Introduction
Axioms is a game with an in-depth civil and military administration system. Setting up infrastructure in a granular and varied way rather than pushing a button for happiness or stability or w/e. Additionally the game contains a detailed system for building up the “capital” or “state capacity” to engage in major and interesting state actions.
In this post I’m going to detail how this allows for many different playstyles, including the elusive “tall” playstyle. Not only can you do it but it is fun and has just as much going on mechanically. Many stategy games fall under the 4X label and then many more fall under grand strategy, which is more like 3X or 2X+1 or something. No exploring and limited exploiting but lots of expanding and exterminating. Not only does Axioms provide an “exploration phase” that does not end as it does in 4X games but it also greatly extends the “exploiting phase”.
Civilian Administration
In the vast majority of strategy games “administration” style gameplay is incredibly limited and abstracted. Sometimes you have a few limited building types and maybe some fancy wonders. Most buildings are like +5% gold, or +2 shields, or -2 unrest or w/e. Limited and dull. Axioms of course has sort of half crafting/half city building structures with lots of advanced features, but that is a whole other post. Infrastructure serves more of the role of buildings in Axioms.
I’ve already done a post on raiding and banditry and how various administrative structures can reduce that. Town guards, message stations, mirror towers for more advanced societies, guard towers, walls, and so forth. Some of those handle more aspects than just banditry suppression.
But you’ve also got all sorts of other infrastructure. Roads are the most obvious example. In addition roads are somewhat like buildings in that they are more customizable. Roman style roads with drainage, paving stones, and other high upfront vs low over time costs. How wide are they? How much weight can they support easily? Raised roads for swamps and floodplains, sidewalks or not?
You can also build structures like lighthouses, fancy forts which are temporary or permanent, canals and irrigation, bridges of course. Basically lots of things that are more often built by states or at least city states rather than private use due to their complexity and cost.
In some sense this kind of infrastructure still involves modifiers but they are more targeted, “closer to the metal”, and varied. Axioms deals with instability in a much more nuanced way as far as revolts, bandits, smuggling, tax evasion and so forth. You’ll actually deal with having some level of consistent lawbreaking most of the time. Even the Romans, with their almost unrivaled state capacity and much more loyal and involved populace, had to deal with hill raiders and forest ambushes and such.
Military Administration
Axioms allows for a much broader and more detailed representation of military administration and infrastucture as well. There are a variety of ways, informed by history, to handle recruitment and levies, to manage supplies and logistics, to handle equipment and animal capital, and so forth.
The effectiveness of your combat troops is modified by their access to equipment and supplies and the impact that has on morale, as well as the difference between generals and the common soldier. Characters have complex personalities and many officers will, as they did in history, engage in more excess as far as food consumption, entertainment, access to servants, and so forth.
The importance of this will very by polity as the building blocks of culture, which is not a single label in Axioms, dictate. More Roman style societies will not only have civilian sumptuary laws but their soldiers will regard extreme excess among upper classed as more offensive, whereas a more Persian or Egyptian society might be neutral or have improved morale as they witness the the opulence of their leaders on campaign.
The actions of a leader in the field will have an impact on the loyalty of the troops. Loyalty to the state and personal loyalty might clash. A top level ruler like an emperor might need to worry more about popular subordinates if they have less interaction with the middle and lower classes, at least as soon as things are going poorly. Characters will be bound by the totality of their “Consciousness” in their behavior.
Of course the ability of a ruler to manage their peers and the magnates ostensibly below them will be very relevant. Perhaps you *can’t* reject the demands of a particularly hostile or merely spoiled aristocrat or patrician to have a military title or office. Some subordinates can harm you indirectly by their behavior even if they are not intentionally trying to destabilize your regime.
Military infrastructure functions in a similar way to the civilian kind. Harbors, drydocks, roads, granaries, and supply depots, human capital on the ground both as messengers and scouts, spies, and so forth. Boats and animal transports and of course carts and wagons. Raising a large army means little if you can’t equip, maneuver, and supply it. Material state capital was just as crucial in the ancient world as political capital.
Resevoir Of Capital
I’ve mentioned before the important of political capital in being a power in Axioms. That is absolutely crucial. In many domestic cases it can be enough, and sometimes in dplomacy as well. But for civil and military administration you also need material capital, or perhaps we might call it state capacity. Unless you build an unusually powerful foundation you’ll generally need to raise material capital for any civilian or military venture.
As you bring more and more land under your control your existing state capacity will become absorbed by maintenance. Many games, especially “map painters”, will allow you to use the same troops and material capital over and over. As soon as you “win” a conflict your army is free to engage in another with little pause. Not in Axioms.
Garrisons will require, as do armies, actual military units recruited from your concrete population. Civil “units” follow many of the same rules. And of course you’ll have casualties as well as injuries and retirements. Unlike Civ games where a raised unit costs a small amount of gold and is permanent and undying.
Garrisons and civilian officials of course actually engage in real activities in Axioms. Hunting bandits, clearing out real life predators and also fantasy monsters depending on your world generation settings.
Especially in cases where “officials” are Characters and not just small Population detachments you’ll have actual character interactions. Generating estimated production for taxes and then engaging to collect them from the Character in charge of a particular population.
Guards and scouts and spies, often including actual Characters, will be gathering information on Populations, local military forces, dangerous animals, and Characters moving about. Leaders, depending on their “Consciousness” and their feelings about their superiors, will often actively be holding back on their wealth and thus limiting taxation.
