[Dom3]New MA Game

[TNT90]

Well to be fair, those were my castles to begin with.
All I wanted was my initial borders back so I could start to rebuild my shattered mage force. The entire trade would have been my 3 provinces with 2 forts for the 3 provinces that Ashdod previously had and a chance to duke it with Tien Chi, didn't seem unfair to me particularly for someone who is serious about winning.
Without being able to rebuild I have a very low chance of winning and do not see why I should not try to spite my opponent.
And thusly, that is what I am now doing. Glad to see it working.

But I have gained very valuable experience, I'd like to try a strategy of army buffs instead of trying thugs and some minor evocation on my next Pythium game (if I play another, the bullshit is very taxing).

[Username17]

Well to be fair, those were my castles to begin with.
All I wanted was my initial borders back so I could start to rebuild my shattered mage force.

Except you weren't willing or able to give me my initial border back, which means you weren't interested in your "initial border", you were demanding concession of fortified provinces. In exchange for: nothing. No one is ever, ever going to take that kind of deal.

-Username17

[TNT90]

I explicitly told you you could have those Ashdod territories if that is what you are talking about. Otherwise I don't have any idea.
Hell I even offered to let you keep one of those forts at one point.

[Username17]

I explicitly told you you could have those Ashdod territories if that is what you are talking about. Otherwise I don't have any idea.
Hell I even offered to let you keep one of those forts at one point.

They were on the other side of your provinces and there was a perpetual storm at the time! Saying "I'm perfectly willing to let you have something in return for the stuff I'm demanding if you can get to it, by the way it's hidden in a locked box in a basement behind a door that says 'beware of leopard', but other than that I won't stand in your way" is in no way similar to negotiating in good faith.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Going to war with the little part of an alliance first is logical.

Define 'alliance.' Were you expecting me to stick up for T'ien Ch'i? If so, you're mistaken. We went to war together. That doesn't mean we're going to the end of the game together. We did not have an alliance, at any point.

and possibly left me in a position to be strong enough to fight Tien Chi.

That does no one but you any good. The fact there would have been a second faction as powerful as T'ien Ch'i on the map is not something other players will thank you for. You went low-risk, high-reward and left everyone else in a fairly ugly position with not many good strategic options; suicide themself on T'ien Ch'i while Caelum is growing in the background, or sit by and wait and hope the two superpowers crush eachother. Neither of those is a good place to be. The latter is probably better than declaring war on Caelum; I suspect there was a lot of underestimating how long it would take to beat Caelum and how long it would take T'ien Ch'i to start pwning the world. Hindsight is 20/20, and they are new, so that's a reasonable mistake to make. I would have cared more, but I had bigger problems.

And Pythium had the gall the demand war reparations from Caleum just to stop, when they invaded in the first place and they got their butts fairly crucially kicked. Pythium has basically flat out said that they are going to suicide their entire army into Caelum if that's what it takes to keep Caelum from being a credible late game threat to Tien Chi. Well congratulations: we're not a credible late game threat to Tien Chi. We are down net provinces on two fronts and there is no real chance of us recovering at any point.

It sounds like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You want peace so you'll have a chance to deal with T'ien Ch'i, but you're also currently in a better position to win the game than any of your opponents. And you expect to get peace without paying for it? After taking their provinces and crippling their armies and mages?

Use Ashdod as an example. I know I'm far too gone to bother offering peace too, and I'm probably one real non-raiding army away from obliteration, but consider: my goal is to win the game. The price of buying peace from Ashdod is exactly whatever it would take to put me back in the running for victory. Of course, that price is impossibly high because I've been running on empty for years now. But keeping Caelum off the throne still has value, as the faction which crushed me. Pythium is much closer to still in the running, but he still has a lesser chance of winning than you (well, it's hard to say; while perpetual storm was up, your odds were probably pretty low; with it gone, I'm expecting you'll make a speedy and painful recovery). Which means it's not at all unreasonable that you would have to pay for peace because it is simply objectively more valuable to you than it is to him.

