RP, Our Vassals

[notyoueither]

re division of Bob.

RP North and West of the mountains remain RP, to be supplemented by ND lands.

Bob South and East of the mountains go to the Storm and let the winds howl.

The area North of ND, a commerce camp. 6 pop cities with 2 or 3 workers and 3 or 4 tax collectors. The winds blow there as well.

Just a proposal.

Another one would be that the South of Bob is the commerce camps and we erect a Palace south of Imperial City. Aeson mentioned that would be a good site. It seems good.

[nbarclay]

My idea of an exit strategy is we own North Bob and RP owns South Bob.

[Aeson]

Hmmm... we'd be pretty close to the Domination limit at that point (far in the future even if things go well), so a Palace in the S (much sooner) is the best bet.

[notyoueither]

Transports are one turn from Stormia from the area around Bilbao-New Madrid.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Aeson
Hmmm... we'd be pretty close to the Domination limit at that point (far in the future even if things go well), so a Palace in the S (much sooner) is the best bet.

Ohhh. That would be a powerful argument to RP to make granting land an easier pill to swallow. Can we have a tile count?

[Harovan]

I'm off to Munich, I have to deliver the wife to the airport (2 weeks alone ) and my son to his appartment. I'm anxiously looking forward to my return, this moment is probably the most exciting in the whole game.

[nbarclay]

My thought is a palace in ND lands whenever we get a leader to jump it (and are sure we can defend it). We could move it later, either with another leader or with a long, slow build process if it seems prudent to do so. Our relations with RP are likely to be better if we gain our Bobian lands at other civs' expense instead of at RP's expense.

[Aeson]

I'll work on one that includes coast. I'm pretty sure we could let RP have about 180 tiles on Bob (slightly less than what we have on Stormia) and still trigger Domination.

The coast may throw it off a bit, but it was very close to Bob having the 66.7% of the land tiles IIRC.

[vulture]

nye - For me, although this doesn't violate the NAP directly, it is rather too close for comfort. The NAP states that we won't take any hostile action against GoW. By allying with RP and attacking ND, we are switching the situation from a more or less guaranteed win for GoW to a war between themselves and RP which they don't have a real chance of winning. Plus if we take towns that they had lined up to take in the near future, and then refuse them rights to cross it (or be in violation of the NAP) - that last part in particular is just taking the piss. We will have done our utmost to ruin their chances in this war, and then claim that them crossing a strip of our territory violates the NAP? We're not actually attacking them, but we;re doing everything else we can to hurt their interests. That looks too much to me like GoW's stance on the MPP.

EDIT I know this is rather a subjective area. For me, this is twisting the intent of the NAP too far (after we said to them that it was the intent that was important). Others may feel differently, and may be right to.

And incidentally, I think GoW and ND's offer (help us and you can then sod off back to Stormia) is insulting. I just don't like this way of dealing with it.

[notyoueither]

Wouldn't that be a kick in the head for the aggressors?

Trick GS into an NAP and then try to leash them as attack dogs to render the victim helpless.

It turns out that they deliver domination victory to RP (by surrogate) over their dead bodies.

[nbarclay]

Regarding how our atacking ND would affect GoW, GoW hadn't told us anything about their plans for an alliance with ND before they got us to sign the NAP. On the contrary, they essentially made our agreeing to the NAP a condition for them to tell us their plans. So I see nothing dishonorable about attacking ND in regard to our NAP with GoW. I can see why GoW would be unhappy about it, but would they be happier if they hadn't talked us into the NAP and had to worry about being targets themselves once we learned that they were attacking RP?

