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As some of you know, I joined the ISDG at least partially to spy on the other teams for this game. Arnelos made this admittedly huge post that has some usefull info in it in a thread discussing lessons that could be learned from the fall of Lux:
As I have highlighted (hopefully) Arnelos has given us some information as to the production of RP lately. From this we now know (or I just learned if you guys already knew this) the following:
1. RP had the equivalent of a MPP with Lux, but Arny also refers to it as an Alliance. At any rate, they failed to even make an attempt to uphold such an Alliance OR MPP. We can turn this to a possible advantage by divulging this info to ND, or other teams to help inspire distrust of RP at our discression.
2. RP has walled up their cities, at least on the boarder to ND. This may already be apparant by the map (I am unsure if you can see walls without having scouted after they are built)
3. RP is Preparing for a war ALONG THE ND BORDER. From various statements elsewhere in that novel, Arny gives the impression that they expect us to be next, however, so they are preparing for owning 1/2 the continent. Based on this, the original plan for us to swing wide to the east in the original assault may just have them with their pants down along that side.
Originally posted by Arnelos
Ok, I've been completely disconnected from the PTW game for over a week and a half now, so what I say is based upon being involved in the diplomatic situation up through about 2 weeks ago and what my impression was of Lux Invicta:
donegeal has hit on the spark that lead to Lux's eventual downfall.
ND was going to probably attack someone, but Lux was screaming "ME! ME! PICK ME! PLEASE!!! PICK ME!!!"
This isolated Lux and made ND's fury at Lux "understandable" to Glory of War and RP Team... the point that we really didn't mind a bit that Lux Invicta lost their border city. We DID mind if ND tried to fully wipe out Lux Invicta, but there wasn't much we could have done about it by the time that became a possibility.
Back to the threatening gestures by Lux...
It convinced ND that Lux had to go - period. From the moment Lux did those two actions, it was very apparent that ND was of the mind that Lux had to die and would be the first to die.
This, in itself, wouldn't be especially harmful. Afterall, it seems that this was part of Trip's INTENT. That ND would get pissed off and eventually go to war.
However, this had several consequences which it SEEMS that Lux either didn't anticipate or did correctly anticipate, but didn't do enough about:
1. ND's source of iron seems to have been considerably closer to ND's capital than Lux's source of iron was to theirs (just the impression I got from talking to people, I actually haven't seen all of that part of the map). If Lux knew this, it should have been factored into the wisdom of their decision. As it turned out, ND could afford to mobilize FAR before Lux got around to it... which, when it comes down to it, is why Lux was killed. Lux could have survived if they'd mobilized earlier and not been caught with their pants down.
2. It convinced everyone (GoW, ND, and RP) that Lux Invicta would "bully" a neighboring civ, but didn't seem yet prepared to follow through. Lux Invicta made an enemy of Neu Demogyptica long before it was profitable to do so. The only impact it had was that it strained ND-Lux relations to the point where they stopped trading with each other and allowed GoW and/or RP Team to take advantage of the situation. Ideally, you don't let the enemy so conveniently and openly know that you intend to stomp on him unless you're actually going to do it.... blustering and threatening w/o backing it up only weakens your position.
So Lux's actions convinced a lot of people that the first likely war would be between Lux and ND, where previously people had been speculating about wars between other combinations first. This weakened the bargaining position of Lux Invicta in continental power politics because they'd deprived themselves of their own freedom of action by so openly declaring their target as Neu Demogyptica. GoW was obviously of the mind to take advantage of the situation and no sane person can fault them for doing so. With animosity betweeen ND and Lux, GoW was in a strengthened bargaining position, especially over whether they would go to war and with whom they would do it.