P.S. I have no idea why you're negotiating over Ashdod territories. Until you kill my armies, we're just going to play musical chairs with them. Pretending something whose ownership is currently so fleeting can be bought and sold as part of a long-term treaty is ridiculous. You cannot meaningfully own those provinces until Ashdod's armies are defeated. You can occupy them, then lose them, then gain them again, and so on, but it's not like Pythium's permission is going to magically secure them for you even if you had an army there to take them. This sounds like a flimsy pretext.

[Username17]

You want peace so you'll have a chance to deal with T'ien Ch'i, but you're also currently in a better position to win the game than any of your opponents. And you expect to get peace without paying for it? After taking their provinces and crippling their armies and mages?

No, he was offering a "province swap" of provinces he owns on the Ashdod border that I couldn't reach and couldn't defend even if I could for provinces on our mutual border that happen to have castles and researchers of mine in them. It was a joke offer, and more than a little insulting. It would be like if I offered you one of the provinces on the Caelum/Abyssia border in exchange for one of your two remaining castles as a "fair trade" in exchange for peace.

Not only is such an offer obviously not in good faith, but just making such a ridiculous proposal calls into question the good faith of any future deals you could possibly offer.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

even if I could for provinces on our mutual border that happen to have castles and researchers of mine in them.

You are setting off my spin alarm again. Were those forts originally his, or your's? Because you keep saying 'my provinces' and 'my forts', and while I have no doubt they have Caelum flags over them currently, if Pythium is really asking for "initial borders" then they were actually his before that and you seem to be rather intent on neglecting to mention that fact.

Initial borders seems like fairly reasonable peace terms. Especially when you're in a 3-v-1 (if Abysia's doing anything, I can't actually tell; his provinces have been slowly going up?) and the peace will do you a lot of good.

[Username17]

even if I could for provinces on our mutual border that happen to have castles and researchers of mine in them.

You are setting off my spin alarm again. Were those forts originally his, or your's? Because you keep saying 'my provinces' and 'my forts', and while I have no doubt they have Caelum flags over them currently, if Pythium is really asking for "initial borders" then they were actually his before that and you seem to be rather intent on neglecting to mention that fact.

Initial borders seems like fairly reasonable peace terms. Especially when you're in a 3-v-1 (if Abysia's doing anything, I can't actually tell; his provinces have been slowly going up?) and the peace will do you a lot of good.

Abysia just lost an army fighting me, yes.

Look, "Initial Borders" is great spin, but it's bullshit. Because the initial borders were that we owned some provinces over on the Ashdod/Pythium border that were literally unreachable due to the Perpetual Storm. Also, completely useless, since if we could reach them, it would just be with raiding forces that could be served up as well or better by just raiding provinces on the Ashdod side of the border, and which indeed would be exactly as temporary as provinces we raided from Ashdod whether we had Pythium's blessings or not. And what they had was some provinces with actual castles and labs that we've erected a temple in and fortified the hell out of and crushed a quite large Pythium army on them twice.

And that was supposed to be a fair trade? No. That's fucking insulting. The stuff that was on the table for us to get was stuff that we literally couldn't get to and wouldn't make any difference if we did. The stuff that was on the table for us to give up was to evacuate dozens or hundreds of Caelumites and watch with our dick in our hands while hard won castles got torn down and and our temples burned to the ground. What. The Fuck.

More importantly, that offer of "peace" wasn't even peace. Peace means you stop fighting. His offer wasn't so much that we stop fighting, but really just that I personally stop fighting back. Think about it for a second. His offer was that for the next several turns:

• We would raid a highly inaccessible and completely indefensible chunk of dirt in between Pythium and Ashdod. Pythium promises not to stop me from raiding those provinces, but of course does not and cannot promise that counter raids from Ashdod would not happen in that area. I don't even know how I was supposed to send forces there through the storm, teleportation maybe?
• Pythium would march his armies over to siege my castles and then storm them, burning my temples in the process. In anticipation of this, I was supposed to take the army that had already beaten his twice, and pull it back to do nothing with.

That's exactly like being at war. This isn't a non-aggression pact being offered, he is absolutely promising that he will spend the next five turns attacking me with everything he has. The promise is that he'd stop doing that afterward. You know, unless he gave notice that the war was going to be on again at some point during all that.

That is some serious Orwellian bullshit. "I'm going to attack you for five turns with everything I have, and I don't want you to fight back" is not a peace offer.

