Covert Operations - General (2125 - 2149)

[Googlie]

You're prolly not far off the mark with the Gaians, except I'd substitute Darsnan for Hydro as an active decision maker. Hydro's in it for the rich vein of fiction he can mine (I expect that many of the Voice of Planet concepts, if not the actual writing, represent his work)

Darsnan will be their minutaie guy, writing up the probe reports, and doing spreadsheet work, etc (I would imagine that he'd piece together a Hive map as easily (?) as I did)

(talking of which, I have had a go at the uni map, but there are fewer bases to work with, less - almost no - coastline revealed, and they don't seem to be so closely spaced as the Hive is in the jungle (there's little overlap). But I do have a partial one done, amnd I'm looking at rivers and fungus to see where the odd pieces may link in. I'll post that shortly)

[KrysiasKrusader]

I've edited my post to reflect Googlie's assumptions.

Only thing is, there is no Vander in the Morganite player list, so he must have left. (Like JDM with the Angels). And Darsnan, I am almost certain that he is not part of the high council.

What did Maniac do to piss off an entire faction, that would be carried over into another game?

As for myself; I don't see anyone who has a grudge against me.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by KrysiasKrusader
Only thing is, there is no Vander in the Morganite player list, so he must have left. (Like JDM with the Angels).

WOW - I'd missed that. He was one of the most active in the early days when I was with them

What did Maniac do to piss off an entire faction, that would be carried over into another game?

That was covered in one of the other threads. The "Coles Notes" says he was the architect of a doublecross on PEACE - accepted a trade (they had sent Doc Init pre-accepted as part of the tech exchange), instabuilt the MCC, and reneged on the deal by declaring vendetta. PEACE wanted the turns replayed, but as CMN I canvassed opinion from other players who had CMN experience and finally ruled it as legal. They debated internally whether to continue or just dissolve their faction, but swallowed hard and continued, whereupon the Cycon rolled over PEACE with some cruiser units and amphibious troops, base hopping and just capturing seabase after seabase

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
That was covered in one of the other threads. The "Coles Notes" says he was the architect of a doublecross on PEACE - accepted a trade (they had sent Doc Init pre-accepted as part of the tech exchange), instabuilt the MCC, and reneged on the deal by declaring vendetta. PEACE wanted the turns replayed, but as CMN I canvassed opinion from other players who had CMN experience and finally ruled it as legal. They debated internally whether to continue or just dissolve their faction, but swallowed hard and continued, whereupon the Cycon rolled over PEACE with some cruiser units and amphibious troops, base hopping and just capturing seabase after seabase

Really? Do they hold me and only me personally responsible? As far as I can remember it were besides me also a couple of other CyCon guys who threw this plan together. :shrug:

This experience of course makes me wary of giving too many techs in advance to other factions, lest someone pull this same trick on us. For example if I were a Gaian, and receive EthCalc & DocFlex, while I still need to fulfill my part of the deal (namely give HEC, pay part of the 150c, and live by a no-trade & CDF embargo), the temptation would be there to just break all my agreements with Sparta, especially if I was confident in an Angel pactmate. So in our effort to sell as many techs as possible before the council meets, we must keep in mind not to give too much in advance IMHO.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Maniac
Really? Do they hold me and only me personally responsible? As far as I can remember it were besides me also a couple of other CyCon guys who threw this plan together.

No, not you, individually. But I couldn't remember if any other old CyCon players are in the Sparta team (or I'd have lumped you together) and was too lazy to go look in the archives.

But do you know of any of your erstwhile CyCon colleagues who are members of the Angels team?

This experience of course makes me wary of giving too many techs in advance to other factions, lest someone pull this same trick on us. For example if I were a Gaian, and receive EthCalc & DocFlex, while I still need to fulfill my part of the deal (namely give HEC, pay part of the 150c, and live by a no-trade & CDF embargo), the temptation would be there to just break all my agreements with Sparta, especially if I was confident in an Angel pactmate. So in our effort to sell as many techs as possible before the council meets, we must keep in mind not to give too much in advance IMHO.

I agree - that's part of the danger of giving a tech on the instalment plan. (That's part of the neatness of the Morgans' linking their subsidy to the screenies, if either of us reneges, it's only 4 ec's lost)

Maybe (and here I am blue-skying - for discussion - not strategy-shifting), we just accept the "hand we've been dealt" and go Fortress Sparta for the next ten to twenty turns. We keep flex, and ethical calculus, and ecol eng. We steal HEC from Lal and we steal Doc Loyalty from Yang. We build the MCC and the CDF, and we wage our war on Zak, then Lal. We'll infiltrate Morgan and find and infiltrate the Angels and Gaians.

In 2165 we'll come up for air and see where we're at. We'll be immeasurably stronger, and if the others haven't yet met, how can they ally against us?

(But we'd need strong probe defenses, and we'd need to interdict Hive ships - or PK ships - trying to find each others' continents, to avoid Council being called)

And we'd need an aggressive borehole program, to generate minerals to build crawlers to supply minerals for the units we need and to be upgraded and cashed in for the SP's we want ..............

[Googlie]

Hmm - maybe we're being forced into a Fortress Sparta posture.

Gaia has rejected our overtures:

Posted by Illuminatus in the Embassy
Examination of all offer by the Council has been concluded. I am sorry to inform you we have turned down offers 1), 2) and 3) because their terms are unacceptable. Offer 4) was too undetermined to be considered a real offer. Offer 5) is explained below.

