A game for 4 year olds

[MikkoAkure]

Slave revolts being another factor, the risk were simply getting too big to try and maintain it. It's not as the British people suddenly grew a heart but that does make for good PR.

The Brits also still turned around and introduced Indian indentured servitude to replace the slaves, which for all intents and purposes was nearly the same thing: free labor under grueling conditions. That also only ended because it ceased to be as profitable.

Also it can't be highlighted enough that the chaos in Garlemald after Solus' death was by design. Everything that eventually bit Garlemald in the ass was deliberately crafted by Solus to create as much chaos as possible (..ok, fine, almost everything, I don't think he saw Fandaniel coming).

Going back to FF and before he's brought up, Varis didn't bring stability after Solus' death either. Of the two choices of emperor during the civil war, he was the worst for both everyone else in the world as well as Garlemald itself. He has equal blame for the civil war as Titus and later purged Titus' faction, the Populares, who had been on a platform of reforms for the provinces and thought that expansionism wasn't good. Varis' decisions lost Ala Mhigo and Doma, which set off copycat rebellions across the empire. Dalmasca was made an example of since they had rebelled repeatedly and the capital of Rabanastre was turned to rubble. He lost 2 more legions, with the XIIth being destroyed at Ala Mhigo and the VIth being left in Eorzea. Though at this point with the VIth it feels super awkward they're just hanging there with the largest airship in the Garlean fleet doing nothing.

Varis also wanted to destroy the world multiple times over to finish the Rejoinings within one lifetime, which also doesn't typically mean stability. In the 8UC timeline, he only managed to get one Calamity off before it backfired in his face and destroyed the Garlean Empire as well as his enemies. In our own timeline, he kept Zenos's Ascian puppet as his official heir, which wouldn't exactly have been good for the world had a new Ascian been on the throne, but it wasn't good for him in the end either when Zenos came back to took his body and killed him. Nerva had correctly deduced that Zenos was an "demonic" meat puppet and Varis' lie that Zenos just got injured and then got better later was difficult to believe and that led to the 2nd civil war that destroyed Garlemald in the end.

[Alleluia]

I mean re: the Aztecs, I would still say everything that was mentioned was better than being a subject to an empire that performed ritualized human sacrifice with its human tribute. I never claimed the Spaniards were utopian. It was a comparison. The quote I was responding to claimed that historically there haven’t been cases where the conquered were worse than the conquerors, and I don’t think that’s true.

And the Brits didn’t only abolish slavery within their own territory, they enforced a stop on trade of them in international waters, too by other countries. It wasn’t cheap in either blood or money. There was a moral conviction there for people to be willling to die over it. And I don’t see how profit and cost reduction would force abolition of slavery. If slavery was a hit to the bottom line then factories could have simply not bought them? It wouldn’t require abolition to simply not use the system. Alternatively, if you mean slavery being in competition with factories hurt factories’ bottom lines, that must mean slavery was profitable. Which would actually be an incentive to keep slavery by the, presumably older money and more influential, people who had them and were using them in competition to the factories. So either way, a purely profit motive for abolishing it, much less enforcing that abolition elsewhere, makes no sense to me. Im sure there were interests that had a money motive to abolish it, but I don’t think it’s fair to claim that was the only reason.

But, regardless of pure or mixed motives, slavery was still abolished. Which is inherently a better condition than having slavery.

My point was less bad civilizations have arguably conquered more unpleasant civilizations before. Which was the quoted statement I was responding to.

[thegreatonemal]

I mean re: the Aztecs, I would still say everything that was mentioned was better than being a subject to an empire that performed ritualized human sacrifice with its human tribute. I never claimed the Spaniards were utopian. It was a comparison. The quote I was responding to claimed that historically there haven’t been cases where the conquered were worse than the conquerors, and I don’t think that’s true.

