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Ymaryn Successor Quest (Paths of Civ AU)

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Oshha said:
Who? We know when the Khem are going to attack and we made a point of securing our border with Styrmyr. There is no one else to make a surprise attack.
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Just saying, but I think it's possible for the Khem to make a pre-emptive attack.

Losing prestige via humiliation is being assumed as a surefire way to turn back the doom clock, but if they're already doing a military buildup it'd be stupid of them to wait. You don't change mobilization plans on a whim, especially for pre- or early industrial powers. Even modern IRL nations would have problems with that.
 
Aranfan said:
It is a bribe to keep them out of the war, plain and simple. It is blindingly obvious to everyone what you are doing, and how desperate you must be to need to do so. The thing is? It works. The Styrmyr happily accept the deal and reaffirm the ancient friendship between the two branches of the family of The People.
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Y'know, despite what the Strymyr did, they seem pretty chill. Even their negotiations were pretty positive, though they ended in failure (to be fair, Greenshore was a big ask). I can see good things in the future.



I don't fear active conflict from the patricians in the know. It has to be common knowledge that our bureaucracy has reached our limit.

As for the masses... well, in times of righteous war, many flaws can be overlooked. It wouldn't be popular, but not nearly as big a deal as the two main fronts.

In general, people probably see this as a bribe, same as with Strymyr. Not happy with the size of the bribe, but needs must.
 
Mors said:
Just saying, but I think it's possible for the Khem to make a pre-emptive attack.

Losing prestige via humiliation is being assumed as a surefire way to turn back the doom clock, but if they're already doing a military buildup it'd be stupid of them to wait. You don't change mobilization plans on a whim, especially for pre- or early industrial powers. Even modern IRL nations would have problems with that.
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The point being, they usually need a casus belli, at least this is how it worked in PoC.
Declaring wars without it did bad things to the king doing it, with a lot of negative modifiers as in-quest effect. (loss of trust)

Álli Méra said:
Use our spies to false-flag the sales as rebels from the Blacksheep?
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We are talking +1 treasury worth - this is a whole lot of weapons. I doubt it would be feasible.
 
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Oshha said:
I'm thinking of selling to Berba since the Khem hate us anyway and it might distract them a bit if the guys on the other side of their border get some guns.
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They consider us ungrateful opportunists and feel threatened by our rising prestige ("hate" is a strong word with nearly-neutral opinion). I agree that we shouldn't make it any worse--or give them a casus belli--until the event of war. Their prestige-demands to a people they actively dislike would also be worse, costing us more.

(Which, come to think of it, is another reason to offer them that unfavorable trade deal--in addition to possible Sacred Warding action, and the loss of trade upon war hurting their internal factions more.)

We can and should, however, seek loans from Berba/Abyss, which makes them more likely to step in if they fear Khem causing our default.

Álli Méra said:
Use our spies to false-flag the sales as rebels from the Blacksheep?
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This would be unbelievable, since they don't have access to the Saffron Sea and have never done this before, compared to the Ymaryn who have many times.
 
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noncannon said:
We can and should, however, seek loans from Berba/Abyss, which makes them more likely to step in if they fear Khem causing our default.
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I doubt they will. Taking a loan out from Berba or Abyss won't make them inclined to side with us. I'm not sure how the idea got started, but a loan isn't going to a tie nation any closer to us than a gun sell would. There is nothing to indicate that is the case and if people want to continue repeating it, I'm going to ask for some proof to back up the claim that taking out the loan is anything more than just business.
 
I think the worries about selling bombards to the Berba are well founded.

I would vote for taking out another loan over potentially giving the Khem a causus belli.
 
tenchifew said:
The point being, they usually need a casus belli, at least this is how it worked in PoC.
Declaring wars without it did bad things to the king doing it, with a lot of negative modifiers as in-quest effect. (loss of trust)
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No, that was an us thing. More violent societies can just dust up any old pretext and go to war. Sure, their neighbors won't love them for it but they'll hardly hate them more than they already do, and Khem's neighbors already hate them.
Oshha said:
I doubt they will. Taking a loan out from Berba or Abyss won't make them inclined to side with us. I'm not sure how the idea got started, but a loan isn't going to a tie nation any closer to us than a gun sell would. There is nothing to indicate that is the case and if people want to continue repeating it, I'm going to ask for some proof to back up the claim that taking out the loan is anything more than just business.
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The idea started because of the notion of repayment. If we sell someone something, they already have it and the transaction ends. Whereas a loan produces income over time as it is repaid, and if the nation that asked for the loan gets sufficiently wrecked then they can't pay it.

