Do we have them high enough?
I think that sleeper cells would be necessary to get this kind of information.
Ymaryn Successor Quest (Paths of Civ AU)
Do we have them high enough?
I think that sleeper cells would be necessary to get this kind of information.
Sleeper cells are people willing to risk their lives to take action. Spies are just people wiling to pass along information or take limited action that doesn't risk their exposure.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We have a spy network for information like this. Sleeper Cells is for getting inside men to assist our military forces.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I definitely want to avoid dragging out the war. Going for fiddly prestige plans with multiple moving and semi-unpredictable parts seems to risky when we have been setting our nation on fire for five years now. We want to wrap things up sooner rather than later with the Black Sheep and the Mass Levy.
Edit: Basically keep things simple. We need to end this war (and the Mass Levy) sooner rather than later and we are currently winning a lot against the Black Sheep. Instead of trying to set things up to be perfect, we settle for good enough lest we push things too far and things come tumbling down around us.
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They started fairly small, but sold off a number of our major advantages to push out into Ukraine fast enough to be economically relevant. Essentially they decided to farm fast rather than farm good, and this is blasphemy.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
IIRC, even though they're farming fast, they're still farming far better than average. Can't shake some things off, I suppose.
Do whatever it takes to end wars or front faster. Then spend the rest our actions on lowering our prestige.
That is a great point, everyone knows about our million man army, and Khem might very reasonably be nervous about facing it.
Doing a preemptive strike would possibly make a lot of sense there.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We have to do it as soon as possible which might mean waiting until we got all of Thunder Plateau.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Brynn: Probably not a great idea to take out too many more loans
Western Wall's presumed 3xCity Levy is more income-efficient than our Mass Levy, though, being a one-time cost (though maybe that changes in an extended war).
@Aranfan: does the -0.3 income from the deal count against Thunder Plateau's eventual -2 income, since it's the Bwyll ration instituted early? (That would save us a bit of pain.)
By contrast, right now, we have a reliable source of both increasing Treasury buffer and prestige buffer (and loaners who think our victory is inevitable). We should make use of that.
If we go into the ultimatum without enough Treasury buffer to support a war (and tank the effects of a partial blockade), it amounts to restricting our choices, and being forced to take that ultimatum.
(If that is your plan, then an unfavorable Khemetri trade deal should also be taken, to make their ultimatum less stringent. The more profits they make from trading with the People, the less they actually want war--and with luck it'll open up the Sacred Warding, allowing for further negotiations.)
@Aranfan: does the -0.3 income from the deal count against Thunder Plateau's eventual -2 income, since it's the Bwyll ration instituted early? (That would save us a bit of pain.)
The biggest "moving and semi-unpredictable part", by far, is the effects Khem entering the war (in army and income).
By contrast, right now, we have a reliable source of both increasing Treasury buffer and prestige buffer (and loaners who think our victory is inevitable). We should make use of that.
If we go into the ultimatum without enough Treasury buffer to support a war (and tank the effects of a partial blockade), it amounts to restricting our choices, and being forced to take that ultimatum.
(If that is your plan, then an unfavorable Khemetri trade deal should also be taken, to make their ultimatum less stringent. The more profits they make from trading with the People, the less they actually want war--and with luck it'll open up the Sacred Warding, allowing for further negotiations.)
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
1. Making a lot of assumptions.
2. It counts against the eventual -2
Well, in that case, let's take out at most one more?
Somehow reduce prestige another way?
I think we should try again to make peace with the Black Sheep.
@Aranfan
Can Brynn tell us how the economy is doing, and where some of the major strain is showing up? Can she give an estimate of how urgent it is to stop the mass levy? How many more years until BAD THINGS happen?
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Accept Terms (+5 Prestige, -1 influence, +2 influence, -.3 Income)
Thanks for the clarifications. That reduces the downside in taking the deal (though there's already a landslide regardless).
We still have Vynta, Magyar, and Ealam who are prime loaner candidates. Is that what she means by not too many, or is it more like HanChenYou's suggestion of one more loan?
