Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

[occipitallobe]

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[Sparsebeard]

Then how the hell did the Divine Saber Palace pull it off, then? He did the exact same thing against the Devil Bees.

Partly probably because he predicted they were going to hit him. But how did he know when they were hitting him, so he knew when to start coming back? Probably some Treasure or other.

So, we do the same thing here. We predict when the Jingshen are going to hit us. We do so by presenting what seems like an opening; we pretend to raid the Devil Bees. Instead, we either partly raid the Devil Bees, or we hide out in our territory.

We hit the Devil Bees with Manuel and Yao, rather than with Kleisthenes.

Nobody knows we have Kleisthenes as our Nascent Soul right now. Jingshen won't know it. Jingshen will either smell a rat and not go for it -- in which case, hey, free raid on the Devil Bees! free money and damage to the Devil Bees! Maybe we'd even be able to mess with Old Cannibal's control and influence over one or both of his students? -- or he will go for it...

At which point he runs into Kleisthenes and the Late Nascent Wills.

And then Yao and Manuel come right back. And we have a perfect Cassus Belli against Jingshen.

Click to shrink...

Personaly, I think you had a great point that Old Jingshen wouldn't want to give us a Casus Beli by launching a large scale offensive. Sure if most of our Nascent Souls are occupied, he might go for revenge for our devastating raid last turn. But a full on attack seems unlikely and a raid doesn't feel like it would be a sufficient justification to strike back.

After all, Old Jingshen knows that Old Cannibal can't attack us in the desert himself and has to deal with the consequences of his strike on the south of the plains. So Old Jingshen know we can turn back anytime if he makes the mistake of giving us an excuse for war.

 

[Deadly Snark]

Attacking the Bees doesnt really give us anything at this point in time. Old Cannibal playing to balance out the factions to build up his own faction benefits us too right now. We are already helping the Great Battlefield with our forces, if we take out the Bees and Old Cannibal now, we might tip the balance too much for the Righteous Faction and end up with less resources for when they recover and decide to kick our face in.

Our position is more secure if we go with the "Kick Jingshen in the Face" plan, and secure De-Facto Hegemony in the Desert First. This gives us control of the Spirit Stones, and allow us to prevent SPS from sending a force against us so long as we keep the stones flowing. Once we have that as a solid foundation, taking out the Bees and Cannibal is beneficial since it prevents him from doing the same to us and show SPS that we are valuable allies.

While attacking the Bees now might gain us good will, it would only gain us good will as Devil Bees Mountain is notoriously hard to take and a 3v3 fight is much more dangerous to us than a 3v2. Good will doesnt mean shit without a stronger powerbase.

 

[Garlak]

Personaly, I think you had a great point that Old Jingshen wouldn't want to give us a Casus Beli by launching a large scale offensive. Sure if most of our Nascent Souls are occupied, he might go for revenge for our devastating raid last turn. But a full on attack seems unlikely and a raid doesn't feel like it would be a sufficient justification to strike back.

After all, Old Jingshen knows that Old Cannibal can't attack us in the desert himself and has to deal with the consequences of his stike on the south of the plains. So Old Jingshen know we can turn back anytime if we make the mistake of giving him an excuse for war.

Click to shrink...

Then in that case, if he doesn't attack, we would have disrupted the Devil Bees and (if we're lucky) have weakened or pissed off one of the 2 Devil Bee Nascent's factions. And gained some wealth for us.

We are already helping the Great Battlefield with our forces, if we take out the Bees and Old Cannibal now, we might tip the balance too much for the Righteous Faction and end up with less resources for when they recover and decide to kick our face in.

Click to shrink...

While attacking the Bees now might gain us good will, it would only gain us good will as Devil Bees Mountain is notoriously hard to take and a 3v3 fight is much more dangerous to us than a 3v2.

Click to shrink...

I don't want to take out Old Cannibal and the 2 Devil Bee Nascents though.

I want to raid and pillage while the 3 Devil Bee Nascents launch their next attack on the Verdant South; with the intent of rushing back home to head off the Jingshen invasion.

While leaving Kleisthenes (who I don't think they should know about immediately, so, we've got an opportunity), the Late Nascent Wills, and a 40-60 Core Formation Hoplite at home.