Of course this is kind of irrelevant in the face of the costs of war, so you are correct.

A better argument to prefer loans over gun sales is that our mass levy needs as many guns as we can give them.
 
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Oshha said:
I doubt they will. Taking a loan out from Berba or Abyss won't make them inclined to side with us. I'm not sure how the idea got started, but a loan isn't going to a tie nation any closer to us than a gun sell would. There is nothing to indicate that is the case and if people want to continue repeating it, I'm going to ask for some proof to back up the claim that taking out the loan is anything more than just business.
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Loaning money ties them to us economically, in that they lose out if we're defeated (and default on the loan): by both the principle of the loan, and future interest payments.

Say Berba has loaned 3 Treasury to us: they expect us to pay it back, along with any interest payments in the meantime (call it +1 Treasury interest, assuming it takes around three ticks to pay back). As long as the Ymaryn don't lose a war, Berba gets 4 Treasury back. If we do lose to Khem, Berba strongly risks getting 0 back. This is an incentive to go to war against the Khem: to preserve that 4 Treasury (in addition to already being enemies with Khem, a bonus).

Finally, if we've loaned out money to other naval powers, each knows that the other has a similar common interest, and are more likely to make an alliance against the Khem.

...

So why loan money to us in the first place? It depends on how aware they are of Khem's impending attack. If they see it it as just funding an inevitable takeover (good news is positive here, and even the humiliation might not hurt too much, since they'd think the matter is settled with Hellas for the likely duration of the war), it would be squeezing a rich nation--as the Ymaryn undoubtedly are--of loan interest while we're still forced to pay.
 
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065tdsa said:
No, that was an us thing. More violent societies can just dust up any old pretext and go to war. Sure, their neighbors won't love them for it but they'll hardly hate them more than they already do, and Khem's neighbors already hate them.
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Khem needs a casus beli, because that's apparently one of the thing that advanced power acquired.
 
noncannon said:
Loaning money ties them to us economically, in that they lose out if we're defeated (and default on the loan): by both the principle of the loan, and future interest payments.

Say Berba has loaned 3 Treasury to us: they expect us to pay it back, along with any interest payments in the meantime (call it +1 Treasury interest, assuming it takes around three ticks to pay back). As long as the Ymaryn don't lose a war, Berba gets 4 Treasury back. If we do lose to Khem, Berba strongly risks getting 0 back. This is an incentive to go to war against the Khem: to preserve that 4 Treasury (in addition to already being enemies with Khem, a bonus).

Finally, if we've loaned out money to other naval powers, each knows the other has a similar common interest, and are more likely to make an alliance against the Khem.
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Berba or any other nation with an inch of sense (aka all of them) isn't going to loan out that much money and I feel you doubt how much badly losing to Khem is going to hurt our ability to repay loans. Either we aren't hurt that badly and we can still repay or we are hurt that badly and in that case, we would be weak enough for them to extract payment by force. When we lent money to Amber Road, there was no talk about going to war with Norsca to ensure that they would win and be able to repay us. In fact, the idea never came up at all by either anyone in the thread or any character in-universe.

The whole idea that taking out loans is going to make the loaner side against Khem with us is nothing more than baseless wishful thinking.
 
[X] Accept this humiliation [-1 Treasury, -.1 Income, -1 Influence, -3 Prestige]

We can afford the costs and we need both the reduced fronts and the lower prestige.
 
[X] Accept this humiliation [-1 Treasury, -.1 Income, -1 Influence, -3 Prestige]

Reducing prestige is good, although I remain unconvinced this can block Khem from declaring. But it can't hurt.
 
Aranfan said:
Counter Espionage
Needed: ???, Rolled: 82+73-5=150. ??

The Shadow King has set up an organization to identify and subvert foreign spies. With this organization, foreign interlopers will have a much harder time ruining your plans

[???]
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The counter's gone, but it appears she set up a bureau to manage all the foreign spies being fed false information.
 
