Thoughts Spartan

[nbarclay]

My view is that we should bide our time and look for targets weakened by warfare elsewhere. That could mean Vox if they get weakened fighting the Bobians, or it could mean a Bobian civ if the Bobians start fighting each other (conceivably with Vox on one side or the other).

Nathan

[zeit]

I agree that we would probably wait until Vox has taken some of its forces to Bob. But going to war shouldn't be that opportunistic IMO- we need to prepare for it, make sure our forces are ready in time.
In this regard: i think Vox's Iron should be our first target- i also don't think we should wait for Vox to build a serious force- with their not-so bad naval capacity (2 galleys right now) they could ship those back, because they have little to lose. Striking as soon as we're ready to take their Iron, hold the Isthmus and make sure our homeland stays safe is the time to attack Vox.

[DeepO]

Intuitively, I would say we take on Vox first, and because we can be reasonably sure we will conquer them if we are in a GA, and can end that war shortly after our GA in the midst of acquiring knights; we should have enough resources and time to then turn our eye towards Bob.

If we would go for Bob first, Vox stays another factor we have to take care of (either by defending against them, or by making sure they join the invasion), and this in itself troubles me. I would rather get Vox's influence out of the picture, it would make our game easier.

However, withtout Vox, we don't have the possibility of backup either. Finding someone willing to divert attention from Bob becomes a lot harder, unless we can get GoW in on the action. So that certainly is a disadvantage we have to take care of: do we really expect to grow so big from taking Vox that we can take on 2 teams at once without support?

Three more things to keep in mind:
1. Purely economically speaking, Vox's land isn't that great. And in order to make it work, we need to move our palace, or build the FP closer to them eventually. So how would we be doing that, and wouldn't it be easier to take e.g. RPs land, and move our palace there?
2. We still have diplomatic things to resolve with Vox before we can go to war. Our situation is dubious at best, are we confident we can adequately resolve that without a large diplo-hit?
3. Very soon, our cities will start to grow, and we will have no room left to peacefully expand to. Either way, we can't wait long with going to war for ground, or we lose possible growth potential with cities bumping into the size 12 limit. So if we don't declare war to Vox, who can we attack, or where can we settle fast enough for us, not to lose pop-momentum?

BTW exploring galleys should become more of a priority in our plans, if only to see what kind of islands are out there. Maybe there is quite a bit of land left to peacefully expand too, and we simply don't see it.

DeepO

[Aeson]

There are 161 tiles up to the bottleneck. Vox claims a 6x4 landmass above there, which makes 185 total tiles on our landmass.

On a standard map there are 100*100/2 = 5000 tiles overall. The water level is 70%, which gives a remarkably consistant 73%. That means 1350 land tiles. Coastal tiles vary quite a bit from map to map, so I'll just ignore them for right now. Just keep in mind we have probably the highest coastal to land tile ratio continent. Lego might be close in that regard.

Our continent, with it's 185 land tiles, comprises 13.7% of the entire landmass on this map. There are 4 other civs to divide up the remaining 86.3%, giving each of them 21.575%... If we and Vox co-exist on this landmass, at most we will have 1/3rd the landmass of any of the other civs.

[Aeson]

I'll just add that I don't think Vox's land above the bottleneck is that small, probably closer to 40-50 tiles, but it still leaves us both on the short end of the stick.

[zeit]

I had some sort of plan in my head- just a plan, but it still makes sense.

We take on Vox- eliminating a potential threat, securing the entire continent, with the obvious benefits (Vox's land isn't so great, but up untill the isthmus there's some pretty good real estate- some grassland and even more after we've taken care of the jungle- which we have the capability to do). Towards the end of the war, or perhaps already at the start of, we sign secret NAP's with GoW and NDE- we have reasons to believe GoW will be quite willing to do so. After that's done, RP is politicaly and geographically isolated- it is less of a threat. If we find an island- good for us, we take advantage of our situation and safely develop it. If we want, we take the war to Bob- with raids or full scale invasion in RP's territory. We could further increase our involvement by aiding GoW or NDE in an attack against RP (most likely NDE) while promising to divide the land and promise those not involved we won't get near their territory.

It's just an idea, but i think taking out Vox out of the equation will make our life much easier, and might pave our way towards domination- siding with Vox is our only other chance- and i tend to dislike that prospect . A real military alliance with Vox will ruin most of our chances of keeping the Bobians from uniting when we land troops on their territory. Lego joining along might be a bit too much to consider right now- but maybe if they know the scale of forces involved, they'll be convinced to send their boys in as well.