If we take three loans + trade deal, that brings our Prestige down to 62 next turn, with a 7 buffer to 69. By comparison, the minimum estimated prestige gain is 3.5.
So we might just take three loans (to increase Treasury buffer) and count on the prestige threshold being hit (and the Khem confrontation starting). The three loans would be to cover our future income hit (both the -1.7 from Thunder Plateau and any hit from the Khem). In total, we would have 7 loans taken out with -0.7 interest per tick.
Hmm... is it mainly a matter of interest payments, or something else?
We still have Vynta, Magyar, and Ealam who are prime loaner candidates. Is that what she means by not too many, or is it more like HanChenYou's suggestion of one more loan?
We can pull out that Amber Road trade deal. But... without that many loans, I'm not sure how large a prestige buffer we can get, in order to make it likely that reclaiming Thunder Plateau wouldn't bring us over. So there's less point in doing so.
If we take three loans + trade deal, that brings our Prestige down to 62 next turn, with a 7 buffer to 69. By comparison, the minimum estimated prestige gain is 3.5.
So we might just take three loans (to increase Treasury buffer) and count on the prestige threshold being hit (and the Khem confrontation starting). The three loans would be to cover our future income hit (both the -1.7 from Thunder Plateau and any hit from the Khem). In total, we would have 7 loans taken out with -0.7 interest per tick.
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I think it's time to stop buffering our prestige. If we can peace out the BS, it will be OK to blow up our prestige and get humiliated by Khem. At that point we can throw 300K men at guarding our coastlines, accept a total loss of our Saffron Sea navy, and just deal with the consequences while we smash WW flat with twice the troops we have there now.
We have a twofold problem of our economy is running very hot (it's on fire) and we keep pumping money into it to pay for everything. We are likely pushing a significant amount of inflation. The more loans we get, the higher the inflation we are likely to be facing as we dial down our economy. On the other hand, it means we will have the money to deal with the inflation most likely.
The problem is that when we demobilize we are going to dump a million unemployed people with pockets full of cash into an economy that's distorted to high hell by the demands of a wartime economy. That's going to do bad things to a lot of our economy. And that's not counting the number of men we will have lost from productive use through injury or death in all this, cutting a big hole in our economy as well.
On one hand, it could transition to a post war boom economy if we can keep the wheels spinning. On the other hand it could descend into recession.
[X] Accept Terms (+5 Prestige, -1 influence, +2 influence, -.3 Income)
There are three things I fear. In roughly descending order of panic:
1) Khem attacks us while we're busy with all three of our current wars.
The Highland Kingdom is an annoying pest so we can largely leave them as an afterthought. Western Wall is losing against a bit less than half of the Mass Levy, so they're not going to survive at all if the full might of our million man army gives them a visit. It's the Black Sheep that's consuming (roughly) two thirds of our military might and the direct attention of our Military Hero general; we need to end this front, and quickly, so that we can finish everything else off.
We can survive Khem paying us a visit if the army isn't busy reconquering Iran. We can't survive it if we're still bogged down by those jumped up bastard nomads. We need to take the deal.
2) Our economy crashes and burns far beyond even our heir's ability to magic it back together.
Our Admin Hero heir says we shouldn't take on more loans if at all possible. She knows better than we do; we need to stop taking loans. As such we need to stop bleeding money with the Mass Levy, which means we need to finish the Black Sheep ASAP to reorient the other two thirds of the army north and smash Western Wall. They're barely holding us back against one third of the Mass Levy, they're not going to have the slightest chance against the whole shebang.
Taking the deal will end the war against the Black Sheep significantly faster. We need to take the deal.
3) Colossal cascading military fuckups along with Dafydd eating an arrow.
This one we can't actually do anything about. Pray to Crow, I guess.
There are three things I fear. In roughly descending order of panic:
1) Khem attacks us while we're busy with all three of our current wars.
