Radical Idea

[alva]

Anyone noticed most RP frontier cities having walls , doesn't look like a sign of friendship to me.

[asleepathewheel]

A thought I just had:

GoW probably just entered Republic becaue it knows that its going to use its riders as soon as they get them. Fun. the good thing is that it will take them what, at least 4 or 5 galley turns to reach us from Port Isolation. I just can't see BoB attacking us en masse yet, the just don't have the galley strength yet.

[asleepathewheel]

Question for Aeson or others:

How many tiles are estimated for a domination victory on this map?

Would it be conceivable that the landmass of Bob and Lego combined would be enough, thus not forcing them to invade us?

[DeepO]

GoW invasion: not if they join Vox, and get a RoP going. They can shuttle 4 units across the straight every turn (actually, 6 units each 2 turns), and have some galleys to shuttle them around Elipolis. If Vox agrees to disband Elipolis, GoW's riders can reach us in 3 turns after embarking... not a rosy sight.

Domination: possibly... we still don't know how big Lego really is. Think of it the other way, though, most likely Bob and our continent isn't enough to get to domination, so at one point an invasion of Legoland will be needed. However, this could very well be after our demise.

DeepO

[Aeson]

Our landmass has 13.6% of the land tiles. The Domination limit takes coastal tiles into account, so we're probably a bit higher than that, maybe 15-16% of the total tiles that count towards the Domination limit.

To trigger Domination, 66.7% of the tiles (land + coast) are needed. So there are more than enough tiles to trigger domination off our continent.

[Aeson]

The main problem with a GoW invasion is they leave themselves open to ND. Same problem with an all out invasion of RP if Vox is still around for us...

Even if we had a very good friend in this game, we'd have to be insane to leave our borders open with them. Against Vox we had warning time... against Ansars? Your warning is they just took 2-3 of your cities and will be at your Capitol in a turn or two.

[Arrian]

Same problem with Riders. I love that unit.

Anyway, the solution, such as it is, to that problem would be a line of hill cities (which is kinda like what RP has) with walls and good defense + a solid road network (something we're good at). The key is to survive long enough to counterattack vs. the Ansars... on defense they're Impi.

-Arrian

[Shiber]

On the matter of radical ideas,

One of the members of Vox (who repeatedly asked not to be named) approached me regarding the issues at hand.
Posted below is the important bits of our conversation, with stuff that might give away his identity removed, of course.
Messages are separated by a hypen.

The war was clearly a mistake and due to Feudalism and soon Chivaly it wont be able to achieve it's goal. This is what I also wrote in our forums.

Beta and NYE discussed options last night, but I think I have another one to offer.
It's a bit far fetching and I dont think it will be popular with both teams and that's why I want to talk about it with you first, so that you will discuss is with other team members(without mentioning the source) and see the mood. If I see that it has a chance to suceed, I'll officialy propose it.
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Basically... Our goal is to ensure future supply of resources. Most chances are that we will end up without Coal, Rubber, Aluminium, Uranium, Oil, etc. Our land sucks,
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Your goal, as I see it, is domination. Not domination victory, but you plan to become a leading superpower, and your land and "all star" team is a great start.
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What I have in mind is an offer that will give both of us what we desire.
But it's a difficult one.

You will have to give up on any immediate gain you might have thought about having from what you can call your victory in this war.
And we will have to give up on everything we hoped to achieve with this war and basically be dependant on you and probably give up on Vox victory.
-
But overall, both teams will have a better future with my offer.
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* me mentioning that GS can conquer Vox with relatively little investment - I thought this would make him spit out some useful info, and it did *
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You cant. Feudalism is only a few turns away, and you wont be able to break through Elipolis. While every sea landing will be easily repealed. You'll waste resources on conquering Diss' Ville and storming the walls of Elipolis while the Bob teams will run ahead of you.
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* I get sortof angry at the guy, there's some chit-chat and then: *
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Ok.
Basically it's on offer of a complete alliance.
We will get(buy at a heavily discounted price) the resources and some techs from you. While our one(and in the future maybe two) circle of productive cities and the efforts of our civilization will be focused on helping you to achieve dominance(officialy it will be a dominance of the GS-Vox alliance, but practically you will be the scoreboard civ since we'll be dependant on your resources, etc).
It is clear than two circles of productive cities are better than one and that four are better than two.
The land arrangement will stay as decided in an agreement a gazillion years, but everything is changeable*.

* - The first clause of our alliance will state that the goal of the alliance is world domination and that both sides will strive to achieve it. "Personal" civ issues should always be willingly and happily compromised to achieve that goal.

More on the way.
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I got this idea from a PBEM game I play now.
(name removed #1) has an average-large landmass for himself.
(name removed #2) controls 80% of a huge continent and he's the dominant civ.
I have the other 20% and I'm pretty much ****ed up economically.

I have an alliance with (name removed #1) and we fight against (name removed #2) for a millenium now, it started with Knights and now we're on the verge of use of Airpower.
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Our goal is victory over Spencer.

I gift him cities when neccessary for bases, we gift each other as many luxuries as we can, technologies are given freely(unless he doenst have them, so one of us keeps it to slow down (name removed #2)'s research).
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Our forces fight together, we coordinate all our actions.
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This can be a bit far fetching for us at this stage, but my offer is something similar.

