You seem to be under the Impression that Salt Gift will just suddenly have us offer Salt to absolutely everyone as opposed to those that we actually have trading with. When we have to take a dedicated project to send trade missions, I very much doubt we would do such a thing.
It's the Lowlands. They've been fighting for centuries. They even fought through the Star Pox. They have no reason to not start up again. The point of trading is to take advantage before the fighting, not during it. The problem is that with the only trading we are doing is with the Xohyrissi, we aren't looked at too favorably and makes us look less like a neutral party.
No shit.
It's a specific target, and that's why I want to send it to the HK. There's no reason to assume it requires trade beforehand. It's technically a gift not a trade arrangement.
As for trading, the HK are sending traders to us, just not vice versa. As for your pathological assertion we can only trade/should only trade during lulls-
why? Who is going to take such offence to us that they won't deal with us? Because as I've repeated numerous times to absolutely no rebuttal-
they need peace with us more than we need peace with them. The very fact the Lowlands is liable to explode at any moment prevents the players there from meaningfully investing themselves in screwing us over at the risk of one of their rivals gaining advantage. The response to another faction apparently having our favor is to court it themselves, not to turn any conflict into an unwinnable one.
There's a reason Britain succeeded in thoroughly dominating the european continent for a while by backing competing rivals and ensuring they never achieved a hegemony in Europe. Even if it's unintentional, that's effectively the role we can play- and it's one liable to be far more productive in the long run than a reactive policy of neutrality. Neutrality in and of itself is worthless. Only in how it helps us is it laudable, it helped us from getting embroiled in a major war while our military was relatively weak and we had trouble at home. Now, we're all but in a golden age, with wealth pouring in, grand sweeping diplomatic gestures (both in the Cholera treatment and the hypothetical Salt Gift to come), the nomads kept at arm's length, and major medical and metallurgical improvements. Now is absolutely the the peak of our relative power in the games going on in the Lowlands, and building up a pathological desire to keep our nose out of it isn't helpful.
The problem with that is that you assume they know that. They think we are weird farmers that live in hills. We haven't fought in the lowlands in centuries. They have no idea what sort of martial ability we have so they would try.
The super wealthy, mysterious hill people that in recent memory intimidated the HK into backing down and offering some tribute in apology. The weird hill people that set forth and taught them how to protect against the devastating disease within a decade of it occurring. Even with cosmopolitan acceptance, that doesn't paint an image of vulnerability. And it wouldn't take long for that image of vulnerability to be broken. Seriously- being attacked would not be the end of our world, and we shouldn't compromise or weaken our position to avoid it at this point. No one is going to be seriously invested in invading the people, and we have/will have enough actions by this point that even dedicating a main to war actions is not crippling by this point.
Seriously, the outcome of the HK or TS picking a fight with us is like to be us escalating the situation by choosing offensive policies and turning it into a brutal campaign that ends in another party swooping in to fuck them up with us potentially getting territorial gains. This wouldn't even be a war without a win condition unlike pretty much every other war we've actually fought.
I stated they'd send in a third party proxy at us... they don't need boats only diplomatic contacts. We haven't talked to them in so long we have no idea who they are actually in contact with.
As much of a mess as the Lowlands are they aren't the only geographical location HK has some access to. The people are their northern neighbor not the empire surrounding their one province minor lands.
The Southern hill people and the raiders we've already seen off. There's no way for a meaningful naval invasion to occur in this time period. And there's absolutely no way they're getting on foreign boats, riding to a land they haven't heard all that much about and entreating our northern nomads to fuck with us.
I don't deal in meaningless what-ifs that amount to 'there's got to be something out there dangerous!'
They get a Khan that owes them a favor and things change. No one figured out The People did that... or at least remember that.
No, they literally boiled out of our hills and for a while everyone thought the hill people
were the nomads fucking them up. It was very,
very obvious who arranged for the TH to invade the Lowlands.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the Beast Folk had gone missing from the northwest for several years, not because they were cowardly or had collapsed in the face of the onslaught of the People, but because they had apparently been building up their strength, because they had erupted out of their northern hills like pus from an overripe boil.
Your assuming everyone is going to act rationally forever and some @^%*&$ King isn't going to be a petty jerk or use it as part of take over the world scheme he thinks he can pull off against the rich neighbors that no one has heard of their military doing anything offensive. Meaning He can swoop in and annex The people when He saves them. That or someone that stopped caring and wants to burn the world for not worshiping him... or because lead painted dishes make meals tasty and sweet.
Not even dignifying this shit with a response. You are literally arguing that I'm being foolish in assuming our neighbors aren't egotistical cartoon villains.
