Our claims of land

[zeit]

Vox, in one of their notes sent to Nathan, announced that they see all the lands to the north of the "Sierra Centralis"- likely what we call the Spinebreaker mountains, as their own. I personally think that these claims are ridiculous, and that taking into account the sheer distance from one's capital, to announce one territory as its own in this game is absurd. If any claims besides mere cultural borders should be accepted, than it is the claims of growth speed, and scouting. Why do i say this: because we will grow faster, and have scouted faster than Vox, we met them along the coast to coast line that runs through that tile north of the wheat grassland in the middle of the jungle. We should compromise for nothing less than this, primarily because we are in the position of doing so (develop faster) and that this was the place where our scouts met.

Of course- we should bargain for more- and i also think we can acquire more land if we act fast and smart enough- not stopping ourselves with feelings of pity towards Vox, or delusions of long term stable relations of co-existence- that simply won't happen, because we are about to be stronger, they will notice this sometime, and will try to do something about it. Our most important asset, besides our prime land and briliant economists which devised a plan for a super fast REX, is that Vox has no prime land, and little of that as well, we must make sure Vox can't easily grab more for it self, if we can do that, we have already triumphed (over them).

I want you to say what you think we should do, besides obviously playing along with this fake expression of trust,
like dealing techs with them, to make sure we take more and more land, while denying them land as well?

[DeepO]

My ideas: no bargaining now, and also ignore any claims of Vox for the moment. If they persist, say that we are discussing the issue, but don't like the deal. No claim is worth anything until the other party agrees, and in this case it would be in our disadvantage to agree to anything.

OTOH, we should avoid that Vox starts building it's cities 5 tiles apart, just to be sure they have a lot of land (and by doing that, take that land from us). Maybe some kind of deal can be worked out where we both agree to only settle cities 3 tiles apart in the others direction.

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

I agree that we should ignore their claims, after all we were there much earlier.


I'm not sure what we could do if they start planting cities 5 spaces apart, since its a bit difficult to just move a city. I suppose our scouts will see a settler on the move, so we will get some warning first, that way we could reciprocate, build a city near the jungle or something.

[nbarclay]

Rather than a specific spacing, I would push the size 12 principle - at size 12, cities should be using all available land and coast and at least most available sea. Using obviously wider spacing in order to gain control of more land at the other's expense should be considered an act of bad faith. But I don't want to push that issue until our size and economic strength are such that Vox has a pretty clear picture that we can back our request up with military muscle if we have to. Also, as noted above, we need to know what other options Vox has for expansion besides expanding toward us.

Nathan

[Shiber]

IMHO, we should defninitely ignore their claims. I don't think they expect us to take those claims seriously anyway.
IMHO, we should begin settling northwards immediately after we found one wheat city in the south.

[zeit]

There is no chance we can agree on limiting or influencing each other's city planning like DeepO proposed. You all seem to try and evade our obvious conflict: settling our rich south against blocking Vox on the north. I am willing to compromise on this matter, but still, we must focus on settling up north- although this means we somewhat retrain our potential growth, in the long run it means weaker Vox with less claims- having Vox settle two cities or more beyond the isthmus doesn't mean happier and peaceful Vox- it means a more powerful Vox with a better foothold in a territory we want for our own, and quite able to aqcuire.

We only postpone the taming of the south, while if we choose the south first, we probably give up some land up north, and it ending up in Voxian hands.

[asleepathewheel]

I agree that we should start bulding cities to the north and west, to carve off some land for ourselves and block them off. I'm not sure what promises have been made to vox regarding our expansion plans.

[nbarclay]

Tell me how we defend the North without wrecking our research to do a bunch of early warrior-to-swordsman upgrades and you might win me over. Terrain up there favors Vox, and we need time to build up the economic base to tip the balance in our favor.

Nathan

[Arrian]

Nathan,

Would settling the gold hill relatively soon (EotS, Hurricane, city, city, Gold Hill City for instance) provide enough of a commerce boost to fund a couple of warrior -> sword upgrades? Plus, it's NW... gets us moving in that direction. Good worker pump, too, with irrigated fp.

-Arrian

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Arrian
Nathan,

Would settling the gold hill relatively soon (EotS, Hurricane, city, city, Gold Hill City for instance) provide enough of a commerce boost to fund a couple of warrior -> sword upgrades? Plus, it's NW... gets us moving in that direction. Good worker pump, too, with irrigated fp.

Interesting option to consider. We'd probably get enough extra gold for an upgrade every ten turns or so, but that still leaves the question of whether we're better off doing the upgrades or ratcheting up our research a little extra.

And yes, it could be nice for cranking out workers using a couple FPs and an irrigated plains or something like that. Now that I look at it, at two production after corruption and four food surplus, it would balance at churning out workers every five turns, which would match EotS's settler production rate. That sounds downright attractive.

[alva]

We only postpone the taming of the south, while if we choose the south first, we probably give up some land up north, and it ending up in Voxian hands.

If vox decides to settle to far to south, they will hamper their growth even more. I see that as an advantage. IMHO we should look for long term benefit, not short term.

[zeit]

alva- remember- what is to us "the far off north" is to them "the fertile south", and they probably desire that little patch of grasland and hills, along with the control of the two coasts, that wheat tile, and a foothold that would make any attack against them a bloody carnage (for the attacker).
I trust our fine Tacticians and Economists to get the best of any given situation, just like you did and doing with our no so perfect (although pretty good) starting position, which will surely boost us soon in a sky rocketed growth rate. We can manage our techs and stay in shape with the kind help of Vox, while gaining us more time. I personally wouldn't mind popping cities along the NW coast, and one or two near the wheat tile (site #12), just to secure our holdings (the NW coast along with the valley of shield grass and forests sure looks juicy).

I am talking here about long term- short term benefits from settling the south are obvious, while IMHO, the long term benefits of denying Vox rich land is too big to lose, even at a cost for our growth (which is again, IMHO, not as large as you fear).