Third time's the charm - Mardoc plays the Pirates [SPOILER]

[Mardoc]

what is the benefit of saving, or helping to save, Sian? Is Isenkder in danger of becoming a runaway?

Mostly the thwarting Iskender aspect, yes. So far, we're the runaway, but if Iskender manages to double his size without difficulty, he'll be way ahead. Plus, he's the tactician I fear the most, and has got a direct border with us.

And, well, ideally we wouldn't be saving Sian forever, we'd be providing enough help that the war drags on forever while we keep on colonizing the western seas and tech up to Nanotubes/Cryogenics.

Edit: well, one more thing. We're the runaway, which means we need someone as a solid ally or at least a neutral. Sian's been willing to play that role for a while now, the Pirate/Morgan border has been the least militarized in the game.

[HidingKneel]

Mostly the thwarting Iskender aspect, yes. So far, we're the runaway, but if Iskender manages to double his size without difficulty, he'll be way ahead. Plus, he's the tactician I fear the most, and has got a direct border with us.

He's got a direct border, and he mentioned ships in the public diplo. Which implies at least some kind of navy. This would make me nervous.

Do you know what Sian's planet rating is? The ability to train native life might not do him much good, if he doesn't have the slots for it.

You've listed a lot of reasons to intervene. My guess is that the game is surely going to come to blows between you and Iskender at some point. It seems to me that you're better off doing so before he swallows up your potential ally. So I guess my suggestion would be to try to prop Sian up, if Maniac/Sareln aren't going to do so. Unless: you think you can out-tech him AND you think that later military techs (planes?) are significant enough to make an even bigger difference.

Of course, you should be mercenary about it. Maybe open the diplo channels, see if you can get a sense of how much help he needs and what he'd be willing to offer for it.

Alternatively, you could sound out Iskender for what he'd be willing to offer for non-interference. Getting paid to stay out of the war would be an even better deal. Not sure what Iskender has to offer, though; you probably don't want an NAP with a potential runaway, and you've already settled the Spartan-Pirate border.

Got any isles with that hidden nationality promotion?

[Mardoc]

He's got a direct border, and he mentioned ships in the public diplo. Which implies at least some kind of navy. This would make me nervous.

Yeah. And his most recent two cities are both port cities on the north and western coast, and both settled for good hammer sites. I don't think he intends a 2-front war, but surely I'm on his list somewhere. Conquering Sian would be especially nasty for us, it would at least double the number of port cities Iskender has, and give him

Do you know what Sian's planet rating is? The ability to train native life might not do him much good, if he doesn't have the slots for it.

It's actually higher than mine. He didn't have much of a Planet rating until after he conquered the Concordat, but that's boosted him way up, and then researching up to Psionics boosted him some more. I think his limit on native life will be foodhammer production, not Planet rating. Especially since I expect serious casualties, as well.

The bigger question is whether Mindworms can outmanuever troops on boats, whether Iskender brought flamethrower-type units, etc. And whether Sian has the production to make a sufficient number in time.

You've listed a lot of reasons to intervene. My guess is that the game is surely going to come to blows between you and Iskender at some point. It seems to me that you're better off doing so before he swallows up your potential ally. So I guess my suggestion would be to try to prop Sian up, if Maniac/Sareln aren't going to do so. Unless: you think you can out-tech him AND you think that later military techs (planes?) are significant enough to make an even bigger difference.

Of course, you should be mercenary about it. Maybe open the diplo channels, see if you can get a sense of how much help he needs and what he'd be willing to offer for it.

Alternatively, you could sound out Iskender for what he'd be willing to offer for non-interference. Getting paid to stay out of the war would be an even better deal. Not sure what Iskender has to offer, though; you probably don't want an NAP with a potential runaway, and you've already settled the Spartan-Pirate border.

I've a pretty good idea what Isk could offer us - a couple-few of Sian's cities and a NAP. But I'm not 100% sure why that's an offer he'd want to make. Or he could possibly offer a good deal of cash, expecting to make it back from pillaging Sian's bases.

