Dimplo Scholia: - Vox Controli - comments

[nbarclay]

The natural course of events in Civ is for nations to expand toward each other until they share a common border. It's a fact of life, and if we try to hem them in prematurely, we practically guarantee an early war on terrain where their immortals (assuming they will have access to iron) have a clear advantage.

Time is on our side because the longer EotS has to build settlers, the bigger our percentage advantage in number of cities will be and the more time our new cities will have to develop. So why not bow to the inevitable gracefully in the meantime and make it attractive for Vox to choose us, not their other neighbor, as their favored trading partner?

Nathan

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The natural course of events in Civ is for nations to expand toward each other until they share a common border. It's a fact of life, and if we try to hem them in prematurely, we practically guarantee an early war on terrain where their immortals (assuming they will have access to iron) have a clear advantage.

Time is on our side because the longer EotS has to build settlers, the bigger our percentage advantage in number of cities will be and the more time our new cities will have to develop. So why not bow to the inevitable gracefully and make it attractive for Vox to choose us, not their other neighbor, as their favored trading partner?

Nathan

Good points, prehaps if we are accommodating,they will look north for war first. But I just don't trust that bunch, they are the ones with the flash, right? The isthmus block does not help.

[Shiber]

They strike me as opportunists. As such, their ultimate decision will not be based upon who is a nicer ally, but upon who is more vulnerable for attack.
Nbarclay got it right though: time is indeed on our side. We have a great starting location (best city in the world, man!) and the world's best economy and production, and the more time goes by, the greater the gap we open between us and Vox will be. We need to take advantage of that by stalling Vox's growth, though we need to be careful not to be too obvious (like Vox was when they babbled about the right to explore but kept blocking the Isthmus, or when Eli posted that thread on the strat forum). Eventually this will have little to no effect on their choices of enemies and allies.
Furthermore, if we stall them we might have a chance to meet Vox's other neighbor and probably sign an MPP or some other military (offensive or defensive) agreement with them against Vox, if we play our cards well, before war between Vox and us breaks out.

[nbarclay]

Actually, having them come out from behind the chokepoint could work to our advantage militarily. At the chokepoint, they can concentrate practically every military unit they have (or at least every unit they have on our front) in a single location. With a wider border, we could gain a greater advantage through concentration of force. And our war chariots' mobility, with a proper road network, would make it harder for Vox to get the same advantage in concentration of force attacking us.

Question (regarding Shiber's suggestion): how does one go about stalling a human player's expansion without being obvious?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Question: how does one go about stalling a human player's expansion without being obvious?

Build cities close to their core in order to force them to waste time in transit. This is the least obvious way that I can think of, but it will be plenty obvious to the Voxians, given their knowledge of our continent.

Or, make them feel threatened (i.e. like war could break out anytime). Thus they spend more resources on military preparations, and less on growth. They probably would not see through this. But the problem is that they'll have a bunch of units ready, and may decide to attack us preemptively.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Building cities near someone else's core sounds like a better way to slow us down than to slow them down. Looking like a threat would very likely hurt our trade partnership, and hence our standing relative to teams other than Vox, and would (at least this early) either slow us down too or leave us vulnerable.

[alva]

Good points, prehaps if we are accommodating,they will look north for war first. But I just don't trust that bunch,

I don't believe they will north (first)
1. they don't seem to think they have to protect that border!! (again, if there is to defend) which indicates to me, they have a better relationship with civ X then with us
2. They will realise we can expand faster then they do; something they would only be to happy to hamper.
3. They have Immortals, which could their best (and only?) chance to hurt us.
4. They will soon (enough) know we have nowhere to go but north, which leads us back to number 3
5. They are vox. j/k

Actually, having them come out from behind the chokepoint could work to our advantage militarily.

true

Time is on our side because the longer EotS has to build settlers,

Again, true

I don't think we should forbid them to settle beyond the isthmus, but we should try to slow them down as much as possible.

Btw; If we can settle can settle #12(beyond the mouintains/fish/wheat) and 1 city east from it, our 'bottleneck' is only two cities wide instead of having 3, maybe even 4 front/exposed cities.

