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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1995620" data-attributes="member: 7240">(a) On what evidence do you presume that good-aligned humanoids are the primary factor in kobold mortality? (b) No they are not. Even if good-aligned humanoids are the primary factor in kobold mortality, the day after the cataclysm, the ratio between these individuals will be completely unchanged. In relative terms, exactly the same number of kobold killers will be there.Precisley because survival is at stake. Good aligned humanoids are not stupid. Why would nearly being wiped off the face of the earth cause them to stop paying attention to other factors that could wipe them off the face of the earth. Wouldn't they be more sensitized to things threatening to bring about their extinction? Furthermore, as I keep saying again and again, historically, cataclysms make people more warlike not less so. So, how is it that you keep asserting repeatedly that the cataclysm will cause people to fight less?These things are not comparable. The ways that grass and trees compete are not analogous to the ways kobolds and elves compete in terms of their respective deadliness to eachother and a half dozen other ways. Also, we're back to guns and butter here. Why are you designing a microeconomics-style problem where there are only two humanoid species? I spoke too soon. Your metaphor is completely incoherent. It doesn't resemble anything.(a) How do we know that before the cataclysm the world ran out of open land? If there was a signficant quantity of "open land" before the cataclysm, I guess the kobolds would already be in charge even before the disaster.(b) Don't we already know that kobolds favour subterranean locations over open land?(c) As I keep saying, land hunger is not always (or even usually) the cause of wars.Why would the kobolds have the resources to take this land right after the cataclysm? They have been exactly as decimated as the humans. Why would they suddenly become unaware of the kobolds' existence? And why would they cease thinking that their surivival is contingent on preventing monstrous humanoids from killing them. A survival-obsessed group is more likely to attack potential threats than a prosperous complacent one. Take a look at the Iroquois or the Avars or the Byzantines under Justinian.Elves are 70% the size of humans and yet, by your math, take 7-10 times as long to reach maturity. So clearly size is not the main determinant of how quickly a creature reaches maturity. Look at how much faster horses reach maturity than humans, despite their considerably larger size. Other than size, is there any other basis on which you can assert that other lizard creatures take longer to reach maturity than kobolds do?So, you have arbitrarily excluded everything that could do a better job of global domination than you believe kobolds could. This isn't actually a valid argument. "Let's decide to arbitrarily ignore everything that undermines what I'm saying" is not actually a rational or valid point. No. You're insisting that conflict and population are primarily dependent on questions of land occupation and I'm saying they're not.</blockquote>

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