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Fried-Psitalon
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Not just another pretty face.
Dec 2002
time: 00:26
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*RP* on.
UG! Urrr..GRUH! GRUH UG UG! EEEEROK! BASH! BASH GROK EEERUG!
*RP* off.
Right, sorry, better wait until we're more evolved to try that.
In this discussion with Persia I've noticed a "let's cooperate and be friendly" sort of attitude, and usually that's a pretty good idea. In fact, I'd suggest that (at least immediately) any trades and generally friendly attitudes we can assume is a good thing.... in the same sense that if someone is looking at your smile, they don't see the dagger coming out from your cloak.
I'd also suggest we consider a slightly less friendly approach as soon as we can. Numidian Mercenaries are *NOT* strictly defensive units. They are pillagers and harassers. Two "Nummies," built relatively early, and sent to garrison Persian land, could have a devastating effect on Persia- particularly if they DO find iron - trying to get a Nummie off a hill with an Archer is not fun, particularly if there are two such Nummies. We could extract "taxes" for our removal.
Okay, fine, behind walls Immortals are not particularly dangerous to us. They *ARE* still the most dangerous thing out there, though, and are we content to merely sit behind Persia on our probable peninsula until they have eaten two Civs and can afford to throw staggering units into a butchery to kill us?
No. Carthage is a "Defensive Aggressive" Civ, and if we give Persia breathing room or access to iron, they will surely use that fact to one day drive an Immortal's blade through our throats. Our strongest asset is our ability to deny Persia what they need through the power of our Mercenaries.
I propose that we should in fact be friendly with Persia early. I propose we find out exactly what resources ARE under their control. Then I propose that either our second or third city be used as a military installation to cripple Persia BEFORE they get Iron and Barracks. Make no mistake, as time progresses, it is WE that should fear Persia, given our land and our positioning ON land. True, we do not yet know if Persia has grassland, but if they do.... do we want to struggle through jungle and force water through desert while Persia expands happily?
I say not. I say we should begin serious consideration of Diplomacy at swordpoint.
Edit: BACK, foul demons of typos! BACK!
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quote:
Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
I'd also suggest we consider a slightly less friendly approach as soon as we can. Numidian Mercenaries are *NOT* strictly defensive units. They are pillagers and harassers. Two "Nummies," built relatively early, and sent to garrison Persian land, could have a devastating effect on Persia- particularly if they DO find iron - trying to get a Nummie off a hill with an Archer is not fun, particularly if there are two such Nummies. We could extract "taxes" for our removal.
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The only problem I'd have with that is we may help set off an early GA for us; which we dearly want to prevent. In MP games that are on-line this is not even considered a problem since games are pretty short and rarely last long enough for your Civ to emerge from the Ancient Times and make a dent into the Middle Ages.
This game will go for quite a while; we hope at least. To have our GA at a later stage would be a better use of resources. If we could get to Monarchy or even Republic before this happens it would be a great benefit.
The rest of your post has merit based upon whether or not the Persian's want to get nasty with us or not. We may not have a choice and an early GA will be forced upon us.
BTW; Welcome to the team. 
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:26
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Fried-Psitalon, I'm impressed. I like your style, and I can see why you've been so successful.
That having been said I disagree. 
The biggest part of this game is diplomacy. Ignore diplomacy, and risk losing trading partners and allies in the world. This is a point that I can't reiterate enough, so I won't bother. I will let the continental PTW DG posse come and back me up on this one. Trust me... extortion is bad for diplomacy in the long run. Especially now and in our situation. Other teams will get suspicious, thinking we're opportunistic (wouldn't you think that?), and would be less likely to trade with us, and especially to give us valuable knowledge, along the lines of maps, new contacts, etc.
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Fried-Psitalon
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Not just another pretty face.
Dec 2002
time: 00:26
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Okay, screw extortion then. Let's shut them down altogether. Unless Persia has land as poor as ours, as the game goes on, they are certain to become stronger than us. If we stick our foot in their face now, we may slow them down enough to get far enough ahead to insure ourselves a place of power.
