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vulture
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Leeds, UK
Jun 2001
time: 05:36
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I think 4 civs with roughly equal territory can be stable. 3 civs almost never is, since there is always the threat of an easy victory from a 2 on 1 beating. No-one wants to be on the wrong side of that, so teams tend to want to get in early to make sure they are part of the 2, rather than the 1. And in principle, 2 on 1 wars should be relatively simple. So since the outcome for the 2 is very likely, and very desirable, things tend to shake out pretty quickly, even when all the civs have enough room.
2 civs can obviously be stable as long as they both have enough room to be competitive. Likewise 4, where there is no inevitability about a one-sided war. If starting placements are unequal (as on Bob, PTWDG) then war may be inevitable because 2 or more civs are just going to be hopelessly cramped. But otherwise, there is a tendency for a 2 v 1 alliance to become 2 v 2, although it does depend a lot on diplomacy. Witness the great Bob war of PTWDG, where RP was pretty much hated by GoW, ND and GS (sorry Arnie...). If ever there was a situation for a 3 on 1, this was it. But GoW and ND, already having a stable alliance, figured they didn't need the third party, and weren't prepared to offer anything worth mentioning in return for our help. RP, understanding the hole they were in, were prepared to offer a lot more. Hence we ended up with a 2 v 2 war. And that is the problem - the victim in a 2 v1 can always outbid the 2 to get the alliegance of the 4th civ - it's just a question of how much the 2 are prepared to offer to secure alliegance or neutrality, how much hostility there is between the various civs, and whether the victim is fully aware of the trouble they are in.
1 v1 wars on a 4 civ continent can only really happen early in the game, since once decent transport is available, a civ that sends all its forces to attack a neighbour is extremely vulnerable to being whacked by its neighbour in turn.
So I think our continent is pretty stable. The only place I see a limited war as being possible is if we and Tabemono decide to prune the LL holdings this side of the chokepoint - they are very hard to defend, and would be more productive for us and Tabemono anyway. We'd have little hope of getting past the chokepoint though. And we'd have to come to a good arrangement with Sunshine first to get them on board (IIRC LL is one of the stronger powers at the moment, so they might be content to see a redistribution of power to make things more equitable).
So unless Tabemono and us get together to plan something, I don't see any wars coming up soon. If LL do decide to attack either of us, I suspect it will be 2 on 1 pretty quickly (what kind of diplomatic state to we have with Tabemono to try and assure us that they won't stand by in the event of a LL attack? Could we get a purely anti LL MPP with them?)
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25-05-2004 18:08
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