Did we read the same post? Its pretty clear to me that the Trelli plan on raiding our shipping no matter what we do.
Actually, that's just a rumor. The only thing we solidly know is that they have launched raids against tribes that weren't producing much else of value to themselves, and they sell the resulting slaves to wealthier nations.
Now, that's detestable by our standards, but it's not an existential threat to us. We would be in the category of people that they sell to, not people they sell. They might be annoyed that we won't buy slaves, but we're still very profitable for them, so they aren't going to disrupt us without a really good reason.
Even if they do raid some of our ships, though, that's a minor and treatable problem. We can arm our ships better, or form convoys, or pay them off. It's in no way equivalent to the kind of war we might get if we build the west trading post.
Remember how the nomads, who are the most warlike people we know, still think we escalate too fast? We hear rumors of future piracy - though the Trelli have
never actually lifted a finger against us - and we're preparing for total war, pointing a dagger at the heart of their economy and making plans for battles to the death. People, relax! They've done nothing to us, they've started nothing with us, from their perspective there is no apparent reason for a quarrel with us. If we try to take over their tin, every other polity who hears about it would agree we launched a serious unprovoked case of economic warfare.
If we are so appalled by their actions that we want to wipe them out like the Xoh, that's our prerogative. But don't take aggressive action - and even if it's not "offensive war", the western trading post is definitely aggressive - on the assumption that they are about to launch a large-scale assault on us.
They're almost certainly not, and we have been given no reason to assume otherwise, if we think about how they think instead of applying our own standards.
