We don't have to compete with them over this. Nagoya can't clear out Tokyo on their own either, we can probably get them to agree to a split.
I think it's extremely premature to broach the subject. But after we clear Tokyo? Yes, I'm sure they will agree to a split.
There are all sorts of tactical reasons to choose Yokohama to downtown first. However there is also the strategic advantage that once the demons start fleeing and we have those areas cleared, we can start the BFD plan there early, and thus bring them under our influence quicker.
It's an advantage to us, and it's also justifiable to Nagoya, because we want to organize them quickly to make sure nothing like this happens again in the future.
If we can get Yokohama and downtown Tokyo, then I'm confident our courier business will thrive, which means we will have the money and the cube to really start expanding. And that we can afford the Getaway house permanently.
Like seriously
@inverted_helix, how are we supposed to compete with Nagoya right now? Because unless Madokami decides to turn on Nagisa and Sayaka's witch-form powers I can't see any way for us to do so. They can crush us like a goddamn bug and we can't do shit to them.
What are you talking about? You're panicking. Just because we have to be cautious around them does not mean they can crush us. Would they win a conflict? Yes, but we'd hurt them so much they would lose.
Something I've been trying to understand is why people seem to think that as huge an area as Tokyo is some sort of single binary result situation. Even in your wildest possible success you were never going to be able to hold all of it even if Nagoya didn't exist. And equally so Nagoya can't either. Some will favor the group that's been supporting them longer, some will favor those that finally made the situation better successfully rather than just continuously stalling.
This is not a binary situation. It's far more complex than that.
I don't think most people think that. I don't. It's just a lot easier to talk about the extreme outcomes for "Tokyo" rather than explain each time that there is a sliding scale of outcomes.
This is something I don't get either. Aranfan has been claiming this whole time that you're a diplomacy focused group, but the moment you guys realize you aren't the biggest most powerful group around your response is despair that the military stick isn't useful for everything? Basically every empire quest ever has rivals bigger and more powerful than you. The response is not "oh noes we lose gm is mean". Not everything comes down to who wields the biggest stick.
Umm... I don't see anyone other than Aranfan saying "Oh no, we lose."
Now I certain do think that being the smaller power is not a good situation to be in. I haven't forgotten our first introduction to Nagoya, and let me say it did not leave a good impression.
Certainly it has motivated me to expand much faster than I would be planning other wise.
Diplomacy isn't only an option when you can crush the other side militarily. And just because you have the potential strength to win a fight with the other side doesn't mean that it's actually a good idea to fight them either. Diplomacy is there so that both sides can find a way to work together and both benefit.
Exactly.
It's more panic that we exist at Nagoya's sufferance. Even if we had Homura and could just timestop murderface everything we still wouldn't except in retaliation. On the other hand, our first interaction with Nagoya was them shooting at us first and they are large enough to crush us like a bug and not even notice.
Edit: Unless we have a strong enough military position that them taking us over by force would bleed them too much to be worth it, then the quest only continues on GM fiat deciding they won't take us over by force. Currently it seems to me that we aren't strong enough to keep them from just crushing us at a whim.
We are strong enough to make attacking us dangerous, why do you think they so quickly returned our two kidnapped girls to us? 50+ vets? That's a big enough chunk on it's own to make fighting costly.
That's like saying Belgium only exists at the sufferance of France.
It's losing far too much of the context.
Well... Belgium probably does only exist at the sufferance of France, and the magical world is closer to 1600 than 21st century in thoughts on the strong and weak getting along.
So that might not be the best example.
A better example would be to say that the Dutch survived just fine despite Spain being very very hostile to them, and at a time when Spain was the superpower of the world, and the Dutch were not much more powerful then they are now.
So even if Nagoya was hostile to us, (which I don't think they are, just... unpleasantly pragmatic), we would still do alright.
The Serenes, on the other hand, are pretty much the opposite. We're here to solve the problem, full stop, including plans to stabilize the politics of the area, whether or not we have actual control. We're a high-morale group with a very low death rate; our concerns are very much the well-being of the locals, which would be crystal clear if they ever meet Mami. And of course, we're all about the diplomacy and cooperation.
We're the group that a lot of Tokyo will want to join, while Nagoya is the group that a lot will feel obligated to join. And if we use a light touch on the political control, I think we'd get even more who would be at least willing to ally with us, even if they don't come under our banner. Which is fine, because every independent group can provide specialization value to everyone else.
Yes, long term we have more advantages then Nagoya in peace time. We just need to get a strong enough foothold that we can leverage that strength effetively.
Our goal at the moment hasn't changed. Everything starts and ends with clearing Tokyo. We cannot and will not fail at that. So let's keep focus on what's needed there, and avoid labeling anyone "the enemy".
Well... I tend to think this is more a scenario where we should keep our friends close and our enemies closer.
We have a very different value system then Nagoya, at some point conflict is inevitable. Hopefully that conflict will not raise to the level of violence. By staying close to them we keep the attractiveness of violence low.
And as you point out, Tokyo comes first, so we shouldn't get so focused on what comes after Tokyo that we fail at clearing Tokyo.
Depends on how unrepentant they are. One thing we could do with any truly unrepentant ones would be to condemn them to living in Serena's aura, though obviously neither Mami or Serena herself would go along with that. It's this kind of growth potential that could have made Serena as powerful as the other Legendaries; it's also the kind of ruthlessness that she shies away from, which makes her weaker than the others.