My Peace Offer was that I would let him have one of the non-castle provinces on the border in exchange for him withdrawing his raider angel and we'd call off aggression immediately and do our own things. That is a peace offer in good faith. On account of it doesn't involve the war continuing for perhaps half a year or even more before it even kicks in. That he wouldn't take "I'll give you an actual province that makes actual gems in exchange for you not attacking me any more" tells me that he was in no way interested in any kind of peace.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Look, "Initial Borders" is great spin, but it's bullshit. Because the initial borders were that we owned some provinces over on the Ashdod/Pythium border that were literally unreachable due to the Perpetual Storm.

Your use of the word owned is weird. You never owned those. You had flags on them at one point while they were being contested and passed around between three different factions. Including those as part of initial borders is just... not correct. That you are talking about those provinces at all as though they affected the deal in anyway seems mistaken.

More importantly, that offer of "peace" wasn't even peace. Peace means you stop fighting. His offer wasn't so much that we stop fighting, but really just that I personally stop fighting back.

You realize that this heavily loaded definition applies to any concession of territory? As in, if you have ever agreed to any concession of territory whatsoever you are making a hypocrite of yourself? You can talk about durations and whatever, but ultimately any concession of territory is "don't fight back while I take this." And you are arguing about how that is bullshit in broad strokes. The fact that it takes a few turns to take an empty castle does not constitute fighting. You aren't contesting territory, the territory has been ceded, and it takes a few turns to change hands. Voila.

But I don't think you understand: you're an obvious #2 to win this game, or #3 if Man is hiding something absolutely awesome. The peace that is necessary to deal with T'ien Ch'i is proportionally more valuable to you than it is to anyone else, because your odds of winning go up more than anyone else's. And when the value of something is higher to you than someone else, that means you pay for it. That's just economics and game theory.

Not to mention, you did just finish crushing their armies and mages, and taking territories from them. You have objectively worsened their chances of winning the game, and then turned around and asked them for a deal which disproportionately raises your's. That's actually a flat-out stupid deal to take, because it would actively encourage other players to come and beat you up in the future. After all, you're willing to take the hits and stop getting in their way once crippled; why wouldn't you try to conquer someone like that? You're providing no disincentives at all. Now, admittably, Pythium was the aggressor here, but the principle is pretty much the same.

Important thing to note: not being crushed by Caelum does not, in and of itself, have any utility if it does not translate into a better chance at winning the game.

Of course, Pythium and Abysia could do the peace thing and then let you fight T'ien Ch'i for them, and hope you cripple eachother, but honestly, if they can't beat you now, what are their odds later? Especially with Ashdod out of the picture and you holding a chunk of their territory? That's a raw deal.

[Username17]

Important thing to note: not being crushed by Caelum does not, in and of itself, have any utility if it does not translate into a better chance at winning the game.

You, Pythium, and Abysia have all identified your current chances of winning as ~0%. A different strategy couldn't possibly do worse than that. For example: a grand alliance against Tien Chi would give the victory out as pretty much a crapshoot: Tien Chi is so powerful that they could quite likely win against the combined armies of the world, but if they went down it would be pretty much up to them which countries to take with them with their Seraph-led armies. Hell, the biggest players could very plausibly be Abysia and Pythium in such a scenario if Tien Chi decided to take down Man and Caelum primarily.

Hell, just sitting back, letting Caelum recover, and watching a throwdown between Tien Chi and Caelum to stab whoever starts winning that war would still increase chances of winning dramatically.

---

The offer of "I want to take my entire army and siege and storm the castles you took and built stuff in while you don't fight back for the next several turns and then we'll start having actual peace once my entire army is safely ensconced in a fortress right on the border. In exchange, I want you to send as much of your army as you can into the ass end of nowhere." lacks credibility. It seems much more likely that the end game there was "Now that I've been doing exactly what I would have been doing if we were at war for the last half year or more without suffering casualties, and collected my armies next to my original invasion point, I'm going to continue attacking you. Because, duh."

