Thoughts on RP

[Velociryx]

Time for some musings on diplomacy.

I will not pretend to tell anybody running the diplomacy angle how to best play their hand, but I will say this:

It will serve our interests best if we TOTALLY focus on this war, to RP, and in all our dealings with the public--on the general forums--that this war is about growing a stronger Spain, so that they will never again fear the wrath of their neighbors.

And we should.

We should treat Spain as our trusted right arm in all our dealings with them. We should deal fairly and generously with them, subsidizing their troop upkeep costs now, while they are down, gifting them numerous cities as we liberate them (as soon as it is ensured that they can keep them!), and even when we build new cities with our own settlers to replace ones destroyed out of spite, or in the thick of the fighting, these also, should be simply given to the Spaniards.

We should treat them as equal partners in this war, even if we are shouldering the lion's share of the burden of fighting it at present.

Yes, our goal is to gain permanant cities on the continent....and we will. And we will grow stronger for it. But the key to KEEPING the peace on Bob after this fight, is to TOTALLY turn Spain into a brother nation. A peer.

If we press this line of reasoning with Lego, it's entirely possible that we can win them to our side as well.

We do not need to utterly defeat the two civs against us in order to win this war. All we must do is secure cities and strength for Spain, and secure a peace which involves a swath of land for us on Bob, and gain recognition that this land is rightfully ours. Even if it's empty land, utterly devoid of cities, that's fine (and in some ways, preferable). The goal is to secure land for our future.

If our enemies won't submit, however, we should not hesitate to utterly destroy them, but we should give them every opportunity to accept peace on our terms, and those terms need to provide generous reparations to our Spanish allies. Always their interests should be listed before our own. If we do otherwise, we risk their ire down the line, and it could prove to be our undoing.

-=Vel=-

[notyoueither]

I couldn't agree more.

[DeepO]

the problem with Lego is that we've mentioned this plan to them numerous times, but they grow very wary of us. Last we heared was something along the lines of 'if any nation would become too strong, we will intervene'.

Oh, and Vel, you might not be aware of this, but ND has declared a jihad on RP: either RP dies, or they die trying to exterminate them. They haven't openly declared one on us too, but I imagine that for them, there won't be any peacetalk, no matter which side is winning. GoW is most likely a lot easier to talk into peace

DeepO

[OPD]

Originally posted by DeepO
Oh, and Vel, you might not be aware of this, but ND has declared a jihad on RP: either RP dies, or they die trying to exterminate them. They haven't openly declared one on us too, but I imagine that for them, there won't be any peacetalk, no matter which side is winning. GoW is most likely a lot easier to talk into peace
DeepO

Maybe we should look into diplo with GoW. The initial euphoria of taking the southern cities will eventually ware off. Perhaps if we can frustrate them and make them realize the futility of this war for them they may be likely to talk.

Of course GoW must go eventually but why fight 2 at the same time.

[Velociryx]

All the more reason to go after GoW first, IMO. We beat the snot out of them, force concessions (IIRC, there's a lovely little strip of land near our northern coast that we could secure for ourselves to build cities on), and then, turn all efforts to ND...

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

A lot can happen in just a few turns, guys. That's something this game has tought me. I'm going to focus on the short to medium term (retake the south, stop the bleeding, get RP a few cities back) and then see where we stand.

If GoW can be bought off, it may be worthwhile to do it, and crush ND. Right now that doesn't seem especially likely, but if we kick the everliving**** out of GoW's army, they might be more inclined to "creative" ways to save their asses.

But like I said, I'm gonna wait and see. We have a lot of work to do. Getting RP back up on its feet is no small task.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

No doubt about it, Master Arrian....one thing at a time....we may yet see some nasty surprises in store for us....hope not....hopefully we'll be the ones doling out the nasty surprises, but....it's impossible to say at this point.

Nonetheless, if we keep our troops focused on the here and now, and plan a variety of contingencies for the future, we can do this....I *know* we can do this....

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

NYE's production spreadsheet will go a long way toward turning the tide.

The next thing we need to do is work out exactly how we're going to land our troops down south.

The third thing is figuring out how to get RP viable again (once the south is retaken). My thought is to pump settlers from Cyclone (?), build cities (mostly once we've beaten back the invaders), and then gift them to RP. *Presto* their empire comes back together. Their pop will be low, but we could consider supplementing that too. This ties in with your thoughts on really going out of our way to prop them up.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Total agreement! (and I really like the notion of speed-growing some of the cities that we gift via more settlers!).

As to the landing, IMO, our first bellyfull of troops should offload in the hill country NE of Valencia. That, combined with what we can pull from further north and march to that point overland should give us all the tools we need to take (and KEEP) Valencia, with further operations possible after assessing exactly where the enemy is, and in what force. Also, it occurs to me that border bumping would be significantly easier in selected cities by speed building the pops as you mentioned....*G*

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

If we're going to speed grow RP, there is only one good way to do it: let them add all their workers to their cities, while we do all their improvement for them. We might have the biggest pop right now, but we worked hard to get it, and we can't give away that advantage. Lego still has the pyramids, and we don't have good cities (apart from the 2 food cities we already have, and the 3rd we're setting up) to supplement our food needs. Sure, we can build some settlers, but adding workers before giving them to RP is a bit too much for me. Our workers are worth more then theirs...

If we could catch some slaves, that would totally change the situation, of course Until that time, I agree that we need to build RP into an able ally, but not when it threatens to take away our #1 position. Us giving away corrupted cities to help them is of course best, us giving away core production can only be done in well-thought circumstances, and not by default.


DeepO

[Velociryx]

good point and good plan, DeepO! I think we should hit them with that proposal as soon as possible to get them thinking about it.

Still think that we should be ready to replace any cities that get nixed in the fighting, and I think we can do that without giving away the store (we've also got one city that can't GET any bigger now....by building a settler there and letting it re-grow, we can continue that trend without giving anythign away....)

-=Vel=-

[DeepO]

Vel, I agree on spending settlers to replace their lost cities, or even to fill space they hadn't settled yet. It's just that I don't want to spend needless population in the form of workers on that... let the workers come from elsewhere

DeepO

[Arrian]

If we're going to speed grow RP, there is only one good way to do it: let them add all their workers to their cities, while we do all their improvement for them. We might have the biggest pop right now, but we worked hard to get it, and we can't give away that advantage.

Great point. I like that thinking. Our workers are worth more than theirs.

However, I don't think they have very many workers left. So while I definitely agree that their guys should get added in quickly, we might also want to pump a couple of newly built towns to size 2 with our own workers prior to gifting them over to Spain (I'm thinking about using 2-3 workers this way).

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Only in special cases I agree with this. If it means we can let them work an extra cow, wheat, whale or game; yes, by all means. Otherwise: no thanks... we still have cities that can use some boosting, so if any speedgrowth should occur, it could very well be used on our cities instead. (like we were planning all along).

As to how many workers remain in RPs hand: 5? 6? that should be enough to get them going again, provided we build the settlers for lost cities. And that is already a big enough gift, I think, they should be pleased with that.

DeepO

[notyoueither]

Pleased? They'll canonize Grog!