Operation: Glorious Plastic

[vondrack]

Big news from Aggie:

Could you send iron this turn again. I didn't accept it last turn so I could slip in another turn of horse.
There is excellent news this turn. GS decided to move their 19 Knights toward Pamploma. They never made it, all were destroyed. ND lost 4 ansar and we lost 1 Rider. Additionally ND got a GL. We were very fortunate. Well thats the big news, but talk to you later.

Patrick

[Tiberius]

I wonder what will they do with the GL. They don't really have good wonders available (Oracle, Great Library, The Hanging Gardens, and the Sistine - but they are not allowed to build the later).

[vondrack]

They will probably use it to build an army (a "Pamplona cracker") or save it for their FP - keep in mind that they will need to redistribute the land after winning the war. In a major way.

[Tiberius]

Thank God they don't have Music Theory or Astronomy

You are right. Probably an army or the FP (or a palace).

[vondrack]

Right. We can only thank ourselves we haven't rushed to gift our techs with no good reason.

Also - note that even after losing 19 knights, GS is still strong to us!

[redstar1]

wow, 19 knights!!!!

Have ND/GOW got cruise missiles??

[vondrack]

Well, this is why I believe our involvement in the war might have been decisive or extremely important. It was us delivering the gunpowder basically for free (our current gold contribution more than balances what we received from ND/GoW for it), saving GoW/ND ~1150g, providing them with a key military tech significantly improving their defense against offensive GS units.

1150 gold is almost 20 ansar or 15 rider upgrades. That's why they are able to cover both their East (not mentioning we tip the balance there with our own forces), while maintaining a strong presence in the South. That's why GoW/ND can even attempt attacking a 19-knight stack of GS... even if they failed, they would have sufficient reserves.

I am almost getting scared by how smoothly our plans come true... this cannot last forever...

[ZargonX]

19 knights down and STILL strong vs. us? Cripes... I don't even want to know what kind of forces they have back on Estonia, then...

[vondrack]

Alright, this is what I sent to Aggie in the morning:

Awesome news! (it still amazes me, though, that even after losing 19 knights, GS is still strong to us... what a monster they must be! ) Congratulations on your stunning victory!

Aggie... after opening the save, we have spotted 6 vet knights and 4 vet pikes of GS on the coastal mountain we were supposed to seize. Is this part of the (retreated?) stack recently positioned SE-SE of Yellowknife or are those (as I assume) reinforcements landed last turn? We will probably move all our knights to the hill SW of the mountain - they will have the best cover there, while being able to strike everywhere this (new?) GS stack might move.

Either way... we received a very long communication from GS. They seem to be on the verge of quitting from the war (or at least seriously considering it). And I bet the loss of their Army Group South will make them consider it even more. We are doing our best to ensure they withdraw from the Eastern Bob without causing any troubles there.

Cheers,
Radek

P.S.: will resend iron, no problem.

P.P.S.: I will not be able to attend the chat on Thursday (I am going to Nuremberg Thursday morning, back only on Friday late night. Whatever you may need, we will have to handle via PMs or a separate chat before I leave.

And Aggie's response I have just received:

That sounds good. The force you see is the remains of the force that was threatening yellowknife. Apparently they have withdrawn 6 knights (maybe to warp south, by city gifting). The sense I got from GS during negotiations is that they wanted a way out, with them keeping land on bob. They actually said the war was launched to get them a presence on Bob.

Best wishes and good luck
Patrick

With GoW agreeing with our LEF move onto the hill and majority of the team happy about our message to GS (I noticed Tibi, redstar, Zargon, and Kloreep expressing support, Leo not objecting anything, despite posting in the thread), I believe we are ready to play the turn now.

[vondrack]

Sorry for the delays, guys, but this time of the year is close to insane for me. But I believe you should know how the Thursday chat worked out - it's nothing that would affect our immediate moves, but something we should be aware of.

I am (probably) not going to post the log this time. It's not a single, easily read log, but 3 separate logs (main chatroom, me & ND, me & Aggie), of which two are sort of "off record", IMO not meant to be posted anywhere. But I think it's perfectly ok if I tell you my overall impression.

