Seperate Discussion: Do we kill the Vox scout?

[notyoueither]

Vox received our message. They ignored it, played the turn, and knowing that we know that they are there their scout popped up on our border.

A fairly common thing in DG diplomacy is to ask that units stay away from borders as a token of peace.

There is no peace atm, other than an mechanic of the game.

If the scout moves onto our borders where one of our warriors can kill it, do we do so?

As a matter of fact, would war stop the trade route and prevent Hinduism from jumping to EotS?

[notyoueither]

Perhaps we could warn them that we consider the tile adjacent to our borders to be ours and that units moving there will be killed if we feel it to our advantage.

[Blake]

You know I do believe that war would stop the spread of religion.

[Mudhut]

So here is my list of all the things to consider:

Killing the scout:
1. Restrict's Vox's exploration (good)
2. Tells Vox that we don't like them (bad?)
3. Warns them that we might attack them in the future (bad?)
4. Prevents spread of religion via the river? (good)

Anything else to consider?

[notyoueither]

We could even tell Vox that the war was nothing personal, it's simply we really don't want their religion.

That would certainly slow down their scouts.

[Arrian]

Well, declaring war on them and whacking their scout pretty much deep-sixes any hope of peaceful relations with Vox.

I agree with the advantages of killing the scout, but... do we really want a war, perhaps perpetual, with our first neighbor?

-Arrian

[Blake]

Well consider this.

If (when) the worst happens and their religion spreads to our capital and they switch to the religion, they gain a significant intel/tactical advantage over us. To the point where it'll probably be impossible to wage a sucessful war against them, our moves are revealed and our weaknesses glaring.

This is simply not a strong position for us to be in.

We have a few options:
1) Become religious allys. The main problem is we would be in the weaker position.
2) Become religious allys but bargain for a stronger position, say the conditions are open borders and full right of passage for our scouts; if they see us, we get to see them. Use the threat of a costly and prolonged war if they don't agree. Use the security argument to justify it.
3) Attempt to destroy or weaken them. Does it even need to be said that this will prove difficult, with them being Catherine? And this will need to be done as soon as possible after being infected because they gain knowledge of our movements and can respond.

In terms of pre-emptive things we can do:
1) We can commit to a full war of aggression (ie a choke with the intention of eventually taking their capital).
2) We can declare war but declare it an isolationist policy essential for our security.


The best strategies would seem to be:
1) Do the whole offensive choke thing.
2) Declare war and an isolationist policy, at least until we gain our own holy city.
3) Wait for religion to spread to us and then bargian for a full alliance, if they refuse, we follow through with our threat of war ASAP.

I think we can agree we don't want to be some kind of junior partner in a religious alliance, nor be stuck in a weak position with a hostile neighbour. So we need to take initiative.

[Ennet]

Vox made contact with us, but did not write any message of any kind to greet us, nor did they reply to the greeting we sent them. They also moved their scout away so that we 1) would have a harder time to understand where they come from, 2) maybe even not notice we had made contact 3) give them the chance to explore our borders for another turn.
Yes ofcourse everyone want information about their opponents, but ignoring our message to gain another one or two turns of scouting of our borders seems hostile enought to me. If they are so desperate to gain intell on our starting position they are defenatly not foreign to a future war.
I doubt they would actually go inside our cultural borders but i dont doubt they would try to gain another move alongside our cultural borders.
We should defenatly as suggested by nye tell them we consider any move next to our cultural border hostile and maybe even any scouting of the immideate areas to the north and east of our capital.
If they "miss" this message aswell and make another move along our border we for sure know they have hostile intentions, and even if they dont i would still consider to trigger the ingame war mechanism to avoid the spread of their religion to our capital. (Ofcourse this would only be a war in the means of the game mechanics i dont mean we should really go to war with them)
Im also for killing the scout if he stays in the area. Yes the act would show some hostility towards them but at the same time it would stop them from further exploration of our land and therefor leave them blank to a lot of our starting position and also tell them we are ready for them should they consider an attack against our nation in the near future, which may make them think twice about any attempts to rush us or send out pillagers..

