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Who Needs Harmony?: An MLP Empire Quest

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Pittauro said:
i'm not sure.

There must be a limit to Sombra's blizzard powers, and our farming innovations mitigated much of the damage.

Unless we reach the point famine is inevitable (and with Neighpon's import and some new innovation i think it's unlikely) i say to wait, and continue to improve our army/tech and launch our sabotage actions. Sombra seems like the impatient type, if we don't attack in a year or two he'll probably attack us. And then we launch the counter-attack.
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You realize that every time we deal with one of these blizzards our people suffer on mass even if they aren't starving?

We thought he reached his limit last time when he was only able to do slight damage and then we failed a hazard roll now we has surpassed that. It looks to me like every turn we wait is just wait for more rolls to fail and hurt us. What more could we possibly do to improve our forces? we have all the nations in the world we know of united against him? At this point why wait when we know he is making improvements to his force we managed to slow with damage to the mine but he is rebuilding them. Waiting only lets him get stronger.
Nachtigall said:
And how would he do that? The further away from his kingdom he wants to spread the Windigos' frost, the harder it gets. We had to roll an 18 for him to succeed with half our empire. We'd need to roll even worse for him to expand the effect all the way.


After we invested five military actions and 2500 gold into the Peregrine line, we've basically committed to actually use it.

For reference, instead of the fortifications we could have built 50 cannons. That's how much attack power we'd be missing if we discard our plan to let him strike first and invade once his army has destroyed itself on our defenses.

If you want to trigger the East sooner, you could suggest an intrigue action to irritate him into attacking before he's ready.

Going on the offensive would cost thousands of lives, need him to make the first move.
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You are basically quoting the sunken cost fallacy there, an investment of resource doesn't automatically make something the best plan.

Just because you don't end up using a weapon doesn't make it a waste. It was a good precaution we ended up not needing nothing more that part of military strategy sometime you invest resource in assets you don't use in order to prevent worse scenarios. You don't build walls because you want people to attack you build wall to discourage people to attack. The Line has served its purpose well in that regard.
 
jwolfe_beta said:
Depends on how hard it is for him to keep the effect going and/or expand it now that he has it in place.
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Fact is, we can always attack the moment we actually predict a famine. If Sombra doesn't attack before that, we're forced to...but that would take still quite a bit of time, effort AND luck on his place.

Consider we still have two possible farming actions to take from last turn, not even considering the possibility of simply expanding the hothouses/mushroom/fish farming OR taking NEW actions we still have not seen.

It would be a bit uncomfortable for our people, but we can probably deal with even a stronger blizzard/winter for several years. And Sombra is not that patient.

It's already been 5 years, and we'll be continuing harassing him until he gives up and decides he HAS to stop us.
 
Again invading would cost too much and plays into Sombra's advantage. We send our troops and allies in and they take massive casualties because we are fighting against an entrenched enemy that hasn't lost his army again. He can get more troops on the defensive than on the offensive.
 
Pittauro said:
Fact is, we can always attack the moment we actually predict a famine. If Sombra doesn't attack before that, we're forced to...but that would take still quite a bit of time, effort AND luck on his place.

Consider we still have two possible farming actions to take from last turn, not even considering the possibility of simply expanding the hothouses/mushroom/fish farming OR taking NEW actions we still have not seen.

It would be a bit uncomfortable for our people, but we can probably deal with even a stronger blizzard/winter for several years. And Sombra is not that patient.

It's already been 5 years, and we'll be continuing harassing him until he gives up and decides he HAS to stop us.
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Sombra can be patient if he wants to and us harassing him won't make him repeat the same mistake twice.
When we reach famine? You do know that army needs to eat as well when they move towards Crystal Empire, or even to defend against the enemy they need to be supplied with food.
He is playing long game here. He can keep his slaves in helish conditions and on the brink of starvation, those are his strength and what about us?
 
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masterofmadness said:
You realize that every time we deal with one of these blizzards our people suffer on mass even if they aren't starving?