RP Team, for its part, wanted to play the role of the "balancer" and skewing the situation to their advantage if possible, but at least attempting to restore balance at the minimum. The problem here was that the situation wasn't easy to balance... too much depended on the various relationships with Glory of War. Lux Invicta's depriving themselves of their own freedom of action while giving Glory of War such an enormous freedom of action (in our eyes), had handed the advantage to Glory of War... I'm sure Glory of War saw the situation somewhat similarly. Even if the war between Lux and ND had been EVEN, the situation would have been ripe for Glory of War to pick sides at its leisure and Lux Invicta would have as much chance of being the target as ND.... allowing Glory of War to be in this position was Lux Invitca's own doing.
3. It convinced RP Team, Lux Invicta's "ally", that Lux Invicta could not be trusted even with a simple defensive alliance agreement. The ink was hardly dry on the document before Lux Invicta seemed to be attempting to incite Neu Demogyptica into attacking them and thus activating the alliance. While that might be precisely what Trip intended, it didn't quite work out as he invisioned it if so. RP Team simply didn't have the force available to help Lux Invicta even if ND -DID- attack them and alliances are largely meaningless unless you keep your ally abreast of the fact that war is the gameplan and give your ally the time to bulid up enough force to help you. As it stood, it was abundantly apparent that even if RP "honored" the alliance agreement, it would STILL only be an agreement in name only should a war actually break out so early - as RP Team was too far away with too little force close to the scene to help in the short time span between the initial attack and the conquest of Lux's capital itself. If Lux Invicta was at all counting on RP Team to help them out that early in the game against a swordsman rush, they were sorely mistaken that it would happen w/o coordination between allies.
If you'd wanted to do it effectively, you would have planned the war IN SECRET and if you'd wanted allied help, would have consulted them well enough ahead of time to let them build up a force capable of helping. Blustering and making threatening gestures w/o making the strike in the process only served to put the enemy on notice and let them build up faster than you.
However, those were only what became the background conditions: ND deciding that Lux had to die and preparing for it, GoW looking to take advantage of the situation, and RP Team incredulous with that Lux Invicta was trying to OPENLY start a war in a manner that seemed so counter to their own interests.
What happened when the war was ready to start was the NEXT blunder.
In the face of a stack of swordsmen sitting on the border of Lux Invicta, Trip correctly realized that it was a force he could not beat on his own.
However, he incorrectly seemed to assume that because ND's invasion of Lux Invicta would put ND in such an advantageous position, that GoW and RP Team would be forced to help Lux Invicta to ensure their own long-term protection.
Unfortunately for Lux Invicta, GoW and RP Team did not share Trip's assessment of the situation. RP Team clearly saw ND's potential conquest of Lux Invicta as a direct threat to RP Team (and GoW's) security, but felt there was little to nothing we could do about it in time. We could immediately muster our forces and grow our military (as we did), but it simply wouldn't be in place and on ND's border fast enough to stop ND from taking out Lux Invicta. GoW, for their sake, didn't seem to us to see ND's lurch toward hegemony to be a direct threat to GoW at all. This made RP Team incredulous, as it seemed to some on our team that GoW was gleefully joining Lux Invicta to line up to commit suicide. That being said, it was abundantly clear from the three-way chat that GhengisFarb (at least) seemed more concerned about getting his hands on a Lux Invicta city than even thinking about containing the potential ND threat to the rest of the continent.
However, I have to give GoW credit for part of that assessment. When GoW and RP Team talked in private after Trip had gone, we compared notes on just what GoW and RP Team might be able to do if we decided to jointly go after ND. It was quite apparent to both sides that there was very little we could do and although this wasn't explicitly expressed both ways, both sides could clearly see that Lux Invicta was done for and both of us would simply have to take as much advantage from the situation as we could while ND was busy.
What happened was that GoW set their sites on taking a Lux Invicta city, the one GhengisFarb had so obviously been pining after the entire time. When Lux Invicta didn't play ball with GoW, GoW declared war on Lux Invicta and decided to take what they wanted by force.
RP Team decided to take the time of ND's distraction to build up military forces, build city walls, and generally secure their military position and defense of the southern part of the continent. RP Team also was given the opporunity to found a few more cities while ND was on the other side of the continent fighting a war.