I am afraid this is impossible. We are not researching Doctrine: Flexiblity so we cannot redirect our research

This latter one has me fooled. Why would they earlier (Oct 16) say,

Posted by Illuminatuts in teh Embassy
Ethical Calculus is one of our priorities, and if you are willing to trade it, we can provide you with Doctrine Flexibility and Social Psych before this decade ends

We know they don't have Flex - unless they have just discovered it in 2144 (maybe that's what they intend stealing from Yang when their Dauntless returns with a probe team)?

[Googlie]

And as our offer 2) was:

Posted in the Embassy by Kassiopeia
2) We will give you Ethical Calculus. You must agree to not build CDF. You offer us a technology in turn.

I make the inference that they intend to build the CDF as soon as they have the requisite techs (maybe they changed to Doc Loyallty when we gave then Doc Mobility in the trade)

We gotta get those other factions infiltrated while we still have a monopoly on shipping

[Maniac]

Weird indeed. The request not to build the CDF while EthCalc isn't its prererequisite isn't really usual, but for the rest those terms aren't exaggerated as far as I get the impression (though I'm a rather bad judge at that - in the previous ACDG I always considered the trade proposals from the others too expensive while I considered the CyCon proposals good deals. ).

Is this the end of all Gaian negotiations? They don't even make a counteroffer or an independent offer themselves - they simply and flatly refuse any and all proposals we made, even proposal #4 which just said they could themselves suggest a tech to give in return. For example the tech they're currently researching, which they still don't want to tell what it is (assuming it really isn't DocFlex).
Could this be a bluff to lure us into giving them better terms?

Just tell if I'm being too isolationist or too much hoarding-minded, but if the Gaians don't want to buy DocFlex & EthCalc, should we stop the negotiations with the Angels regarding those techs as well? With the apparent cooperation between those factions, I'd be wary to give a tech to only one of those two factions. I'd be inclined to release an official communiqué to both factions that because of the abrupt refusal of all our possible and open proposals by the Gaians, we have decided only to trade techs to both factions at the same time, and not to only one faction.

Perhaps we could suggest a IndEcon<->Gene Splicing to the Angels instead? Gene Splicing is seriously reduced in value anyway due to the Gaians soon to be able to trade it third parties.

[Googlie]

I wonder, as well, if we could "spin" into such a communique our disappointment at the double selling of ours and the Angels' commlinks?

I'm more and more liking the Fortress Sparta posture - at least for the next 20 turns or so.

But if we do, (I sound like a broken record) we need to infiltrat the other 3 factions before they either get probe defenders everywhere (we could have slipped a probe into Red Fungus Resort if we'd had one nearby) or before they get naval power to announce territorial waters.

And maybe that's what we do (like the "Monroe Doctrine")

*************************************************

The Maniac Doctrine

Sparta declares the inviolability of the Federation, its territory and its coastal waters, extending 8 tiles from its coastline. Any vessel or unit, whether armed or unarmed, encroaching within this Federation Zone will be destroyed

*************************************************

And shouldn't we try for Ind Econ and Soc Psych for Gene Splicing? (in the event we are forvced to research Doc Loyalty ourselves, we need Social Psych)

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
But if we do, (I sound like a broken record) we need to infiltrat the other 3 factions before they either get probe defenders everywhere (we could have slipped a probe into Red Fungus Resort if we'd had one nearby) or before they get naval power to announce territorial waters.

And maybe that's what we do (like the "Monroe Doctrine")

Sounds great.

And shouldn't we try for Ind Econ and Soc Psych for Gene Splicing? (in the event we are forvced to research Doc Loyalty ourselves, we need Social Psych)

Would be fantastic if it works.
However do the Angels have SocPsych? Also at least if I were GeoModder, I wouldn't give two techs knowing full well I could get Gene Splicing from my Gaian buddies very soon anyway (And Geo knows they have it).

[Googlie]

Ind Econ isn't particularly useful to us right now (leads to Ind Auto, which we have, and Environmental Econ, which would be a bit of a luxury for us currently, as we'd rather research other lines)

Social Psych would be worthwhile, so perhaps something like:

While we are still discussing a possible Doc Flex for Ind econ trade, it occurs to us that there may be an easy one to execute.

Gene Splicing from us for Social Psych from you. There is somewhat oif an imbalance in tech values there (in your favour) but Soc Psych would enable us to speedily resolve Drone problems, thereby increasing its value in our estimation

If we get it, then it opens up our researching Doc Loyalty after we get Doc Init (and changing to Int Int if ever we acquire Doc Loyalty) - plus it might force them to tip their hand if they do - or don't - have Soc Psych

[Maniac]

Sounds great to me.
If we can get anything at all out of selling gene splicing to the Angels, I already consider a victory.

[Kassiopeia]

Fortress Sparta would be in the Spartan spirit, yes. But it'll require a good bit of luck and careful planning to be succesful. If we can keep the others isolated and build our own power base, of course we'll have a huge advantage. I like the idea - it'd be the perfect solution after our flipflopping from pro-Angel to pro-Gaian to pro-Morgan to back to pro-Gaian.

So, shall I just give the Gaians a formal "oh well, never mind then" and do the GS<->SocP suggestion to the Angels?

[Googlie]

That'd get my vote

(The Angels have the turn right now, so maybe you could prevail upon them to send Social Psych pre-accepted - needed urgently next turn, or something like that (nervestapling's not the Spartan way) and we'll reciprocate with Gene Splicing (notwithstanding the PEACE experience with the CyCon last game)

[KrysiasKrusader]

Originally posted by Googlie

Maybe (and here I am blue-skying - for discussion - not strategy-shifting), we just accept the "hand we've been dealt" and go Fortress Sparta for the next ten to twenty turns.

Did I not see something completely opposite this in a recent thread!?!?

I better read the rest of these posts slowly (so as not to miss anything, and then ask a stupid question.).