The War Council

classical_hero

classical_hero

In whom I trust
Joined
Jan 30, 2003
Messages
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Location
Perth,Western Australia
As time goes in any game, the time gets closer for the need for war grows larger. We have come to a point where it is beneficial for us to start preliminary discussion with the goal of world domination.
 
Very good idea, Classical. We already have quite a few talks/ideas about conquest. It will be good if we have them in one place for further reference/discussion.
 
Well, a summary as I see it:

RB: Nuh-uh. No war. They're our long-term competitor, methinks, the one we have to annex others to outgrow.
WPC: Maybe, if they don't get their affairs in order. But on the whole, they're friendly, wanna keep them around.
The Germans: Much the same as WPC, though I don't think we're gonna be sharing a border.
UCiv: Annoy the heck out of us, and have ORG/Rathaus synergy that we'll want to preemptively counter. A threat mostly because they seem like slightly loose cannons. Tempting target. Would be cathartic to eliminate them.
SpAp: The other tempting targets, mostly due to (it seems) poor management. They seem generally more reliable than UCiv, but the difference is slight and neither is particularly great.
Apolyton, CP, and CivFr: Unknown entities.
 
IMO, SpAp would be the best first target. Here is my reasoning why:
  1. Their reluctance to have a NAP is a serious risk if we are to go to war against UCiv. Though they seem to be weak, we still have to leave significant portion of our army for defence.
  2. We do not have NAP with them, which gives us a good opportunity take them by surprise. (True we may not have NAP with UCiv soon either.)
  3. They are weak.
  4. They are a bit closer to us than UCiv is AFAIK.

That being said, UCiv would also be a good target if we would have a war ally. And of course Talons has a point. Dealing with UCiv before they can become a problem would be an excellent idea. They have strong UU and UB that they'll get rather soon.
 
SpAp would be our easiest target, true. But "easiest" does not equals automatically "best". Dont mix things.

Not to repeat myself and for reference I'll post with some parts omitted here my thoughts on our preferred strategy about war with SpAp and possible conquest:

Spoiler :


They have the smallest army, fewest cities, worst GNP...
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This already gives away that they are not very strong players. With their choice of Boudica I knew they are not going to be major competition for the win, but I was fearing they will do what WPC did - attack their closest neighbor recklessly and ruin their both teams. Hopefully this did not came truth until now.

I suspected their level of game skills is not very high earlier as back in the last October from what I saw how Magno plays. But then I looked up at their ranking and saw that actually Magno is not their best player, more like middle tier and I though the other guys can be much better. Now I spoke with Filon of CP who I know plays in their leagues already 2 pitbosses and he said that the rest of the guys are not great players either. He said he have 10 cities in one pitboss and the others have 5 each at best. Also, he have the best GNP too. This firms my belief that they are not very good civ players and we could be able to easily outplay and out-perform them. Here we come to:

I like these guys and all, but we might just have to put them out of their misery.
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My feelings are the very same. I like those guys and their different approach/culture. And they look to me like easy-going crowd. But as this is highly competitive game, we must look at the situation pragmatically. So if Team Spanish Apolyton have to die to give us benefit, so be it and we must not even wince the angle of our eyes while preparing and executing the deed.

Still, I think it will be better for us if we keep them as desert after Uciv. Sun Tsu teaches us that if there are 2 great kingdoms and a small one, none of the bigger must attack the small one. If someone is about to be attacked, it must be the other big kingdom. The small one will be afraid to take side, and even if it does, it will be unable to shift the outcome of the war much. Where is the small kingdom is attacked, it will inevitably lead to the other big kingdom come in help to the smaller kingdom and then the change of power ratios will be too much to be easily handled.

Just checking, as a possible reason for UCiv's weird behavior might be if they were aware if how badly managed SpAp is, and they know we are in a very good position to take them out.
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If Uciv know from somewhere how badly managed SPAP is, they must have this knowledge from strict guessing/assessing means, rather than direct observation, as they did not entered their territories prior to us. But it was not that hard to know that Spaniards are managed bad if they have the same or even worse score as the two teams involved in cruel ancient war. So Uciv might happen they have some ideas about SPAP and prefer to play it cautiously not signing NAP with us or SPAP to have their options open.