This is, admittedly, holding some risk. Possibly too risky for people to be comfortable going with. And they might prefer to just go straightforward "Naw let's just invade or raid Jingshen and take some land."

 

[Humbaba]

Bluntly, I don't think the strategic value is worth it for use against the Devil Bees.

At the moment, we have a hidden Nascent Soul. We can't expect that card to remain hidden for too long, so it's important to deploy it as well as possible.

For the next 60 years (maybe 40 as of start of turn 12?), we have Yao. We can't use her offensively in a war,* but she can hold down the fort, allowing Manuel and Klesthines to move as a team in devastating Jingshen lands. The ideal play being mousetrapping Old Jingshen and Jiao into a battle with Manuel and only then revealing Klethines.

I know the thread is inclined to do further intrigue prep work, but I'm honestly very wary of waiting too long and missing our chance. The Jingshen have been prepping to raise a third nascent for 220 years at minimum at this point (since they started as a last ditch survival plan against Alexios), there is a serious risk that their third Nascent pops in the next couple of turns, at which point we're back to stalemate. Even if not, we have to consider that if they learn that we have a second Nascent, given Jiao's diplo focus they may actually be able to beg enough aid from other righteous path members to put something to neutralise our advantage in place, even if they have to pay through the nose.**


*She can raid with us. But helping us actually conquer the Jingshen could mess up her standing among the righteous path permanently.

**SPS are allergic to the idea of the Golden Devils achieving desert Hegemony as a Demonic power. Once they're undistracted by the Noble Devil alliance they will be making more moves to curtail that option, and the Saber Palace would be happy to help.

Also super interesting to see Dixang's blind spot. He's so convinced of how dangerous Manuel is that he's seeing him behind every shadow. I'm sure we can make use of this somehow.


EDIT 2 - Responding to a new post that came up while I was typing:

Then in that case, if he doesn't attack, we would have disrupted the Devil Bees and (if we're lucky) have weakened or pissed off one of the 2 Devil Bee Nascent's factions. And gained some wealth for us.


I don't want to take out Old Cannibal and the 2 Devil Bee Nascents though.

I want to raid and pillage while the 3 Devil Bee Nascents launch their next attack on the Verdant South; with the intent of rushing back home to head off the Jingshen invasion.

While leaving Kleisthenes (who I don't think they should know about immediately, so, we've got an opportunity), the Late Nascent Wills, and a 40-60 Core Formation Hoplite at home.


This is, admittedly, holding some risk. Possibly too risky for people to be comfortable going with. And they might prefer to just go straightforward "Naw let's just invade or raid Jingshen and take some land."

Click to shrink...

The issue is that the Jingshen are very unlikely to invade unless they get nascent soul No.3. It's a pretty high risk for not a great return for them. Especially since Manuel is known for his traps and misdirection's (like the old pretend to be wounded gambit). At best you might see a big raid (similar to what we have just done). Thing is, as long as they stay away from the Dawn Fortress, maybe our core territories, the Nascent wills probably won't activate (they're made to be last ditch defences).

Which means Klesthenes has to just sit there or risk getting ganged up on in a 2v1 with a mid-nascent.

 

[no.]

Do you really think that Jingshen would fall for that? Seriously?

You think he will believe Manuel Konstantinos, who works in plans within plans, has left his territory unguarded for no reason, against an enemy he knows wants to take his land? Right after he just got a great defense against said land-taking?

What you're proposing is the oldest trick in the book. He won't fall for it.

 

[Garlak]

The issue is that the Jingshen are very unlikely to invade unless they get nascent soul No.3. At best you might see a big raid (similar to what we have just done). Thing is, as long as they stay away from the Dawn Fortress, maybe our core territories, the Nascent wills probably won't activate (they're made to be last ditch defences).

Which means Klesthenes has to just sit there or risk getting ganged up on in a 2v1 with a mid-nascent.

Click to shrink...

I figure that if Jingshen see Manuel and Yao leave, they might invade in order to target our Late Nascent Will repository. And to kill our Core Formation elders, because they know 60 of them can be a huge threat to a Nascent Soul. In their view, they would be invading in order to take out Manuel's ability to tilt the scales in a Nascentbowl; by taking out our Core Formation folks and Nascent Wills.


