25-12-2002 19:51									#1
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Certainly everyone else is thinking conquest or, perhaps, space race victory. I see another path to victory entirely -- diplomatic. By that, I don't mean building the U.N., although that may be how we win in the end. I truely believe that the team with the best diplomacy will win this game.

Each team begins on an equal footing. We all have astute CivIII players and plenty of experience. No one has a clearly better team than anyone else, except perhaps us.

We have the greatest diplomatic minds of any team.

I long to find the other teams quickly so that we can begin to establish and manipulate the geo-political alliances that will soon form. All of the isolationist civs will die off first, as will the unpopular or equally hated civs. The civs who work together to remove the competition or to protect each other will survive to the end game.

Legoland is a bit more trustworthy than most, but all of the others are on equal footing. They all want to win. All of them will attack us if they see an edge. None is more of a danger than the others. Gow is equally as dangerous as Lux, Vox, Storm, and Dem.

We need to figure out who of the 5 is most likely to work with us to remove a common threat. If possible, we should work with multiple nations. Once a threat is removed, we look to focusing the allies to removing another common threat. We change alliances if necessary. If one nation becomes too powerful we paint them as the common threat and focus the other nations against them.

All of our ambassadors should try to get their nation to open up and "play ball" with us. It is too early in the game to determine who will become our greatest friend, but we need to sew the seeds of a future friendship now. We also should begin planning who might be the first "victim" we set our allies upon.

For my money, the first victim should be a close nation to us that doesn't want to cooperate with our diplomatic efforts. We will most likely gang up with GoW to destroy them, as GoW has already demonstrated a willingness to "play ball" and they should be an easy enough nation to destroy in a Grand Alliance in the future.

My top 3 victims thus far: Neu Dem, Storm, Lux.

Neu Dem -- because they're a threat to GoW and they're getting a huge diplomatic advantage with scouts that they're not even using ... yet.

Storm -- Too many "ringers" and their likely early rush strat.

Lux -- Too many egos and an isolationist policy = 0 friends.

--Togas

	25-12-2002 22:02									#2
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One thing that we need to remember, about GoW, is that they are claming to be Mercenaries. They also claim that they will keep what ever contracts that they make.

THe problem with Mercenaries is that, IF the price is high enough, WILL break a contract and stab the back of the nation that had made their original Contract. If the Price is high enough, the Reputation Hit that they will get won't matter.

We need to tread lightly with them and make sure that they don't get into that type of position...

E_T

	25-12-2002 22:40									#3
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How would work a mercenary economy ? Building units, consistently and only, and upgrading full speed, and being paid either in gold or in techs. The client economy would save the cost of building an army, and devote this saving to commerce and research. Could work brilliantly in theory, but politically inacceptable, the client becoming totally dependant of the mercenary civ for his security.

	25-12-2002 23:01									#4
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All civs will pay a particular attention 1/ to their immediate neighbours to assess if they are an immediat threat or a potential prey, 2/ to the civ becoming dominant, and therefore a future threat.

The problem of the low profile is to appear strong enough not to be tempting, but without reaching the top ranks. Practically it means that we should build potential power (for instance much more barracks that the size of our army requires, late upgrading, etc).

	25-12-2002 23:43									#5
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I agree with Señor E_T. GoW probably will backstab us if someone pays them more. But I also believe that we should pretend that we agree with them, specially if the alternative is a direct attack. This is a dangerous politic game, but is probably what better suits us and definitely better than the alternative of being "nice and clear" and stating from the first moment we don't trust in them and suffer their attack.

I also agree with lord Togas than Legoland and us are probably the only two teams that prefer a non-warmongering victory, and this converts us in natural allies. They are the ones in which we can trust more (never trust completely an oponent) and would be nice if the later game was a race with them to complete the spaceship.

Said that, we must use active diplomacy while keeping a big army for the worst case. Otherwise we would have to be really lucky to win, and even survive.

	26-12-2002 08:05									#6
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I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY with Togas' reasoning above. We must make everyone friends and then work to eliminate those powers which we see are either unwilling to play ball with us now or we figure are unwilling to live peacably and stabily in a configuration of future civs.

Legoland is a natural ally not because we have reason to not believe they are a threat - indeed they are our GREATEST threat precisely because their policies are as easily adaptable to those of others as are our own. Our advantage over Legoland is that Legoland is going isolationist rather the openly pursuing diplomatic engagement as we have. That advantage may quickly fade, however.