All this said, I think it is early for a war to be profitable or easy to be fought against either Uciv or SPAP. And as a major politic aim, I would say we must try to prepare ourselves to take on Uciv first and kill them hopefully before they become monstrous with their ORG + Ratthouses great combo, which will allow them to settle almost double the cities count than us. Just after this we attack SPAP with comfort and consolidate their land and cities in our empire. Of course, anything can happen till then and we might found ourselves forced to act in completely different manner, but this is what we must think and aim for as I see it at the moment.
Click to expand...
 
Don't think we should go it alone against anyone, we just saw how that worked out with WPC and the Germans. We should get a solid alliance first preferably with WPC and/or Germans.
 
:) Allies and their pros/cons we discussed a bit earlier too, but actually it belongs in here. Not talking about taking on a runaway top civ (there we MUST have allies to rely on success), but normal neighbors.

Here is what my thoughts on this are:

If you speak about Uciv or Spaniards in their role of victim/ally I would say that if we want something done, we must rely only to ourselves. If we want someone killed, we must bloody our hands and do our job on our own. Teaming up when someone must be killed can be lucrative (yeah, we are 2 and our victim is alone), but beside this comfort, it have numerous disadvantages:
- there is a chance when we approach our ally-to-be and propose them that we attack together someone, they to slip things over our victim, being it unintentionally or intentionally to gain more favorable in their eyes ally or just keep the status quo which they like, spoiling our element of surprise and even the war itself.
- it might be easier to win a war with an ally/allies if everything go ideally smooth, but then, smaller effort means smaller gain - we will have to make concessions in first time to get an ally to fight along with us, and then we will have to divide the spoil, which can be tricky.
- when two or more people are to do the dirty job (or give wine for the king's party), there will be always at least one who will tell to himself: well, let the other/s do the big part of the joint work, I will keep my powers for a bit later or just save myself my serious harm and setback. If only one thinks this way, endeavor can be successful. If all think like this, the cask will be full of pure water when it is opened.

The best case scenario will be we get NAP with either of the two (I would be happy this to be Zulu) and then hit the other like a freight train so before anyone know what is happening and be able to react, things are done and our enemy is finished.

So in my opinion no matter what we decide to do, we have to keep quiet about our intentions and low on profile, so we dont alarm potential victim or allies/neutrals.
Click to expand...

Now I can add one more thing: When a coalition is formed, even if she is the most successful, what the other teams would think? "Gee, those 2 teams teamed up and crushed the poor xxxx in no time. What is my guarantee that we would not be the next team to fall to this obviously strong alliance? I better run to my other neighbors and talk them to ally with me while we still have time and prepare to attack those guys when we still have a chance." And the other teams will listen and agree. There is nothing like seeing others unite to make you look for a group to join to make yourself feel safe or strong.
 
As for comparing with WPC/Germans war, we wont do anything like that.

Where WPC mistake was in your opinion and why everything ended bad for them? In my opinion, WPC did not choose the right moment for war from the very beginning. They choose time to go to war where everyone (their victim included) have equal technology/units (axes, spears, chariots and archers) and almost equal production capabilities, mainly trough the whip. But why? How you expect to win a war if you have equal army as your neighbor and the defender have the advantage of defensive terrain and faster movement in his own culture? Are you so good at tactics? Will your attack be so surprising with those big distances between borders and no roads to speed up troops movement and graphs already visible? Nor they could rely on strike for the core (capitol), as many cities and border pop-ups were present. Do you believe your gods are stronger than the other one's and will give you always favorable outcome from nearly 50% fights? None of those WPC should had to rely on and there was no other factors to rely on as it showed from the outcome. Neither Germans were lame enough to not be able to defend themselves properly, neither other nation joined the war to tilt the balance in WPC favor.