A roadmap to peace has to have some sign of peaceful intentions in it over the next five turns or it's ridiculous to expect someone to accept it. Literally 100% of the tokens of good faith were supposed to be on my side. He promised only to mass his army on the border and attack my provinces, siege my castles, and burn my temples. That was literally 100% of what he promised to do in his peace roadmap. That's serious Sudetenland bullshit. "I'm going to behave exactly as if we're at war for for the foreseeable future, but don't worry, if you stop fighting back we'll be satisfied with territorial gains eventually and stop invading you after we have our army consolidated at a good spearhead to invade you with."

Yeah, right.

-Username17

[Korwin]

Thanks for your high opinion of me
(Look how long it took me to finish of C'ties Pretender...)

--
T'ien Chi

[DSMatticus]

You, Pythium, and Abysia have all identified your current chances of winning as ~0%. A different strategy couldn't possibly do worse than that.

Winning isn't the only thing with utility, however. Spite has utility; not only because it is fun, but it acts as a disincentive for aggression against you as a whole. Maximizing the cost of your defeat is, in and of itself, valuable. As a deterrent and as a bargaining chip.

Regardless, I don't think Pythium's chances are zero. They're just astronomically low, and moderately lower than Caelum's, whose are... bad, but not terrible. And I can literally say nothing about Abysia because somehow I have not bothered to put any scouts in their territories and have no knowledge of them beyond the graphs.

Hell, just sitting back, letting Caelum recover, and watching a throwdown between Tien Chi and Caelum to stab whoever starts winning that war would still increase chances of winning dramatically.

This I sort of agree with. Letting T'ien Ch'i and Caelum duke it out would be a smart move for Pythium and Abysia. But it also gives you a better chance (than it does them), and the fact that you aren't willing to pay... basically anything at all for it is what I find perplexing. You have the most to gain from the T'ien Ch'i and Caelum war, even if the odds are that you'll lose, in that you are a clear #2 favorite in this game.

As for the trust issues, I don't get that; sure, he's new here, but I've never seen anyone outright break a formal treaty except in the VP games around here when someone was on the brink of snatching victory.

Thanks for your high opinion of me

Hurry up and do something showy and awesome. Or better yet: someone put perpetual storm back up! Please dear god, he has flying battlemages!

[Username17]

As for the trust issues, I don't get that; sure, he's new here, but I've never seen anyone outright break a formal treaty except in the VP games around here when someone was on the brink of snatching victory.

What plans have you ever seen in Dominions remain unchanged in six or seven turns? Pythium offered to stop invading me in six or seven turns. For fuck's sake, a formal declaration of war is only three turns. If you can't get a peace up and running in two, you're doing something wrong.

Get this through your head: his offer was that if he was allowed to invade me with everything he had, unopposed, for five or six turns, then he'd stop. You know, unless he issued another formal declaration of war some time in the next three turns, in which case my capitulation would have bought me nothing and less than nothing. There is no substance to that offer. It's literally just "stop fighting back for three turns and I'll decide if I want to stop fighting you three turns after that".

My offer was one province he could take the next turn, and keeping all his ill-gotten gains on the Ashdod front. All he had to do to get that was to stop attacking me in two turns. But he wouldn't accept that. He wouldn't accept me giving him a province and taking absolutely nothing in return. o call that "basically nothing" is beyond disingenuous. He was offering literally nothing. He wasn't even offering a cessation of hostilities. He was going to continue attacking me for five or six turns. Possibly more. That was his "peace".

He was asking for me to allow him to overrun everything he could reach for longer than a nonaggression pact even lasts in exchange for... having a non aggression pact that would kick in seven or eight turns from then unless he canceled it in the interim. It's in no way a credible offer. Even if he was sincere, which I have absolutely no proof that he was, it wasn't credible by the very length of the operation. "I will stop attacking in half a year" is not something you can even predict with any accuracy, because it's beyond the threshold that you can know the realpolitik of the situation. Maybe Caelum would do something crazy like launch the Astral Corruption in five turns and he'd have to continue fighting anyway. He doesn't know.

His "peace offer" was seriously "I will continue invading you with everything I have for longer than I can currently predict what is going to happen in this game". That is not a fucking peace offer. That is a declaration that war will never and can never end!

