T3 External Consulate - Saving Shanghai?

We are of course at war with France & Portugal. Both civs declared war on us. We’ve taken from the French the former Chinese cities of Tsingtao and Shanghai. Now Shanghai is threatened by both the French and the Portuguese. In Shanghai we have our army (in diminished health: 2/13); one healthy knight and one unhealthy (1/4) knight. The Portuguese have 2 Vet Ancient Calvary, 1 regular Sword, and within one square 1 Regular Archer. The French have a vet Archer and a regular Longbow.

It’s likely we’ll lose the city unless we make peace with Portugal and/or the French. We still have a MA against the French with Persia which runs another 11 turns, so we’d prefer not to break that (although the French will give us 66 gold & 28 GPT for peace). Portugal is willing to make peace straight up: they won’t give anything other than peace, nor do they demand from us anything other than peace.

Portugal will also give us peace, 65 gold, & a MA against France if we give them Monotheism. Monotheism doesn’t have much value, and having Portugal attack the French forces near Shanghai does have considerable value to us IMO.

I suggest we make peace with Portugal, take their 65 gold, and form a MA against the French in exchange for us giving Portugal Monotheism. We aren't ready to war on the Portuguese homeland soon, so making peace doesn't hurt us. And the MA allows us to continue to punish the French.

Thoughts?

Hmmm I was sure the Portuguese would pay us a few gold for Peace, but obviously not and my Civ has crashed and I can't reload unless I reboot , but a MA with the Portuguese against the French, now that would be interesting, Ancient Cavalry v Crusaders. It was ONE Crusader that knocked our Army from 10/13 to 2/13 by the way. We should be able to cope with the French, we just can't get enough units there quickly to cope with them both.

I'm in favor of the MA against France. Let us allow them to use up their free units attacking each other. Perhaps we can even get in position to capture Paris during the next 20 turns and get our own Crusaders.

If we don't make peace with Portugal, we're likely to loose Tsingtao as well. (I would probably order the army to flee back to Ratopia, and quite possibly all other units as well.)

There is little to gain from continued war vs Portugal, so making peace is the right thing to do IMO. I like the alliance with Portugal vs France, it will weaken both severely. I am not sure of the consequences of tying it up with the peace deal. Does that mean immediate war when the alliance is broken?

Another option would be to gift the 2 cities to someone while we re-group. I would suggest the Dutch as we will be ready for offensive action very soon. I believe that most of our units would teleport back to Camelot for a brief parade in front of Madame President.

I merely present this as an option. I am still in favor of peace with the Dutch in exchange for an MA vs France.

I do believe that it will mean war if the alliance is cancelled by either party prior to the 20 turns. It would also mean that after 20 turns peace would come up for negotiation automatically. We would need to be ready at that time to either decide on another 20 turns of peace or on war with Portugal again.

MOTH said:

I believe that most of our units would teleport back to Camelot for a brief parade in front of Madame President.

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I thought that all units were lost?

When you gift a city the units teleport to the capitol. They are only lost when the city flips on its own.

You learn something new everyday. Whenever I rarely gift a city, I always moved the troops out for fear of losing them!

Well, fear no more.

I say, make peace with portugal, or evac the city. the army is too important to lose. I am only in favor of the MA against france if we intend to wage war against them for the next 20 turns (or until they die)

MOTH said:

It would also mean that after 20 turns peace would come up for negotiation automatically. We would need to be ready at that time to either decide on another 20 turns of peace or on war with Portugal again.

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Moth, is this correct? I thought unless one side or the other made a point of renegotiating the peace, that the peace would continue on a turn-by-turn basis unless one side made a point of renegotiating peace (as we did with India to learn a tech). For instance, our 20-turn peace with the Netherlands has long since expired; yet we're still at peace with them, and the "current deals" trade screen doesn't show that there are turns left on the agreement.

It depends on what is tied to the peace deal. As the MA vs France and the Peace deal are one trade then they must be negotiated togather. You are correct in that we could run the deal past 20 turns if Portugal is willing. If Portugal decides they don't want the MA any longer after the 20 turns then a straight up Peace deal would have to be negotiated. If we tied in GPT to the peace deal then Portugal would be nearly guarenteed to want to renegotiate after the 20. With just an MA it is less likely.

I doubt that Portugal will stay at war with France for 20 turns anyways so they are most likely going to break the deal and we will be at war with Portugal again at that point.

We should have plenty of military options at that point on how to deal with both France and Portugal.

Moth,

Thanks for explaining this; what you say makes sense.

We're going to be at war again with Portugal, so if they break the deal it's OK. We should have sufficient military ready to roll by the time they do so.

The Peace and Alliance worked. The Portuguese took out several French units and we saved Shanghai! We then captured Nanking after the Portuguese killed many of the French troops including another Crusader.