Sorry for not finishing the previous debate I was involved in guys. SV was making me kinda anxious, and that first made me procrastinate but eventually just led to me taking a vacation from SV to "detox" or whatever the word is for destressing from internet interactions. I am back now and ready to get involved once more!
Hope our citizens will be fine for us not getting anything.
They wouldn't be. It's important to remember that even in the Winter War, our own populace was stated to be likely to not be happy with the government if we gave the Crystal Empire full independence. This was a war
with the full backing of the populace and was viewed as an entirely defensive war, mind you. This intervention is viewed as justified as well, but that doesn't match the fact that even self-defense wasn't enough for our populace to feel as if winning was enough of a reward. They aren't gonna accept nothing in a war we explicitly blew up the economy over that we technically didn't have to get involved in.
Anyway, second shortest war we've had so far with, I don't know, maybe the least amount of relative casualties? Good job everyone!
To be fair, it was only short because we came in at the very end when the three factions had just about murdered one another and were exhausted already.
Would any of them even have much to go back to as well?
Do remember that a few turns back, we already explicitly made a fair number of the refugees citizens of the empire as part of our program to expand agricultural usage. We gave them Crystal Protectorate land, money, and tools in return for becoming permanent citizens.
5)possibly Tirek if he's already around, but he cheats by stealing magic
I know in EaW, the Kingdom of Gargoyles and Centaurs - not the actual name - is still around and it's supposed to be where Tirek is from (in the mod anyhow). It's in Zebrica. Maybe we might find it there?
Hopefully we won't have to do this again. We at least had the excuse of "we had a good reason, we had the support of basically the majority of Maretonia, and our target had already pillaged their capital and burned the farmland after using a WMD on its own territory"
What's that? Couldn't hear you. Too busy annexing the coastline around where the Yetis live
I'm actually in favor of not Protectorate-ing them? Gawain is speccing pretty well into diplomacy and if/when he ascends the throne (my preference being we step down to enjoy our twilight years) I'd prefer there to be a lot of nations to diplomance.
We've got at least one continent - probably two if my guess is on point - worth of countries to interact with.
I also want to point out that "nations" isn't the proper word. Most of what we are encountering are not proper nation-states. Heck, some of them aren't even proper
states. They are just countries.
That is true, but I want there to be as many extent nations as possible.
Not a big deal. Just wanted to inform you made a typo. The word is "extant". Apologies if that comes off rude. Not a common word so I don't blame you for misspelling it.
They have the framework for a new governmental body. They have the royal knights, they have the abolitionists, and they have the wizards. It's not a lot, it's going to take months- if not years in the absolute worst case- of effort and dialogue, and obviously there's going to be bumps and misteps, but countries have formed from just as small beginnings. We obviously have the power, but do we have the right to sweep in and say "No, you shouldn't attempt to stand on your own (minus whatever aid we give you), warts and all"?
No they don't. I literally made this whole long argument that I put a LOT of time and effort going over every single part of the Maretonian society pre-war and how it has changed during the war. The Knights have had their base burnt, their leader killed, and pretty much any true organizational capabilities decapitated. The wizards were
explicitly cast to the wind and most wanted to fade in obscurity. As organizations, the colleges are dead. Finally, the Abolitionists explicitly have no actual overarching political goal beyond the abolition of slavery. They are a motley group whom was just a bunch of disparate small cells until Imperial Intelligence united them into somewhat of a functional faction. That was
pre-war mind you, and we've seen even that wasn't enough to make them an actual political faction since we still had to basically puppet them for them to become a viable faction in the civil war. The abolitionists have no end-goal and no legitimacy and thus
also don't make for a good post-war body.
Yeah to be fair to the Changelings as shady as they are it is genuinely in their own interests to try and keep people happy and safe
or they could go full EaW Pax Chrysalia and just start recklessly draining people, drunk on their own superiority!
(this is a joke. I doubt they'll do that at this point)
Every time a War or a Tragedy happens, we are going to be forced to consider Changling involvement, because the current administration has proven to be willing to mess with internal politics of other countries to the point of causing a complete collapse of government.
Meh, I believe that both you and jonas are holding too extreme positions in regards to the Changelings. You are being too paranoid, but jonas is being too lenient.