[DeepO]

We should definately start to plan our cities again, and which border we want to have with Vox. They can claim all the mountains they want, as long as we don't give it to them, it is not official. BTW, we only gave them the claim to the Isthmus if they would let us true, they didn't, so there is no 'owner' of that tile yet. Of course it will be Vox, but at this moment we haven't given it to them.

Sierra Centralis: if they want it, they are going to need to reach it first. I say we do not move our half-block, unless we see both their scouts retreating. Or, they ask it. I would move a little out of the way, but the advantage now is that we don't really block them, but can do so whenever we please. If a settler wants to pass, I suggest that we at least delay them by one turn (under the disguise that we need to make sure our warriors aren't captured in Vox territory). They stalled us enough.

I do think it is a good thing to warn them that space is very limited, and we are building cities very close, they should do the same. OTOH, as long as they don't start putting ridicous cities down, I don't care. Vox is still going to be toast, and once that happens, we can raze and rebuild to our likings. We need the production to do so, but we will outexpand them.

Re: defense from Civ X: notice that RPG said in their last message that Vox was rumoured to be on another continent, which could be seen from their continent. It would explain everything: why Vox has only met one other Civ, why they need no defense, why they are aggressive to us only (also in scouting).

DeepO

[alva]

Didn't they say/mention something about a very narrow landbridge to the east?

[DeepO]

hmmm... you're right. But I don't get why they would call that "another landmass" instead of East Estonia. it doesn't make sense.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Okay: other points. Vox asked us to give a description of our side of the continent. I would definately tell them we have water, and will have it covered soon enough, so that all of the river falls in our borders. That should be a good opening to a possible water deal. Other description of territory: not too much, but mentioning grass could be needed (at least don't tell them we are overflowing with food tiles!). Could be a way of telling them that city spacing is tight. What ever happens, downplay the size of our South, they do not ned to know that we can get 4 or 5 cities to the South of EotS

Further, they indeed ask us to withdraw to their Sierra, I would play dumb, and say there is but one lonely mountain near the neck on which 4 warriors can't fit. Once they start they intend the Spine, we say that that one mountain is obviously a far better demarcation line, as it is more or less half way between our two borders. If they are going to put scouts at just a few tiles from our capital, there is no reason we should move 10 tiles from their border.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

My current inclination is that South Estonia is significantly bigger than what they call North Estonia, and that if we are going to tell them about the entire, larger land mass (including areas they could not have gotten to without crossing our borders even if Tim and Willy had proceded), we want some information about the other land mass they're connected with in return. Otherwise, they are asking us to reveal considerably more information than they did.

Nathan

[DeepO]

True... but we need to make some gesture of good will, so what about telling them that we are currently settling the only river on the continent? That seems to be quite a bit of information, and we could use it later on if we want to.

Further, maybe we can make some comment on having grass, or having plains too, not revealing any more then we need.

Oh, BTW: I wasn't counting exactly, but there is no way that they could be hoping to build their 3rd settler soon on non-irrigated plains, they haven't got enough food for that. So, either there is some grass available (which should be shielded to get anything near their production, they nearly follow us when it comes to their military strength), or they have some cows, wheat, game or wine on those plains. I don't think for one minute they have told us everything regarding their territory. And, as cutting forest would be the only way to get those kind of troops, that is or was present too. Forest on plains isn't my favorite tile though.

DeepO

[alva]

[quote]they do not ned to know that we can get 4 or 5 cities to the South of EotS[quote]

On a normal use of 'city placement' IE 21 tiles, we don't have that much room anyway.
It's not that we are lying, we just happened to make a different strategic choice/gameplan (...in the future, hey something came up, so we settled another city down there)

[nbarclay]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by alva
[quote]they do not ned to know that we can get 4 or 5 cities to the South of EotS

On a normal use of 'city placement' IE 21 tiles, we don't have that much room anyway.
It's not that we are lying, we just happened to make a different strategic choice/gameplan (...in the future, hey something came up, so we settled another city down there)

I thought we agreed not to tell outright lies.