Lurkers love manifestos, and it’s a lovely day out, despite the looming viral threat, so I felt like soul searching. What follows is half petulant self-justification, half confession.
Hello. My name is naufragar, and I am aggressive. Superdeath and I are kindred spirits. I’m on record saying he hasn’t been aggressive enough, in fact. I have a problem, and acknowledging it is the first step.
My litany of reflexive aggression goes back. In this PB, I just assassinated a neighbor’s axe that wasn’t doing me any harm. In my last game (PB45), I assassinated a neighbor’s warrior that wasn’t doing me any harm, and the aftermath cost me a city and my only source of horse. It probably didn’t lose me the game outright, but it certainly didn’t help. In the game before that (PB41), I was on an island, so I didn’t really get the chance to be aggressive. Wait. I remember. Rusten and Hitru on another island committed an unforgivable sin (I forget exactly what
) and the ensuing war I declared ruined my game. In my first game (PB38) I didn’t do anything too stupidly reckless, but I was planning to. I was going to screw with Rusten’s settling, but I had to retreat my axe to fight some barbs.
So, two out of three completed games, I shot myself in the foot with some unprofitable minor attack. And dear reader? I’m only a little sorry, only partially chastened. Take the current game as an example. I currently have three enemies: Ziankali, Aspi, and Holland. Astute lurkers might notice that I’ve just named all my neighbors. Ziankali is currently winning the game, I believe. Eventually he will run out of avenues of peaceful expansion. He’ll need to fight someone to keep expanding, and he’ll likely pick the runt of his neighbors. I’m weak; he’s strong. If I want to win, I need him to not kill me when he turns imperialistic. More than that, I need him to not win somehow. Aspi planted a city a boat ride away from two of my cities, one of which is my capital. His culture will grab the only spot I know of that will give intercontinental trade routes. He must know that I will take that city as soon as I can. I know that he knows. Finally, Holland. He’s actually the least inimical of my enemies. We’re enemies because I want the land to my East. Some of that land, in a fair world, would be his, including the excellent pig tile. There are two ways that the neighbors stop being enemies. 1) We settle mutually defensible boundaries that are too costly to attack. 2) A different neighbor becomes a great enough threat to the both of us.
I say all this with no personal animus. I’ve got nothing against my neighbors, and I assume they don’t have anything against me. We’re simply opponents. Simply by existing next to each other in a competitive game, we are in a state of conflict. I wacked Holland’s axe because the attack benefited me and cost him. But of course therein lies the rub. It could be that by attacking I make myself Holland’s least liked neighbor, and he moves against me in the future, so my attack comes back to cost me later. My blind spot comes from the fact that at the same time I am eager to do casual violence, I accept the risk of someone doing the same to me. For example, if Ziankali wants to kill my warrior, that would not change our relationship in the slightest. It gives me an intelligence problem: I can’t watch for his chariots/horse archers. But that’s a tactical consideration. To my mind nothing has changed vis a vis diplomacy. (In fact I said something like this back in
PB38: “If I ever play another game at RB, something for future opponents: I would not take it personally if BGN declared to move through. If I then had a warrior in reach, I'd pop his scout. That's just scouts and warriors doing what scouts and warriors do.”) Ziankali is the big fish; I am the small fish, warrior snipe or no.
This is not to say I don’t get cranky when people thwart my plans or break my stuff. When GeneralKilCavalry and Boak were propping Superdeath up with free luxuries in PB45, I was
furious: “Dear lurkers, please let me be white-hot, seething mad, despite my knowledge that my opponents are doing what they should do.” But at heart, I can appreciate self-interest. And despite my proclaimed jerkishness, I have worked with neighbors. I worked with Rusten against Mackoti in PB38 and Commodore against Rusten in PB41.
I know that in the real world justice is not, in fact, merely
the advantage of the stronger. But in a game of Civ? A few turns after raging about GeneralKilCavalry’s luxury gifts to Superdeath and swearing eternal vengeance, he and I made a mutually advantageous luxury trade. We knew where we stood. We weren’t allies, but self-interest prevailed. So, back to PB88. I have gained 2xp on an axe, 2 Great General points, the chance for 2 more xp and some capture gold, and I’ve cost a rival a unit. Without a reaction from Holland, this is pure profit, however miniscule. It remains to be seen if I’ve started a chain of events that ends with terrible cost. “Mock mothers from their sons. Mock castles down.”
Turns out this manifesto was just my attempt at explaining my face-blind realpolitik. I promise that, if I dish it out, I at least make an honest effort to take it, too. Future opponents please don’t read this.
P.S. I miss Krill.
Now to try to translate all this to German.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
Hopefully it's building a monument while working a green forest. That would make it grow at pretty much the exact time I knock out its last defenders. It's annoying to not know when it'll grow because I won't know when to send over workers to chop a badly needed monument.
And I guess I'm not 