The Changelings are definitely a threat. There is no doubt about that. They are shapeshifters whom have developed an entire society around using that biological advantage to blend in and manipulate things to their favor. That is something to be feared to the extent that I even have slight hesitancy towards the idea of integrating them into our society. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean they are responsible for everything on the planet. Assuming as much is just relentless and unfounded paranoia. Look at Maretonia, for example. You claim they caused a "complete collapse of government", except they DIDN'T do that. WE DID. We completely destabilized that house of cards, undermined every faction of their society, saw what was happening, and then decided to double-down and make it worse. Mareia's assassination was just the final straw. If the Changelings are behind her assassination, we are still the ones most culpable for the collapse because it was
already collapsing before she died.
Likewise, on jonas's thought, that doesn't mean we should excuse them from acts we have high reason to suspect they were involved in just because we don't have definitive proof. They are an intrigue-focused civ. By definition there's a high chance we are either never going to be able to find conclusive proof on a lot of things without it being told to us by those in charge of the civ, or it's going to take a LONG time to truly find out what happened. If we have a #1 suspect and everything seems to point to that person, we are justified in acting like they are the most probable suspect. Saying "we don't know for sure" is a ridiculous standard in my mind given the context we are operating on.
1. The Maretonians decide that they can no longer form a proper state and decide to become a protectorate of Gryphus. This is, in many ways 'the best case scenario' for Gryphus, but even so, it's important to remember that Maretonia is pretty damn big, and it's going to take a lot of investment in order to get things up and running again. What's worse, this means that proper integration into our empire is massively important, because if we fail at that and they decide to split later, we'll have a large, powerful neighbor to our South who might have had a problem with being nominally subordinate to us this entire time.
Just quoting this to say for reasons stated above that you are MASSIVELY undervaluing support for the Empire and overvaluing support for sovereignty. Like, I really don't think you have any legitimate reason to believe that full independence is going to be so overwhelmingly popular that pushing for a protectorate would have a high chance of alienation. Their entire society has been uprooted and destroyed, there is no legitimate government left, and the entire place is highly depopulated from famine, warfare, and emigration.
Adding on to that last point, it's not gonna be near as difficult to integrate Maretonia relative to its size as you are stating. It will
definitely be a hefty investment, but you are forgetting that large chunks of Maretonia were stated to be either not settled or just lightly settled. They were also a feudal society with little urbanization, which means that all that warfare and famine has likely depopulated the countryside just as much as the cities have been destroyed and kept only not starving thanks to our aid. Empty land is relatively easy to integrate. The main investment would come in building political infrastructure out of our local allies, and then connecting what remains of the cities with paths through the countrysides to the coastline and the Empire with railway investment projects.
From a more cynical and selfish perspective encouraging immigration may result in even more Maretonian's fleeing the ruins of their home to move to the Empire which would increase the likelihood of them having to accept Protectorateship
Ah, so the Ymaryn Immigration tactics have finally been copied by another! Very well. If PoC has taught me anything, that means all we need to do is keep encouraging immigration and all our enemies will collapse from instability and a broken economy
With the discovery of a most likely less then friendly and raid happy dragon nation on their border it'll behoove(heh) us to have a strong buffer state against them.
I'm not really convinced there is an actual "nation" to the south. Everything I know about MLP Dragons tells me they are more likely a highly decentralized warlord state where stronger dragons subjugate weaker dragons to do their bidding - those weaker dragons usually being the younger ones. They are in no way a true "state" that can be actually negotiated with so much as a changing hierarchy based on might-makes-right with potentially the Dragon Lord on top.
At least, that is what I believe they are like. I find having read through all the posts that I missed that you guys WAY overstated the possibility of angering some "dragon kingdom." I doubt they are centralized enough for there to be such a concept as "war." Massive raiding parties for loot to fuel their hoards because MLP dragons seem to be similar to western fairy tale dragons? Yes, but not a full-on state which has diplomatic consequences and the ability for binding negotiation and arbitration.
So Maretonia is left with three powerful individuals who represent different parts of the country. Seems like a great time for a triumvirate.
Nope. Remember House White Star is dead in the water, has few people left on their side, has no money due to spending it on mercs and being heisted, and overall is not viewed as having
any political legitimacy anymore. They barely even controlled anything by the end of the war. Just because they technically survived doesn't mean they are at all a viable faction, and they DEFINITELY aren't gonna be a kingmaker.
Like, even Lepidus, weakest of the second Roman Triumvirate, still had quite a bit of power to his name. It was just lesser than the other two.