As for clearing the issues with Vox- we could arrange something- we don't need to lie- they have ignored us, and we'll let them know it's over in our perspective, and that any further deal should be negotiated speprately. After that the only thing left is the border-treaty, hardly something to wave with. That kind of treaty cannot be interpreted as life-long NAP, war will be officialy and honorably declared, no deceit or backstabbing.

[Dominae]

zeit, your PM box is full. Please clear it out so that I may SPAM YOU!! Just kidding...I'm just trying to answer your PM.

[Arrian]

Crap, the border treaty. I didn't think about that. I can see that being used by Vox to try and blacken our name if we attack them. Then again, they haven't played a very smooth diplomatic game, so we should still be able to outmanuever them on that front.

By the way, how do people feel about Dissidentville (or whatever we may choose to rename it) as a FP location?

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
Vox claims a 6x4 landmass above there

Actually, I'm not sure how they interpreted that, their land may be bigger then thought. IIRC they said something like 'Nowhere does it get wider then 6 tiles, and it's roughly 4 tiles high'. If you would check what we already settled, you'd see that at most, our continent is 6 tiles wide, and if you count the distance from Typhoon to Arashi, it's 8 tiles.
It's reasonable to assume that Vox's pensinsula is about half the size of what we have within our cultural borders.

Because a tile is not square, but diamond shape, double the number of tiles exist then what you expect. So, Vox's part would be 48 tiles, not 24...
It's only a marginable difference, of course, as we still need land if we want to keep growing at the same rate as others.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Originally posted by Arrian
By the way, how do people feel about Dissidentville (or whatever we may choose to rename it) as a FP location?

I'd like to see Vox's peninsula first. If it's just a load of desert and plains then perhaps it would be wiser to position the FP a little south of Dissidentville (Arashi perhaps) so it would favor the currently viewable (read: grassland-ish) part of our continent over the cities in Vox's peninsula (assuming of course that we place our FP while keeping in mind that we may would want to relocate our palace to Bob later on).

[Arrian]

Maybe, Shiber. But then again, I've been thinking about the difficulties sure to be involved in getting a foothold - let alone really putting roots down - on BoB.

Unless the Bobians get into a really nasty war, and one or more of them is willing to agree to our joining in, it is difficult to forsee capturing, holding, and developing territory over there.

On the other hand, with ownership of our own (admittedly mediocre) continent, we could go turtle (militarily speaking) and win peacefully.

I'm not after Ultimate Power in this game. Just win, baby!

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
On the other hand, with ownership of our own (admittedly mediocre) continent, we could go turtle (militarily speaking) and win peacefully.

If we resign ourselves to never getting a foothold on the main continent, we're leaving ourselves open to the (very real) possibility that one civ will end up dominant there, in which case we're no longer competitors for the title. The war will take its toll, surely, but with twice our landmass and no one to stand in our way, the lead civ will definitely pull ahead before the game is done.

Best-case scenario at this point would be to get a Great Leader while wiping out Vox (preferably toward the end of the war), claim some free land on the main continent (sell our souls if we have to) and rush a Palace or Forbidden Palace there.


Dominae

[Aeson]

We could put our FP in Arashi or even Tempest, then if we get a Leader, rush our Palace up N of the bottleneck (just where would depend on the terrain).

This would give us the opportunity at having a few productive cities on BOB if we can somehow claim them, and probably put culture flips in our favor. ND's and GoW's Palaces being so far away.

[Shiber]

So you're saying that we could culture-flip cities on the other side of the crossing to Bob?
It's possible, but wouldn't the previous owners of the city try to take it back? Certainly, they will have enough forces in standby near the crossing to deal with the flip, so we'll have to transfer lots of garrison units as soon as we flip the city. This would mean that we'd have to keep lots of defensive units near the crossing (which we should do anyway, to deal with any Bobian invasions) and ready to board a galleon and land in the flipped city.
Actually, I'm starting to like this... we can keep a formidable force and two galleons near the crossing, invest much into culture and stay on constant standby until we flip a city on the other side of the crossing. We then put loads of our latest in city garrisoning technology on a boat, drop it into the flipped city, hold off the first wave of attacks, fortify more units, establish our beachhead on Bob and continue the invasion by force at will.

[Aeson]

I meant if we do have a foothold on N BOB (peacefully or militarily), the cities will be easier to hold onto culturally with our Palace in former Vox lands. They would also be more productive.