I understand what you're saying about the importance of Diplomacy- I do recognize its VERY considerable power - but the simple fact is: Our land is BAD. If we don't take aggressive actions, in the long run, our land will betray us and we'll be a second-rate power. Worse, if Persian land is considerably better AND they have iron, the smart Persian goes for an early war. Why not? Should they wait until their Immortals are obsolete? If they're smart, they won't. Particularly if they find out we have crummy land, they may recognize that our best hope of WINNING is in expansion.
I think we need to get a good look at Persian land quickly, and make a call one way or another. To be successful in the short term, we need peace.
To WIN, we may need war. There are 6 other Civs to ally with out there, and we can always say THEY struck first. 
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:26
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Fried-Psitalon, I think you need to slow the gears in your head down a bit. 
People are in this game for the long run to have fun. That's 8 months, 10 months, a year, a year and a half. The game will not be won or lost on a huge risky attack like that. As MoW, I can tell you attacking Carthage, tucked away in a jungle with NMs and not knowing what their rear contains is far too risky for a game of this nature.
This game will be won or lost with diplomacy. Even if we succeed in taking them out, then what? All their neighbors will suck up their land, so instead of having one neighbor with a fair amount of power, now we have 2/3 neighbors that are much stronger than average. Then what? We cannot colonize beyond the jungle for a very long time. Even then, there's no way we can control all of the land that they have in their sphere of influence.
So how do we win? Not for a very long time. Probably with allies. We must split them off diplomatically, try giving us the moral edge. Make friends near them. Over time, we trump up a case against them, then launch Cavalry. Bam... Cav rush from both sides. Let's see someone stop that.
Basically, the game isn't nearly so linear as in SP. The possibilities of what might happen are endles. Hell, someone else could come by and attack them, or even attack us. The game is too fluid to devote ourself to attacking them offensively unless we know we have the upper hand, and can use it. Going into war baselessly will destroy your diplomacy, destroy your economy, and there's a strong chance it could destroy your military as well...
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Dominae
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I'm quite glad to have Trip on my side for this one.
Fried-Psitalon, there has been a lot of discussion on this point in this forum already, but I'll summarize most of it for your benefit (Trip has done a good job in the above posts, too).
First, this is not an internet MP game. You do not "win" by taking out your nearest neighbor and doubling your land mass. Teams will be playing this one to the end.
Second, the teams that trade peacefully will go up the tech tree faster, and will simply laugh at the warmongers when they reach Industrial while everyone else is stuck around Gunpowder. Even if one civ is comparatively huge next to two other peacefully co-existing neighbors, it is at a disadvantage. For one, it gets more Corruption than the smaller civs. Also, it would effectively need to have double the research rate of the other civs combined, which (even if Corruption is not a factor) is simply not going to happen. Thus the two "weaker" civs will ally against the big one when the time comes, and trounce over it with their heavier guns.
Third, I like to think that our Mercs. are best used as deterrents to war, rather than for war itself. I would be happy if we triggered our GA well into Medieval age, when a peaceful neighbor sacrifices a poor Warrior to one of our Mercs. We've got a nice toy, but that does not mean we need to use it. The best part is that the Merc. is useful for so long that we may end up using it way down the line, so it's potential use is actually quite high.
Fourth, our lands do suck, but that's a better reason to "peace out" and take the time cut down that Jungle. Sure, we could try to conquer Persia (and maybe fail), but what would have then? Some nice city-sites relatively far away from our capital. Not a good scene unless we get a Great Leader. And, by the way, one of my Civ3 mantras is "Never expect a Great Leader" (alonside "You want a piece of me!??!", but this one is reserved for SP play).
Dominae
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Aeson
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orangesoda
Nov 2001
time: 22:26
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I could see early warfare as helpful in our case. Points for it:
- They may not have Iron, we don't necessarily need Iron to be effective.
- If we 'win' it's likely they have weakened us in the 'middle' run. This may sound stupid, but in respect to how other civs may react to us in such a case, we won't be the giant everyone fears. We stand to win (or lose) the Jungle, which isn't going to strike fear into the hearts of any neighbors on better land. It does have lots of potential though.
Problems I see with it:
- CDG will almost surely see the Iron before we do. Assuming they do have Iron. They could have it hooked up before we can even get there, with a Spear on it for protection.
