Poll, Foreign minister

[Ben Kenobi]

The Persians have offered us alliance should we desire to go to war against Sacajawacea.

We can either:

1. Accept the offer and besmirch our reputation while obtaining an alliance,

2. Ignore the offer.

Which course shall we pursue?

[rjmatsleepers]

I just voted to accept - and then the thought struck me. Aren't we staying spotless in this game?

RJM at Sleeper's

[Ben Kenobi]

Nope.

If we were, then we'd have no dilemma.

[cavebear]

I checked old threads and found our self-imposed restrictions (which I have now "stuck" to the top). We did indeed agree to maintain a "spotless" reputation.

It's my fault we slipped from that. When I was playing the session that brought us to 1889, I wasn't thinking of our reputation when I attacked and captured Wood Lake from the Sioux. I should have taken the trouble to make them declare war on us first.

I guess we will have to try and maintain our "excellent" reputation.

How much of a reputation hit would we take if we agreed to fight the Sioux at the Persians' request? Or perhaps we should free ourselves of that particular restriction... Personally, I've never cared much about "reputation".

[Ben Kenobi]

Oh no...

That's not good.

[rjmatsleepers]

Please regard my previous vote for "accept" as a vote for "ignore".

Should we go back to the last "spotless" save and replay?

RJM at Sleeper's

[Ben Kenobi]

That is an option. Or we could simply agree to not commit any more violations of our reputation.

Shall I start the poll?

In any case, I think that renders this poll invalid, since if we agreed to a spotless reputation, we shouldn't try to do further damage.

What are everyone's thoughts on this matter?

[cavebear]

As I see it, our options are to replay the offending sessions, live with what we've got, or take steps to improve our reputation.

I don't think we should replay any sessions.

For now, I suggest trying to maintain our "excellent" reputation and going forward. And I don't see how we can go forward without without taking enemy cities. We really can't survive the "tech gap" we are laboring under.

I'm not sure of all the options we have for repairing our reputation. Time itself will have an effect, and capturing the Eiffel Tower (the Celts have it in Merthyr) would fix our problem.

Do we take a reputation hit for merely agreeing to aid the Persians in their war against the Sioux? Or perhaps we can provoke the Sioux into declaring war themselves...

[Ben Kenobi]

We take a small hit.

Taking the Eiffel Tower would allow us to finish with a spotless reputation, and would be an option to acheive all of our victory conditions.

I'm in favour of playing on from where we are now, and not taking any further hits to our reputation, which would scuttle the alliance with the Persians, who are almost as weak as we.

[cavebear]

OK then. How do we proceed? We need to take cities to gain techs and increase our power. We can't advance very much on our own just through research; we are far behind on that.

I rejoined the game because it appeared that your idea of using tanks to take Sioux cities would give us a chance to succeed (or at least compete).

We need a way to gain techs and production. I don't know how to do that other than by absorbing Sioux cities.

I suggest we take advantage of the Persian alliance, take the small hit in reputation by taking more Sioux cities, and go on from there. Reputation is a difficult item to control, and the least important thing to me in any individual game.

Most Equal Leader-of-the-Workers Paradise, Premier Ben Kenobi, I request that you post a poll to help us choose, by the socialist group will , how to proceed in this difficult time so as to advance our glorious Peoples' Revolution.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Well we stuffed up a bit by accident. If we have a less than spotless rep already, I see no need to try to maintain that already technically failed condition.

There is a case to be made that it is the principle of the thing, that our prior transgression was not so bad because it was unintentional, but this time around if we worsen our rep whilst being fully aware of it we would be deliberately breaking our decisions. Many of those who voted on that decision at the start of the game are not here now, so it should fully be up to those of us still around to decide.

And remember too that it IS the principle of the thing. The basic principle behind this condition was us making this game challenging. I think it's challenging enough as it is, and we should not lose sleep over a single, minor condition being dropped so we actually DO have a challenge rather than a disaster.

[MrWhereItsAt]

As to this particular offer, I do not know ATM how much the Persians can do for us, but assumingw e may be able to get some tech out of the deal, we should go for it. And it's a lower rep hit than if we declared by ourselves, so we should go for it, provided it's not risking suicide.

[rjmatsleepers]

My 2 bits worth

I guess that since the original hit was accidental we don't need to replay, but I don't think we should deliberately worsen our reputation. It is relatively simple to provoke a war, although we do lose whatever the Persians might have offered us. As we capture cities, we will gradually pick up technologies.

I think our main problem at the moment is the space ship under construction. We need to do something about that as soon as we are in a position to do so.

RJM at Sleeper's

[MrWhereItsAt]

Er, would have voted for accept had my supervisor not interrupted at the crucial moment. I missed the poll.

[Ben Kenobi]

What the Persians offer us is a way to backstab, plus the ability to request a tech from our allies.

They have many techs we don't have, and hopefully they would offer us a good one.