Whollata bouncin' going on

[nbarclay]

Question: How would you folks react if another civ openly auctioned its services to the highest bidder? Would it cause you to be more inclined to work with them economically (tech exchanges, luxury trades, etc.) or less inclined? Personally, seeing another civ act in such an openly mercenary fashion would tend to incline me against them.

I do think that should the opportunity arise, a "scavenger" approach to warfare could be much more effective than initiating a war ourselves, though. Consider the following hypothetical example:

We start on a continent with Glory of War and an AI civ. GoW decides to take out the AI civ early. We notice that the fight is going on and shift extra attention to building up our own forces, and after GoW has suffered unit losses at the hands of the AI for a while, we ally with the AI against GoW (hopefully getting at least a little bit out of them). GoW is weakened from its wartime losses and has quite a few troops away from their homeland, so hopefully, we have a nice initial advantage attacking them.

And such a tactic could work even better when one human civ has been fighting another for a while. Ally with the loser against the winner, and while the loser gains back some of what it lost, we make bigger gains against the winner of the initial engagement.

Conversely, of course, if we start wars while another warmonger civ quietly looks on, we may be in trouble!

[notyoueither]

Excellent point nbarclay. Very applicable to human play.

There are unlikely to be AI now though. 2 new teams are boosting the human quotient to 7. Very unlikely that the game will start with a single AI turkey for Thanksgiving.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Excellent point nbarclay. Very applicable to human play.

There are unlikely to be AI now though. 2 new teams are boosting the human quotient to 7. Very unlikely that the game will start with a single AI turkey for Thanksgiving.

Probably just as well. But I still like the tactic of letting other warmongers start wars and weaken themselves and then taking them out (or at least mostly out), should the opportunity arise.

[DeepO]

Nathan, that was more or less my point. If 2 humans are warring, there is nothing holding us back of auctioning our services to both of them in public. The reputation hiit we would get isn't that big, considering the following: the loser will welcome all help he can get as he is toast when 2 attackers team up on him, so he won't consider it a disrespectful act to buy our services. The winner OTOH won't mind either unless he is at the receiving end of our forces. But anyway, we are giving them both the option to pick themselves on which side we are going to fight, leaving one the choice, and the other a fair warning.

So to the outside, I don't think we will be considered mercenaries (at least if we word it right). The only rep hit we will likely take is in the teams that aren't involved in the fight, but I don't think it will be that large.

BTW, which do you prefer: the scavenger or the mercs? I don't like those who steal of dead bodies, while hired forces are relatively honorable.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by DeepO
So to the outside, I don't think we will be considered mercenaries (at least if we word it right). The only rep hit we will likely take is in the teams that aren't involved in the fight, but I don't think it will be that large.

If we openly put our services up for sale to the highest bidder, I don't see how anyone could not view us as mercenaries.

BTW, which do you prefer: the scavenger or the mercs? I don't like those who steal of dead bodies, while hired forces are relatively honorable.

It's all in the packaging. If we step in on the side of the loser in the initial war, we can portray ourselves as paladins riding in on white horses to save the poor victims of unwarranted aggression, and hopefully be paid for our services in the process anyhow. And all else being equal (which it may or may not be), there are very definite advantages to taking out the stronger opponent rather than helping to finish off the weaker one as long as we're sure we have the strength to win.

As for the honor of hired forces, I have nothing against soldiers' accepting money to fight for a cause they believe in, but I see no honor in selling one's sword arm to the highest bidder with no real regard to whether their cause is just.

There's one other problem with the mercenary approach: it fails to take into consideration our own direct interests. Questions such as how useful conquered territory will be to us (both in quality and in location) are ultimately likely to involve far greater value than we would be paid to get involved in a fight. Similarly, if we don't expect to capture territory that would have any long-term value to us, it is doubtful that anyone could pay us enough to compensate for the value of what we'd lose. So unless the value of getting involved on each side is roughly equal, our more direct interests should take precedence over seeking maximum payment for our involvement.

Nathan

[DeepO]

Well, I agree that there have to be opporttunies here, it's not that I just want to sell off our services to whoever might need them. That's why I started out with saying that we should have 2 battle plans ready, meaning of course that in both cases there have to be considerable gains for us.

Of course you're right that attacking the strongest will prolly be best in the long term, however it is also the biggest risk. If they manage to divert all their forces to us instead, we could be in for quite a war. I would never do it without proper alliance / compensation from the losing party, as they are likely to lean back once another one joins the fight, and build up their defenses again. If so, they would get into a better posistion than us, coming from an underdog position...

This is of course all nice before anything of the game is known, but I wouldn't dismiss it now... just something to keep in the back of the head as some tactic we might use later on. We will have to decide then anyway

DeepO

[alva]

Attacking the stronger one is the best choice too IMO; you're going to have to take them on someday anyway.
Even if the weaker one isn't able to give/pay alot, he at least opens a second front.
One for wich you might have to pay (beaucoup gold) yourself later on in the game.
And if they have been in a war for a while allready, either they will starting to run low on units or/and infrastructure.

In Sp, one is often able to do both, but I doubt this will be the case in MP.

good thread btw

[Meshelic]

Should the moment arise that there are two other human nations warring against each other and we are at a point where we can intervene on behalf of one of them, then warring against the larger enemy is a better idea I feel. We should always try to take the side of the underdog (hopefully WE'LL never be the underdog).

As far as payment for services, we could put up a half-now, half-later payment plan. I'm sure all the teams know war is expensive, so if a team is in really rough shape and need us to bail them out, it's going to cost them alot of gold, or tech, or whatever they have to barter. War is serious and therefore the payment should be great.

The mercenary idea I see as probably able to be done once, maybe maybe twice. But I think we could only get away with it once without a rep hit.