We thought he reached his limit last time when he was only able to do slight damage and then we failed a hazard roll now we has surpassed that. It looks to me like every turn we wait is just wait for more rolls to fail and hurt us. What more could we possibly do to improve our forces? we have all the nations in the world we know of united against him? At this point why wait when we know he is making improvements to his force we managed to slow with damage to the mine but he is rebuilding them. Waiting only lets him get stronger.
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we can expand our army again. we can find new ways to use the oricalchum (like plating/lining our weapons with it). We can develop more counters to his magic and to the windigo thanks to our new magic advisors. We can strenghten the Qilin and do joint research in magitech for battle. We could even create a prototype airship for logistics (it wouldn't be really sturdy enough to actually fight).

And we can continue freeing ponies and sabotaging his mines and maybe even his farms, so that he is FORCED to attack us.

I repeat, if we predict famine or that we won't be able to support our people any longer, we should definitely attack. But up to that point we have all reasons to wait and try to draw him to us.

What's worse: some discomfort for our people, or thousands more deaths?
 
Star said:
Sombra can be patient if he wants to and use harassing him won't make him repeat the same mistake twice.
When we reach famine? You do know that army needs to eat as well when they move towards Crystal Empire.
He is playing long game here. He can keep his slaves in helish conditions and on the brink of starvation, those are his strength and what about us?
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Those slaves still die and replacements take many years to grow so he is losing people faster than they are growing up unless he had a massive amount of children when he took control and he kept them around instead of disposing of them as a burden on his Empire.
 
Personally if this is all that results from our bad roll, I'd say we got off really easy. It said that there was no risk of famine, and that we just got reduced income. So I think we're still in a really great position, and there's absolutely no reason to go on the offensive all of a sudden. We just have to wait for him to attack and throw away his army and then we can invade.
 
So as of right now I think we keep trying to hold the defensive and make him come to us. But should he prove to be just trying to freeze us out at one point were gonna have to go for him or risk starvation.
 
Questor said:
Cold Warfare: The unnatural cold that has plagued the Southern reaches of the Empire over the past three years has intensified, reaching the levels that it did during the Redstone Crisis. It has also crept further North, affecting more than half the nation. Rivers freeze, crops are covered in frost, and the roofs of several buildings have already begun to collapse under the weight of the snow. While hothouses, fish and mushroom farms, and imports from Neighpon have staged off the threat of famine, the Empire's agricultural sector has suffered a significant blow. -500 Farming Income
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Oh you cheeky little fucker. It's on like Donkey Kong when we get our wall built, just you fucking wait.



 
Adventwolf said:
Again invading would cost too much and plays into Sombra's advantage. We send our troops and allies in and they take massive casualties because we are fighting against an entrenched enemy that hasn't lost his army again. He can get more troops on the defensive than on the offensive.
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The same thing works in reverse. Clearly Sombrero knows this, otherwise he wouldn't be bothering with using magic to starve us out.

I don't know why there's such a perception that Sombrero is going to YOLO against our fortifications. He already lost his first push when we didn't really have any, he's not likely to attack again now that we've got much stronger defenses to work with unless he has some means of bypassing those defenses entirely. Like the blizzard.

Adventwolf said:
Those slaves still die and replacements take many years to grow so he is losing people faster than they are growing up unless he had a massive amount of children when he took control and he kept them around instead of disposing of them as a burden on his Empire.
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One third of our rumor mill is "our people are horrified and angered at the accounts from the rescued slaves, and would really like to do something about that" and part of said accounts is the existence of breeding pits. Waiting for them all to die isn't likely to work all that great.
 
Adventwolf said:
Those slaves still die and replacements take many years to grow so he is losing people faster than they are growing up unless he had a massive amount of children when he took control and he kept them around instead of disposing of them as a burden on his Empire.
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And their dead slaves bodies are recycled into walking horror shows. Add to it that their suffering is feeding him and his monsters more magic and those conditions were there before us.
 
Raptor580 said:
So as of right now I think we keep trying to hold the defensive and make him come to us. But should he prove to be just trying to freeze us out at one point were gonna have to go for him or risk starvation.
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Yep but we would get a warning about a famine or starvation before it became an issue so we don't need to go on the attack yet.
 
guys, im fairly certain that the invasion question is invalid now anyway.

last time (turn 11) he marched his army with the cold weather, we scouted him and followed with the winter war arc.

unless Sombra had altered his stratergy and is going for a long term weakening (something we don't know if he can do) then he might well have started his march.

i suggest, depending on what alternatives we have this turn that we muster for battle, call in our neighponese allies, scout and make ready.

danger might be coming to us fater than we thought.
 