And the Brits didn’t only abolish slavery within their own territory, they enforced a stop on trade of them in international waters, too by other countries. It wasn’t cheap in either blood or money. There was a moral conviction there for people to be willling to die over it. And I don’t see how profit and cost reduction would force abolition of slavery. If slavery was a hit to the bottom line then factories could have simply not bought them? It wouldn’t require abolition to simply not use the system. Alternatively, if you mean slavery being in competition with factories hurt factories’ bottom lines, that must mean slavery was profitable. Which would actually be an incentive to keep slavery by the, presumably older money and more influential, people who had them and were using them in competition to the factories. So either way, a purely profit motive for abolishing it, much less enforcing that abolition elsewhere, makes no sense to me. Im sure there were interests that had a money motive to abolish it, but I don’t think it’s fair to claim that was the only reason.

But, regardless of pure or mixed motives, slavery was still abolished. Which is inherently a better condition than having slavery.

My point was less bad civilizations have arguably conquered more unpleasant civilizations before. Which was the quoted statement I was responding to.

Yes because the Spanish didn't kill people for no good reason either using religion as an example. Your comparison is pointless nobody was acting like other groups were goodie two shoes and to be frank this comparison is used by some pretty foul people all the time. Yes the Brits but pressure on others to get rid of slavery, because if they couldn't make as much money off it, nobody should.

[Cleretic]

I do want to say a huge thanks to Denishia and WhiteArchemage for stepping in with better knowledge than I had on the whole 'Cortez Vs. the Aztecs' situation. While I knew as a fact that it wasn't nearly as simple as 'the Aztecs were bad, then the Spanish came in and were better', it's also one of the parts of world history where my knowledge is so poor that the Civilization games are a significant percentage of my knowledge; I live very far away from that part of the world both geographically and culturally.

My knowledge of colonialist history is rooted in being Australian. Ours is best described as 'worse than you expect, for longer than you'd think'; almost worse than the many acts committed against our First Nations people is the fact that people who were direct victims and perpetrators of that are still alive, it's not exactly distant history. Our story is much closer to Limsa than anything touched by Garlemald, though. (Which for the record means I actually quite like Limsa's recent stories!)

[Lyth]

I've really enjoyed reading Mikko's posts, and I feel like they've really elevated both the overall quality and atmosphere of the discussion in this thread. Informative discussions are the real strength of this subforum, and I've missed seeing them.

I'd like to see more about Aerslaent. I don't think that we'll have a reason to travel there anytime soon, but I'm hoping that at least Nyunkrepf and his backstory comes up to give us more information about the region.

[KageTokage]

I do kind of wonder how they're gonna handle the story of the New World once that comes around.

They was already some shades of colonialism in the BLU quests with the Monetarists trying to exploit the situation with the Whalaqee to their advantage, but I think I'd rather see more of an internal conflict between the existing cultures in that land.

[Denishia]

I do kind of wonder how they're gonna handle the story of the New World once that comes around.

They was already some shades of colonialism in the BLU quests with the Monetarists trying to exploit the situation with the Whalaqee to their advantage, but I think I'd rather see more of an internal conflict between the existing cultures in that land.

I want to go to the New World so badly, and at the same time my mix of trepidation and excitement for how a Japanese game will fumble on a setting inspired by the Americas is potent… We’ve already had the conflicts and evils of colonialism addressed in the MSQ and general game worldbuilding, everything about Garlemald but also Limsa in particular and Ul’dah, so I know they aren’t going to hit only sour notes. The war bonnet still makes me a little uncomfortable and doesn’t give me a starting place of confidence, but how Rak’tika and Thavnair were handled soothed some of it. A part of me wonders how much the New World inhabitants, if/when we meet them fully, will be modeled on the Ainu instead, as a more familiar and immediate example. But my limited knowledge of the Aztec and Incan Empires is why I’m so curious for the New World, because I’m interested to see if when that setting is fleshed out if either empire is used as a starting point for the replacement antagonist for the Garleans and what would be done to differentiate them from the aggressively expansionist imperial magitek version we’ve known for a decade now (and what would also make them distinct from Eulmore and Golbez). I know I don’t want “defend Limsan colonial outposts funded by the East Aldenard Trading Company” to be the opening arc to an expansion even if I’ve resigned myself to being exactly the setup building in the background. But even if that’s the thread to have to WoL land on the shores of the New World, the open possibility of the hypothetical central plot excites me.