Keep in mind that all of this might have been staged. I do not believe it was, but it could have been, with the goal of getting me exactly where I am now (feeling-wise) . If it was staged, then it was near perfect.

The whole thing started earlier that day, when I PMed Darekill & Zayxus about the expiring lux deal. Darekill responded, saying he was looking forward to the chat. And that he wanted to talk about something GoW "did not need to know, at least for that moment".

The main chatroom was busy only for a moment. Darekill informed us about the offer ND made to RPers: leave Pamplona, leave Bob, and keep all your units. RPers, as you could have guessed, responded they felt they'd be doing a "favour" to ND and they'd expect a similar "favour" in return (though this favour was not specified and ND did not bother to ask ). ND told them plainly letting them leave with all their units was a "favour" big enough - and that they had some time to think the proposal over, but that that time was running out fast. Attack at Pamplona was planned for this turn, had the peace talks failed.

Aggie had some more news: GS should be off Bob in 2 turns, according to the schedule submitted to GoW. GS had the balls to offer some of the Spanish cities to GoW (Barcelona).

Then the conversation in the #gow_cofa room kind of faded away... and the rest was happening in separate channels.

First, Darekill invited me into a secret room (he & Zayxus were present). Now, this part of the chat was most interesting: he said they were kind of fearing a backstab from GoW. Because their units were mostly gone to the South and GoW riders scattered across all their empire (because of being en route to the South), ND was nervous about GoW allying with GS, backstabbing. He said ND would be unable to defend and would fall like a fly. He said that out of all teams they've met in the game, we were the most trustfull (not sure, but he might have meant trustworthy) and that if they had no chance to win, they'd want us to win (this is becoming a widespread feeling, I'd say... ). He then asked me a really shocking question - if ND was attacked now and was unable to defend, would we accept all of ND's cities? I took some time to respond... first assuring him that we wanted Bob evenly split between them and GoW, assuring him I knew absolutely nothing suggesting GoW would be planning a backstab, and assuring him Lego was definitely NOT part of any such evil alliance, even if one existed (which I did not and do not believe). Later I told him that gifting cities would not help much, as they would fall to the attackers even easier than if defended with whatever little of their own would be there.

Feeling how distrust is creeping in between GoW and ND. I fired up a private channel with Aggie and started some chitchat, steering the conversation towards the topic of my chat with Darekill. It turned out that GoW was a little concerned about ND talks with GS, too... not as much as ND was about a possible alliance of GoW & GS, but still... I then helped both of them to start talking to each other (in yet another private channel), hopefully rebuilding the trust that was so strong between them. When the chat was ending, at least Darekill sounded a lot less worried than at the beginning, saying they were open with GoW again, feeling much better.

Now, a little summary:

1) GoW & ND are far from being "one civ" - with the final victory at hand, distrust and suspicion are creeping in
2) GS is desperately trying to find an ally, considering us the biggest threat (Aggie said the GS agenda of the day was to get all three of them against us, Darekill said GS told them they should ally with them, otherwise "GoW and Lego would eat them up alive")
3) ND is more friendly towards us than we may believe; though Darekill made it clear that in the "far future" they may be forced to turn against us in order to win - I honestly believe we have nothing to fear from ND, at least in the near future
4) we need to keep our military buildup - several of the possible scenarios (all non-peaceful, to be precise) require a strong military on our side.

5) we should at least hypothetically discuss what we would do if ND was backstabbed within the next few turns

[vondrack]

After seeing Pamplona fallen to GoW last turn, I congratulated GoW & ND informally, expressing my hopes they did not suffer too much losses - from Darekill's and Aggie's responses, it seems it was an amazingly stunning victory. ND lost 4 ansars, GoW lost 1 rider - and that's it! The change in relative strengths is most probably due to the temporary loss of hitpoints - they had LOTS of units down to 1hp (and retreating).

The war is over. They may need few more turns of mopping the remains of RP up, but the war is essentially over.

[lmtoops]

There is a harsh reality, I believe. If ND were to be backstabbed by GoW and GS, our support would not result in ND victory. None the less, I think we would be compelled to support ND. GoW vicious act could not be ignored.