Where if/when we decide to go to war, we will be prepared. Sun Tzu teaches that the good general first wins and then go to war, where the bad general first go to war and then seeks way to win it.
 
2metraninja said:
Now I can add one more thing: When a coalition is formed, even if she is the most successful, what the other teams would think? "Gee, those 2 teams teamed up and crushed the poor xxxx in no time. What is my guarantee that we would not be the next team to fall to this obviously strong alliance? I better run to my other neighbors and talk them to ally with me while we still have time and prepare to attack those guys when we still have a chance." And the other teams will listen and agree. There is nothing like seeing others unite to make you look for a group to join to make yourself feel safe or strong.
Click to expand...

Now I am still reading threads to catch up on the general styles and peculiarities of our opponents, I can speak to this concept from a purely strategic perspective.

Situation 1A: CFC teams up with another team or multiple teams to crush a rival.
Situation 1B: CFC teams up with another team or multiple teams and fails to crush a rival.
Situation 2A: CFC strikes out at a rival and steamrolls them.
Situation 2B: CFC strikes out at a rival and steamrolls them.

By being prepared for war and being informed about the rivals movements, we can limit the chances that 1B or 2B happens. This is obviously something we have to think about, but it is clearly better to be prepared than unprepared for war. It is not as clear however whether it is better to fight with another team or by ourselves. Lets analyze the two situations (2metraninja has already offered some analysis which I will draw from).

Situation 1A: "Allied Assault"
Likeliness of implementation: Good, but not guaranteed.
Simplicity of implementation: More complex.
Advantages:
  • Increased attacking resources (This one is straightforward; more attacking resources increases the chances of attack success)
  • Distributed blame and global reputation (This is probably an advantage, although this is a continuum. Even with an allied assault, we might still be seen as the instigator. At worst, we are seen as the ringleader who roped the other teams into helping us. At best, we are seen as coming to the aid of an ally who has been ruthlessly attacked by an aggressive civ. This is a wide range of values and the highest values probably rely on the rival seeming aggressive. If the other civ cannot be made to seem the aggressor (i.e. our attack cannot be seen as a move for safety), then we can advertise our strength or weakness to other civilizations. If we are looking for people to see us as strong, it might benefit us to look like the organizer of the joint attack. Other ways we might appear to other teams include: loyal ally to an aggressor, opportunistic civilization)
Disadvantages:
  • Information leaks ("Two people can only keep a secret if one of them is dead." Probably no one on our team would think they would benefit from revealing information to the potential target unless it was misinformation that we really didn't plan to follow through on. If we introduce another team into the assault, we must believe that they will not benefit by revealing our intentions to the target. It is hard to trust another team, unless we can make it definitely in their best interest to keep quiet about the impending attack. There are various ploys we might enact that would increase their chances of choosing to keep silent, but without careful planning we might lose the opportunity to strike our target if our allies betray our trust. It may be possible to make is so that the ally implicates themselves by revealing our plans. For example, we make it clear that we have an agreement with the ally of cooperating in military endeavors. If the ally knows we have told the target this, they will feel that revealing our plans will also implicate themselves. There may be other ways around this issue as well.)
  • Distributed gains (While the blame is distributed in a joint offensive so are the gains. The stronger party should still be able to get larger gains, but then must consider the consequences of this not only on their ally as well as the other informed civilizations. There is no way around this. It must be weighed against the benefits of having allied resources. It is important that the ally either feels that their effort was adequately rewarded or that we are not threatened if they immediately turn upon us.)
  • Incentive to slack (2metraninja mentions this problem and it is a serious problem and fighting in any war that requires cooperation we will face this problem. One potential way around this might be to tie gains to actual effort. For example, these three cities are yours to take. These three are ours to take. If they do not expend energy they gain no cities, regardless of the effort we put in.