Though, the more I think on this whole thing, the more "Ehhhh..." I feel about it; Manuel and Yao raiding the Devil Bees is still risky. Leaving Kleisthenes at home to face Jingshen is still risky.

Everything would have to go right, in order for things to work out. If things go bad, things can go very bad. And while that goes for any war with Jingshen, it's not quite the same level of leaving ourselves extended and risking things. More points of failure in any "Raid Devil Bees?" plans. And if Jingshen doesn't invade, all we've gotten is some wealth and damage to the Devil Bees.

 

[Olivebirdy]

Do you really think that Jingshen would fall for that? Seriously?

You think he will believe Manuel Konstantinos, who works in plans within plans, has left his territory unguarded for no reason, against an enemy he knows wants to take his land? Right after he just got a great defense against said land-taking?

What you're proposing is the oldest trick in the book. He won't fall for it.

Click to shrink...

So I just had an idea that Jingshen might fall for. We hide Kleisthenes and pretend the Doomclock is still ticking. Desperately hit Jingshen's economy again and again to slow down but fail to stop the ticking. Raise their anger against us. And when, despite all our efforts, the Doomclock completes, Jingshen invades us with three Nascents. And we hit them with a surprise Kleisthenes and Casus Belli to take them for all they're worth. Core territories, mines and all.

Three things I'd like input on.

1. How do we hide Kleisthenes?
2. What huge thing could Yao do for us that would make observers think 'okay, yeah, she's done enough to repay her allies the Golden Devils, it's not strange that she would abandon them in their time of need'. Preferably something that would help Kliesthenes, Manuel and the Hoplite win against three Nascents, but not enough for only Manuel and the Hoplite to win.
3. Do the RP actually care about Casus Belli? Are they going to think, 'okay, Jingshen attacked first, we're not going to join a coalition to save them'?

Edit:

1. She probably delegates a lot, and Manuel is good at hiding things. Or we might put her in closed-door cultivation, pretend that we're still trying to get her to ascend. It puts a timer on Jingshen's actions as well, which is nice. They can't afford to wait until we get our second Nascent.
2. Jingshen doesn't actually know that we funded Yao. They don't know how much she thinks she owes us. We could have her just raid Jingshen for us and then leave. We don't need an excuse.
3. We'd be annoying to invade. We'd be incredibly annoying to invade. And now's a bad time for it anyway. With a proper Casus Belli, they don't have to. They've got no obligation, they've got no deals. It would be hard to wrangle up a coalition, without even honor to defend. We'd stay at the bottom of their priority list.

 

[Garlak]

Three things I'd like input on.

1. How do we hide Kleisthenes?

Click to shrink...

'Three Ghost Hiding Spirit Cloak'. What have we been diplomancing the Strength Purity Sect for, if not to beg/buy/borrow/steal their treasured ghost sheet?

2. What huge thing could Yao do for us that would make observers think 'okay, yeah, she's done enough to repay her allies the Golden Devils, it's not strange that she would abandon them in their time of need'. Preferably something that would help Kliesthenes, Manuel and the Hoplite win against three Nascents, but not enough for only Manuel and the Hoplite to win.

Click to shrink...

Well... she is a bandit, so... What about that "hit the Jingshen's bank" idea you had in Discord?

Manuel and Yao, together in: The Great Jingshen Bank Robbery!

It advances our goals by getting us wealth and pissing off (and weakening) Jingshen, it fulfills "What big public thing can Yao do for us?", and it's cool. Risky, but cool.

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

So I just had an idea that Jingshen might fall for. We hide Kleisthenes and pretend the Doomclock is still ticking. Desperately hit Jingshen's economy again and again to slow down but fail to stop the ticking. Raise their anger against us. And when, despite all our efforts, the Doomclock completes, Jingshen invades us with three Nascents. And we hit them with a surprise Kleisthenes and Casus Belli to take them for all they're worth. Core territories, mines and all.

Three things I'd like input on.

1. How do we hide Kleisthenes?
2. What huge thing could Yao do for us that would make observers think 'okay, yeah, she's done enough to repay her allies the Golden Devils, it's not strange that she would abandon them in their time of need'. Preferably something that would help Kliesthenes, Manuel and the Hoplite win against three Nascents, but not enough for only Manuel and the Hoplite to win.
3. Do the RP actually care about Casus Belli? Are they going to think, 'okay, Jingshen attacked first, we're not going to join a coalition to save them'?

