a stick and you could figure out a way to make at least one end of it sharp, you just got yourself a fighting chance.

One of the great things about early civilized warfare is that was a good method of obtaining slaves. Slavery was a bona fide pillar of early civilization; nearly every culture kept them and a few even treated them well. Going off on a raid and capturing yourself a couple hundred slaves or so ensured that you were able to afford nice new pointy sticks and could afford to go on even more raids for slaves. The early vikings are a great example - they used to sail out, capture a bunch of christian slaves, find themselves a christian slave market and sell them for a nice profit. It was a great system because they hadn't invented the Emancipation Proclamation yet. It still works in some parts of the world, but is considered not as great a system these days. Social mores are prone to change rapidly. Slavery and rapine are out, back sassing your elders and taking hundreds of selfies is in. Civilization will never quite be what it once was.

For many civilizations, this was also a great way to obtain human sacrifices. Early on, practically every civilization engaged in this in some form or another, then accused other civilizations of engaging in it by way of asserting their superiority over the other. Ancient slurs tended to gather around the kinds of human sacrifices your civilization took part in. So, a civilization that sacrifices captives to their gods could consider themselves superior to a civilization that sacrifices young children to their gods. A civilization that merely sacrifices their captives and doesn't drink their blood, too, could think they'd achieved another level of advancement. It was a great system for gauging how advanced your society was - in our own age, we've reached a point where we'll very nearly have human sacrifice phased out(or at least very rare) altogether by 2030. This is a triumph of Western Civilization.

The thing that warfare was great at was wiping out civilizations that didn't have what it took to hack it. This might sound brutal at first, but it also sounds brutal at second. Once your civilization runs out of steam, it's going to be deleted and the barbarians are going to have a chance to start over. They won't maintain your aqueducts, they'll let your cities fall to ruin, they'll let your trade routes be forgotten, and they'll immediately start fighting each other over the leftover pieces of your once great empire. Just ask any of the royal families in Europe. Their ancestors did it better than just about anyone.

Now that our civilizations have slaughter, ruin, slavery, human sacrifice, taxes, farming, and a lot of oppression, we're ready for technological advancement. We'll need domesticated animals, the wheel, the lateen sail, metallurgy, and industrial revolutions if we're really going to kick up civilization to a whole new level.

-The Pointy Stick Accords

Sengoku hereby declares war on Delusions of Grandeur. May God have mercy on our souls.

 

 

Signed

 

hartfw- Emperor/ government alcoholic.

autosave36- Shogun/ alliance crier

Rogal Dorn- Kensei/ best wingman ever.

Konrad- rogal's brother.

Auctor- 2nd and 6th most powerful man on Bob/ Daimyo of War/illustrator

Petro- MIA

Han- Forced to become gov today.

Schad- Manatee of Foreign Affairs

Bcortell, President SO, Dockingscheduled- Too old to put in work past a decent hour.

 

 

[Schad]

Bad Decision Friday rolls on.

[President S O]

I'm not too damn old, I'm too damn drunk.

 

Yay, go us!

[han fei zi]

can you tl;dr the comics?

[Schmoo]

Have fun kids!

[autosave36]

can you tl;dr the comics?

 

You're in gov. you know what we are doing to this alliance person.

[Ogaden]

Destroy them Scorn, hear the lamentations of their cattle

[autosave36]

Destroy them Scorn, hear the lamentations of their cattle

To be fair, our cattle is a sea cow.. and I'm pretty sure he's endangered or at least protected so there may be some fines and or jail time involved with making him feel any stress whatsoever.

[Rogal Dorn]

Destroy them Scorn, hear the lamentations of their cattle

[spoiler]oh i like that[/spoiler] Edited December 6, 2014 by Rogal Dorn

[ShadowDragon]

Destroy them Scorn, hear the lamentations of their cattle

This. o/ Scorn

[Ogaden]

To be fair, our cattle is a sea cow.. and I'm pretty sure he's endangered or at least protected so there may be some fines and or jail time involved with making him feel any stress whatsoever.

Here in Soviet Florida, we eat sea cow with hoisin sauce.  Sure it's illegal but so is all the meth.

[Scorn]

I am honored to be the subject of this week's Bad Decision Friday. My people have informed me that they have a large supply of pointy sticks and even some advanced pointy sticks are in development. That sea cow won't know what hit it when the time comes for loud cow lamentations.

[Walshington]

I am honored to be the subject of this week's Bad Decision Friday. My people have informed me that they have a large supply of pointy sticks and even some advanced pointy sticks are in development. That sea cow won't know what hit it when the time comes for loud cow lamentations.

 

Sound like someone has succeeded in earning Delusions of Grandeur's..  

...Scorn.

 

Enjoy, old frenemy.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Walshington

[Ogaden]

Walsh wins the thread, it's all downhill from here

[TBRaiders]

Funny DoW and great response by Scorn.  You guys have fun.

 

hail Pointy Sticks

[DeathAdder]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the best part of this war so far.

[Xiphosis]

 

 

This is the best part of this war so far.

 

Seconded. Great comic.

[Scorn]

 

 

This is the best part of this war so far.

I still owe hartfw some money. I love the comics that the cowboy/samurai crowd produce and now I have my very own Delusions of Grandeur inspired comic. I am still willing to pay out that money hartfw, the last link you sent me the guy rejected my aid slot twice. Once on the day you sent me his name and again after he bought the FAC.

[jutopia la]

Love you too, guys.