I'm a bit undecided on what GoW will do. On one hand, I don't think they would betray so soon, based on moral grounds. But on the other hand, if GoW plans on winning this would be their best opportunity. GoW riders are ready to strike and ND units are out of position. Hmmmmm.

I don't think direct involvement would be beneficial, except for the current LEFs. We could provide gold for rushes and upgrades. Our first priority must be build up our defenses, then we can see about direct involvement.

We should delay and tech trades with GS until we have some cofidence that there will be no betrayal. At the very least, we should not trade any military techs to GS.

Speaking of the LEFs, where do they go now? I'll have to look at the save to give any input.

[ZargonX]

A GoW backstab of ND is possible, but one backed by GS is less likely, as I see it. There are certain members of GoW who would rather kill themselves than cooperate with GS, from what I understand.

As for Pampelona; wow, those are very small losses! I guess retreat ability really paid of for them that time

[vondrack]

Few more comments on the backstab issue...

In his response to my congratulation notice...

Congratulations!
Hope your losses were acceptable.

And thanks for the luxuries, we are resending dyes this turn.

I hope the chat on Thursday fixed the distrust that was creeping in between you and GoW. As I said, I may be naive sometimes, but I usually judge people correctly by my intuition/feelings - and Aggie is a noble person. He would not backstab an ally like you just for the sake of winning a game (though you are right that there are more GoWers than just Aggie). There is a different kind of honour than the one so often mentioned by GS...

Cheers,
Radek aka vondrack

...Darekill explained he personally never feared a backstab from GoW:

I for myself, did not belive in a treachery of gow. Never.
I'm naive too you know. 40 Years old and still belive in the good side of humans...

But my fellow Neu Demogyptians made me ask you all this stuff just in case. There were even a lot who asked me to turn around our Ansars and crush a deth blow to the Riders in reach just to ensure they don't turn against us. I and Zayxus turned that down. So if anything turns out to get messy I think I'll be eaten alive

Well the battle was lucky for us.

4 Ansars lost.
8 Ansars did win!
The rest retreated.
So if GoW doesn't get all the bad luck we had in form of good luck then Pamplona should be there's soon then it will be ours a turn later....

So, I believe it's more a problem of the less involved members of ND feeling a bit "exposed" to the military might of GoW - if you do not attend the chats, it's more difficult to "get the feeling" about the other party and you are more likely to succumb to your fears, even if they are not justified.

As for our involvement in a potential conflict of GoW+GS vs. ND... my first reaction was that our direct involvement would be the last thing we would want. But after mulling this over for few days, I believe we would have very little choice. Should ND be wiped out, WE would lose the game AS WELL - as simple as that. We would be smaller/weaker than any of the prevailing powers (GoW, GS) - granted, mostly only area/potential-wise at first... but that means that we would, sooner or later, lose the race anyway.

If you look at the production/commerce figures I posted in the Next turn thread, you will see GoW and ND quite likely just about match each other (but GoW has a stronger and much better positioned military ATM). Now throw in GS, that - despite having less than half of our area - still generates more shields/commerce than we do. What would the likely outcome be, if we restricted ourselves to an indirect involvement...?

I am afraid we would have to throw in everything we'd have in a desperate attemp to prevent ND from falling. Because their fall would be an ouverture to our own fall. Perhaps not to our elimination, but it would be the beginning of our (relative) decline.

Hopefully, this will remain only an academic issue. I do not see GoW backstabbing at this moment, however beneficial it might look for them. They must realize that in the hypothetic alliance with GS, it would not be them setting the pace. Plus, as Zargon correctly points out, many on the GoW team hold personal grudges against GS and not even the vision of a grand victory would make them side with that team.

[vondrack]

...fortunately, with Pamplona in the hands of GoW and the war basically over, I believe that things will not go wrong now. ND should need no more than few turns to position their troops properly, preventing a surprise, lethal blow from GoW.

And one more time... I would like to stress that all this talk about GoW backstabbing ND is purely hypothetical. I do not believe it's going to happen in the near future.