Click to shrink...

1. We can't hide her.
2. Too much work for too little gain
3. Ehh, the major hegemon of the Righteous Path is the Strength Purity Sect and they have a thing about honor even if they do have ways around it

 

[TehChron]

Or we could just save the clever tricks and mindgames for the next time we have three Nascent souls and instead focus on securing security and wealth while we are certain to have Yao in our corner

The overly complex covering our ass stuff can come later when we dont have that leeway

 

[Olivebirdy]

1. We can't hide her.
2. Too much work for too little gain
3. Ehh, the major hegemon of the Righteous Path is the Strength Purity Sect and they have a thing about honor even if they do have ways around it

Click to shrink...

You can also 'suppress your cultivation', weakening yourself temporarily and making you appear for all intents and purposes as a cultivator of a lower realm. This doesn't count when facing weaker opponents, though, or trying to enter secret realms.

Click to shrink...

Found a source. We can hide Kleisthenes without going through all that trouble. Hiding cultivation is possible.

Fair enough. SPS is the most dangerous enemy, if they'll accept it, that's great.

Or we could just save the clever tricks and mindgames for the next time we have three Nascent souls and instead focus on securing security and wealth while we are certain to have Yao in our corner

The overly complex covering our ass stuff can come later when we dont have that leeway

Click to shrink...

If we don't hide Kleisthenes, we'll have an easy fight, but general opinion seems to be cautious of a coalition. We'd be going for whatever we think we can get away with, either the southern vassals or just the Cannibal territory. We wouldn't be going for the core territories, the main mines, because we simply wouldn't have a good enough casus belli. We'd be going for the eventual victory, grinding them down piece by piece.

If we go for subterfuge, it would both be very in-character and also give us a really good excuse to go for the whole thing. Take all of Jingshen without much worry about getting coalitioned. They attacked first. And we'd get to see what a surprise Nascent can do to a war. And it would be a good warning to anybody else who thinks to attack when we seem weak.

 

[Sparsebeard]

Taking all of Jingshen in a short timeframe just seems hillariously risky and probably unrealistic.

I mean, the whole NDA only completely destroyed what? One or two factions? Even most factions behind enemy lines were able to survive in their last fortifications and even ended up linking up in a defensive triangle.

If we attack Jingshen in their Core Territories and they survive long enough, they WILL receive reinforcements. Even just Old Jingshen and his daughter surviving and running away would spell no end of trouble.

People seem to think that time is against us, I disagree! Surviving long enough for the Good Seeds to start getting into Nascent Soul is almost a winning condition for us, seeing how efficient the Good Seeds are at dealing with enemies on the same level. Manuel's job as Grand Elder is to make sure we survive until then.

 

[TehChron]

If we don't hide Kleisthenes, we'll have an easy fight, but general opinion seems to be cautious of a coalition

Click to shrink...

If we don't we'll have an easier fight by constantly forcing Jingshen to choose who he allows to do damage uncontested: Yao with her raids into his heartland, or Kleisthenes with her rampages down south.

For the moment, he only has one Jiao, and if we commit to a quick and aggressive fight then theres no reason to commit to killing one of the Jingshens nascent souls.

Leaving both of them and the Jingshens core territories intact means that everything the Righteous Powers care about regarding the Jingshen will still be in place even after we're done.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Jingshen doesn't have the ferocity to go on the attack against our territory without a third Nascent Soul, even if he thinks our territory is (temporarily) unguarded by other Nascents (until they get back).

The only way we could troll Jingshen into attacking us is if:

1) He might attack with Nascent Souls (himself and his daughter) if he thought Lady Yao were out of the picture and didn't know about Kleisthenes and thought Manuel was somehow weakened or so heavily distracted that he won't be able to respond to a Jingshen Nascent Soul attack before it inflicts crippling damage on the Bronze Devils as a whole. Since even Nascent Souls take time to kill entire regions, Manuel would have to be pretty out of it. So we'd have to trick Jingshen about three important facts simultaneously, and that sounds very difficult- something we'd have to expend a lot of resources setting up.