The Highland Kingdom is an annoying pest so we can largely leave them as an afterthought. Western Wall is losing against a bit less than half of the Mass Levy, so they're not going to survive at all if the full might of our million man army gives them a visit. It's the Black Sheep that's consuming (roughly) two thirds of our military might and the direct attention of our Military Hero general; we need to end this front, and quickly, so that we can finish everything else off.
We can survive Khem paying us a visit if the army isn't busy reconquering Iran. We can't survive it if we're still bogged down by those jumped up bastard nomads. We need to take the deal.
2) Our economy crashes and burns far beyond even our heir's ability to magic it back together.
Our Admin Hero heir says we shouldn't take on more loans if at all possible. She knows better than we do; we need to stop taking loans. As such we need to stop bleeding money with the Mass Levy, which means we need to finish the Black Sheep ASAP to reorient the other two thirds of the army north and smash Western Wall. They're barely holding us back against one third of the Mass Levy, they're not going to have the slightest chance against the whole shebang.
Taking the deal will end the war against the Black Sheep significantly faster. We need to take the deal.
3) Colossal cascading military fuckups along with Dafydd eating an arrow.
This one we can't actually do anything about. Pray to Crow, I guess.
@Fouredged Sword, @Oshha, everyone in general:
The game plan for conceding to Khem is as follows:
There are significant advantages in conceding to Khem:
Disadvantages (aside from the obvious loss of whatever they demand):
The game plan for conceding to Khem is as follows:
- Take the disadvantageous trade deal to increase their opinion (and make their wealthy want war less), so that they give us better terms.
(There's also the chance this opens up Sacred Warding; starting this and the Cholera cure will give us even better terms. Starpox can strike at anyone, from the lowliest slave to the highest official. We can convince them that, too bad a deal, and we wouldn't have the political will to continue Sacred Warding even if we wanted to.) - Max out our Influence dice. Most or all of them are going to be taken away, and we need to make sure we have enough. Relatedly...
- No more dice on long-term projects (per Brynn's advice; more details in future post), whether Influence dice or Authority dice. This is so that the essential long-term projects (Sacred Warding Amber Road, Train Administrators) are not abruptly cancelled.
- [Medium confidence] If a long-term project must be taken, strongly prefer not using an Authority dice on it.
Because I think one Authority dice can take the place of 2-3 Influence dice being drained (with medium confidence). This is based on the mechanic:
and that it makes sense that an Authority dice is worth more than an Influence dice when taking the Khemetri Influence loss.
In other words, uncommitted Authority dice can help us to "tank" the Influence loss and ensure that projects are not cancelled.
There are significant advantages in conceding to Khem:
- Weakens Revaunchists
- Weakens OVERWHELMING ARROGANCE
- Minimal or no income loss
Disadvantages (aside from the obvious loss of whatever they demand):
- We don't know if Revaunchists will roll to demand prestige post-unification. (But we'll have weakened them net 5-6 times, so that helps.)
- Eventually we will catch up to Khem again. We need to build our navy so that, that time, we can stand up to them. This will cost Treasury/actions.
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@noncannon
One long term project that we will need to start soon, and that also can not afford to be cancelled is spreading the sacred warding to the Thunder Plateau.
One long term project that we will need to start soon, and that also can not afford to be cancelled is spreading the sacred warding to the Thunder Plateau.
- Location
- Southampton, Great Britain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First of all, the biggest moving and semi-unpredictable part is how much Prestige we get. We cannot guarantee that our Prestige reducing actions will pass unless we use an Authority nor can we predict how much Prestige we will get from doing well in the war. We are going to find ourselves just 4 Prestige behind the Khem after this vote. A bad combination of rolls could push us over the edge.
Edit: @noncannon From the Discord
It's not our choice to cancel the projects; Influence loss to Khem does it for us.
But in response to that thought, I've added the following suggestion:
Why? Because I think one Authority dice can take the place of 2-3 Influence dice being drained (with medium confidence). This is based on the mechanic:
and that it makes sense that an Authority dice is worth more than an Influence dice when taking the Khemetri Influence loss.
In other words, uncommitted Authority dice can help us to "tank" the Influence loss and ensure that projects are not cancelled.
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