(The very local history precludes me to heavily side-eye claims of cannibalistic natives, so I’m hoping that particular pulp adventure trope doesn’t crop up again. The dangling plot thread of the ziggurat Qiqirn and their counterparts bug me, especially as between the Namazu and the Qitari they will never be touched again outside of lore books.)

[Cleretic]

I'd like to see more about Aerslaent. I don't think that we'll have a reason to travel there anytime soon, but I'm hoping that at least Nyunkrepf and his backstory comes up to give us more information about the region.

Bringing up Aerslaent makes me realize there's a lineup of places that we've only barely heard of, that I still kinda think would be more interesting than just 'Ilsabard'.

The lalafel come from a series of southern islands that I don't even think are on the map. And while we've technically been to Abalathia's Spine as far as, like, regional borders go, we've never been to anywhere you'd actually call 'Abalathia's Spine', like where the Warriors are from; we've definitely only been to the Spine's weird outliers.

(The very local history precludes me to heavily side-eye claims of cannibalistic natives, so I’m hoping that particular pulp adventure trope doesn’t crop up again. The dangling plot thread of the ziggurat Qiqirn and their counterparts bug me, especially as between the Namazu and the Qitari they will never be touched again outside of lore books.)

The Meateater Qiqirn were sort of an odd casualty of the devs changing their mind on something; the qiqirn were originally going to be the Stormblood crafting tribe before they instead went with the namazu and put the qiqirn off until Shadowbringers (I'm not sure if that was due to public response or just them realizing they struck gold while developing Stormblood itself), so their worldbuilding to lead to the qiqirn tribe is still there, but sort of... orphaned. Looking around the Peaks there's a couple places that feel like they could've been the qiqirn tribe's area.

I wouldn't trade either the namazu or qitari tribe storylines for the world, but I do wish we could get a peek at the plan for the SB qiqirn storyline just so we could get a bit of definition for the Meateaters.

[sidurgu-12]

Bringing up Aerslaent makes me realize there's a lineup of places that we've only barely heard of, that I still kinda think would be more interesting than just 'Ilsabard'.

The lalafel come from a series of southern islands that I don't even think are on the map. And while we've technically been to Abalathia's Spine as far as, like, regional borders go, we've never been to anywhere you'd actually call 'Abalathia's Spine', like where the Warriors are from; we've definitely only been to the Spine's weird outliers.



The Meateater Qiqirn were sort of an odd casualty of the devs changing their mind on something; the qiqirn were originally going to be the Stormblood crafting tribe before they instead went with the namazu and put the qiqirn off until Shadowbringers (I'm not sure if that was due to public response or just them realizing they struck gold while developing Stormblood itself), so their worldbuilding to lead to the qiqirn tribe is still there, but sort of... orphaned. Looking around the Peaks there's a couple places that feel like they could've been the qiqirn tribe's area.

I wouldn't trade either the namazu or qitari tribe storylines for the world, but I do wish we could get a peek at the plan for the SB qiqirn storyline just so we could get a bit of definition for the Meateaters.

I would love another "pick your own story" tribe if it was as good or better than the qitari.

[SannaR]

I do hope that with rank 8 we will get something with the Ra-La worshipers as they are a miss them if you aren't looking types if they so far have only been seen around during the rank ups since we got formally introduced to them. It would be odd to have the story tell them to go mingle with the other inhabitants in hopes doing so would help them stop being so nihilistic as they are and basically say ahh yes everyone else got it right life does suck and good for for you for developing a hivemind. If our Omnicron business partner can deliver a line that says they don't believe the Ea's theory about how the heat death of the universe being a thing should make everyone hopeless you'd think we'd get just one more scene with those who had such a lovely planet to look at.