These were the apparent assessments of RP Team and Glory of War...
Which leads to the next mistake that Lux Invicta made (yes, there's more...).
I was talking to Trip after the three-way meeting where it was abundantly obvious at least to the GoW and RP Team reps that we weren't going to help Lux Invicta except for RP Team seeing if we could somehow convince ND out of completely wiping out Lux out (through some combination of pressure regaring ND's inability to sustain the conflict to the rest of the continent). We KNEW we couldn't convince them not to take Lux's border city and weren't even going to TRY to convince them of that.
I don't know whether Trip just didn't see what the rest of us saw as obvious or whether he decided to knowingly bluff the situation and see if he could get away with it... but Trip's next message to Neu Demogyptica came in the form of a rather bellicose THREAT.... that if Neu Demogyptica attacked even Lux Invicta's border city, the wrath of RP Team and Glory of War would be brought down upon Neu Demogyptica.
This had two impacts:
1. It made RP Team's attempt to convince ND not to wipe out Lux Invicta completely impossible... If ND hadn't already been convinced that Lux Invicta shouldn't even be permitted to survive, that message clinched it. ND was completely unwilling to negotiate the matter after that point where at least they'd previously been willing to discuss it (though it's unclear whether they were sincere, of course
).
2. ND apparently could see through Trip's bluff. Whether that's because ND was being naive and didn't figure RP Team or GoW would ever join together with Lux Invicta against them or because they used the recent correspondance from RP Team and GoW as a guide to see that we simply didn't have the inclination or capability yet to do that, is not entirely clear. What IS clear is that ND correctly doubted the bluff and saw it as being downright laughable - which it was. Even if we HAD acted to attempt to militarily pressure ND not to attack, we would have considered the border city an acceptable loss... we'd even already suggested to ND that if they simply culture flip the city, as that would avert the need for an armed conflict with Lux Invicta - one that we did not desire to see.
At this point, Lux Invicta was clearly beaten and RP Team and GoW weren't going to do enough about it to stop ND, while ND had decided to WIPE OUT Lux rather than simply hurt it.
This is the point at which it would have been useful for Lux Invicta to realize just how badly they were beat and just downright surrender to terms, providing they were permitted to survive at all, by ND and other powers (call a "Congress of Europe" or the sort). Thankfully, Lux Invicta DID realize this and DID ask ND for terms, which ND refused to provide them... Lux's earlier actions had already condemned them beyond the possibility of salvation to ND.
It's possible that Lux Invicta could have given in to the bullying terms of Glory of War (given them the city) and hoped that Glory of War would then desire to keep Lux Invicta around while somehow (if possible) stopping ND from taking the REST of Lux (it would be, afterall, in Glory of War's interests to do so). However, this would have been dumb and it was probably best for Lux Invicta (though not Glory of War or RP Team) that they chose against it. Giving a city to Glory of War or giving in to other terms to them was almost certainly not going to lead to any increased survivability for Lux... at that point, they had nothing to gain as Glory of War simply was incapable of helping them - GoW was too weak.
So then Glory of War declared war on Lux Invicta over the breaking of some "agreement". I'm not aware of such agreements, but I don't care and it doesn't matter. It was entirely in Glory of War's interests to declare war and it was entirely in Lux Invicta's interests to refuse to freely give up stuff to a team that did not have the power or inclination to help them.
At this point, the most interesting thing that COULD have happened, would be if Lux Invicta effectively "surrendered" to Neu Demogypitica and agreed to fight alongside Neu Demogyptica against Glory of War in return for Lux's survival (with at least their capital city). RP Team had been musing about this possibility and while we didn't suggest it, we were indeed fearful that Glory of War was walking themselves into a potential trap if ND would be willing to let Lux survive and use the Lux-GoW animosity to go stomp out GoW and thus leave ND the master of the entire north (other than the surviving remnant of Lux, though ND could later destroy that if they wanted to go back on such an agreement).