2) He might attack with juniors (Core Formation and below) if he thought the Trials had gutted our strength and, again, didn't know about Lady Yao or Kleisthenes. He wouldn't try that, though, if he thought we had a Nascent Soul available to sort out random bullshit attacks in Core Formation and below while Manuel continues to hold down the Fortress of Dawn (?).

I just don't think it's feasible to troll Jingshen into attacking. Our Intrigue game is good but it's not flawless to the point where we can tactically control what Jingshen does and does not know about our situation as if we were flicking a light switch, or to where we can manipulate him and move him around like a game piece on a board.

Then in that case, if he doesn't attack, we would have disrupted the Devil Bees and (if we're lucky) have weakened or pissed off one of the 2 Devil Bee Nascent's factions. And gained some wealth for us.

I don't want to take out Old Cannibal and the 2 Devil Bee Nascents though.

I want to raid and pillage while the 3 Devil Bee Nascents launch their next attack on the Verdant South; with the intent of rushing back home to head off the Jingshen invasion.

Click to shrink...

It occurs to me that there is an obvious problem with this strategy.

Namely, if we can rush back to repel a sudden Nascent Soul attack on our core territory launched while we're busy raiding elsewhere, so can the Devil Bees. Indeed, you'd expect them to be better at "rush home to protect core territories from an enemy who hit while you were out raiding" than we are.

The Devil Bees are, as a faction, famously mobile. The Golden Devils are not.

What happens if, after we attack the Bees' territory while they're off in the south, then Old Jingshen conveniently attacks us because he's doing exactly what we want him to do for the moment, Old Cannibal and the Devil Bees come back too?

Then things could get pretty fuckin' dicey.

 

[Sparsebeard]

Fair enough. SPS is the most dangerous enemy, if they'll accept it, that's great.

Click to shrink...

Our enemies are the Saber Sect, the Devil Bees, Old Cannibal and to a lesser degree, Jingshen and the NDA.

The SPS are our not!allies. Attacking Jingshen is us turning on them, not the opposite but even that doesn't neccessarily precludes good relations with them so long as we let them keep face and prove to be trustworthy allies.

The Heaven's Shadow might conceal us enough for an actual Heaven enforced coallition to never be in the cards again. If that's the case, it's not like Righteous factions are impossible to cohabitate with.

It occurs to me that there is an obvious problem with this strategy.

Namely, if we can rush back to repel a sudden Nascent Soul attack on our core territory launched while we're busy raiding elsewhere, so can the Devil Bees. Indeed, you'd expect them to be better at "rush home to protect core territories from an enemy who hit while you were out raiding" than we are.

The Devil Bees are, as a faction, famously mobile. The Golden Devils are not.

What happens if, after we attack the Bees' territory while they're off in the south, then Old Jingshen conveniently attacks us because he's doing exactly what we want him to do for the moment, Old Cannibal and the Devil Bees come back too?

Then things could get pretty fuckin' dicey.

Click to shrink...

At least it stops them from eating people and they have to stay wary of us!

Not the best thing from a machiavellian point of view, but the Golden Devils are not known to always make the choice in their best interest. I'd like to think we would choose to do the RIGHT thing rather than the most optimal for our interests (I don't have too much hope...).

Die standing tall rather than live patheticaly (in the context of the quest).

 

[Sirrocco]

What I'd like, shipper that I am, is Old Jingshen tossed over to the RP up north, while Jiao marries Manuel as a fig leaf. This isn't conquest, this is a dowry. A unification of the Jingshen and Golden Devil Clans, with the tacit understanding that the other option is destruction of Jingshen. Terms would be heavily weighted towards us.

Click to shrink...

Being married, however thin the fig leaf, to Jiao is a terrible idea. We really, really don't want to let the Dao of Acceptance into bed with us... or even spend all that much time in the same room with her.

So... on claiming the mines... basically, our long-term plans require that we have full dominion over the desert. We have a few different strategies that I see.

