Riding the tiger...

[vulture]

Okay, so now we are committed to an alliance with RP, with them as our (alleged) vassals. They were willing to gift us quite a few cities at first to get us on their side. The question now is how do we balance making sure that they are always too weak to threaten us, while keeping them strong enough to be useful. From what I've seen so far, we seem to be veering towards letting them keep a lot of the territory they have now, while we get the north. That can't be good, surely. Owning all of the north is a long way down the line, and may never happen at all. Meanwhile RP gets us to fight on their behalf without costing them too much, and without us getting much tangible in turn. The agreement seems to be 'help us, and we'll let you keep whatever you can take on Bob'.

Without wishing to antagonise RP too much, we should try to get some of their smaller cities on the east coast in our hands, at the very least. We want a defensible position on Bob to have as a base, not a scattering of cities all over the place. And we need to stop RP getting ideas above their station. The situation I see being discussed now makes us very vulnerable to them teaming up with Lego further down the line - we need to make them smaller so they are less of a threat, at least once we have a palace on Bob so those cities can become useful to us. I know we are walking a very delicate line with regards to RP, but at the moment they really need our help, and this is the time to put ourselves in a position of power over them.

[DeepO]

vulture, RP isn't out of the deep yet. Before we can mount any decent defense for them, they are going to get badly damaged. Before they can recuperate, we already have a palace up in ND if all goes well... and we have one very good stick behind the door: we can take RP quite easily as long as we have any military presence in their lands. They however can't damage our core...

But you make a valid point: we have to make sure they do not get any ideas on joining Lego

DeepO

[ManicStarSeed]

Originally posted by DeepO

But you make a valid point: we have to make sure they do not get any ideas on joining Lego

DeepO

Once lego sees where this is going (watching the power graph), they will jump at the chance to take us down in the future.

There will be a time when the war is winding down, and our forces are spread thin, that we will be in a critical state ripe for screwing. We must be aware of this and be prepared (if possible).
RP would be able pierce into our Bob territory while Lego flanks our coasts (Maybe even our homeland).

Mss

[Theseus]

Long-term note: We will want to start increasing our proportion of defensive and bombard units for the eventual slugfest with Lego.

[Octavian X]

As for a possible Spanish deception... As the war wears on, the true nature of our agreements with RP will become appearent. When the current Bobian war ends, we should be able to get a Stormian into RP to make sure we don't get hoodwinked.

[notyoueither]

Octavian makes a good point. So too does vulture. vulture's point was in the back of my mind while finalising the treaty, and has not left since. I believe we are safe, and I will tell you why...

When this game started, many people had many ideas about how civs could interact with one another, and how best to 'play the game.' We ourselves decided on a course of action in dealing with other civs and after faltering a bit in PR, have come up to speed a great deal while maintaining our initial ideals, largely.

RP on the other hand... Their leaders thought this was a game of diplomacy on a Civ3 board. They thought that it was anything goes, and that back stabs galore would be celebrated. As time wears on, and people realise the level of commitment to the game of the many participants, and the anger that screwing around can rightfully raise... I doubt that the leaders of RP will want the stains of the back stab to be on them for a long time to come. I say this for a number of reasons, not all of which I am free to disclose. However, I will say that I have seen a moderating of attitudes, a shift in perspectives of what is acceptable and what is not.

I feel I am safe in saying that if we never give Spain reason to resent us, that they will remain faithful. That is simply my conclusion based on observation and experience with the people.

To give you a more practical reason... the major reason for them to shift would be if they would have a chance of winning the game themselves. If they shifted, they would be assured of gaining our full and mostly undivided attention for mutual destruction. That would scupper their chances of winning, in all likelihood. So their leaders would gain for themselves the stigma of being the civ'ers that most others would rather see die early than live if possible, and they would not gain that which they seek.

One final note, there is no written rule for the end of this game. Is it possible for our ally and ourselves to simply rid the world of any who would contest us and then jointly declare that 'we win?'

[Theseus]

I fully agree, nye. I trust RP.

And, further to your last paragraph, could not a joyous 'merging' of our two civilizations into a domination win satisfy all parties?

Disclaimer: Now that I'm Catholic and a potential Cardinal, I admittedly am a bit biased.

[Octavian X]

I'm going to admit, I'm still very skeptical. I can see why RP would want to ally with us: It is the natural instinct of a human being to survive, no matter what.

However, it is their view that the game is one to be played on the diplomatic field which I fear. Simply knowing their past record, I grow concerned about them. By civ standards, RP's move is a drastic one.

I still believe we need our own observer in RP's forum.

[Aeson]

I don't know. I trust RP to a certain extent, but we should always keep our back covered. In a way, I'd almost hope they'd rebel at some point, add some spice to the game.

We just have to keep progressing at the rate we have been, economically and militarily, and keep our eyes open. Right now we'd be a tough cover for any two civs, and until we run up against an optimized Palace/FP core, we should be able to maintain that lead.

I don't much like the idea of forum observers. It's tacky IMO, and more likely to backfire than anything. If it comes down to it, it wouldn't be hard at all to circumvent by using chats/emails.

Just remember, RP has lost this game. If they side with us, we win. If they side with Lego, we may lose, but they'd have to know we'd focus everything on taking RP down with us, seeing as they share a landmass with us, and that they'd have pulled off the most dastardly backstab imaginable.

RP can choose for us to win, or for Lego (maybe, if we're prepared, I think we can still pull it off), not really themselves. So keep it so they'd choose us. Shouldn't be too hard seeing as Lego gave them 150g, and we'll give them close to half of Bob.