Interestingly, this did not happen. Though Trip certainly patched things up with some of the ND leaders and got almost buddylike with them at one point and it's possible that it could have at least been brought up, it's not what happened. Perhaps ND was too mad at Lux or desired their anihilation too much to see this potential way to dominate the whole continent... who knows. It stands to reason that ND may have doubted that Lux could be trusted even to "surrender" on such terms and was better off making sure Lux was dead than to see if they could be trusted against GoW.
About the same time, RP Team and GoW were already negotiating with ND about post-war borders (assuming the absense of Lux Invicta on the continent), which became a de facto authorization by GoW and RP Team for the complete destruction of Lux Invicta, something RP Team had previously been attempting to prevent.
As I joked to someone (I get this from a press release in an old game of Diplomacy)... the press article should read:
"Trip was found dead in the Lux Invicta palace with multiple stab wounds in his back. The coroner ruled the cause of death to be suicide."
That said, there were a number of things that were outside of Lux Invicta's control. Lux Invicta's primary mistake was in picking an enemy long before they had the ability to defeat that enemy. Even if they'd been as blustering and threatening but had the force to back it up, it wouldn't have been a problem. The later mistakes were merely what drove the remaining nails into their coffin. It was the initial mistake that caused the coffin to be prepared for them in the first place.
I think the lesson should be clear: Only make threatening and warlike gestures that put your enemy on notice of your intentions if you fully intend to be ready for war and to go to war before your intended enemy can prepare and catch you with your pants down... and when in doubt, be courteous regardless of your eventual intentions.
It should also be said that if you think you need your ally or allies to help you, it's best to consult with them AHEAD OF TIME about what you will need from them. If you don't, you're only shooting yourself in the foot when they're completely unprepared to help you on the time table you need them for. Allies coordinate battle plans with each other. If you don't trust your "ally" and think they'll just taddle on you and you don't think you can handle the war on your own, then you shouldn't be starting the war yet, should you?
But the bottom line of it all is the following, which is the mistake Trip admitted he made because I think he knew it the moment he saw those swordsmen:
War or the threat of war without the superiority of force to back it up is simply foolish - period.
Ok, I've been completely disconnected from the PTW game for over a week and a half now, so what I say is based upon being involved in the diplomatic situation up through about 2 weeks ago and what my impression was of Lux Invicta:
donegeal has hit on the spark that lead to Lux's eventual downfall.
ND was going to probably attack someone, but Lux was screaming "ME! ME! PICK ME! PLEASE!!! PICK ME!!!"
This isolated Lux and made ND's fury at Lux "understandable" to Glory of War and RP Team... the point that we really didn't mind a bit that Lux Invicta lost their border city. We DID mind if ND tried to fully wipe out Lux Invicta, but there wasn't much we could have done about it by the time that became a possibility.
Back to the threatening gestures by Lux...
It convinced ND that Lux had to go - period. From the moment Lux did those two actions, it was very apparent that ND was of the mind that Lux had to die and would be the first to die.
This, in itself, wouldn't be especially harmful. Afterall, it seems that this was part of Trip's INTENT. That ND would get pissed off and eventually go to war.
However, this had several consequences which it SEEMS that Lux either didn't anticipate or did correctly anticipate, but didn't do enough about:
1. ND's source of iron seems to have been considerably closer to ND's capital than Lux's source of iron was to theirs (just the impression I got from talking to people, I actually haven't seen all of that part of the map). If Lux knew this, it should have been factored into the wisdom of their decision. As it turned out, ND could afford to mobilize FAR before Lux got around to it... which, when it comes down to it, is why Lux was killed. Lux could have survived if they'd mobilized earlier and not been caught with their pants down.
2. It convinced everyone (GoW, ND, and RP) that Lux Invicta would "bully" a neighboring civ, but didn't seem yet prepared to follow through. Lux Invicta made an enemy of Neu Demogyptica long before it was profitable to do so. The only impact it had was that it strained ND-Lux relations to the point where they stopped trading with each other and allowed GoW and/or RP Team to take advantage of the situation. Ideally, you don't let the enemy so conveniently and openly know that you intend to stomp on him unless you're actually going to do it.... blustering and threatening w/o backing it up only weakens your position.