Or we could gem coma them until we are sufficiently established to deal with unruly Elites.
Or we could strongly suggest to the troublemakers that they get on a plane far away from us. No organizations in Kumamoto, or Okayama. Maybe send some out there. Split up the ones hostile to each other. Buy them a plane ticket. Tell them to redeem themselves by building an organization that doesn't result in class 3 demons.
There are people that think that? I certainly don't; my main issue of concern is that, if and when Tokyo does finish shaking out we're going to be sharing a long and porous border with a group that is both much larger and much more militant than the Serene; that's not a stable situation at all, even if by some miracle we end up with more than 25% as much Tokyo territory as Nagoya will get, something that is looking less and less likely now that we know how long they've been at things over in Tokyo and how many more resources they have than we do.
Nagoya is most like to make Tokyo into vassal states, rather then direct incorporation. Which is another advantage we have.
Also, we really ought to work on developing an "affiliation model" to compete with the Nagoya "vassal model."
It occurs to me that, considering how Class 3 averse Nagoya is, they may be amenable to measures to prevent hostilities from breaking out between us and them after we've carved up Tokyo between us. At least before those tensions start manifesting.
Yeah... exactly.
Only thing we need first is to know whether the "hope" effect is actually a spell. For now, all we know is that it's an aura, and my default assumption is that that's a completely separate type of magical effect than anything we've dealt with yet.
This is what I was thinking. Probably can be cast as a spell, but Serena will have to spend time researching it.
No one likes my joint morale day idea?
Premature. We haven't cleared Tokyo yet, and we haven't established any colonies/expansions/borders, this is is at least 3 major steps away. I just don't feel the need to think that far ahead in such small detail.
I mean I have some ideas about Mami spending a month learning Spanish (ought to be easier for her because of the Italian). But that's a long way away and not important right now, so why do it?
This is actually a growth in abilities from the start. Originally you couldn't teleport items without the teleporters. What they're doing here though is making a teleport charm and firing it off immediately with it only teleporting itself and not them.
Ah that makes sense.
That sounds like something to go for later, but right now we could try to get them to agree to let people go if they want to join us, in return for our help in clearing our the city. Follow up by making sure that our propaganda and contact details are widely circulated.
I... think we can just assume that we can recruit people. This isn't dividing up a pie (like the Grand Coalition plan). We just need to succeed in clearing Tokyo, then we can recruit people. What is Nagoya going to do to stop us?
She can probably cast hope effects as targeted spells, but her Aura would have made that redundant so it might take a research project for her to learn how.
Exactly, not something we can get going in time for Tokyo.
Leaving yet another incomplete omake here.
Not sure what you are implying here.
I take serious, serious, issues with your characterisation of Nagoya.
I believe that they are the ultimate pragmatists.
Remember when we first met them, they were working to "prevent dangerous overhunting" and their counter recruitment pamphlet talking about bringing order to a dangerous system? Everything they do is focused on efficiency and savings, the cold storage, the military levy, the class 3 hunting missions.
They even limit their powers over their vassal groups, no more than 3 days of levy per month without additional negotiations etc etc.
They also shoot first and ask questions later. Don't forget that.
These are not nice people. They are not our friends. And they have already shown that they cannot be trusted to open disagreements with diplomacy.
If they treat us well it is only because it is pragmatic for them to do so. Not because they think we ought to be treated nice.
They are violent, and they do use force to strong arm organizations.
They are not villains, is what I believe you are trying to point out. And that is true. They are not a evil empire.
However, that does not suddenly make them the Care Bears. We can have legitimate conflict of interests with a group that is only amoral and not immoral.
Whilst I found quite a few of the omakes from the perspective of independent Puella Magi outside of the SIMP insultingly condescending to the independent girls, they now appear exasperatingly on point. We -the voters- are now those independent girls.
"Oh the SIMP is bigger than us, we now must proceed to fear for our lives"
"Obviously SIMP is lying, blackmailing bandits etc no way did they gain so many members by recruitment"
Replace SIMP with Nagoya with the independents with us voters and you have mirror situation.
This wariness is exasperating to me. Sure Nagoya could go full SIMP to our Iwata, but unless we attack first or start doing stupid shit like making our own Tokyo situation in miniature, it's not going to happen.
We are supposed to be a diplomatic group, so how about showing a bit of trust in the larger and more mature group to not fuckup?
Diplomacy is not about trust. And particularly not about trusting the larger and more powerful group.
Diplomacy is about achieving gains through non-violent means. Usually by finding ways for both sides to make gains.
Being the weaker party we obviously should be paranoid. That doesn't means we should be ruled by it, but we should always be cautious in how we deal with Nagoya, because if we got into conflict with them we would lose far more than they would.
I don't think people are respecting the biggest issue with Tokyo. Even with both us and Nagoya taking on huge tracts of it, we'll be doing less deliberate hunting and more peacekeeping, at least that's what I've taken from helix on the matter. Tokyo might as well be Afganistan or Iraq for all the factions in it constantly blasting at each other. After the initial recruitment, we'll have to crack down, possibly violently, on continued infighting. We may need to join Nagoya in playing impartial third party with much bigger guns to try to force some semblance of peace onto them.
I doubt that we will have problems like this for at least a few months. DS is so low that over-hunting isn't the problem, and if we play our cards right we should get some organization in place before idiots take charge. In most places. We'll probably have a few conflicts, but they should be manageable.
