Machiavelly Institute: France's surrender

[Shiber]

I figured we need a thread to discuss when we should come to terms with France and end this war and what and how much of it we should demand from France, so I opened one.

[MrWhereItsAt]

When playing I was hoping for nothing less than Chartres, hopefully Rouen, and one more city. Never has France offered up Chartres, which surely we cannot allow to sit there so close to Mingapulco. They have only ever accepted one city, which has never been any better than Rouen (which would be pretty crap).

It is pretty aggravating. One thing is for sure, though. Without reinforcements, we can keep taking cities, but we won't have the forces to protect them without disbanding our stacks of attackers. Either France surrenders after one more city falls or we may need to settle for something less.

[Shiber]

Currently France can offer us either one of these deals:

* Technologies:
- Feudalism for 345 gold. We could techwhore it later to Russia, Babylon and the Iroquois to help them defend themselves from the Romans, and to other civs we want to cultivate as well.
- Feudalism and their WM for 356 gold. We might be able to carry out another fine mapwhoring project like the last one.
- If we throw in a RoP the price for Feudalism and their WM will drop significantly to 256!!! (we save 100 lytons)
I believe we need to sign a RoP with France anyway because it's the easiest way to connect our newly-acquired towns to the trade network: we just finish the road to Chartres and viola!

* Towns:
- They're willing to offer 2 out of the 3 following towns: Rouen, Grenoble and Cherbourg. Grenoble and Cherbourg are useless to us but Rouen could be used as a link to the trade network if we build a harbor there. Then again it's much cheaper to sign a RoP with France and finish the road to Chartres (just two more tiles to dig).

* What they won't offer:
- Gold per turn.
- A lump sum of gold: they have none. Figures.

I'm positive the French can do better than that, so I suggest that we continue the war for about three more turns and then return to the bargaining table. Of course if it turns out that the German war machine has produced a formidable army and they're marching our way we should end the war immediately.

[DAVOUT]

Considering the Germano-Aztec war, which requires our forces in the east to seize any opportunity to weaken the Germans, and our need of a strong buffer between us and the Romans, I am of the following opinion :
- take Rheims
- offer peace for Rouen, not so bad after all
- expect a flip of Chartres and meantime build roads starting Timeline (5 tiles?)

That would make 5 cities gained in a very short war, and that part of the Grand Bassin secured. Short of the access to Abananaba Minor which was originally one of the aims of war, but that is not to-day an obvious necessity, we would have obtained all what we wanted.

Edited for proper orientation.

[Shiber]

We can't take Rheims, it's a 1 citizen town.
Also, a road from Timeline would be much more expensive and will require us to divert workers from much more important jobs such as clearing jungle and mining the mountains near Here It Is (formerly known as Paris).

[DAVOUT]

As a capitol, Rheims will have created some culture and would not be destroyed, I suppose. Anyway, if we dont take Rheims, we must take Chartres before the peace.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I don't remember a time Rheims was ever capital. When we got Paris, it moved to Marseille, and now Avignon.

[DAVOUT]

On the 290 BC map, the French capitol is Rheims, not Marseilles as we expected.

[Reddawg]

Maybe Paris should be renamed C'est Ici... or C'estici... it means the same thing but it's french and looks really cool.

[Shiber]

Towns with 1 pop. get autorazed no matter how much culture they possess.

[DAVOUT]

I remember that this point has been answered by Sir Ralph, and I believe that culture prevent autorazing even at size 1, but you make me doubt !

[Robber Baron]

I begin to think the current situation offers us an invaluable opportunity: we should take advantage of the fact that the Germans are embroiled in so many wars, and hit them hard.
Germany will have to be confronted sooner or later -- the AI is so aggressive playing this civ that it will not let us continue to grow without attacking. Better we take them on now than later.
Meaning, perhaps we should make peace with France relatively soon, and concentrate our military forces on the eastern front, against Germany.

[OPD]

Originally posted by Shiber
Towns with 1 pop. get autorazed no matter how much culture they possess.

Not if they have culturally expanded they don't.

I think we may need to build about 4 settlers to fill in all the gaps when cities are razed.

[Shiber]

You mean if they have any culture at all or if their borders have expanded? (meaning they have at least 10 culture)
If the first is correct then Rheims will not be autorazed because it was the capital for a little while. If the latter is correct then it will be autorazed because it hasn't expanded its borders. If neither is correct (which I doubt since you both sound certain) then it'll be autorazed.
Does anyone know for sure?

[OPD]

If it has 10 or more culture it won't be razed.

IMHO we should keep the war going untill we have control of the land or cities of chartes, Rhiems and rouen.

As for Germany we should raze and replace Munich and then get peace.