So Lux's actions convinced a lot of people that the first likely war would be between Lux and ND, where previously people had been speculating about wars between other combinations first. This weakened the bargaining position of Lux Invicta in continental power politics because they'd deprived themselves of their own freedom of action by so openly declaring their target as Neu Demogyptica. GoW was obviously of the mind to take advantage of the situation and no sane person can fault them for doing so. With animosity betweeen ND and Lux, GoW was in a strengthened bargaining position, especially over whether they would go to war and with whom they would do it.
RP Team, for its part, wanted to play the role of the "balancer" and skewing the situation to their advantage if possible, but at least attempting to restore balance at the minimum. The problem here was that the situation wasn't easy to balance... too much depended on the various relationships with Glory of War. Lux Invicta's depriving themselves of their own freedom of action while giving Glory of War such an enormous freedom of action (in our eyes), had handed the advantage to Glory of War... I'm sure Glory of War saw the situation somewhat similarly. Even if the war between Lux and ND had been EVEN, the situation would have been ripe for Glory of War to pick sides at its leisure and Lux Invicta would have as much chance of being the target as ND.... allowing Glory of War to be in this position was Lux Invitca's own doing.
3. It convinced RP Team, Lux Invicta's "ally", that Lux Invicta could not be trusted even with a simple defensive alliance agreement. The ink was hardly dry on the document before Lux Invicta seemed to be attempting to incite Neu Demogyptica into attacking them and thus activating the alliance. While that might be precisely what Trip intended, it didn't quite work out as he invisioned it if so. RP Team simply didn't have the force available to help Lux Invicta even if ND -DID- attack them and alliances are largely meaningless unless you keep your ally abreast of the fact that war is the gameplan and give your ally the time to bulid up enough force to help you. As it stood, it was abundantly apparent that even if RP "honored" the alliance agreement, it would STILL only be an agreement in name only should a war actually break out so early - as RP Team was too far away with too little force close to the scene to help in the short time span between the initial attack and the conquest of Lux's capital itself. If Lux Invicta was at all counting on RP Team to help them out that early in the game against a swordsman rush, they were sorely mistaken that it would happen w/o coordination between allies.
If you'd wanted to do it effectively, you would have planned the war IN SECRET and if you'd wanted allied help, would have consulted them well enough ahead of time to let them build up a force capable of helping. Blustering and making threatening gestures w/o making the strike in the process only served to put the enemy on notice and let them build up faster than you.
However, those were only what became the background conditions: ND deciding that Lux had to die and preparing for it, GoW looking to take advantage of the situation, and RP Team incredulous with that Lux Invicta was trying to OPENLY start a war in a manner that seemed so counter to their own interests.
What happened when the war was ready to start was the NEXT blunder.
In the face of a stack of swordsmen sitting on the border of Lux Invicta, Trip correctly realized that it was a force he could not beat on his own.
However, he incorrectly seemed to assume that because ND's invasion of Lux Invicta would put ND in such an advantageous position, that GoW and RP Team would be forced to help Lux Invicta to ensure their own long-term protection.
Unfortunately for Lux Invicta, GoW and RP Team did not share Trip's assessment of the situation. RP Team clearly saw ND's potential conquest of Lux Invicta as a direct threat to RP Team (and GoW's) security, but felt there was little to nothing we could do about it in time. We could immediately muster our forces and grow our military (as we did), but it simply wouldn't be in place and on ND's border fast enough to stop ND from taking out Lux Invicta. GoW, for their sake, didn't seem to us to see ND's lurch toward hegemony to be a direct threat to GoW at all. This made RP Team incredulous, as it seemed to some on our team that GoW was gleefully joining Lux Invicta to line up to commit suicide. That being said, it was abundantly clear from the three-way chat that GhengisFarb (at least) seemed more concerned about getting his hands on a Lux Invicta city than even thinking about containing the potential ND threat to the rest of the continent.
