GoW : "No"

[Cort Haus]

We've sure as hell impressed Aggie, but his team won't go with it. Here's the message - to save opening up the log thread.

Not the official line, but Aggie is being decent enough to let us know what the score will be in advance.

Yes we have recieved the analysis and I am impressed with them. A more formal response in the making, but I feel that before you play your turn I must inform you that it appears that this proposal will not be approved and other options are winning out. So here's my advice, play the turn as if a peace deal will not be made. We appreciate the great work and IMHO this is a fair and practical deal. However, the majority of the team feels that other options are best for our team. We do hope that the channel of communication stay open and that hopefully at a later date peace can be made.
Best of Luck
Aggie

[OPD]

noooooooooooooo

we need as many units as we can get back on GS soil as quickly as possible

[Theseus]

MOTHERF*CKER!!!

We have the save, so we need to make some decisions. I've got Thanksgiving (yeah, right!) at 3:30pm EST, so let's plan on playing the turn this evening.

My initial reaction is to execute a full blown retreat to Stormia, with RP in the north.

[Cort Haus]

Phew! I was worried you might fancy a stab at the Alamo!

[Harovan]

So we end this war basically with less land than we had before? How sad. Why don't we just stay on Bob, raze a couple of GoW cities and try our best to prevent them to get any good out of their victory? You say we would have Lego against us? Screw them, we have them against us in any case.

[OPD]

I hate GoW so much.

The 7 3/4 knights are going to be a problem and a shame to loose. Perhaps we could keep the diplo thing going for just one more turn so we can retreat or at least make them less likely to attack them.

The tile blocking should be easy, we can block a lot of the east coast this turn with units we have around stormia.

Once we have the "cocoon" we can also make it as hard as possible for GoW or ND to make any gains whatsoever on Bob, pack the cities with pikemen, build walls and raise them to size 7. Then we'll see if GoW are willing to loose 2 seventy sheilds units to kill one 30 sheilds unit.. We have loads of pikemen, we could even build another city on a hill in the SE.

Should we now go into full research and builder mode? Everyone else seems to be getting prepared for more war? Market places and 4 turn research? We could even prebuild and switch to Copernicus in Hurricane.

[Cort Haus]

Perhaps we'd be better off with RP developing cities in N.Stormia than getting nothing out of them ourselves. Without them, we have less corruption elsewhere.

We could still fight for Spain - OPD has a point, we can dig in and make it nasty for them, blow what's left of their GAs, and see if their WW will bite.

Togas 'forgets' what's in Pamplona (maybe he feared we'd let it slip to GoW), but I reckon there's a fair few units, and the enemy will pay a price for it. I'm even wondering whether we should give RP some gold to rush a couple more pikes in there - it could be well spent.

I'll have to break the news to Togas that the deal's a no-go, I hope they don't feel that all we've done here is mess them about and take their cities - I wonder if they'll want them back?

So - if we don't need our whole army to defend Stormia perhaps we could stick it out and make life difficult for the enemy - trying to hold the land that we've got and exhaust our opponents into making a peace where we keep what we hold. It may be though, that the best we can get is a cease fire, and they'll come and finish the job later.

I like the research and copernicus idea - we've got more incentive to build it than anyone else - with the Colossus. Would that contradict hopes of holding what we have on Bob? Not if we balance it with both military and economic builds

I'm not sure whether we gain anything except some emotional satisfaction from raising a couple of GoW cities. War with Lego who are going ape on the power graph doesn't appeal, and weakening GoW can only help ND long term. Despite the historical acrimony and current disappointment, I don't rule out the possibility of GoW and GS working together some time.

Another thing I don't rule out is a potential alliance between GS and Lego. If GoW and ND stay married, and we retreat and turtle as a second-rate power on Stormia, they might see Lego as too threatening long-term to leave alone and go after them before it's too late. Or, ND backstab GoW and destroy them, taking all of Bob and driving GS and Lego together against the 750-tile uber-power. Who knows, maybe GoW will approach us one day looking to hire us against ND?

[Cort Haus]

Final (very late) thoughts before bed:

GoW have said No. ND are unlikely to befriend us, after what we've just tried to do, which spotlights Lego as the next diplomatic target.

First objective - stop them attacking us, if that's what they're up to. Second - stop them thinking that we're some kind of threat that needs to be 'balanced' by supporting the already-stronger alliance against us.

[vulture]

It can't hurt to try the same kind of deal with ND as we just tried with GoW. My impression of ND is that they aren't going to be personally offended that we tried to talk GoW into a backstab - it's just business, and they'd probably do the same in our situation. I doubt they'll go for the deal, but it can't hurt us to try.