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Oh for fuck's sake Frank:
1) Peace agreements have whatever number you put on the end of them. You can just make the offer "NAP-3 after such time that you have the forts back; or NAP-6 after such time that you have the forts back." Yes, longer ones are normally kind of stupid because it's hard to predict, but seriously: T'ien Ch'i is already on the road to the end-game! The situation cannot actually get that much worse.

2) Stop acting like it is impossible for any peace treaty to include the concession of a fort, because "that's war! You can't cede a fort, that's always war!" It's stupid.

3) There is no meaningful ownership, by anyone, of anything on the Ashdod front. It is a three-way warzone! Saying Pythium can keep those territories is exactly as bullshit as saying Caelum can keep those territories. You don't think I would take them back if Pythium stopped being such a buddy? I don't mind him holding them because it helps me fulfill my anti-Caelum resistance movement agenda and I am busy, but I still wholly consider those Ashdod territories. Just because they passed through the hands of a shared enemy does not magically mean I will respect anyone else's claims to them. No one would do that. I would consider refusing to return them a violation of our NAP. You don't get to "help" an ally in their war by cannabilizing their provinces as they are raided.

4) And honestly, Pythium would have to be flat-out retarded to get peace and concessions from you and then declare war again. The entire point of peace and concessions would be to sit back and recover from the beating he received while you (try to) take care of T'ien Ch'i. If he starts fighting you again, that can't happen and T'ien Ch'i just flat-out wins. And T'ien Ch'i has seraphs now. I don't think anyone is retarded enough to not recognize the existential threat that poses to every other faction.

[Username17]

3) There is no meaningful ownership, by anyone, of anything on the Ashdod front.

I agree. Which is why I thought the "trade" of those provinces for ones with actual castles in it was laughable. I mean, completely pointless, impossible for me to realize when the offer was made, and not even his to give away in any way. A "trade" of something you don't own in any meaningful fashion for something the other guy definitely does own is not an offer in good faith.

Stop acting like it is impossible for any peace treaty to include the concession of a fort

Not impossible, just extremely difficult. Ceding a fortress involves the other guy taking actions which are 100% indistinguishable from an all-out invasion for several turns running. An uncastled province can be ceded to a token raider force, which is very different from a full-scale invasion force. A castle province can only be ceded to a force capable of sieging it. That's not a complete repudiation of the idea - if there was a castle that was for example in the middle of someone else's territory (I am certain you can imagine such a scenario), then that someone could commit the forces required to siege without that being necessarily a force buildup against the other player.

But in this particular scenario, the castles are right on the main border, making taking them not only indistinguishable from an attack, but indistinguishable from an attempt to conquer the other player's homeland. It's just not a request that is in any way reasonable, and it is totally ridiculous to expect anyone to even seriously consider it.

TNT: as a newbie, it's entirely possible that you didn't understand how absurd and insulting your request was, but moving forward you should now know. Don't make people offers that you have no reasonable expectation of being fulfilled unless your big plan is that you are trying to provoke the player into doing something stupid.

-Username17

[Korwin]

@Man, what happened to your research?
Got to an 9 somewhere and did not change your research?

[koz]

So... I'm finding this game becoming more and more of a chore. The inevitability of Tien Chi's winning, combined with the fact that I've basically boned my nation out of a lategame without realizing it, and the fact that I actually realized I don't like Man very much, makes for a very dull play experience, especially at this point.

So I'm going AI. Have fun looting my corpse.

[Korwin]

What about Abysia? Tador is AWOL in every game he is... (stalled only the last turn in this one, because of the slower turn around).

[Korwin]

What about Abysia? Tador is AWOL in every game he is... (stalled only the last turn in this one, because of the slower turn around).

Twice, stalled twice.

[Username17]

Witht he abdication of Abysia and Man, I feel no compunction about simply surrendering to Tien Chi myself.

-Username17

[Korwin]

Someone needs to set Abysia to AI. No problem with continuing.

[DSMatticus]

It's been a hell of a busy week for me with the end of classes and finals, and I've been putting in fairly minimal turns for quite awhile. I'm also fine with letting this one die.

[TNT90]

I'm good with whatever. I too have finals so having a little less to think about would be nice.

[TNT90]

Should I even bother taking my turn?

[DSMatticus]

The vote seems to be "surrender." I won't take mine, unless something changes.