Situation 2A: "Solo Attack"
Likeliness of implementation: Very good.
Simplicity of implementation: More simple.
Advantages:
  • Less chance of information leaks (Reverse of above. Easier to keep a secret if only we know about it. This means a higher chance of surprise. Although military buildup can still be seen by our opponents, they should not know what we will do with those troops.)
  • Non-sharing of gains (No concessions must be made to allies from the spoils of victory. This should be directly compared to the amount of extra resources necessary to capture extra cities.)
  • Less dependent upon other players (Our strategy is less likely to suffer from communication failure from the other team. We can still fail to communicate within the team, but external communication is not necessary to strategy decisions.)

Disadvantages:
  • More resources required (This is the most straightforward and heaviest of the disadvantages. This should be weighed by the higher potential gains of conquering alone.
  • Non-shared blame (This could be less or more of a disadvantage based on how we wish other teams to perceive us. If we come off as a big warmonger and threat, even the higher gains from this combat may not be enough if it polarizes the world against us.

Personal Opinion: Without knowing much about the nature of our opponents yet, I would say that the simpler plan is to do a solo attack, but it may be the worse option if we can manage the ally and the allied assault correctly. The resources saved and the time gained by choosing an allied assault probably outweigh the reduced gain. A valuable gain from attacking Realms Beyond (that is who we're thinking of attacking, right?) would be their reduced power, which would result in both the case where we took all the gains or where gains were shared. The fact that RB is so far out in the lead in terms of score will help our image in any war between us. We are likely to be seen as helping the rest of the teams (including us) have more of a chance of winning if we spin it like that. As a target RB is both tempting and a difficult target due to their skill and their success in the early game. However, if we can successfully defeat them we would be the only strong power on our side of the map, which would help us in the future. I have seen plans to consolidate the middle triangle by taking out two teams in the middle. That would probably end up with two strong civs on either side of us. I like this plan much better.
 
First war- Solo effort against UCiv or Spanish Poly.

2nd War- Allied attack against RB. Allies could be WPC and Germans (we should seriously court both of these teams to be kingmakers for us since neither of them now has a chance) and possibly Civ Players.
 
cav scout said:
Allies could be WPC and Germans (we should seriously court both of these teams to be kingmakers for us since neither of them now has a chance) and possibly Civ Players.
Click to expand...
Agree. Though, we obviously should be very crafty and careful about how we do the courting. I don't supopse we'd get a postive response if we go and say: "Since you guys are obviously out of running already, how about helping us to beat RB and win the game?"
 
BTW, if our main aim is to take RB out in our second war, then I think our decision on who to attack in the first one should be based solely on two factors:
  1. Which war will give us best cost benefit ratio (spoils per lost resources).
  2. Which team is more likely to attack us while we are going at it with RB.
As far as I understand, our more experienced generals seem to think that we can benefit more from attacking UCiv than from attacking SpAp. Unfortunately, to me it seems either team could actually attack us while we are at war with RB. Though, with current power ratios, SpAP would not be that much of a threat at the time.

If however, we aim to first conquer both UCiv and SpAp, and then move against RB, I still think taking the easy pick first would probably be a good idea.
 
Very interesting analyze from SC. Had desire to comment on it, but had no time. Will try doing so tomorrow with Cav's, Talons ans Aivo's posts.
 
So, here are my comments (in blue) on this excellent attempt from SC on the con's and pro's of fighting alone/with allies:

Situation 1A: CFC teams up with another team or multiple teams to crush a rival.
Situation 1B: CFC teams up with another team or multiple teams and fails to crush a rival.
Situation 2A: CFC strikes out at a rival and steamrolls them.
Situation 2B: CFC strikes out at a rival and steamrolls them. I think you mean "and fails to win" here

By being prepared for war and being informed about the rivals movements, we can limit the chances that 1B or 2B happens. This is obviously something we have to think about, but it is clearly better to be prepared than unprepared for war. It is not as clear however whether it is better to fight with another team or by ourselves. Lets analyze the two situations (2metraninja has already offered some analysis which I will draw from).