However, I have to give GoW credit for part of that assessment. When GoW and RP Team talked in private after Trip had gone, we compared notes on just what GoW and RP Team might be able to do if we decided to jointly go after ND. It was quite apparent to both sides that there was very little we could do and although this wasn't explicitly expressed both ways, both sides could clearly see that Lux Invicta was done for and both of us would simply have to take as much advantage from the situation as we could while ND was busy.
What happened was that GoW set their sites on taking a Lux Invicta city, the one GhengisFarb had so obviously been pining after the entire time. When Lux Invicta didn't play ball with GoW, GoW declared war on Lux Invicta and decided to take what they wanted by force.
RP Team decided to take the time of ND's distraction to build up military forces, build city walls, and generally secure their military position and defense of the southern part of the continent. RP Team also was given the opporunity to found a few more cities while ND was on the other side of the continent fighting a war.
These were the apparent assessments of RP Team and Glory of War...
Which leads to the next mistake that Lux Invicta made (yes, there's more...).
I was talking to Trip after the three-way meeting where it was abundantly obvious at least to the GoW and RP Team reps that we weren't going to help Lux Invicta except for RP Team seeing if we could somehow convince ND out of completely wiping out Lux out (through some combination of pressure regaring ND's inability to sustain the conflict to the rest of the continent). We KNEW we couldn't convince them not to take Lux's border city and weren't even going to TRY to convince them of that.
I don't know whether Trip just didn't see what the rest of us saw as obvious or whether he decided to knowingly bluff the situation and see if he could get away with it... but Trip's next message to Neu Demogyptica came in the form of a rather bellicose THREAT.... that if Neu Demogyptica attacked even Lux Invicta's border city, the wrath of RP Team and Glory of War would be brought down upon Neu Demogyptica.
This had two impacts:
1. It made RP Team's attempt to convince ND not to wipe out Lux Invicta completely impossible... If ND hadn't already been convinced that Lux Invicta shouldn't even be permitted to survive, that message clinched it. ND was completely unwilling to negotiate the matter after that point where at least they'd previously been willing to discuss it (though it's unclear whether they were sincere, of course
).2. ND apparently could see through Trip's bluff. Whether that's because ND was being naive and didn't figure RP Team or GoW would ever join together with Lux Invicta against them or because they used the recent correspondance from RP Team and GoW as a guide to see that we simply didn't have the inclination or capability yet to do that, is not entirely clear. What IS clear is that ND correctly doubted the bluff and saw it as being downright laughable - which it was. Even if we HAD acted to attempt to militarily pressure ND not to attack, we would have considered the border city an acceptable loss... we'd even already suggested to ND that if they simply culture flip the city, as that would avert the need for an armed conflict with Lux Invicta - one that we did not desire to see.
At this point, Lux Invicta was clearly beaten and RP Team and GoW weren't going to do enough about it to stop ND, while ND had decided to WIPE OUT Lux rather than simply hurt it.
This is the point at which it would have been useful for Lux Invicta to realize just how badly they were beat and just downright surrender to terms, providing they were permitted to survive at all, by ND and other powers (call a "Congress of Europe" or the sort). Thankfully, Lux Invicta DID realize this and DID ask ND for terms, which ND refused to provide them... Lux's earlier actions had already condemned them beyond the possibility of salvation to ND.
It's possible that Lux Invicta could have given in to the bullying terms of Glory of War (given them the city) and hoped that Glory of War would then desire to keep Lux Invicta around while somehow (if possible) stopping ND from taking the REST of Lux (it would be, afterall, in Glory of War's interests to do so). However, this would have been dumb and it was probably best for Lux Invicta (though not Glory of War or RP Team) that they chose against it. Giving a city to Glory of War or giving in to other terms to them was almost certainly not going to lead to any increased survivability for Lux... at that point, they had nothing to gain as Glory of War simply was incapable of helping them - GoW was too weak.