There may also be one sided activities like surveying your land to gather new info, repairing infrastructure, dealing with weather and other natural, and sometimes not so natural, events. Axioms is a fantasy game with an expansive magic system after all.
Not only must you generate the state capacity to wage a war but also to learn about and manage your new territory.
Nominal Control And Concrete Control
In Axioms there are several quite distinct ways to expand your control over the land and the people. Few strategy games, aside from EU4 in a limited way, really deal with differing levels of “control”. Axioms as a fantasy world sim with a detailed character and population system oftens a variety of unique playstyles and strategies.
You can rule in the style of a Persian or Bronze age ruler where you mostly exact tribtue and sometimes military support from existing elites. You can have a series of defensive alliances like the Greek city states. You can go full Roman with much more social and political investment and by blending local elites with your hub culture. You can entirely replace existing elites as well.
Some societies may even engage in cleansing whereby older women and adult males are wiped out and the land is given over to new settlers with children and younger child bearing age women subordinated to the new controlling power. All of these choices have different costs and benefits and different horizons for recouping costs.
Some populations will be more or less resistant to changing elites based on their ideology and traditions. So you might have to employ more than one major strategy depending on the circumstances, or simply gain less economic value in the short term. In some regions there will be lots of revolts and unrest over foreign control and in others the Populations and lower status Characters will care little about who holds their yoke as long as the taxes and drafts function at a similar level.
Additionally due to the potential of the infrastructure mechanics there is a choice about playing wide or tall even beyond going for diplomatic or administrative/military control. Both the player and the different NPC characters may focus more on building up or building out depending on their “Consciousness”. If your existing Populations are extremely loyal a less risky strategy might be to reinvest in your existing territory.
You could engage in a complete control strategy, rather than a nominal(diplomatic) control strategy and go wide in that context or you could go even taller and spend less of your capital on conquest. Note that in many cases a military strategy is more “efficient” in a pre-industrial context but you also have to consider that it is also riskier. It would generally be superior even accounting for risk when you consider rate of return on your capital investment but NPCs of course must follow the dictates of their “Consciousness” and a player may also prefer to roleplay an inward focus.
There are of course situations where Axioms being a fantasy game would change the calculations vs what would be realistic in a purely historical setting. There are rare resources and certain magical options that can produce a “temporary industrial revolution” through different means. This includes the previously noted “dense mana crystal” type resources from the Unique Playstyles design post from last year. You can go hard until the limited supply depletes in which case you’ll be in a pickle unless you planned well for the loss.
Geography And The State
Axioms places a strong value on the historical impact of geography on state capacity. Rivers and good farmland have a strong impact on the game. In addition the “fall line”, which is what created an industrial north and agrarian south in the USA, at least as far as textiles were concerned, impacts access to water power for various purposes like mining or mills. Water for transport and industry is a heavily detailed aspect of Axioms. Coastline, timber access, and natural harbors are also powerful in Axioms. These are mostly industrial/economic concerns however.
Axioms represents the limited power of the state in the face of hills and plateaus as well as forests. Hill peoples are famous both historically and in fantasy literature for their independent nature. This is often represented by their tough nature but historically hilly land was very hard to rule over and additionally was convenient for livestock based societies. Populations that were fed and clothed by livestock and had easy access to transport for the same reason were quite difficult to control.
The Romans actually considered nearly all hill sheperds to be a banditry risk. Hills were often not super valuable land for settled societies and they provided safety due to terrain concerns but that was heavily modified by the unsettled nature of their indigenous populations. Plus most large empires had armies suited more to set piece battles on flat terrain. Rome had a persistent problem with cattle/livestock rustlers in the hillier parts of Italy. Augustus even had a special subordinate in charge of crushing the endemic banditry brought on by the civil war and sheperds were a large percentage of the problem causes. After all the loot itself is mobile.
Forests also presented difficulties to the large coastal/river based empires. Teutoberg forest was one of Rome’s greatest calamities for a reason. Forests are of course easier to police than hill country since you can slowly cut down the trees and the building materials for fortifications are close to hand and numerous. Swamps were another risky area.
As far as the sea large states had to decide whether maintaining a defensible outpost on rocky islands was cheaper than dealing with some piracy. And unless you were Rome and controlled “your sea”, then rugged coasts across the water were also a problem for you.
On the plus side rivers and mountain ranges often provided nice natural borders. Sure they restricted your own expansion but they also prevented easy ingress by your enemies. China was one of the most wealthy and populous empires but the same mountains that protected them from invasion also provided natural barriers to their expansion and they rarely considered it worthwhile to project power beyond them.
Conclusion
Axioms engages with a lot of realistic and historical gameplay options to provide a totally unique and varied experience. Players will need to make lots of trade offs whenever they consider their expansion and these decisions will be much less obvious when you consider the long vs short term.
Is it worth it to double your size now if you’ll then pay an ongoing cost you were not really prepared for? Should you expand ceaselessly and haphazardly or in planned and controlled bursts? And of course unique diplomatic and geographical considerations will impact any given choice.
Your options for an inward focus are much more varied and meaningful. Generally fast expansion will necessitate a lack of stabilization due to the Attention system. And delegating in order to utilize the Attention of vassals, allies, friends, and subordinates has risks and rewards to consider as well. A powerful and brilliant governor or duke make secure valuable lands from outside enemies but they’ll empower themselves in turn unless you keep up your relationship.
One key aspect of Axioms is that thanks to the Attention Point system a more powerful characters naturally avoids micromanagement through delegation. Excessive micromanagement is of course impossible as your area of control grows but it ideally feels realistic as you shift to new activities and focuses.