Tech/lux/resource trades wont be free(but heavily discounted) and we will fight together.
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So basically. Just like in my PBEM game. You will play the role of Jshelr trying to be the winner and we will be the ones who willingly assist him in everything we can, and in return keeping our civ advanced and viable.
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Such agreement will be very long term one and with a very long warning time(so that one side wont be able to leave without giving a X turn warning).
(x >=20, for example).
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You will be able to claim we become vassals(as long as it's private, as soon as my team hears about such term it all goes down).
While we will be able to claim a defeat in war without loss of land and overall achieve much more than we'll be able to get from our lousy land.
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My team is never going to win. So it's best for us to ally with someone who might and at least be an ally of a winner, instead of staying in the medieval ages while everyone are Industrial.

Your team will get a very poweful support base(1 and maybe 2) production circles.
-

Basically he's offering a super-alliance or something where our two civs will almost act as one civ with two production circles. I've made it clear to him that this requires trust, and frankly GS doesn't have much of that for Vox.

[FrustratedPoet]

Riiiiight. Yet another 'alliance' with Vox. I think they've had enough chances to deal honourably with us.

I wish I could support this because I think that destroying them will take time and resources we could really use elsewhere. However, I simply cannot imagine us launching a major invasion of Bob and leaving lightly-defended cities behind where Vox can get at them. Unthinkable.

btw, it's pretty obvious who this Voxian is, but I'll keep my mouth shut out of respect for his wishes for privacy.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Shiber

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Basically... Our goal is to ensure future supply of resources. Most chances are that we will end up without Coal, Rubber, Aluminium, Uranium, Oil, etc. Our land sucks,

Uranium? Did they actually type that?

How is there going to be two of each item on our island? I just can't see that happening.

Originally posted by Shiber
You will have to give up on any immediate gain you might have thought about having from what you can call your victory in this war.
And we will have to give up on everything we hoped to achieve with this war and basically be dependant on you and probably give up on Vox victory.
-

I don't get this passage.

Originally posted by Shiber
You cant. Feudalism is only a few turns away, and you wont be able to break through Elipolis. While every sea landing will be easily repealed. You'll waste resources on conquering Diss' Ville and storming the walls of Elipolis while the Bob teams will run ahead of you.
--

Ouch DeepO, good job. Of course, feudalism is useless without iron. This guy is pretty funny. They continually underrate us. Oh, and how are they getting feudalism, eh? buying from GoW? pretty funny.

I don't like this idea of a super alliance. Seems like they are trying to weasel their way out of this war.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
btw, it's pretty obvious who this Voxian is, but I'll keep my mouth shut out of respect for his wishes for privacy.

I have no clue

[notyoueither]

Beta contacted me last night and I figured what the heck, why not chat...

It was very awkward because I did not want to propose what was already in this thread and was not being warmly received by many (peace on our terms). In fact, I did not want to propose anything; I wanted to see how they viewed recent events. There came a point in the chat when Beta asked what next? for the second or third time... I said something, I can't recall what, but it led him to volunteer that all land south of Eliopolis as forfeit was not unrealistic and that they would do this so that we would both go after Bob.

I will post the full log later when I get home. The reason why I did not last night was, on top of being dead tired and distracted by events in the ISDG, Beta asked that I stay mum on the issue until he gauged support for the idea within Vox. I agreed, seeing that adding yet more chatter here on the topic prior to a glimmer of a chance from Vox seemed pointless. I have been waiting for a message of some sort from Beta, but now it seems that Vox themselves are bringing the issue into the open, so...

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
I wish I could support this because I think that destroying them will take time and resources we could really use elsewhere. However, I simply cannot imagine us launching a major invasion of Bob and leaving lightly-defended cities behind where Vox can get at them. Unthinkable.

I've given this some thought.

A fortress at the choke point, and a Galley or two... It would be better warning than we gained from Grog because they would have to fight their way down the 'throat'.

I think we should give the idea some additional consideration, assuming that Vox is willing to bite down and take their lumps. We gain more than just the savings in effort to take them down. We gain double, because that same army that we would have to expend effort to exterminate would be on our side bashing on and keeping GoW(?) busy and out of our way while RP goes down.

We gain considerably if a deal can be worked out. The question is how much assurance do we need of Voxes fidelity, and do they have it in their power to satisfy that need.

[DeepO]

Of course it's obvious who he is, but that's okay.

Shiber, the problem is that they are still underestimating us. Of course we know that they will get Fedualism soon, possibly before we can reach Elipolis. However, it's a simple matter of maths if we could take it or not. We can also be quite certain they will not have iron anymore by that time, and we have all the time in the world to whittle them down, including their precious walls (on plains!) before actually going in for the kill.

Further, we can probably put twice as many units on their land by boat as they have, in 20 turns time, certainly if they keep squandering them in 'small' stacks camping in our territory.

Sure, he () has a point in that Bob will take advantage of this, but having a clear passage to a 1-tile sea to Bob could be what makes all this worth it. And seriously, how could we benefit from Vox, with their underdeveloped cities and territory? We're past babysitting, we have done that before, and they back-stabbed us. Even if it may not be the most efficient way of handling this game, it certainly will be good to clean them out.

My apologies to your friend, this is not personal, but indeed they made a mistake, and have to pay the price for it. Or at least, that's my opinion on the matter. I do appreciate it you want to serve as an informal communication channel, though.

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by notyoueither
We gain considerably if a deal can be worked out. The question is how much assurance do we need of Voxes fidelity, and do they have it in their power to satisfy that need.

How would they explain this to their current allies without exposing our new alliance? How could we trust them not to turn against us if they got a better deal?