So then Glory of War declared war on Lux Invicta over the breaking of some "agreement". I'm not aware of such agreements, but I don't care and it doesn't matter. It was entirely in Glory of War's interests to declare war and it was entirely in Lux Invicta's interests to refuse to freely give up stuff to a team that did not have the power or inclination to help them.
At this point, the most interesting thing that COULD have happened, would be if Lux Invicta effectively "surrendered" to Neu Demogypitica and agreed to fight alongside Neu Demogyptica against Glory of War in return for Lux's survival (with at least their capital city). RP Team had been musing about this possibility and while we didn't suggest it, we were indeed fearful that Glory of War was walking themselves into a potential trap if ND would be willing to let Lux survive and use the Lux-GoW animosity to go stomp out GoW and thus leave ND the master of the entire north (other than the surviving remnant of Lux, though ND could later destroy that if they wanted to go back on such an agreement).
Interestingly, this did not happen. Though Trip certainly patched things up with some of the ND leaders and got almost buddylike with them at one point and it's possible that it could have at least been brought up, it's not what happened. Perhaps ND was too mad at Lux or desired their anihilation too much to see this potential way to dominate the whole continent... who knows. It stands to reason that ND may have doubted that Lux could be trusted even to "surrender" on such terms and was better off making sure Lux was dead than to see if they could be trusted against GoW.
About the same time, RP Team and GoW were already negotiating with ND about post-war borders (assuming the absense of Lux Invicta on the continent), which became a de facto authorization by GoW and RP Team for the complete destruction of Lux Invicta, something RP Team had previously been attempting to prevent.
As I joked to someone (I get this from a press release in an old game of Diplomacy)... the press article should read:
"Trip was found dead in the Lux Invicta palace with multiple stab wounds in his back. The coroner ruled the cause of death to be suicide."
That said, there were a number of things that were outside of Lux Invicta's control. Lux Invicta's primary mistake was in picking an enemy long before they had the ability to defeat that enemy. Even if they'd been as blustering and threatening but had the force to back it up, it wouldn't have been a problem. The later mistakes were merely what drove the remaining nails into their coffin. It was the initial mistake that caused the coffin to be prepared for them in the first place.
I think the lesson should be clear: Only make threatening and warlike gestures that put your enemy on notice of your intentions if you fully intend to be ready for war and to go to war before your intended enemy can prepare and catch you with your pants down... and when in doubt, be courteous regardless of your eventual intentions.
It should also be said that if you think you need your ally or allies to help you, it's best to consult with them AHEAD OF TIME about what you will need from them. If you don't, you're only shooting yourself in the foot when they're completely unprepared to help you on the time table you need them for. Allies coordinate battle plans with each other. If you don't trust your "ally" and think they'll just taddle on you and you don't think you can handle the war on your own, then you shouldn't be starting the war yet, should you?
But the bottom line of it all is the following, which is the mistake Trip admitted he made because I think he knew it the moment he saw those swordsmen:
War or the threat of war without the superiority of force to back it up is simply foolish - period.
As I have highlighted (hopefully) Arnelos has given us some information as to the production of RP lately. From this we now know (or I just learned if you guys already knew this) the following:
1. RP had the equivalent of a MPP with Lux, but Arny also refers to it as an Alliance. At any rate, they failed to even make an attempt to uphold such an Alliance OR MPP. We can turn this to a possible advantage by divulging this info to ND, or other teams to help inspire distrust of RP at our discression.
2. RP has walled up their cities, at least on the boarder to ND. This may already be apparant by the map (I am unsure if you can see walls without having scouted after they are built)
3. RP is Preparing for a war ALONG THE ND BORDER. From various statements elsewhere in that novel, Arny gives the impression that they expect us to be next, however, so they are preparing for owning 1/2 the continent. Based on this, the original plan for us to swing wide to the east in the original assault may just have them with their pants down along that side.
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