Some points related to Haman's responses, that I can't find the quotes for:
The problem with dividing Tokyo up among 5 or so big power blocks is twofold.
1) The power blocks themselves will squabble over territory.
2) The residents of Tokyo will be resentful of the power blocks, and work against the stability we're aiming for.
This will not be stable, nor does it have any exit strategy. We can't return territory to the original residents unilaterally without making ourselves weaker, and opening the opportunity for one of the other power blocks to make a power grab. And the residents of Tokyo will be stewing to get us out of there, just like every colony state ever.
Of course it won't be completely stable. However, it's a far better choice than any viable alternative. And it will give us an opportunity to grow in power as well. We'd have sufficient manpower to suddenly bootstrap our research into something massive. Furthermore, with our naturally higher morale we ought to be the most stable group in this venture, and thus able to exploit chaos the most easily.
We are approaching this from completely opposite directions. You are starting with: "what is the wise way to organize things to avoid conflict, yada, yada, yada - okay now how do I sell this to people?"
I am approaching it from: "What can I sell to people? Hmm... just these two options. Which of these two bad options is the best?"
The idea in my overall plan was that we do not introduce new overlords in Tokyo, but keep it as territory of the locals (but with oversight). We then provide them with the means of governing themselves, without too much interference, but with benefits for those involved in dealing with the Tokyo issue. It's mutually beneficial, and leads to eventual self-governing Tokyo states.
The benefits to the outside groups are not sufficient to justify the expenditure of resources to setup and then maintain this system. The tax you propose is a small injury, which is the worst of both worlds, as it will make Tokyo girls resentful, but do nothing to cripple them, leaving them strong enough to combine to overthrow their "oppressors."
Again, I submit to you that outside groups are unlikely to agree to such an orderly scheme. It just doesn't sufficiently serve their self-interest.
Basically, we don't play US-in-Germany/US-in-Iran/Israel-in-Palestine/Everyone-getting-a-slice-of-the-Kurds/etc. The only way to maintain that kind of control is to maintain a hostile relationship with the suppressed state, and that fundamentally leads to failure.
Well... first of all, your US in Germany example suggests that you can maintain occupation without a hostile relationship if you treat people decently, and if there is sufficient cultural agreement.
Which of course is the case, since we're all Japanese here. If the problem city was Seoul, then yeah, a partition and occupation plan would be a disaster. But this is Tokyo, and we are all Japanese. That means we share the same cultural background. Assimilation and absorption should be possible. It'd be more akin to the US conquering Canada.
Or as if during the 16th Century, Bavaria had collapsed due to plague and the other princes of Germany (Austria, Saxony, Brandenburg, Hessel-Kassel, and Hanover) got together to decide how to carve up the carcass. (Which they totally would have done). The rulers are all different, but they are all German. It's not like the French or something invading.
My expectation is that if we treat the Tokyo girls properly we will be able to completely assimilate then and form a single polity. Furthermore, I expect that we will do so faster and more effectively than the other groups.
The first three months will be hard, but three months following that we ought to start seeing differences. Our Tokyo girls don't have any deaths from hunting, the other areas still have girls dying. The other areas have more money probably, due to willingness to engage in crime, but then we start opening restaurants, and legal jobs become available. Our Tokyo girls get to live a semi-normal life. Other Tokyo girls have to be criminals and take risk while hunting.
Within a year I expect that most of our Tokyo girls will be fully loyal to the Serenes. The instability that starts to come about as the other groups partitioning Tokyo start jockeying for position will only cement their belief that they lucked out in joining our group. Furthermore this loyalty will make us a harder target in the competition for Tokyo power. Additionally, our conservative nature will make us less threatening.
We'll probably have to deal with one or two probes testing to see if our "soft ways" makes us easy prey, but if we are prepared for those and stomp on them hard and ruthlessly, most of the other groups will decide to go after the other "more dangerous" rivals first. Then we just turtle to victory as the other groups weaken each other.
At the same time, I'm not trying to create a great united Tokyo. The groups in Tokyo are not and will not be united. Even if almost all of the original groups are dead, history is not so easily forgotten. So I went with splitting them up into sustainable, bounded blocks. Territory disputes are over who owns what. If the boundaries are already known and fixed, that cuts out a lot of the ambiguousness that can lead to aggressive behavior.
That's also part of why I went with the draft system for splitting things up — force a semi-random distribution of meguca, with the option to trade them around, so that we can avoid concentrations of hate next to each other. And putting limits on mergers (including getting the approval of the other m-wards of the area for larger mergers) should keep rampant growth in check.
We will not be creating a massive super-group of 1000-1500 meguca that we suddenly have to compete against. We'll be creating lots of 30- or 60-meguca groups (or 70 after contract rates go up), a size that allows a reasonable amount of power, but also a reasonable amount of vulnerability.
I see no plausible way to prevent Tokyo from uniting unless we fully occupy it. Your plan will result in resentment against the outsiders taxing them and regulating them. A charismatic girl will exploit that to unite Tokyo against the outsiders. Then we will have a war that either ends in Tokyo hegemony over magical Japan, or partitioning and occupying Tokyo - but this time without the relief of having been saved from class 3 demons, and instead a sense of having been wrongfully oppressed.
In other words, worse in every way than just going for the partition plan from the get go.
Sometimes the orderly plan is the worse plan, because you can't get people to agree.
OK, taking the current plan, which is overhunting in the South. We're not merging the 10+17 area yet; waiting til the North is at 0 to minimize the fuss during merging and splitting. South area has 28 territory.
Using IRT in the south, with Seto on teleport transport, changing vets to pack hunting, and teleport charms for safety. Solo elite and pack vets are both then at -0.1% casualty risk. (Teleport charms used because solo elites started at 3% risk, and this takes it to 0%.)
Increase the number of vets from 8 pairs to 10.5 packs. In addition, 230 charms are required, which costs 0.5 GCU and 1.5 meguca time.
Final cube harvest increases from 84.5 cubes to 88.5 cubes, an increase of +4 cubes. Total meguca assignment increases from 16.5 to 20.5, an increase of +4 meguca.
+4 cubes for +4 meguca seems a very bad trade.
You misunderstand, I was suggesting IRT hunt starting next month, when we overhunt the rebalanced North. Then I suggested getting the charms for this started on this month.
That should mean IRT gives us about +6.2 cubes over RT, right?
Quick thumbnail estimates is that this would mean 16 vet pack hunters instead of 13.5 vet pair hunters. Plus 1.5 vets to make charms. So 4 more megucas for 5.6 more cubes.
Except that if we use 3 elites (which doesn't change), this is more like 8 vet pairs to 10.5 vet pack hunters... which is about the same trade off...
Hmm... yes, grief cube management is a better expenditure.
