Did you miss AN note about it?
He explicitly said there will be a choice (-ish) between cleansing and rebellions. Not necessarily one or another, maybe something in between is an option, but it is explicitly a landmine of a conquest for us.
Ethnic cleansing doesn't mean dragging people out and executing them, in case you missed the entire discussion. It is a known problem with a known solution, move in lots of Ymaryn population and disperse the Trelli population into Ymaryn heartlands for assimilation. If only they had Grand Docks to help with bulk shipping of populations eh?
And again, the ethnic cleansing argument from a moral perspective is a dead end. The leading alternative vote is to let Freehills slaughter them for us.
From a purely moral perspective conquering them gives us options for a minimal damage approach OR supporting Trell itself would lead to the fewest casualties in exchange for propping up a slaver culture.
@veekie we have never conquered a peer culture without factors which would make them welcoming before.
Txolla we freed from Xohyr, Thunder Twins we bailed out after meteor. Trelli conquest - of independent polity which has no damn reason to be grateful to us - is unprecedented for Ymaryn.
With AN explicitly saying more or less "guys well you don't
have to genocide them but good luck keeping them under control otherwise" I am reasonably sure you severely underestimate how painful the cultural and economic friction will be.
Because if AN phrased it this way this is way beyond scope of "meh a couple of Main Influence".
Besides, "a couple of Main Influence" is not a thing we did...ever? Certainly not on a short notice.
No, AN said we needed to replace the majority of their population with Ymaryn culture population. This, at present, would mean dumping a city's worth of new population into them. The maximum Influence relevant stat points of a one province state is 40, but due to the collapse of Trell, they currently are very unlikely to be at maximum. One Main Influence right after we take it replaces about a third of their population. Two Main Influence replaces half or more of their population
Which is what the 15 stat points of an Influence action represents. A couple of Main Influence is the population of a small country being migrated in.
*shrug* Best indicator of future results is past results - nothing to do with your character or motives. I'll be more than happy to apologize if attacking the strait works out well.
I could play the drama queen and start quoting past predictions that happened exactly as predicted but was ignored, but that's pointless. I could also point out all the needle threading, but that's similarly pointless. I could also point out in all but two of the regret cases, I explicitly expected the outcome, considered it a worthwhile cost/risk, and enough people agreed to it. Like the last famine, which was not some error of misplanning or unexpected risk. Everything predicted happened. Only facts outside of available information could have changed things and that is a failure of luck rather than analysis.
If you want past performance then I have a solid one, which is why some people to all our detriment(because seriously, we can't refine votes without looking over them!), vote blindly. I'm right often enough.
More to the point, personal attacks are needlessly aggravating and makes it difficult to maintain the civility and reason needed to assess problems properly by their merits, rather than repeating the same point louder or denigrating the opposition.
"A couple of Main Influence" isn't really something we can afford right now anyway, what with our action slots basically being taken by solving our current problems and making sure we don't implode.
We actually mathed it out. It should be affordable without hindering any quests or pressing concerns.
