Strategic directions - long-term planning

[MWIN]

Realistically, can we defend Eastern dealers even with the deal?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

m_h, great suggestion. It's good to have something constructive to talk about!

I think that this would be tremendous for us, for the reasons that scooter stated. I know that BbB has been an awesome production city for us the entire game, but now that we can draft and have so many other cities, it is comparatively less useful than before. It would be a blow to lose it, but in all, I'd rather write off these cities than lose better cities to the stronger CFC team.

Thinking ahead, ASSUMING it is possible to get Apolyton and CivPlayers to agree to this, how long would it take us to reposition our forces (or what we have left) in the east against CFC? Would it be fast enough to prevent losing Eastern Dealers? I'm still assuming that Starfall is toast.

As for the diplomacy itself, I think the sooner we can get a draft, the better. They'll know we're in a bad spot after having killed so many of our units and may be in a mood to consolidate their gains with an agreement before we bludgeon them right back with something in the fog.

Key notes to hit:

• Good job in your execution of the war so far.
  
• We respect your skill in pulling off the build up and execution.
  
• We would prefer to deal with you as equals going forward rather than all of us as underlings to CFC.
  
• We still dislike the way CFC has handled diplomacy, how about you?
  
• Offer the deal, "you guys take our cities up to the m_h line and spend some time consolidating your gains." NAP to ____ future date that gives us time to recover.
  
• CivPlayers, you can keep BbB with a guarantee from us that we will never try to retake it and the SoZ if you will work with us to prevent CFC from winning.
  
• You guys are the best, we're glad you are so reasonable.
  

Etc. Thoughts?

[scooter]

I'm going to write something up as an initial draft to discuss.

In the meantime, if anyone opposes pursuing something like this, do say so and explain why. I can't think of a good reason not to pursue this.

[mostly_harmless]

If we see an opportunity to hit either Civplayers or Apolyton badly in the next three turns, we hold back and use this as a chip on the table. This way we might come to an agreement and save us some troops. If they believe they can get more land than offered, we bleed them at every opportunity. This probably means we lose at least Eastern Dealers in addition to Starfall and probably more, as our heartland is completely open to CFC once they are through that Starfall / Eastern Dealer chokepoint.

mh

[scooter]

The reality is this: we cannot completely fend off this 3v1. We can definitely win 1 front over time, though, and we've chosen their front. They just need to recognize then that it's absolutely in their best interest to tap out while they still can. They can currently cash in on their winnings, or it'll all dry up in the next 10T if they push on.