Turn 261: 1350AD

[Aeson]

Opening up the save.

[Aeson]

Builds:

Velocity's borders expand.
Nothing else (no WW?).

[Aeson]

Battle report:

2/4 MI on Mountain 32 of Velocity captures last RP city "Kill Me Please". Game crashes.

[Cort Haus]

I think Togas really has had enough, and doesn't want to be a ghost Civ like Lego. We shouldn't make him go through any more turns - this game is over.

[notyoueither]

I agree.

Game called on account of bugs.

[notyoueither]

Award them the cheese.

[Krill]

Can't we simply edit them out, using Gramphos tool?

[Aeson]

I would prefer to play it out, as "robbing" a team of their victory march is also kinda cheesy. (If they want to forgo it that's another story.)

I definitely agree that if it comes down to forcing RP to continue playing that it's not worthwhile. Same for Lego.

[vmxa1]

I am good either way. When I agree to sign up, I agreed to stick to the end. That means any end the team chooses.

Did disbanding their settler also crash the game, I could not remember?

[Krill]

I've got a plan that might work, the only thing it lacks is an aim. It requires that we have nukes, but all our plans need nukes, it seems...

---

What if we went to Lego? We know that Mare Nostrum is surface ship free, so we won't have a problem gettinng there. the onlly problem then, are the nuke subs, but they are going to be a problem anyway.

The problem of getting onto Lego; we either need to take a coastal town (taking Back Gibralter), or get Vox to give us an ROP (better yet ask if we can have the donatios we gave to them back for a short while ), so we can land protected, and then throw ND and GoW of Lego.

IF that works, then we have the advantage that Bob has to land conventionally by razing every coastal town. And if we have some nukes, say goodbye to their stacks. (Don't Forget that spies won't show anything if we don't have a city, so we should toast every city after building the nukes, and get the hell off Stormia, to hide the nukes). Even if they attaack via Vox, they need MI, and lots of them, to get anywhere near us. If we don't, we nuke them

---

Admittedly, Bob can simply ignore the outside world and win by SS, but they would do that even if we attacked with Aesons' plan. Thi would simply be an alternative play on things. I would even be willing to play the game this way if people wanted to see how it worked out.

[vmxa1]

The more I think about them maybe having a locked alliance, since the start or near start or maybe even as teams were signing up, the less I care about robbing them of their spoils.

I would be fine with just going on the public page and saying that since it was always two civs againt indiviual civs, we concede.

It is one thing to make alliances (announced) from time to time or even stick by your once partner after they got clocked ALA RP or Vox. These arraingments do not hurt anyone as they are out in the open and having to give them your land is not much of a boost.

It is not on par with GoW and ND working in concert through out the game and not declaring themselves.

[Aeson]

I think we should make an offer to GoW that if they are interested in claiming sole (and a legitimate) victory, we would be willing to ally with them against ND. Make the same offer to ND if they don't accept Although I very highly doubt ND would even consider it.

--------------------

MZ and citizens of GoW,

You claim to be a whore working for the best price. It's not the metaphore we would choose, but we do understand the sentiment. GoWND has a shared "victory" wrapped up, no doubt. GS will be decimated this coming turn by ND regardless of what you choose. Still perhaps we can better the offer that ND has made.

I can tell you that GS views your shared victory with ND as cheesy and a mockery of the 2 years of effort teams have been putting into this game. We do not observe a "victor" that has not triggered an in-game victory condition or had all other teams declare them the winner. In a case where a victory condition is triggered or unanimous decision made, that team, and that team alone, is the victor in our eyes. This is what an FFA is, fundamentally, where all teams compete to be the one winner. Alliances form to help teams to that end, but the end remains the same. Obviously some people will have different opinions, surely some will share ours. We ask if this is really how GoW wants the game to go down?

GS wishes to continue it's existance and maintain some sliver of possibility for a victory. We offer our services in an alliance against ND. We do not offer a shared victory or even a guarantee that we will work towards GoW's ultimate victory. If GoW is to claim final victory it will be by defeating GS (militarily, spaceship, or diplomatically) and vice versa. What we offer is an opportunity for GoW to have overwhelming odds of claiming sole (and legitimate in our eyes) victory in this game in exchange for the continued existance of GS, and at the cost of GoW breaking it's word to ND and not having an assured shared "victory".

Given ND's production potential, and the tech of Space Flight you are almost surely sending to them, every city and tile of GS' within 11 tiles of a ND city is a good bet to be nuked in this coming turn. That leaves us with Hurricane, Tornado, Cyclone, Blizzard, Sufu, Inchoff, and Typhoon. EotS and Sandstorm cannot be hit themselves unless we have missed some ND Nuclear Subs, but almost half their tiles can. Needless to say, our already dismal production capacity that was roughly 50-60% of either your's or ND's will be lessened greatly. WoC is in ruins, and Tempest, our other biggest producer, will surely be in ruins. EotS will be half what it was. We will have no Rubber, no Aluminum, no Uranium, drafting Riflemen. We will have no Space Flight, and no research capacity to obtain it. We will have over 100 ND units on Stormia.

GS will still have most of it's military though. That would be directed at ND if you accept, otherwise it basically becomes irrellevent due to the extreme gameplay imbalance cause by nukes. By ourselves we felt confident in being able to hold our own in a 1v1 with ND even given their inherent production advantage. We still feel that given our curent military we can hold our own in a non-nuclear war for quite some time even given the extreme hit our economy has already taken, and will take on ND's turn. Our analysis of the situation was that there was no way GS or ND could win the game if the 1v1 nature of the war lasted, and that GoW's analysis would lead them to take a virtually free ride to victory. That is why we trusted in your word that you would remain neutral, having been forced into the war by ND, and having long known that GoW would always favor ND over us in any equal proposition.

Between GoW and GS we would have overwhelming naval superiority, numerical troop superiority, and GoW could make sure that ND has no nuclear capacity before they can react. There is no doubt in my mind that GoW on it's own could do the same thing without GS' help (as could ND if they chose), but it would be less likely to work and would (further) open doors that need not be opened.

Once ND is eliminated or made insignificant, then GS and GoW would each do their best to obtain final victory. GS gives assurances that at no time would we ally, or try to ally, with ND against GoW unless GoW attacked GS first. GS would agree to observe the sovereingty of Vox, the return of Estonia (borders as defined long ago before the Vox/GS war) to Vox, and an eternal NAP with Vox if they so choose. If GoW were to provide resources or techs to GS to help eliminated ND, GS would agree to not used units/weapons created with those resources against GoW in any case. RP is out of the game in our eyes, and their's, and would not act for or against GS in any way for the remainder of the game if the bug requires us to keep them active.

I would put my money on Vox being in better shape economically than us after ND's turn, but so be it, we have no chance against GoWND, so any chance would be better. We leave it up to you to decide if this offer is more attractive than the one ND has given.

- Aeson

[Aeson]

stupid quote... doh

[vmxa1]

You are the turn player and I back what ever you want to do. Frankly it seems a bit like begging to me, but I know that is not your intent. Anything we offer at this point is coming from weakness and is suspect.

[vmxa1]

There is one thing we could do that would be as cheesy as their play. We could gift all our cities to Vox.

This will force ND to show its true colors as it will probably go ahead and nuke them anyway.