I do think that our GNP is higher than Isk's and will continue to be, unless he profits too much from Sian. He kept up with intense Great Doctor bulbs, but those have to be running out as the GPP threshold keeps increasing, and techs get more expensive. And I also do still think that planes will take war to an entirely new place; combining excellent scouting with solid collateral and not many counters except other planes should have an effect similar to Hawks + magic in FFH.

Sian - I'm not confident he really has a surplus that he could trade for survival. And I'm pretty confident he was the #1 GNP, we do want him hurt, just not wiped out.

I guess at the core, I don't see a way to profit from the war. Neither side will be willing to trade so much that the treaty takes them out of the game, but I don't think intervention on a smaller scale will matter. We might be able to squeeze a few hundred energy from one side or the other, but only at the cost of guaranteeing we're disliked by both. And we couldn't do it in secret - what I'm really hoping to do is help Sian covertly. Negative sum for all three participants seems likely, but if we're lucky, it's worst for Sian and Iskender.

Got any isles with that hidden nationality promotion?

No, but I can manufacture some very quickly; it'll take about 2 turns for the first ones off the production line. The bigger problem is, I don't know where Iskender's troops are. And a 'natural' approach to using them requires they be spread out. I don't see the point in making them HN if it's obvious to Iskender that it's us.

This is why I'm strongly tempted to build and gift some to Sian, he knows where they're needed, and that launders their origin as well. Plus, of course, gifted ones could have the +10% str promo instead of the HN promo, so be more effective. And we get credit from him for helping save him, while he might never know that we sunk a few Spartan ships with HN Isles. The risk is that he uses them against us later, but Sian seems fairly peaceful, and if I were in his shoes I wouldn't attack anyone but Iskender until Isk is at least reduced to pre-war holdings.

Or, hmm, maybe a 2-stage process here. Build and gift a first wave of Isles to Sian, then make a second wave for myself and make them 'Wild' and go looking for ships in transit. That means we get credit from Sian, but also hedge our bets against him attacking us later.

Really what we want is the minimum investment to guarantee Sian's survival, but have the both of them hurt by the war. Which is very hard to do when we don't know Sian's military, nor Iskender's invasion force. Hard to calibrate how much we should do without data .

I'm also considering buying Sian's worldmap from him, which would let us gift him the Flamethrower in his territory and expect that he'd upgrade it to a Hyperian. Maybe give him a few more Flamethrowers and cash, they're not doing us much good and that'd be an impetus to keep building more Marines. Main downside is that it would delay Atmospherics, since we'd have to take a break from teching.

[Mardoc]

Sian sold us his map...and oh, dear, it is bad!



We've given him three subs and an Isle and a Flamethrower so far, but I suspect all that'll be able to accomplish is to make Iskender's conquest less than free, not stop it. Not if Iskender can simply train his Invitros in ex-Morgan lands. I did spot a new Mind Worm in Morgan Polysoft, so at least Sian's building troops that should have odds - if he can build enough of them.

So we're also pressing full speed ahead on Drop Troopers research, and building a lot of military. When Atmospherics comes in, I plan to take a turn or two to upgrade all or almost all our Marines to Drop Troopers. Aside from that, I'm not sure what to do. I think we'll stick with a hybrid strategy for now, mixing economic growth and military production and small but steady subsidizing of Sian. If he manages to survive for, say, 10 more turns and create a stalemate, then we might come in on his side. Iskender have a bunch of cities that would be nice to own, after all. And maybe we could even take that Morgan Bank settlement for ourselves, while liberating the rest of Morgan Industries - owning the Nexus and a Radiotrophic Fungus would be nice.

If Sian dies quickly, then we'll just have to try to outbuild Iskender. Fortunately, Drop Troopers should have enormously good odds on the defense: Str 6, +50% on water tiles, + 25% fortification, + 50% (usually) due to Perimeter Defense, is an equivalent strength of 13.5. Meanwhile, Invitros attacking at sea have the -50% amphib penalty for equiv Str 3.5, or Iskender could use Subs at Str 4. And Drop troopers are exceedingly mobile. Basically, they should allow us to hunker down and defend well enough that Iskender would rather take on, oh, the rest of the AI's.