- Even if we win (cut off their Iron, eventually destroy them), CDG can react like Lux did, scorched earth. If there is a S or W neighbor, they are just as likely to claim the land as we are.
- CDG is on the southern edge of the Jungle and is Industrious. Their land immediately surrounding them isn't going to be much if any better unless they have a river running through their desert. Two teams will clear the Jungle roughly twice as fast, increasing the potential of the land.
- We may be alone with them on the landmass. We kill our trading partner, and if it's astronomy/navigation before other landmasses make contact... game over unless someone takes pity on us. We can suicide galleys, but that doesn't always turn out well. Our first one can make it, or it can be our 10th. A trading partner means we'd be relatively close in tech throughout the Middle Ages, as it's almost perfectly set up for a 2 partner deal. CDG's free tech would help as they are the only Scientific civ in the game. (Am I forgetting someone?)
- If they have a southern neighbor on strong terrain, CDG may be our best friend. Let them be our buffer while we improve our land. It isn't that bad, it just needs some time. Again, CDG probably isn't on terrain that is much better.
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Dominae
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Fried-Psitalon, keep that warmonger enthusiasm in reserve for when we the time comes to really unleash our fury upon the world! Sort of like "reformed warmonger" in reverse.
Dominae
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Trip
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Hunt Valley
Apr 2002
time: 00:26
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quote:
Originally posted by Master Zen
The problem Trip is how do you know they're not planning to kick our @ss with Immortals? If they get iron, trust they will think about it and if they see the precariousness of our position, I for one, would not discard it. |
Keeping them from scouting our peninsula is part of preventing them from realizing how precarious our position is. If they don't know we don't have 8 cattle and hills with 5 iron up there, then it would be too big of a risk for them to attack us, especially since A) we'd be defending, which is much easier than attacking, and B) we have NMs, which are very very powerful Ancient Age units.
quote:
My diplomatic instinct tells me CDG will definitely act nice right now, trade everything etc. since they know we will have an earlier window of opportunity to crush them if we want. As time pases, and if they get iron, CDG will only grow stronger, especially if terrain is favorable to them. |
As time goes on? Do you mean 50 turns in the future? By then, we'll have as many NMs as they'll have Immortals, and their UU advantage is balanced out by our own.
quote:
Everyone here is out there to win. Having fun is a secondary objective. I have no doubt that CDG will try everything to knock us out if they have the chance because the know what we are capable of. |
That may be true, but gambling so early, with the chance of leaving the game so soon, is very much out of the question if the odds are too great.
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Fried-Psitalon
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Not just another pretty face.
Dec 2002
time: 00:26
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Just to kick in a comment: remember that even the idea of WAR isn't neccessarily a straightforward idea. War doesn't mean "Go in, attack their cities, stomp their children beneath our feet." War can also mean:
"Go in, stand on hills and force them to double-guard any settler that comes out, keep their workers in, and waste time building archers which are highly likely to lose when they attack us camped out on hills, wasting even more time and resources."
My notion wasn't to crush the Persian cities already in existence- it was to choke Persian development so much that LATER, when we are so far ahead of Persia because we DID choke them down for so long, we can simply flex our hands and wipe them out. This is a tactic that I've used many times... and it really doesn't require that much effort - Num Mercs lend themselves to this very well.
I'm also worried that if we get bottled up on this pathetic corner of land, the above (via careful border-control by Persia) is exactly what will happen to US.
That's also why I said we need to know more about Persia's land, asap.... if we're looking at an iron-mining Persia, I think we might want to look more seriously at the idea. If we're looking at Persia on an island alone with us, we want to look less seriously at it. We wouldn't be able to launch our Numidian Choke for around 20 turns (Maybe a bit more, Chokes aren't the job of regulars, it's a job for Vets) so we'd have time to get that information together before making a decision anyway.
::shrug:: Just clarifying what I originally thought, since it seems that people have a different notion of the objective of the war I had in mind. If we find another ally quickly, the notion of stunting Persia for awhile, then swooping in to kill them when it suits us (say ,right after Code of Laws or Republic so we can actually use Persepolis/Elucidia) still seems a pretty good one.
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14-03-2003 17:21
. Indiana Jones hates snakes. Master Zen hates immortals. 
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