Radical Idea

[notyoueither]

Message received from Beta, and they have moved the turn on. Sounds like they are withdrawing from Tempest.

I should send him a reply. Something along the lines that one of his team brought the matter up with one of us and the discussion over here has started. Then, nothing can come from us until we have a proposal from Vox OR we are currently voting on proposals.

Waiting for input.

[Arrian]

I'm in favor of taking them out.

But, if the majority really does think it best, I guess I could accept us getting control of everything south of the neck, with a bunch of pikemen behind walls on a hill.

EVEN THEN, however, I DO NOT want Vox to think we've "got their back" if they go and commit hari cari over on Bob.

I not only view Vox as a military threat, but as a diplomatic liability.

Frankly, I say we toast 'em.

-Arrian

[notyoueither]

Reply to Beta posted here for convenience:

Got your message. Don't have a lot to say at the moment. Good idea not to treat our discussion as definitive yet. I am waiting to hear from you as to the views of Vox.

/end message.

I am signing off now for a bit. Not sure when I will be around tomorrow. Early I hope, but I cannot predict. I wanted to reply before things progressed too far. We should have the turn shortly as I see vondrack stirring.

[DeepO]

Nice... I like new turns to hurl bananas on mortals

As to the message: sounds fine to me (wasn't around this morning to send it then). There is no need for hurry, we're in the strong position here, and they want something of us, not the other way around. So let them come to us, and we can respond.

DeepO

[Aeson]

I've been thinking about the best way we could use Vox. For us to really be able to take advantage of them as allies, they need to be off our Island so we can both trust each other enough to co-operate.

Vox's land isn't anything special, and RP has beautiful terrain to their S that they aren't in position to claim for quite a while yet. Perhaps we could 'land' Vox there by building cities of our own and giving them to Vox. Vox reciprocates by giving us their cities on our Island, and then disbanding their Capitol to jump their palace to BOB. We then give them back a city, they move all their units into it, and then give the city back to us. All their units are then transported to their capitol on BOB. We could feed them Workers to build up their pop fast (most of Vox's cities they give us won't be good for much else but building Workers until we get our FP up anyways).

We get our Island clean of foreigners, and Vox gets their best chance to have a viable core. The main concern is if RP is willing to let ND bring Ansars through their territory and/or GoW bring Riders to hit Vox? It's at least a better chance then Vox would have trying to settle land in the face of GoW and ND who would both be there very quickly.

This also pulls RP forces S to hit Vox. Then we'd have more of an opening to hit their core if/when we do land them.

It would take a lot of selling... what do you guys think?

[DeepO]

Interesting idea, but is it workable? We'll need the time to build say 5 cities, defend them, and then take 2-3 turns selling everything back to Vox.

I think we can speed things up, though, by at least a turn. If Vox keeps a size 1 city here, their capital won't move to that city if they have a couple of size 1, or one size 2 on Bob. So, they disband their capital, move everything in their last city, and give it to us. We accept before RP has a chance to do anything (as they won't play their turn until after us), and Vox has a core on Bob. But still, they then have 1 capital with loads of units in it, and a coupld of undefended cities for at least a few turns... will be very tricky if RP has a few horsies close by.

It would make one of the nicest maneuvers I've seen in a long time, though, and could certainly classify as fun. Plus, the risk is for Vox, and not for us, except that we have to settler their cities...

DeepO

[Aeson]

I don't have any screenshots of BOB anymore, can someone post/email one of RP's territory?

I think we can speed things up, though, by at least a turn. If Vox keeps a size 1 city here, their capital won't move to that city if they have a couple of size 1, or one size 2 on Bob.

Good thinking. The size 2 city would be the best bet, as they could certainly hold it. Then as they get roads/units in place, we can keep founding new cities for them.

Also Vox could be building Settlers/Workers of their own up to that point, and when their stack gets ported over, they'd then have 4-5 Settlers to go found new cities with, and the units to protect them.

[Shiber]

I see one major flaw in this idea: RP must be barb-hunting in their south (all that fogged-up south makes for one huge barb farm). It won't be long before they come across a dark-red border and do two plus two.

[Shiber]

Btw, I had a thought:
If we ever reach an agreement with Vox, I would also demand to see their screenshot of the demographics screen each turn. It will allow us a close look at where Vox is standing, and also give us more data to be able to guesstimate where the other teams are standing (two demographics PoVs are better than one).

[Aeson]

Certainly they will find out that we are building cities for Vox there. The cities show up even in the FOW, and at least some of the teams will see that the cities start out blue and then turn dark red.

This would be a nice big 'thank you for funding Vox' to RP... and it might make them think twice about sponsering anyone else to hit us... they just might be facing their own gold again. Keeping it a secret wasn't part of the plan.

[nbarclay]

To the best of my knowledge, we have no concrete evidence that RP has funded Vox beyond the normal scope of tech purchases. They make good suspects, but the evidence is all circumstantial.

Further, if we start operating on Bob, and especially if we and Vox do so jointly, it could very easily unite all of Bob against us. With Riders and Ansars coming up in the near future, that's pretty much the last thing I want to see happen. The only way we can safely invade Bob is if the Bobians are already fighting each other, or are getting ready to and ask for our assistance.

[Shiber]

My "contact" in Vox just saw the latest turn. He said: "We need more information about the peace offer."

I think it's time for serious negotiations. My suggestion is that we tell them our initial demands - everything up to and including Eliopolis, and being allowed to attack any Voxian units still within our territory, and ask them where they want to go from there. Any ideas they might have of cooperation or whatever, just send us something official and we'll discuss and negotiate.

What are your opinions?

[DeepO]

Shiber, add the possibility of iron trade, and I agree on that offer as an initial idea were to start from. But make it clear that we could perhaps reach another agreement, but this is what we consider a minimum, and we may need additional safety measures. We're willing to think on extra advantages for Vox (like the iron), though.

Oh, but better to wait until more people can comment on this, too important to simply state your personal views on... even if they are most likely the majority opinion

DeepO

[Shiber]

Of course, I wasn't going to comment back without a wide discussion.
Btw, I was going to suggest that we send them an official message rather than just relay messages through me, but then I realized that it's best if Vox had to make the first official move.

[DeepO]

I agree on that too, Shiber Better to let an initial offer come from them. Power diplomacy, sure, but in a polite way

DeepO