[Cort Haus]

I don't think their scout can enter our borders without a DoW or a RoP agreement. I agree that their silence is a hostile act, and we should tell them this, but I doubt we'll be able to kill their scout, which can outrun us.

A very early war with Vox would slow us down at best relative to all the other civs (if they're not doing the same), but creative civs are a PITA to share a border with. In SP I spend all my time building culture to hold my borders against these guys - especially if they have an early religion.

[vmxa1]

I suspect they are well aware that we can do little to their scout and are tweaking our noses. We really will only have one choice if we want to stop it and they want it to continue and that is to take them down as a two move unit will always get away from a one move unit.

So we can demand and hope, but little else at this time.

[Arrian]

Impotent demands are bad, m'kay. Not only do they piss people off, but they tend to highlight one's impotence.

The wildcard here is the religion thing. I don't like the idea of them getting line-of-sight on EotS. Are we SURE that war will prevent religion spread? If so, it's worth considering, and we can even try the "we're only doing it for that reasons" angle in diplo. If not, war now is rather pointless.

I'm ok with the medium-term plan of a skirmisher choke, though.

-Arrian

[Blake]

I don't think I've ever seen religion spread in an Always War game.

[Arrian]

Hmm. Difficult to prove a negative. Any reason to believe that always war changes the religion spread mechanic?

Damn them for beating us to Polytheism. Casus Belli!

-Arrian

[Dominae]

You do not need a Trade Route for Religion to spread, although it does spread more easily if said route exists. I'm not entirely sure a state of war prevents Religion from spreading. I have contacted many civs on other continents through Religion, so my intuition is that even war does not stop it.

---

One thing to keep in mind regarding our diplomatic relations with Vox is that they are our closest neighbors, and as far as we know this relationship is reciprocal. In previous demogames we entertained the idea of a peaceful partnership (mainly, a tech trading deal), to our mutual advantage. I think experience has demonstrated that this is not a realistic expectation for very close neighbors unless there is a third close neighbor nearby. Thus it's my intuition that we will be at war with Vox sooner than later no matter what.

Assuming this is the case, let's explore the pros/cons of an early rush/choke compared to a slower buildup-then-conquer strategy.

If we declare war right away, we put them on the defensive and essentially dictate the engagement due to the power of our Skirmishers. We also (possibly) destroy one of their Scouts and (possibly) prevent the spread of their Religion to our capital. Since the map is balanced, we can assume that they will have access to metals or horses, meaning that if we wait to attack we run the risk of meeting equally powerful troops; rushing now may allow us to cover their strategics. Finally, since we're Spiritual and they are not, we have the Civic advantage of being able to switch to Slavery in a single turn and abuse that for fun and profit.

If we wait and build up first, we remain neutral while gaining more information (through scouting), information that could potentially affect our decision to attack at all; they might hook up Copper much more quickly than we would like, for instance. By remaining neutral we maintain a certain level of moral high ground with respect to the other teams; if you rush in a demogame you are generally less trusted, at least for a short while. By waiting we also leverage our (presmuably) superior knowledge of the Civ4 economic system, eventually outpacing them as we did in the PTWDG.

I'm going to vote for the Skirmisher rush.

Does this mean we should hit the Scout if the opportunity arises? Not necessarily. By outright attacking right away we give them the chance to react and build up their defenses before we can reach them. They might, for example, go for Archery or Bronze Working earlier than they otherwise would have. The potential surprise value of two Skirmishers on their border is thus reduced. Then again, the loss of their Scout actually helps us stay under the radar, assuming of course that their Religion does not spread to our cap.

[Dominae]

By the way, there's also the option of ignoring their Religion altogether and just play our best economic buildup game. They cannot realistically attack us because of our Skirmishers, and I seriously doubt that their land is significantly better than ours. Yes, line of sight to our cap will give them an intelligence advantage, but we may be able to offset it by an economic advantage.

Also, we can keep our goings on relatively secret by leaving our capital mostly empty: whenever we build a new unit, we can move it out of range on the same turn, and Vox will never be the wiser.