OK, massive post. I'm not entirely happy with it, but there are lots of things I want to address, so here's the mess, for good or ill.
I think both of you are wrong. I suspect that a large number will want the security of a larger organization that has proven they can handle youma outbreaks. That favors us and Nagoya.
In particular, I expect Greens, and the youngest Vets/Elites to want to join us. Maybe some of the hero types as well.
On the other hand, the oldest Elites/Vets that survived from the beginning? I expect that they will generally be grateful, but want independence. In particular they will want to re-establish their old organizations, and possibly even start up their old feuds again. That's going to be a problem. A big problem. Big enough that I'm wondering if we might ought to openly oppose it. Alternative is to try and channel it.
And then there will be a middle group. The Vets/Elites that were not there before the outbreak, but lived through most of the youma fighting. They will probably favor Nagoya, but also be very grateful to us. They will probably be of two minds about joining us. They probably won't approve of the reestablishment of the old organizations, but their pride might oppose joining a group from outside of Tokyo. I suspect this group will be key to how well things go for us, and we should make a big attempt to win them over.
Heh. While you say you think I'm wrong, you then go on to say basically what I just said.
I do agree that the independents are key to how things fall out. Any that want to join up with either us or Nagoya are simple enough, but the independents are necessarily not all of one mind, and thus will form several groups of their own. The ones that are leftover from the pre-youma Tokyo are who we really need to focus on. How we handle them will really determine how stable Tokyo is in the future. The ones who are grateful but want to remain independent and form
new groups will be easy enough to get along with.
Errr... not sure what kind of humans you've been hanging out with, but I'm pretty sure that is how most humans work. People love to be with a winner. And they spit on losers no matter how nice they are.
Perhaps look at how the entire world views the US? Does every other country in the world want to be part of the US? Does everyone play nice and always do what the US government wants them to? Are there no groups whatsoever that are fighting against the US, despite the disparity in power?
Or if you want a more immediate, explicit example, look at the Oracle vs Google legal case. Pretty much any programmer who knows anything about the stakes involved hates Oracle's position (and Oracle in general, given their history of behavior), and that wouldn't change if Oracle won. Meanwhile, even though Google won, and people are happy about that, it doesn't change that a lot of people still don't like Google very much.
There's vastly more involved than just winning or losing that determines how people treat those involved. Love to
be the winner, sure. Spitting on the loser? Not so much, even putting aside that it's an entirely different comparison. You're abstracting too much away.
I think you are seriously underestimating the importance of clarity and the danger of ambiguity here. All you have to do is put yourself in the place of the Junta, and then pursue an aggressive policy. (I'm using the Junta as the example, but any aggressive outside force could follow a similar strategy).
If I was an outside force seriously intent on taking us down, there's probably a half dozen ways offhand that I could do that. Size only matters in terms of which plans to pick. Being 'bigger' limits some plans, while facilitating others.
Given that, I consider being 'bigger' as an inadequate defense plan, because the more you push for 'bigger', the more vulnerabilities you open up. One of our greatest strengths in defending against the wide spread of potential threats is internal stability. We must consider that stability degrades as size grows within a fixed span of time. Thus, beyond a certain size growth, you're making yourself weaker by growing bigger. Alternate forms of strength must be considered. Don't abandon the strength you're good at for the strength you're not good at.
And while I can't find the quote right now, it's falling back into that same flawed thinking that helix warned about before, with people effectively saying that we're only good at diplomacy as long as we're big enough to beat everyone else up. Because at that point it's no longer diplomacy.
Well, as the Junta, what I would do is send back the Tokyo natives (mostly Elites), backed by Junta money and cubes, perhaps with some Osaka vets to help support them. Go to the areas that are not claimed by any major power, and re-establish their old territories as protectorates/vassals of the Junta.
No need to fight Nagoya or the Serenes, just suppress the locals that try to resists, and then you got a big foothold in Tokyo. And in the most populated and valuable part of the city too!
Okay... so the Serenes and Nagoya decide to fight the Junta after all? Well, now we have to deal with these local vassals. Are we now going to war against the Tokyo locals we just saved?
That can all be avoided if we make it clear from the beginning: All Tokyo prefectures assigned a custodial power, you mess with that area, you're picking a fight with the custodial power.
Then that means that the Junta can't send back their Tokyo elites to Tokyo Downtown without knowing that doing so will mean a fight with the Serenes.
Mostly in agreement, but it kind of falls apart at the end. Why
can't they send those elites back as an agitating force? Either we leave them alone, which gives them a foothold, or we suppress them, which creates the excuse for the Junta to get involved as a 'liberating' force.
Basically, there's nothing intrinsically preventing an attack, either way. As I said above, if you're really that intent on taking out an opponent, you can find a way. The key is to take actions that mitigate and neutralize any such intent.
Anyway, what matters is how things would play out in either scenario. There's lots of uncertainties in how things will work. For example, does the territory Nagoya gets become Nagoya's territory, or become a vassal of Nagoya? Politically, those are
very different things, and influence how things will work for us in future developments, and how people will view the manner in which we claim territory.
Also, we're expecting Nagoya to act as police in Tokyo (as per helix's comment). Are they going to be policing
us? Would we accept them acting as legal agents within our territory? Maybe? Maybe not? If we say 'no', then that changes whether they can patrol the Tokyo prefecture, if we were to claim it, which means we have to be capable of defending it on our own (which we would have difficulties with). If we say 'yes', that gives them legal authority within our borders, and changes how much power other groups perceive us as having (ie: we're weakening our apparent power, increasing the odds of being attacked (though also dependent on how they perceive Nagoya as likely to respond), boosted by the fact that we have a ton of territory that seems ripe for acquisition).