What talking we have done about targets (and I have done as one who originally forwarded the goal of eliminating all civs who were unwilling to live in peace with some configuration of other civs) has been based upon educated guesswork as to which teams will likely fit this bill: ones which would be sources of instability.

In terms of sources of instability, the prime "problems" (and thus I believe what will likely be our main opponents):

Glory of War
Gathering Storm

Unknown how bad they may be:

Lux Invicta
Vox Controli
Neu Demogyptica

Likely to join with us in attempting to raise the stability of the game (but still compete with us rather fiercely in other ways):

Legoland

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Of all three "unknowns", Vox Controli seems to be veering strongly toward being another factor for instability along with Glory of War and Gathering Storm. Neu Demogyptica is very hard to pinpoint, but they're likely to be seen as a target by all of the war-bent Apolyton teams because they have so little connection (and seemingly no willingness to build one) to any other team. Diplomatic isolation is the equivalent of the buzzards already circing the would-be corpse in a game like this.

Lux Invicta faces a similar problem of self-imposed diplomatic isolation, but I think that they might POTENTIALLY be workable into a stable long-term framework. My reasoning is that Lux Invicta seems to be risk-averse... and an aversion to risk is PRECISELY what is required for a team (whether it is more to their advantage or not) to live within a relatively stable international system w/o "tipping the boat" or stirring up too much trouble. So even though they might have dreams of conquering others, they (at least) wouldn't dare to go through with such plans if they can clearly see that it could be suicide to try it. This is why I think that even though they are likely to be a fierce long-term opponent, they might make a fantastic partner against the likes of Gathering Storm, Glory of War, and Vox Controli. That they seem diplomatically isolated only strengthens the case, as it gives us the opportunity to perhaps even be their SOLE close friend

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THE VERY SHORT TERM:

I agree with Togas that, in the very short-term, it is quite likely that one team will die and it is most likely that the team which dies is one that has been dumb enough to comit self-imposed diplomatic isolation. The most likely candidates seem to be Neu Demogyptica (for reasons I've stated above), Lux Invicta (the reasons Togas cited), and Vox Controli (their players are less known to the rest of us from Apolyton and they've gone archaic over approachable).

It's also POSSIBLE that an "unpopular" team like Glory of War could be the first to go down just because so many of their neighbors agree to take them down before any of them become GoW's first target (this is entirely possible). Expect some of the other war-bent teams to beat the drums for an allied campaign against Glory of War if they neighbor GoW because then the war-bent team gets to conquer another civ (GoW) and for it seem a public service at the same time.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO IN THE EVENT OF A EARLY WAR:

We should either join in on this early campaign or fail to do so in accordance with our own short-term security (will the result of this conflict create a large power that could threaten us or will it rather leave multiple weakened states? We should support hte latter as the outcome) and our long-term stability interests (if given the choice between one of two teams being wiped out, we'll always pick the greater threat to long-term stability to be the one wiped out).

The same reasoning should affect decisions of whether we should enter a conflict AT ALL (along with the fact that staying out of a conflict we have nothing to gain from could mean that OUR military remains intact and even that we may grow it stronger while other militaries are dying on the fields of battle - as well as build our infrastructure while other civs' production is being spent on military units that die on the fields of battle).

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That about covers it (I think).

	26-12-2002 08:20									#7
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As for an Early War, look to the participants to try to attain a GL AND get the HE. They will want to have the ability to become GL Factories, if at all possible.

Because of this, you can bet that the more militaristic Civs will attempt to get the Great Library, so that they aren't as dependent on the outside trades for techs. THis will also fit well with a GL Factory concept. You have a GL ready, you get the tech for a Wonder, let the others build on it to where they loose sheilds, rush the Wonder and start a war to Replace the GL, for the next Wonder.

I think (it's possible) that GoW's talk of ND is a scare tactic that is to try to get us (or someone else) to pay for a very early war, so that they can get this all set up.

E_T

	26-12-2002 09:45									#8
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What happens if they all decide to turn on us first as the easiest and closest target?

Can you also be more descriptive about the personalities of the other teams? Being someone who has just started to try playing at Regent level in Civ3 (i.e. the 3rd level) I don’t know their personalities all that well. Why are the Storms ringers? Who are the egos in Lux? I know ND is completely foreign and Vox is likely completely amateur.

Last edited by pikesfan on 26-12-2002 at 09:51

	26-12-2002 09:50									#9
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Oh well, at least I can contribute by distracting the other teams with my role-playing and smilie-using skills, and also because I’m so