So our option are:

a) Re-work the deal, offer it to ND.

b) Abandon the attack on the north, and carry on the fight in the south as before. We've been holding our own more or less despite having played imperfectly (I assume - I've not been studying the battle plans, but I remember e.g. Theseus saying that we lost a stack of slow movers because we moved them onto flat ground within range of the Ansars and Riders). So with more caution it might still be possible to turn the tide in our favour, particularly with the GAs of our two opponents coming to an end or completely over (what turn number are we on now - that info seems to have disappeared from the turn threads).

3) Attack GoW in the north, and see if Lego are bluffing. We explain to them that if they take action against us, we just turn turtle on Stormia and leave RP to their fate. Lego won't be able to land enough for a long time to be able to take Stormia if we evacuate (and ND and GoW won't be happy with the idea of Lego having Legoland and Stormia - 600 tiles), so we end up in the game, moderately strong for now (but behind in tech), but with bad lnog-term prospects (although who knows how the wind will change), while Lego have then to deal with a two civ Bob, both civs as strong as them in area and population, but stronger in military and allied with each other, and viewing Lego as the main competition. Bottom line - if we turtle, Lego can't reasonably gain anything by attack us.

4) Go turtle straight away, in expectation of a Lego attack at some point regardless of what we do (which is what I'd do in Lego's position). This means abandoning RP to their fate, which perhaps isn't in the spirit of GS.

It's disappointing that the GoW deal hasn't come through, but lets not take it too hard. It was an attempt to swing the war. Before the northern landing, we were prepared to carry on the fight in the south anyway. Lego will stay out of things if we stick to fighting back in the south (and take some ND cities), assuming all we've been told on that score is correct (again - in Lego's position they have a lot to gain by trying to allay our fears and then launching a large invasion of Stormia - and I'm sure Vox would help them in this).

Perhaps we should arrange some sort of 'we stay out of each others homelands' deal with Lego.

And sorry for not being around much recently. What with two funerals, planning a wedding and buying a house, amongst other things, life has been kind of hectic.

[Cort Haus]

Vulture - glad to see your nice long post - may there be many more of them if life gets less hectic for you!

You've re-iterated my point about Lego. If we abandon Bob - their policy of opposing us makes no sense. They've got it wrong as it stands - percieving us as stronger than we actually are - but if we were to say to them : "OK guys, you win - you've opposed us and we're getting off Bob. ND and GoW between them will soon have 750 tiles; Lego have 400. GS has 160. What do you think about the balance of power now? Are you still against us?"

I'll work on a draft to Vondrack. Vulture, fancy drafting something for ND? It's about time we had an ND contact log.

I've asked Togas if they've got a channel open to Vox, as Beta's being a bit, er, enigmatic at the moment and is ignoring us.

I'm not too upset about the deal not swinging - it was always a long shot, and I'm actually relieved now to finally know where we stand. We also need to still consider the possibility of an alternative peace with GoW - Aggie wants to keep the channel open and so should we.

[Cort Haus]

Gow and Lego

GoW may already have an insurance policy against an ND backstab - Lego. We've seen Lego's MPP with GoW as a move against us - but it could also apply to ND.

Thing is, Vondracks warning was against an attack on either GoW or ND homelands. This suggests they have MPP's with both GoW and ND. Why would a builder Civ make risky MPP's with two civs at war - who could even attack each other? What a tangle - no wonder Lego are tearing themselves apart internally.

Could Lego have signed them as its own insurance against a Gow/ND assault on themselves? One look at the map and they can see that the first threat to them must come from Bob, not Stormia. They knew they'd be risking war with GS when we attacked our enemies homelands, but they hoped (correctly) that we'd be deterred from forcing them into that because we're already at war with two civs.

It can't have been a straight MPP though - because Vondrack had no objection to a combined GoW / GS assault on ND. This suggests that their obligations to ND are perhaps a part of their obligation to GoW, and for the duration of the GoW-ND alliance, rather than an independent deal with ND.

Lego's miltary buildup may therefore be a potential weapon to be used in the case of war with GS - if we attack GoW's homeland - rather than a definite invasion force to destry us.

For me the path is very clear - there are four powers in the world - currently three against one. We must change that to have a chance and Lego is the best bet for us now. We must detach them from our adversaries.

[Cort Haus]

I'm drafting something for Vondrack now. We might want to chat with him before we play our turn - especially if we go ahead and attack GoW. I certainly want Vondrack to think that we might do this to get his attention.