I don't think we can afford to keep bleeding influence nor to set the precedent that we can be extorted by opportunists. Sure we don't want to overtake the Khem but we also can't afford to look weak. Simply facing down the Hellenes with a strong defence isn't going to get us dangerous levels of prestige - we're sticking to our own territory and everyone already knows we're stronger.

As to where we get the troops to defy Hellas, we have so many people in the mountains of the Thunder Plateau that it's fucking up our logistics. If we're having rear echelon trouble enough to slow down the campaign then those hundreds of thousands of extra mouths are living off the land. That's land which is environmentally strained and people who are impoverished - not the way to win hearts and minds, and a fuck of a problem for those really green administrators! Sometimes fewer people just works better, especially when fewer still means over half a million soldiers. Plus we now have more warships to support south coast operations and they're dealing with an open rebellion in a strategic area.

Redistributing the troops has a significant chance of failure with bad results but a complete success is entirely possible and within the scope of a good roll - that's what Authority dice are for.

Not chucking away the influence on appeasing Hellas means we can use that action on loans or trade deals that can actually improve our strategic position while still reducing prestige. Having a penalty on actions is better than not having actions.

[x] Reject this absurdity [War continues]
 
[X] Accept this humiliation [-1 Treasury, -.1 Income, -1 Influence, -3 Prestige]

Oshha said:
Either we aren't hurt that badly and we can still repay or we are hurt that badly and in that case, we would be weak enough for them to extract payment by force.
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You can't extract payment by force if there isn't anything with which to pay: if the Khem take everything, if the Ymaryn are run dry (or who knows, collapse for a second time).

Extracting payment through force is also made more dubious by the bottleneck of Trelli, which exists regardless of Ymaryn absolute "hurt". What are they going to do, blockade everyone else from going there?

Oshha said:
Berba or any other nation with an inch of sense (aka all of them) isn't going to loan out that much money
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Maybe, maybe not. Speculative fever can lead to taking on of many more risks than originally intended, if they see this as funding the increasingly inevitable takeover of the Ymaryn's old provinces (and miss the Khem threat).

Worse, if they already have an economic incentive, in the form of previous loans, they're all the less likely to consider the failure case. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it", and all that.

Of course, if they do notice the Khem rationale, I think you're right. (Or if they have sane risk management, which is always possible, but never a sure thing with humans.)

Oshha said:
When we lent money to Amber Road, there was no talk about going to war with Norsca to ensure that they would win and be able to repay us. In fact, the idea never came up at all by either anyone in the thread or any character in-universe.
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We would have totally sent troops to Amber Road, just not because of the loan (which we're inclined to forgive anyway). Actual friendship--or, for the cynical, long-term strategic interest--is a far stronger motivator than economic ties. Economic ties are just an additional incentive: in Berba/Abyss' case, in addition to the fact that they already, actually hate Khem from the wars.
 
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I for one am very worried about what happens if the Ymaryn armies roll well on all fronts and we suddenly rack up a whole pile of prestige at once. We need to pull back on prestige.

Also, what would we even do with Hellas if we won? It sucks that accepting peace means we lose influence, but using Hellas to pull our prestige down seems like the best way to go for now.

[X] Accept this humiliation [-1 Treasury, -.1 Income, -1 Influence, -3 Prestige]

fasquardon
 
Kiba said:
The bureaucracy isn't going to do better just because you take off troops. The supply issue may improve, but the bureaucrats are still overwhelmed.
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Supply issues matter. They matter a lot to the poor peasants whose winter stores are feeding our ginormous armies. Supply issues make up 90% of the administrative burden of keeping armies in the field which is so vexing our bureaucrats.

More important though, even after we remove the troops we'll still have overwhelming force in the Thunder Plateau. The marginal value of those troops is higher in other theatres. Will the Hellenes keep taking the piss when there's 30-40,000 well equipped troops in Trelli and the same in reserve? Upping the forces fighting the Highlanders by 50% might finally make them give up, closing that front and not getting any pesky prestige because it's just the Highlanders. In the Western Wall campaign the number are nearly even, we have less if anything, and a well deployed army of 30-40,000 can make an impact.
 
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