- We go hard aggro on the Jingshen right now, claim their territories by force and drive them out. We use the dramatic increase in income to crank the heck out of our defenses. We seriously consider whether it's possible to send enough spirit stones down the Scorpion Road to buy off the SPS in the short and medium term. If it is, we do that. If it's not... we're basically left with no options other than cutting them off entirely and hoping that that makes them collapse against the aggressions of the Demonic Altar. We make sure that Jiao dies rather than escaping, because under this plan, having the Dao of Acceptance out there among the Righteous Sects talking about how evil we are would be terrible. Ironically, this is basically two different plans (buy them off vs cut them off) but only one is actually viable, and it's not entirely clear which one.

- We take all of the territories outside of their core territories. We keep doing little obnoxious raids. We apply financial pressure to weaken them to get more leverage to apply more financial pressure. We drain them via death of a thousand cuts until they collapse enough that we can coerce them into being our vassals. This may require killing both of their Nascents, but it would be better if we could somehow get away with not doing that. Best of all would be if we could somehow make them cash-poor enough that they couldn't maintain both Nascents, but I'm thinking that one's pretty implausible.

- We go hard aggro on behalf of our Very Good Friends the Flood Dragons. They have this delightfully twisted CB based on how the Jingshen have been mistreating the Bandit Kingdoms, that doesn't work for us nearly as well. We set it up as Lady Yao's fief with Golden Devil administrators, in close alliance with us. We don't get as much money out of it directly, but we do pull the Bandits into our orbit that much more, and that lets them be a significant presence out in the world that much faster. Having a powerful Righteous Sect who likes us quite a lot, is happy to project all kinds of force out in the world in various unpredictable and uncontrollable ways, and whose core strength is ridiculously well-defended behind the Great Bronze Wall of the Clan? That's really not a bad thing. With this setup we might or might not have enough resources to crank up a third Nascent of our own... but if we don't get a third, the Flood Dragons are likely to get a second. Also... heh. There's one way in which the core Jingshen lands are likely to be more productive with us at the helm. To whit, we won't be raiding them. The Golden Devils are generally capable of adding infrastructure and keeping it. The Jingshen have been... not so fortunate in that regard.

To my mind, from best to worst, the options are something like this:
- Claim lands, placate SPS long enough to hard-fortify
- Claim on behalf of Flood Dragons
- Claim edges, then vassalize over time
- Claim lands, screw SPS

My decision making on this matter would be easier if I could discern whether the "go hard aggro, claim lands" option was the first or the fourth, here. My read, though, is that the first is sufficiently implausible that I'd be inclined to go with having Lady Yao grab it.

 

[Lampshade]

Some points that I haven't seen enter the discussion so far:

• Jingshen could have their own Nascent Will.
• They could have rigged the mines to blow.
• Jingshen vassals hate the Golden Devils. Right now they are in various stages of discontent and rebellion, but if we attack them they might unite against us and fight to the bitter end. Also, attacking someone who's already down seems against our principles of good governance.
• Shameless meta-gaming, but . . . If we get coalitioned and don't instantly die, we will probably get the option to break the coalition up with the third Shadow of Heaven's Will.

In terms of marco strategy I like the idea of invasion, but the closer one looks the worse it seems. As for cassus belli, how about openly accusing them of mismanaging the mines, especially now that we are sending our own troops to the Battlefield and want the supplies secure? It carries upfront the implicit message that we will manage the mines better.

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

Some points that I haven't seen enter the discussion so far:

• Jingshen could have their own Nascent Will.
• They could have rigged the mines to blow.
• Jingshen vassals hate the Golden Devils. Right now they are in various stages of discontent and rebellion, but if we attack them they might unite against us and fight to the bitter end. Also, attacking someone who's already down seems against our principles of good governance.
• Shameless meta-gaming, but . . . If we get coalitioned and don't instantly die, we will probably get the option to break the coalition up with the third Shadow of Heaven's Will.

In terms of marco strategy I like the idea of invasion, but the closer one looks the worse it seems. As for cassus belli, how about openly accusing them of mismanaging the mines, especially now that we are sending our own troops to the Battlefield and want the supplies secure? It carries upfront the implicit message that we will manage the mines better.

Click to shrink...