Regarding the trick of taking over RP cities and demanding that GoW stay out of our territory, normally, I would agree that such trickery would be dishonorable. But after some of GoW's stunts - not just in regard to their MPP with RP, but also the way they "honored" their contract to land troops to support Vox against us and their giving us doctored maps - I'm more inclined to view it as poetic justice. When they play such tricks with technicalities, they should not be surprised to have someone turn around and do it to them.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by vulture
nye - For me, although this doesn't violate the NAP directly, it is rather too close for comfort. The NAP states that we won't take any hostile action against GoW. By allying with RP and attacking ND, we are switching the situation from a more or less guaranteed win for GoW to a war between themselves and RP which they don't have a real chance of winning. Plus if we take towns that they had lined up to take in the near future, and then refuse them rights to cross it (or be in violation of the NAP) - that last part in particular is just taking the piss. We will have done our utmost to ruin their chances in this war, and then claim that them crossing a strip of our territory violates the NAP? We're not actually attacking them, but we;re doing everything else we can to hurt their interests. That looks too much to me like GoW's stance on the MPP.

EDIT I know this is rather a subjective area. For me, this is twisting the intent of the NAP too far (after we said to them that it was the intent that was important). Others may feel differently, and may be right to.

And incidentally, I think GoW and ND's offer (help us and you can then sod off back to Stormia) is insulting. I just don't like this way of dealing with it.

I agree to a great extent. I would be much more liberal with my interpretation of 'hostile act' if GoW were not actively trying to thwart our interests after signing that NAP.

Certainly, we will not attack them, nor will we even go adjacent to thier cultural borders if I can help it. However, they deserve no other consideration after thier 'temporary land' proposals.

We have an NAP with them. What if we race them to conquer RP cities? We can beat them to the important ones for us, by all reports. Is that cricket? I think so. In this situation we are simply gaining those cities by another, totally legitimate means, diplomacy. And, we are not gaining them simply to block GoW. To my mind, the cities in question should in all liklihood remain with the Storm. RP to be supplemented in the North.

I do understand your misgivings though. I simply see diplomacy differently, I guess.

[notyoueither]

I agree to a great extent. I would be much more liberal with my interpretation of 'hostile act' if GoW were not actively trying to thwart our interests after signing that NAP.

I said this wrong. I think what I meant is that I would regard our NAP as an act of friendship, and I did, until the chats where we are to be minimalised and marginalised on our small (relatively) island.

Is accepting RP cities friendly? No. But what friendship has been returned?

I think that it goes to what one expects when entering into an agreement that does not necesssarily go with that agreement. There were expressions on this forum of desires for friendship with GoW before we signed that NAP. We were making an exception to our practice just so we could find that friend.

Now, those feelings are fallen cracked and brown onto the ground after their season. Our friends seek to use us to their ends and contain us on Stormia while harnassing our power to their own ends.

This is not a relationship of friends. We should not grant more to that NAP than is contained in it and its spirit. We will not be hostile to them. That does not mean we will not seek to enlarge our prospects without regard to their welfare so long as we are not attacking them.

The end result? We are not friends. That NAP does not imply that we are. It is only us who expected we would be, but we are not.

[Aeson]

I must have remembered rather badly...

Total Land/Coast: 1890
Domination Limit: 1261
BOB/Stormia: 1204
Little Bob: 46
Legoland: 642

So if we had all of Bob, Stormia, and Little Bob, we'd be 11 tiles short of Domination still. So we probably can't win that way without basically winning by conquest (excluding RP) first.

[Arrian]

Oh my, things have changed since yesterday.

Read the GoW/ND chat. Not impressed with them.

Still, I have SERIOUS reservations about jumping into bed with RP. Namely, these:

1) Our NAP with GoW makes things trickey, as you guys have been discussing.
2) Invading ND will be a *****, especially since our cats can't move through the jungle.
3) If GoW breaks our NAP to attack us, we're then fighting ND & GoW, and RP may be too weakened to help us out (or may not try very hard to help us).
4) I neither like, nor trust Togas & Co. They are slippery SOBs, and I'm concerned that we're a) lowering ourselves to their level; and b) likely to be out-weaseled by the professional weasels (axis of?).

HOWEVER, if we're gonna do this, we get an ironclad agreement from RP about what we get out of it first.

Second, my though would be to land further north, next to the gems mountain (on the hill 7 from there), build a city with our settler, and march straight on ND's core.

-Arrian