The silver lining? This conquest will make Iskender the world's boogeyman, rather than us. Even though we're still leading all the demos (except 2nd in Power), we're not the one invading people and smashing them. We're just going to have to hope that our demo lead allows us to keep a strong enough deterrence force while simultaneously growing peacefully quickly enough. We can't compete with 4 cities in 2 turns, but presumably Iskender will slow down now, and maybe even take some casualties. He's got Fungus, and distance maintenance both to slow him down, in addition to whatever Sian can manage.

[Mardoc]

Thoughts on the map trade proposal(s)?

Pros:
Would definitely emphasize the danger of Iskender!
Would learn more about Sareln/Maniac
With open borders, we might well get scouted out anyway

Cons:
Vision on cities enables a lot of spying actions. And learning from them, IIRC, without even having to spend EP
Also would show just how far we've grown
Would enable invasion plans. Once the genie's out of the bottle, you can't stuff him back in.

Anything I missed? Do you think the pros or the cons are bigger here?

[Bigger]

I think the cons are bigger.

[HidingKneel]

Pros:
With open borders, we might well get scouted out anyway

This seems like the big one to me. With (genuine) open borders, either of you can scout the other in any case. So the map trade favors whoever has more trouble mustering the manpower to do recon.

I approve of the drop troopers, and a gradual shift to a military posture. Hope you're wrong about Sian. Assuming you're not... what do you think Iskender does next? Come for you? Consolidate and try to outgrow you? Try to absorb someone else?

[Bigger]

he'd come after the easiest target. which is more likely to be Lal than us.

[Mardoc]

This seems like the big one to me. With (genuine) open borders, either of you can scout the other in any case. So the map trade favors whoever has more trouble mustering the manpower to do recon.

That's what I ended up concluding. I can't really keep things secret anyway, and I wanted to make sure that the other two are perfectly aware of Sian's predicament; maybe they'll find a way to help him too.

I approve of the drop troopers, and a gradual shift to a military posture. Hope you're wrong about Sian. Assuming you're not... what do you think Iskender does next? Come for you? Consolidate and try to outgrow you? Try to absorb someone else?

If I were Iskender, I'd try to absorb AI's while consolidating. Or perhaps absorb Maniac. As long as the Pirates keep a focus on deterrence, he'll go for easier targets, until there either aren't any of those, or until we force the issue.

If we let our guard down so that he can seriously hurt us - or if Sian let him see a stack of submarines with 'scavenger' promotions and he wants revenge - then we'll see him invade sooner. But I don't seriously expect him to get stuck in with us as long as we keep building military.

[Mardoc]

Well, Sian's down to 2 cities. If we had more of a military, Iskender would be really vulnerable right now - he left all his ships hanging out in Sian's otherwise undefended capital, for example. But...we don't really have what it takes to exploit the openings.

Atmospherics is in next turn. At ~33 gold/upgrade from Marine to Drop Trooper, and a GNP of about 300 gpt, it'll take us approximately 2 turns to upgrade our entire force. After that, I'm thinking Nanotubes still makes sense. We're currently working 16 trench tiles, each of which would gain +0/2/3 from the tech alone. More if/where we decide it's worth building some Sea Boreholes.

I wouldn't go here if I thought Iskender would/could invade in the teeth of Drop Troopers, but I think that'll give us the breathing room to stick with a mostly economic focus a bit longer. I still want about 10 more peaceful settlements, and each of our existing ones to grow up to size 11 or so...

And we got a Transcend at the end of the turn. It'll bulb about half of Affinity Gene, leaving us with 1000 beakers to spend for Locusts of Chiron. Or it can found Dawn of Planet and declare war on Iskender now . Or settle for 3 EP/turn and 6 Planet. Or...can turn into a Golden Age. My gut says Golden Age will pay the best at this stage of the game. We're working a ton of tiles (88 pop points), the vast majority of them having both energy and hammers.

I just don't think Locusts are a priority for us right now, they're a much more offensively oriented unit than a defensive one, and as long as we stay off the continents Isles are a better deal anyway. And honestly, 88 tiles boosted is probably a better profit than a bulb anyway, even ignoring the value of having that extra commerce/hammers go where *we* want it instead of half a tech we won't use for a while.