Situation 1A: "Allied Assault"
Likeliness of implementation: Good, but not guaranteed.
Simplicity of implementation: More complex.

Advantages:

Increased attacking resources (This one is straightforward; more attacking resources increases the chances of attack success)
Distributed blame and global reputation (This is probably an advantage, although this is a continuum. Even with an allied assault, we might still be seen as the instigator. At worst, we are seen as the ringleader who roped the other teams into helping us. At best, we are seen as coming to the aid of an ally who has been ruthlessly attacked by an aggressive civ. This is a wide range of values and the highest values probably rely on the rival seeming aggressive. If the other civ cannot be made to seem the aggressor (i.e. our attack cannot be seen as a move for safety), then we can advertise our strength or weakness to other civilizations. If we are looking for people to see us as strong, it might benefit us to look like the organizer of the joint attack. Other ways we might appear to other teams include: loyal ally to an aggressor, opportunistic civilization)

Disadvantages:

Information leaks ("Two people can only keep a secret if one of them is dead." Probably no one on our team would think they would benefit from revealing information to the potential target unless it was misinformation that we really didn't plan to follow through on. If we introduce another team into the assault, we must believe that they will not benefit by revealing our intentions to the target. It is hard to trust another team, unless we can make it definitely in their best interest to keep quiet about the impending attack. There are various ploys we might enact that would increase their chances of choosing to keep silent, but without careful planning we might lose the opportunity to strike our target if our allies betray our trust. It may be possible to make is so that the ally implicates themselves by revealing our plans. For example, we make it clear that we have an agreement with the ally of cooperating in military endeavors. If the ally knows we have told the target this, they will feel that revealing our plans will also implicate themselves. There may be other ways around this issue as well.) The problem with the confidentiality is easy solved if we know our allies-to-be will benefit from allying with us. Say a small nation neighboring a superpower who is pushing their culture and keeps cold relations with them.
Distributed gains (While the blame is distributed in a joint offensive so are the gains. The stronger party should still be able to get larger gains, but then must consider the consequences of this not only on their ally as well as the other informed civilizations. There is no way around this. It must be weighed against the benefits of having allied resources. It is important that the ally either feels that their effort was adequately rewarded or that we are not threatened if they immediately turn upon us.)
Incentive to slack (2metraninja mentions this problem and it is a serious problem and fighting in any war that requires cooperation we will face this problem. One potential way around this might be to tie gains to actual effort. For example, these three cities are yours to take. These three are ours to take. If they do not expend energy they gain no cities, regardless of the effort we put in. To avoid this is also tricky. They may well just postpone their attack with 1-2 turns leaving us to soak up the collateral from the target siege in their furious initial response, then walk over the almost undefended countryside. Team Quatronia and Team Sirius attacks Team Mavericks homeland in MTDG2 anyone? Or they may just not want to use their siege for the common goal as they see/judge the situation different from their allies. The first example which comes to my mind is CavScout holding on on using Q's cannons on the Sirius invading force on their own home island. We at Amazon were absolutely sure Cav must use the canons and annihilate the main Sirius army while we have this chance. However, he played it cautious and just held back. We had then to fight those same soldiers on Starland and on Maverick's Home Island and lose to them again in the next 20 or so turns. The war would have turned completely different if our ally Q did what we wanted them to. Not sure if it would have been better as all is good when it ends good, but back then we were mad :)


Situation 2A: "Solo Attack"
Likeliness of implementation: Very good.
Simplicity of implementation: More simple.
Advantages:

