Dimplo Scholia: - Vox Controli - comments

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by zeit
Regarding the land issue and tech partnership- only an even partnership, that is a tech for a tech which evens out (like the last deal with Vox), nothing in the spirit of: we share everything, which is clearly too much in Vox's favor.

That depends. If Vox can leverage their monopoly on contact well enough, they could end up ahead on tech through equal-cost trades. Even just being able to trade what they research when we can't trade what we research could potentially double thier effective rate of tech progress (at least unless and until Lux reaches a point where trading with them is no longer possible), and trading away what we research on top of that would give them even more of an advantage. For however long that advantage would hold, we could find ourselves falling behind them.

Further, given the disparity in sizes that will exist even if we're generous with Vox in defining borders, we can afford an arrangement that would benefit them a bit more than it benefits us if such an arrangement helps us relative to the rest of the world. Vox is nowhere near our most serious competition, and getting so caught up in making sure Vox doesn't benefit from working with us any more than we benefit from working with them could end up costing us relative to the rest of the world.

[zeit]

By the way, if we DO go for the Great Library, I think we also need to take a serious look at taking over our continent after we complete it. What good is a weak, untrustworthy tech trade partner when we have the GL? I'd rather, at that point, have control of our continent, and the security bonus that provides. Further, it would trigger our GA (hopefully in Republic).

I can understand the urge to take over the continent, and i seem to like it more than being dragged and slowed down by our lowly and annoying partner. I think that any military alliance with Vox, as was brought up in the chat is a nice talk, but will prove to be a tactical disaster- Vox is just too afraid and concerned with its immediate survival (as was reflected by their extreme short term reasoning) to seriously commit istelf to oversees conquest alliance.
Indeed, i forsee that Vox will not serve as a worthy long term partner, but for now, the plans for conquest must be put aside, and discussions on the details of our deals must be finished quickly, before the Voxians change their minds again.

[nbarclay]

I don't see any viable (or at least any remotely honorable) way that we could go for the Great Library and then turn around and take out Vox. We'd have to trust Vox not to take advantage of our setting our REXing and military production back to build it, and that means we need an agreement where they see our building it as being in their best interest too.

[nbarclay]

Dominae, if you have specific evidence that Vox knew about the limitations of WCs, I'd be interested to see it. If they're lying to us even now, and even after I've made it so clear how vital trust is to our relationship, that probably does doom our ability to work together.

[zeit]

Dominae, if you have specific evidence that Vox knew about the limitations of WCs, I'd be interested to see it. If they're lying to us even now, and even after I've made it so clear how vital trust is to our relationship, that probably does doom our ability to work together.

We can and should believe them, while in discussions with them, but we (the GS members) all probably realize that this excuse is quite remote, much like the ultimate "we were afraid of you" thing.

[nbarclay]

A couple points about the most recent map revision:

1) I made it clear to Jon that if they build where their theoretical city radius overlaps the iron square (assuming our team would be willing to ratify such borders), there has to be an understanding that they won't build up a lot of culture in that city and grab the iron away from us.

2) The city site I deleted could only have grown to size 8 without pirating tiles from the coastal site, and only to size 6 without irrigation to work more than one mountain. Giving Vox any additional jungle tiles made the site worth little enough that I didn't regard removing it as a big deal.

[Dominae]

Nathan, I'll do a short search on the WC issue (an in-depth one could take a while). I'll keep you posted.

Concerning the jungle city, what's wrong with size 8?!?

Your point about Vox not being our biggest enemy is well-taken. At the same time, they're potentially not our biggest ally either. If we restrict ourselves this early on, there might eventually be 3-4 superpowers in the world: Demo, Lego, Lux (say) and GS/Vox. What I'm saying is that our partnership could be quite strong, but individually GS would not. I would much rather have a situation where a strong GS strikes up a tech partnership with a strong Lego (say). This type of deal leads to military alliances that would actually be worth something. Military partnerships with Vox will lead nowhere, IMO, so basically we're partnering with them for short-term gain only (effectively, not in word). When comes time to assert ourselves, we'll find Vox to be the best target, but they will no longer be an option. Best keep our options open.


Dominae

[nbarclay]

Size 8 is viable, although size 8 where you have to irrigate four grassland tiles (until railroads) to work three mountains is far from what I consider really good. But that would mean leaving the borders the same with us having 15 cities as what Jon was willing to accept with us having 13. Vox would probably live with it if they have no choice, but that would leave an extremely weak foundation for partnership. Which is not good in terms of "keeping our options open."

If we give Vox even two more jungle tiles, that shrinks the city's maximum pre-railroad size from 8 to 5 (since it would be down to three grasslands and thus one less mountain it could work) or 7 if we steal a grassland from another city and irrigate it. At that point, I think the added benefit of keeping the city compared with moving the coastal city back up a tile is marginal enough that the potential advantage of greater goodwill from Vox if we give them more room is more important. (Again, even if our goal is to keep our options open, one of those options we keep open should be a strong long-term partnership with Vox.)

[Harovan]

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[edit: got to love this editing of other's posts ]