[Shiber]

Well, at the moment there are no French towns we can take. They're all pop. 1 and have less than 10 culture with the exception of Avignon which is of no value to us anyway.
We should definitely finish off some French troops and then move our swordsmen to the tile next to Rheims so Joan agrees to hand it over quietly. Then we should go and beef up our defenses, chew on Germany or Persia or finish off what we started with the Americans.

[GodKing]

Ignore chartres. We will flip it culturaly before it can harm us.

Get rouin (sp?) and anything else. Build a road to chartres (we only need rop to build road - if we are at peace the trade goods pass through foreign territory).

We then focus on culture in the former french cities and soon chartres is ours without worring about the french declairing war and cutting us off.

[Shiber]

A RoP with France is still a good idea regardless of how we plan to establish a trade route with the newly-acquired towns. You'll notice that if we sue for peace and ask for Feudalism they charge 356 gold for it but if we offer a RoP they charge 256 gold. That's a discount of 100 gold! We can't possibly turn that down.

[OPD]

Originally posted by Shiber
A RoP with France is still a good idea regardless of how we plan to establish a trade route with the newly-acquired towns. You'll notice that if we sue for peace and ask for Feudalism they charge 356 gold for it but if we offer a RoP they charge 256 gold. That's a discount of 100 gold! We can't possibly turn that down.

dude have you been playing ahead?

As for Chartes I would advise against relying on a culture flip.


It is important to know what people generally think our objectives should be for the wars on all three fronts.

Personally I think we should take munich from the Germans then get peace from them.
Take the land or cities of Rheims, chartes and Rouen then peace with the French
And just take a few more slaves from the persians before peace with them.

[GhengisFarb™]

Same reasons everyone wanted an ROP with Persia for..................

I say make peace and get Feudalism (indifferent on the ROP thing) and Rouen(or not, Rouen is about as useless a city as possible) if you get another city out of them fine, give it to Greece or somebody (improves their relations to us and we don't want it, but hey if Joan's giving it up for free.......)

Smack Sidon. I said it before and say it again, take Sidon and Persia will sign a peace treaty, although they are going to be PO'd about those settlers. Anyway their easy kills. Don't think we got much chance of denying them the iron anymore as they moved their troops to cut off our warrior while he sat there picking his nose. That guy needs to be courtmartialed.

We might take Hamburg but I put our odds at 50/50 now, maybe worse. It's a gamble but not much to lose as there's no other threats except Persia if we make peace with France. We really need to make peace with Germany and Persia and spend some time building up our cities as we may not get another chance to focus on infrastructure later and it greatly improves our warfighting ability. (see the reference to Warfighter. )

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by OPD
Personally I think we should take munich from the Germans then get peace from them.
Take the land or cities of Rheims, chartes and Rouen then peace with the French

We CAN'T take Rheims or Chartes, we can destroy them, but not take them. Personally I can't think of any more preferable place holder than France.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by OPD
dude have you been playing ahead?

No, I just opened up a diplomacy screen, punched in a few deals and checked the foreign advisor's reactions. I think we've concluded that this does not count as playing ahead as long as you don't actually make a deal and only put a proposal on the table.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by GhengisFarb
Smack Sidon.

I'm afraid it will be autorazed if we do.

[Kuciwalker]

We want Chartres. Yes, it will flip to us before it is a threat. That is irrelevent. We want it so that we have Wine.

[Aggie]

If we move our archers toward rheims it might hlep the deal. I say NO ROP. Remember, as long as we aren't at war we can move goods though other civs. A techwhore deal sounds good. Remember, if we continue the war an archer could attach port rouge. On the other hand the spear is elite and maybe a great leader could emerge.
Aggie

[UnOrthOdOx]

How can we Techwhore with Russia? They have the Library? Don't they get it for free once we obtain it as well? Or are they dumb enough to trade for it even though they would get it free at the end of the turn?

[Shiber]

Why no RoP? They'll give us a discount of 100 gold on Feudalism if we sign a RoP. France have become a feedble civilization. All of their productive towns have been reduced to 1 population and their treasury is empty. Furthermore, other than Feudalism they have no technologies that we don't have and we're considered a technologically backward civilization.

[Shiber]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
How can we Techwhore with Russia? They have the Library?

Yes, but they don't have Feudalism yet. However, once we get it they'll get it from the library as well (we'll be the 3rd known civ to have it. I overlooked that).

[wervdon]

I could care less about the cities, but we need feudalism from them, but surely they can be persuaded to part with it for less than 350 lytons....

I say take/destroy one more city (approach them again as our troops get close) then politely ask them to reconsider the price on feudalism.

After that, I guess take what they offer though, cause we risk getting over extended in the west due to our lack of units for defense.

As for RoP, It's probally worth 100 lytons, but 250 lytons, rop, and peace for feudalism is still an insult.

[Epistax]

Take rheims, then take whatever peace offers the french will accept. Chartres, at the least, will be a cultural victory.

Peace must come quickly, but so must rheims