Less chance of information leaks (Reverse of above. Easier to keep a secret if only we know about it. This means a higher chance of surprise. Although military buildup can still be seen by our opponents, they should not know what we will do with those troops.) No one knows 100% for sure who and why is this military build up. We could also use this military build up and the uncertainties to our bigger advantage. As a current example I can tell you what happened in the ISDG warmup game. I got just got knights and started to whip mass of them. I got good ransom from Bowsling, who was the second least powerful of my neighbors (the least powerful I wanted to conquer, as he was completely worthless for me alive and I could kill him in just few turns, so all is done and no one can react before the dust settles), to not attack and kill him, which ransom was a hefty Great Scientist and 700 gold in cash, given to me as 20-turns loan, plus 50 or 70 turns NAP. When my west border was secured, I went to my east neighbor and asked him what he thinks of our future. He was in war on his other border and agreed immediately to long NAP, despite he knew this will take him out of the competition for the first place, plus he agreed to keep fighting my main competitor LP and give me interest-free loan and to buy military units from me with hard cash. Then launched attack on the poor south guys who was in war with Elkad meanwhile - he was some of the German team I believe - and conquered him in just few turns. With secured West and East borders, I went to my new neighbor in south Elkad and asked him to stop trading with LP (who had The Great Lighthouse and OB only with Elkad) and to give me concessions in land. Elkad refused and I went on rampage against him with my shiny new knights. So I used 1 and the same army to secure 2 borders, get good ransom in GS and cash which put me on par with the tech leaders, made big problems to my main competitor LP, conquered one nation and started exterminating the only ally of my main competitor and assimilating his rich territory. At one point LP conceded, but I convinced him to get back and play the game. 20 turns later he left the game frustrated and since then it is on pause :(
Non-sharing of gains (No concessions must be made to allies from the spoils of victory. This should be directly compared to the amount of extra resources necessary to capture extra cities.)
Less dependent upon other players (Our strategy is less likely to suffer from communication failure from the other team. We can still fail to communicate within the team, but external communication is not necessary to strategy decisions.)


Disadvantages:

More resources required (This is the most straightforward and heaviest of the disadvantages. This should be weighed by the higher potential gains of conquering alone.If having the luxury or choosing target and preparing for the attack, we can expect to win 90% or more of the times. Again, a good general wins and then goes to war. The bad general starts a war and then seeks ways to win it.
Non-shared blame (This could be less or more of a disadvantage based on how we wish other teams to perceive us. If we come off as a big warmonger and threat, even the higher gains from this combat may not be enough if it polarizes the world against us.Beside a blame, there is also somewhat heroic halo around those who go and kill with their own hands instead of searching for allies and ganging. I already mentioned this, but alliances are formed easiest to counter other alliances already made. Alone nation killing a weakling can be looked upon as normal and manly.


Personal Opinion: Without knowing much about the nature of our opponents yet, I would say that the simpler plan is to do a solo attack, but it may be the worse option if we can manage the ally and the allied assault correctly. The resources saved and the time gained by choosing an allied assault probably outweigh the reduced gain. But also the drawbacks from making alliance and relying on others to have success are not small. A valuable gain from attacking Realms Beyond (that is who we're thinking of attacking, right?) They are out of our league in the foreseable future I think. Any attack on them with the available allies will only lead to ourselves ruining completely our chances in the long run and maybe ruining RB's chances somewhat. Remember that this is a many teams game. What benefits you, even if benefiting another team too, it is good for you. While hurting yourself, even if hurting another one or two is bad for you. The time is not yet to look at RB as the ultimate runaway civ which must be dragged down no matter the cost in order to have the slightest chance for the win. We play our game, set our own goals and pursue them. When the time is right, we start to look for winning the game in final showdown.would be their reduced power, which would result in both the case where we took all the gains or where gains were shared. The fact that RB is so far out in the lead in terms of score will help our image in any war between us. We are likely to be seen as helping the rest of the teams (including us) have more of a chance of winning if we spin it like that. As a target RB is both tempting and a difficult target due to their skill and their success in the early game. However, if we can successfully defeat them we would be the only strong power on our side of the map, which would help us in the future. I have seen plans to consolidate the middle triangle by taking out two teams in the middle. That would probably end up with two strong civs on either side of us. I like this plan much better.
__________________
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We have still to meet 3 of the major powers in this game. Their attitude and constitution will influence our politics a lot too.
 
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