ChaosRuneSmith said:
guys, im fairly certain that the invasion question is invalid now anyway.

last time (turn 11) he marched his army with the cold weather, we scouted him and followed with the winter war arc.

unless Sombra had altered his stratergy and is going for a long term weakening (something we don't know if he can do) then he might well have started his march.

i suggest, depending on what alternatives we have this turn that we muster for battle, call in our neighponese allies, scout and make ready.

danger might be coming to us fater than we thought.
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If those Wendigos have anything resembling intelligence (or if he could piggyback some kind of scouting spell on them) he may have very well seen the Wall already. Stands to reason he'd try yo attack before we got it done, the cheeky fuck.
 
It is both nice that there is enough of a mind to save in that drone helmet, and horrible what they have to go through constantly.

I had thought of an omake for after the battle about one of Sombra's drones being surviving and being nursed to health and freedom, but didn't in case I was wrong.

Now let's drown Sombra in molten Orichalcum.
 
Every year we delay invading Sombra is one more year in which hundreds of thousands of poor souls continue to be mindslaved into torment unending. Invading Sombra is like fighting Morgoth. As soon as you have something you think can do it, we have to do it right then.
 
Rockeye said:
Every year we delay invading Sombra is one more year in which hundreds of thousands of poor souls continue to be mindslaved into torment unending. Invading Sombra is like fighting Morgoth. As soon as you have something you think can do it, we have to do it right then.
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We have one chance to do this right we screw up then guess what our army gets killed we save none of the ponies and our own people get conquered so no going off at the first bad luck roll is not the thing to do. We can feel bad about what he going on but throwing our lives away is not what we should do. We continue to build up keep hitting Sombra and either force him to attack us first then invade or we find a way to stop him without invading.
 
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ChaosRuneSmith said:
that is one of, if not THE, funniest thing i have seen in weeks. that's absolutely hilarious and im making it a signature
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Highest praise I could achieve. Many thanks.

Rockeye said:
Every year we delay invading Sombra is one more year in which hundreds of thousands of poor souls continue to be mindslaved into torment unending. Invading Sombra is like fighting Morgoth. As soon as you have something you think can do it, we have to do it right then.
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Damn right. That's the whole reason I want to cross my t's and dot my i's, when we kill this fucker I want to make sure he stays dead.

Zavvnao said:
Now let's drown Sombra in molten Orichalcum.
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Someone get this man some funding, that's the kind of go to spirit and twisted thinking we need on this planning department. Bet if he's in charge of Evil Overlord disposal we won't have a recurring "Sealed evil escaping" problem that the damn ponies seem to get every other week.
 
If we push ourselves to the edge of famine, doesn't that make it harder to sustain an attacking army?

We can bring more supplies along if we have food reserves than not?

Hmm
 
Rockeye said:
If we push ourselves to the edge of famine, doesn't that make it harder to sustain an attacking army?

We can bring more supplies along if we have food reserves than not?

Hmm
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We're good for food, at least for the moment anyway. Growing shit topside is difficult, but our Hothouses, fish farms and underground mushroom farms mean that our population still has a regular supply of food on hand.

The trick is fighting the fucker off before we actually hit famine stage, cause while we can maintain our current levels, any sudden need to increase their output would put us in a bad spot quickly. I'm hoping we can have our magical advisers give us some help with some kind of fire counterspell or something.
 
Rockeye said:
If we push ourselves to the edge of famine, doesn't that make it harder to sustain an attacking army?

We can bring more supplies along if we have food reserves than not?

Hmm
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I expect we're storing all our surplus food away. the moment we start having a deficit and our food stores start diminishing instead of increasing is the moment we HAVE to attack. At that point we should still have months at the very least before we really risk going hungry.

After all no matter how bad the blizzard gets, at the very least hothouses and fish farming will still continue to stretch our reserves
 
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