Less consistent because? Because he is going to give some blowback? There is always going to be blowback. We'll have people running against us in elections, if we have particularly bad luck our co-consul will attempt to prevent us from getting anything done. Pussyfooting around rivals because we are afraid to assert dominance isn't going to help us in the long run.
There are cons to every action. What is more important is that we not lose our opportunities for self-improvement. Not cementing to our legion here that we are the important one means Scipio ingratiates himself to OUR legion. It was already stated that he has a likeable personality. We cannot afford to lose time, because divided loyalties will ensue.
Both fair points. There's no reason to assume Scipio won't try to wrangle control away from us and the cults there so we might as well use it when it can be the most effective. I'm fully behind the Off with the gloves plan now.
We cannot actually stop him from gathering support with overshadow, we can only try to be more impressive and distracting. Stopping him is Undermine.
I trust an arragnment of apparent mutual benefit more than the bonds of affection when it comes to someone who could watch what just happened and land on his feet. In addition, while a cold war is possible with all the options, the Connect option is the one where he could make the most opening moves before we could respond. With Overshadow and Undermine our contest would be constant, with Terms it would be obvious when he overstepped his bounds because those bounds would be clearly defined, but with Connect we have no way to know when he jumps from "helpful filling in the gaps" to "preparing our end".
Not true. Overshadow demonstrates that we are the first in the soldiers's eyes, and that is what I desire. Will it stop them from liking him? No, but it will cement their loyalty towards us alone.
And Romans seeing someone just like them would start quoting TFS Vegeta
I don't believe in this arrangement of mutual benefit. There is only one man the legionaries can love most, only one man they go to with their grievances first, only one man who can lead the men into battle, only one man who ultimately gets to ride at the forefront of the army.
Ok on his Wikipedia page it mentions a daughter but if you changed that that's cool.
Ok on his Wikipedia page it mentions a daughter but if you changed that that's cool.
Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus (consul 83 BC) - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
I'm down, let's doMy mind goes to weird places when I think too hard on jokes.
I was initially going to make a joke about spreading the ccurrent iteration of the Cult of Mars (with MC as the head) to the rest of the legions. Then I thought, "man it would be cool if there was a joke omake set in the future wherein we successfully spread the Cult of Mars throughout the republic with MC as the Pontifex Maximus of the cult (not to be confused with the one in Rome) and takes the city and the republic at large in the name of Mars Ultor therefore skipping the Republican and Imperial routes by going the Theocratic route!" I then went even deeper and started to imagine that instead of just regular worship, the new Cult of Mars Ultor evolved into a branch wherein Mars overthrew Jupiter, continuing the cycle of son usurping father, and declared himself King of the Gods and taking Bellona as his Queen.
Being first in our soldiers eyes is the end goal of all of the options except connect, just in different ways. With Overshadow, we hype ourselves up a lot and pray that he can't find glory on his own. With undermine, we screw him over and pray that we don't break the legion in the process or anger the higher ups. With Terms, we do it by giving him jobs that ensure he is second only to us, but that he IS second to us, with the implicit threat of flipping to the other 2 options with him at an extra disadvantage from being seen as the one to start shit.
Mutual benefit is not intended to be EQUAL benefit. My intended goal is to specifically get him to never make command rolls. He can be the legion's beloved provider, it's engineer, it's logistics wizard, its champion, but never its leader, and the cult will start hammering it in first thing that this is how things should be.
I am very much aware of that. I have no clue how you could get the impression that I thought human beings were capable of feeling loyalty to literally only one person ever. Would you mind telling me which of my posts gave you that impression?
hence why I called it dangerous and am not advocating it.
It very much isn't. Overshadow is what you are giving Terms the definition of. Terms is an acknowledgement of divided authority and setting which lines the other does not cross, with the cult only helping us in balancing the great influence of Scipio to getting the areas we desire or believe we can best achieve. It is a far more equal arrangement.
Well, there isn't much I can say to that except "no thats not what it means". There's only one person who can actually clarify this.
Leaving out that I doubt he is going to let himself be completely shut out of leading the men in battle, we are going to ensure that we get our areas of expertise how? For sure I expect Telamon to take our discussions into consideration, but we won't micromanage that negotiating.
Why are we suddenly afraid to fail? We weren't when we immediately aimed for the highest available office, the one actually giving us command duties, as broad striped tribune, we weren't when we rode out with the Gauls or spoke with Sertorius. But now we are supposed to tread carefully because we could embarrass ourselves and he could roll well? We can do so with every failed roll.
What is the option for if not for keeping him out of our areas of expertise? And what is adding the cult to it if not an attempt to do so aggressively? I see no other reason for this pair of options to exist.
The ad-homenim attacks are unnecessary, thanks.
Because he is a soldier, and a Roman at that. He will not sit lightly while you attempt to relegate him to being the legion's janitor. To attempt so would likely be as insulting as Overshadowing or Undermining him. He seeks personal and political glory like any other officer here. Do not think that the dice potentially rolling well will suddenly rid a person of their own ambitions, whatever they may be.
That wasn't my goal or my intention, so I apologise if it felt like that, but I'm really unconvinced by your argument that "we'll have to pray that he won't find glory". We can fail at every roll, choosing terms can fail as much as trying to assert us as the foremost tribune.
Because they are vague I'm not convinced it's going to work. He is not going to agree to be shut out of command (because we wouldn't either), and otherwise? Will he get logistics while we get negotiations? Everything that has to do with logistics is his job, but when we have to negotiate with villages to open up their granaries it's our job, because we are an orator? There will be overlap and therefore friction.
