> Literally one of the most defensible positions in the entire fucking world.
It does when the thing some people like my self are worried about the action sink it could turn into, instead of the actual feasibility of holding it.
Feasibly we
can hold it if we get to it first, which is decently likely, but the question then becomes "How many actions are we going to have to sink into defending it, and where will we find those actions?"
I mean at this point the Mercs might be able to handle it, but the action commitment from Lords Loyalty varies with each situation.
Letting Free Hills have doesn't work. You know why? It gives yet another Civ the power to choke us out.
It's a massive strategical weakness.
Sure... if they were a Great Power inclined to attack us. They're not, for reasons I will get into. And taking Trelli will not increase them to that point immediately. It would with time, and I'll get to that in a minute. Them "Chocking us out" actually does very little from what we can gather from our experience under the Trelli. It didn't matter at all until we paid for strait access. That's in trade.
In Naval Freehill can do even less. Our Navy's tech is advanced compared to theirs (likely Trelli Pre-Implosion), with them mostly having galleys while we have galleys and war catamarans and naval rams(they might have these). Additionally they are not said to be very port focused in their home territory, so we can say they either have a Naval score of 0 or near ours since they have not had exceptionally long to build up. And then on top of this, they have not had access to the Trelli Grand Docks since they broke away, which means we have an indelible lead on them even if they get the Docks if they take over Trelli and this lead is compounded by the combo of our Grand Docks and Artisan Games. They are unlikely to break this lead.
They would also just lose the land war, in the sense of being pushed all the way back to the cities considering their small size compared to us and our relative populations.
As to growing with time, that is a natural result of them finding ways to use their new wealth income. Probably some kind of merc army, though different from Trelli's more than likely. This is not a fast process however, and the more time we spend working on them diplomatically means the more amicable to them we are and the more we can negotiate mutually beneficial relationship until we get the option to annex them with diplo.
So looking at this from the perspective of a logical leader, the sensible course is to accept the help of the Ymaryn and then get the
best deal you can out of it. You get a new city,
shit tons of wealth, minor friendship with the local Bugfuck Nuts Great Power, while the Ymaryn get a troublesome city off their heads, renewed contact with the outside world via middle man which means not having to deal with Not!Med problems, and a lot of wealth too.
Looking at the map of our empire, we
don't need Trelli with a sense of deathly urgency from what I can see. We do need it at some point in the next three or so centuries but there are many other trade avenues we could explore like going to the Far East Salt Sea or through the Harmurri. Vassalwise we are also getting Vassal Support it looks like and that focuses on trouble areas so West Wall is covered and the other things on the West Shore are pretty handled too.
If we do take it though, *shrug*. I expect it to feel like shoving our heads into hot oil, but I've been pleasantly surprised before so I'll hope that happens again and we get to reap really rather awesome benefits. I ain't gonna complain regardless of how it turns out.