The vassal we are specifically targeting doesn't hate us or like us. We are however seeding Flood Dragons in their land to get an invitation so that we back Yao's affiliates and present a better offer than the current one they have under Jingshen. The vassals go to Yao we get the rest of the Cannibal lands

 

[Sparsebeard]

The vassal we are specifically targeting doesn't hate us or like us. We are however seeding Flood Dragons in their land to get an invitation so that we back Yao's affiliates and present a better offer than the current one they have under Jingshen. The vassals go to Yao we get the rest of the Cannibal lands

Click to shrink...

I don't think we can get land for ourselves without getting coalitioned (eventually). But we'd probably get at least some of the ressources from the land from the FDG to administrate the land for them (I assume).

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

I don't think we can get land for ourselves without getting coalitioned (eventually). But we'd probably get at least some of the ressources from the land from the FDG to administrate the land for them (I assume).

Click to shrink...

This is not Jingshen territory. This is Cannibal lands. If the Righteous Path come for us over this then we're willing to pay the blood price

 

[Sparsebeard]

This is not Jingshen territory. This is Cannibal lands. If the Righteous Path come for us over this then we're willing to pay the blood price

Click to shrink...

Why though? We had the option to go to the knife with Old Cannibal, we didn't chose it. By definition, the land is Jingshen's due to a treaty we agreed to.

We accepted the deal, which meant that SPS and Jingshen would apply pressure and we wouldn't have to fight Old Cannibal to the death alone (which, I repeat, was an option).

And it's not like handing the land to our closest ally in order to try and stay in the good graces of SPS is that bad. If we even succeed in a quick war to take it...

Spitting in the face of the SPS and taking the land ourselves IS an option, but we shouldn't delude ourselves that we would have some kind of moral highground because the land once belonged to the Cannibals. And before saying we are ready to pay the blood price, we should be sure we can afford to pay the bill. Because we might just get our wish granted...

 

[fictionfan]

Our approach is likely to be dictated by our spying results.

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

Why though? We had the option to go to the knife with Old Cannibal, we didn't chose it. By definition, the land is Jingshen's due to a treaty we agreed to.

We accepted the deal, which meant that SPS and Jingshen would apply pressure and we wouldn't have to fight Old Cannibal to the death alone (which, I repeat, was an option).

And it's not like handing the land to our closest ally in order to try and stay in the good graces of SPS is that bad. If we even succeed in a quick war to take it...
Spitting in the face of the SPS and taking the land ourselves IS an option, but we shouldn't delude ourselves that we would have some kind of moral highground because the land once belonged to the Cannibals. And before saying we are ready to pay the blood price, we should be sure we can afford to pay the bill. Because we might just get our wish granted...

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I'm not claiming the moral high ground. The territory allocation with Jingshen was one of two arrangements struck under the supervision of the SPS. Only one of those was enforced under binding oath. I'm working from what in character our faction knows and Manuel did not consider that the treaty between us and Jingshen meant that they could not invade and take our territory in its entirety including the assigned portions. There was no mention of non-aggression merely border demarcations and in the Virtuous Flipper Region borders are negotiable with force even among the Righteous Path.
Edit: When our raid was successful and Old Jingshen was considering whether this was the prelude to all out war. He didn't make a reference to the division of lands which would be odd to miss since that would have been the obvious front.

 

[fictionfan]

The ideal is a short and victorious war done by Christmas and before the rightous alliance even really hears about it and we can present the whole thing as a fait accompli. If our spying indicates that is likely, well I would suspect a trap, but we would likely go for it anyway the timing is too perfect.

 

[no.]

The Strength Purity Sect doesn't have the power or stupidity to organize a huge coalition of Nascent Souls in the middle of an apocalyptic war. They certainly don't have the power to do it over a silly broken land division treaty. Hell, the agreement didn't even protect against future changing of hands for that land. If we're so terrified of destruction at the hands of Righteous Powers to even do that, then why are we even still Demonic? We're getting the worst of both worlds; playing by the rules without reaping the benefits.

The RP will maybe, maybe send a coalition if we fully destroy Jingshen and conquer everything. Anything less than that, and we'll be able to bribe our way out. That's what sucking up to SPS has been for. If we don't use that good will, then what was the point of all that? There can be no long-term coexistence with the Righteous Powers, not as independent entities. It's time to gather more strength in preparation to openly stand against them. Not now, not tomorrow, certainly not until the second fight with Old Cannibal is done, but someday we will.