[Cort Haus]

Draft : to Vonrdack

Vondrack,

As you may be aware by now, GoW are not going to take up the GS offer.

National Holiday family commitments in the USA have delayed our turn. There's no way we can proceed on this most critical of turns without a full team discussion. So, Lego and GS are still, thankfully, at peace but if a vote is taken to attack GoW regardless then according to your policy a state of war would, most regrettably, exist between our nations.

This begs the obvious question: What would be the conditions for ending such a war?


Please consider the following frank and open analysis of the geo-political realities of the world :

We compared the size of the continents in the world in terms of tile count as a rough guide to productive power. Here are the findings :

Stormia : ~ 200 tiles (including 40 on N. Stormia)

Bob : ~ 750 tiles

Lego : ~ 400 tiles (exluding approx 80 New Voxia)

A glance at this shows that GS's potential productive power is only half that of Lego, and only half that of each civ of a 2-civ Bob. Of the four powers in the world, Gathering Storm clearly has the least chance of winning the game. In fact, our only chance was to (a) try to establish a production centre on Bob and (b) to prevent a 2-civ Bob by defending Spain. With RP eliminated as a power, GS has been facing 2 civs, each with a far-superior Knight unit, and both in Golden Age. With stalemate in the South, our only chance was to strike the enemy at home, but when we tried that we discovered, to our astonishment, that Lego is also comitted to our defeat as well, and we stand on the brink of all powers being openly allied in war against us.

If we elect not to attack GoW, we may instead turn round and say to Lego : "OK guys, you win - you've opposed us, defeated us, and we're getting off Bob. ND and GoW between them will soon have 750 tiles; Lego have 400. GS has 160. What do you think about the balance of power now? Are you still against us?"

Having defeated RP and driven GS from Bob in the above scenario, GoW and ND would either continue their alliance against another target, or they'd split up with ND, taking the whole of Bob. The Bobian uber-power would then have to decide whether Lego or Stormia is next, and if I was them, the prospect of Lego - already overtaking GS economically, catching up (if not already at parity) militarily, miles ahead on tech, still with a GA to come and industrialising soon - would be more threatening than a technologically backward, diplomatically isolated and militarily defeated GS.

True, Lego's 400 tiles against Bob's 750 tiles is better odds than those GS are facing : 200 tiles against 900, but a more even balance of power would see GS's 200 tiles combined with Lego's 400.

If GS were to survive as a competing power to the end-game, as pragmatists we would happily play either a build-out or a duke-out. GoW have no intention of there being a build-out, and so far ND seem to prefer military solutions. You guys are the Builder team, albeit prepared to go to war if you deem it necessary, so you'd surely be hoping for build-out rather than ending the game on GoWs terms (btw - if it came to Lego v Bob with GS out of the game, I personally would be rooting for Lego!).

So, Legonians, I have laid out some reasons why our nations should not be enemies - on the contrary, perhaps we should now be looking at forging closer ties. What say you?


Regards
etc

[Cort Haus]

draft to Aggie:

Aggie,

Thank-you again for your honesty yesterday. Your boys must be delighted to see that the peace talks will cost GS seven Knights - but that was the risk we took You could easily have strung it out a turn to give us less chance of taking even one opponent down whilst they are routed.

You mentioned at one point in our discussions that you could concieve of an alternative peace with GS. That is comforting, but what of your team? Are there any set of circumstances (other than our capitulation and the destruction of RP) that GoW as a team would consider as peace terms? There seems little point in us making any further proposal without an understanding of where the goalposts are.

As we understand it - we are still in a position to deliver your current contract at a considerably reduced cost than the one you are currently facing. You will, of course, inevitably take Pamplona - but at a high price. We also still have many defenders dug-in around Spain, and there is a feeling amongst some in GS that seeing as Lego is effectively part of the alliance against us anyway - getting them out in the open, while getting an emotional thrill out of destroying a some GoW cities hardly makes any difference. Lego may even be forced to eventually realise that eliminating GS as a power could be the lining of their own coffin, as even their 400 tiles cannot eventually compete with a Bobian superpower's 750 tiles.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to be in communication with you.

CH

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by OPD
The 7 3/4 knights are going to be a problem and a shame to loose. Perhaps we could keep the diplo thing going for just one more turn so we can retreat or at least make them less likely to attack them.

Unfortunately it's too late for that now - and even under the 'cease fire' they were pinging the knights - they had to keep up appearances for ND. Staying there another turn would only make them weaker - they have to try and take some enemy with them as they retreat, and another round of pinging wouldn't help that.