From an outside view, what constitutes a threat?
1) Size of the opponent, and particularly large territory grabs. The larger we are, the bigger the threat, and the more territory we grab in one fell swoop, the more threatening our actions appear. The higher the threat, the less cooperation we get, and the more other groups will try to undermine us.
Meanwhile, the larger we are, the weaker we are in terms of our original organizational structure, which means we react more poorly to unexpected or problematic situations. The more we grow all at once, the less cohesion we have within the group, leading to greater factionalism and collapsing from the inside.
The larger we are, and the more we swing towards a militant organizational structure, the weaker morale gets. The more things swing in that direction, the more likely Serena will see our original position as just a sham to use her for the sake of a power grab. If she decides to leave, we can't stop her. And if she decides to leave, we just lost our biggest trump card, and everyone else who's been eyeing us warily suddenly sees a massively vulnerable giant just waiting to collapse in on itself, as our internal morale takes a nosedive as people realize that purported morals were just a cover for an apparently power-hungry leadership.
This I see as our most likely cause for complete failure. Not the Junta, not poaching, none of those external threats. Collapsing from within because we were blinded by greed or power.
2) Actions. Attempts to dominate or control, rather than negotiate.
Being big is not a sin, but what you do with that power can be. It's very easy to fall into the mental trap that what's good for you is good for everyone, or to not even think of the "everyone" half of that comparison. People don't trust others, so try to do everything themselves.
Growing too quickly creates an imbalance in perspective. But people are scared, and reach for the maximum power they can grab, before learning how to properly use their strength first.
OOC: When we have the power advantage, people have a tendency to abuse it. When we're at a disadvantage, people panic and complain about not having the power advantage. I, personally, do not want that power advantage, because I don't like how people behave when we have it, or assume that we
must have it.
3) Explicit threats. Direct or indirect, we can expound on a threat against another group. Disproportionate response is a policy that I cannot agree with, because it is self-destructive (within the context of the world of magical girls), and because it is OOC. Predicating our defense on a policy that I cannot believe our organization members would adhere to is foolish. Remember that Serene members (in particular, Taura) have directly rejected orders by Mami when that went against their own beliefs. Other actions (such as grief counseling) have had negative effects on morale when handled inappropriately.
However, this is a resource-constrained game, and that doesn't just apply to
us. Every organization out there will have issues that require cooperation with others to resolve. And the more connections we have with other groups, the more we can cut off the options that a misbehaving group has for resolving their own resource limits.
In other words, we don't have to be the big brute in order to choke off the life of a group that's misbehaving. Cooperation with others will always generate more total power than a single organization could, and we have mechanisms available now that make cooperation very easy.
Sure, we have make a credible threat that poaching will be unprofitable because we will make it unprofitable, no matter the cost to us.
And you're completely missing the point that until we have a
way to do that, said threat is just empty posturing.
Why not just make contracts forbidding poaching in the first place?
Isn't that what I just said? The problem is getting agreement from groups outside our immediate influence, such as the Junta.
The optimal response to poaching is immediate, accurate, and disproportionate retaliation against the offender.
The problems are your assumptions on "immediate" (we currently have no way of getting immediate information; that's what I was pondering with the sensor net) and "accurate" (you have to actually be able to identify who the poachers are, and if you don't get "immediate" info you can't guarantee "accurate" info). Without those, "disproportionate retaliation" is meaningless; a blind titan thrashing about.
---
Overall, I do not think we need or want more than Kanagawa prefecture as personal territory.
I do think we want Nagoya's police patrolling Tokyo.
I do not think we want Nagoya's police to have jurisdiction within our own territory just yet (though that's subject to implementation).
I do think we want our own members to have access to the general Tokyo area.
I do not think we want to suppress the formation of independent groups within Tokyo
even if those groups are not entirely friendly to us, as long as they behave within a few general guidelines on things such as poaching (agreed to via Sachiko-contract for any leader that wants to form a state).
I think setting up the central Tokyo area (Tokyo and Saitama, possibly Chiba depending on how Nagoya plays things) as a joint 'protectorate' between us and Nagoya is a solid overall approach. That gives Nagoya full access and authority for their policing, without impinging on our own territory, while we likewise have access for supervision, planning, and training, while still leaving them as autonomous territories of the locals for most purposes.
I do not think the Junta is an immediate threat to Tokyo. The Osaka/Kyoto conflict is still ongoing, and attacking Tokyo territory gains them nothing. For all that Haman says, "Don't borrow trouble", we seem to do that quite often in viewing other groups' actions as threatening when they actually aren't.
If anything, the Junta are more likely to be concerned about significant growth by Nagoya rather than worrying about a new upstart.
As such, I expect any territory Nagoya claims to be declared a vassal state, to differentiate it from the group fighting directly with the Junta. Likewise, attacks on a vassal state cannot directly harm Nagoya, which makes it kind of pointless, dis-incentivizing Junta from such actions.
At the same time, by Nagoya having a vassal state there, the vassal state is subject to the same protections as any of Nagoya's other vassals, which means there's
already going to be someone dishing out that "disproportionate response", who is in fact far better at it than we are.
A mutual defense pact between the Tokyo states/vassals/etc means that there is literally no value in the Serenes acquiring territory in order to be able to unilaterally do the same thing, but not be as good at it.
Nagoya's choice of territory claims will necessarily be influenced by our own claims.
Thus if we claim lots of territory, Nagoya must as well, leading to a second front in their conflict with the Junta.
