RESOLUTION: Peace Treaty now

mapfi · January 24, 2003, 14:27

Hey - I know Locutus has already polled on this in an official poll with devastating results for diplomacy.

Before you vote - think about how many times you've played on impossible before.

I did some playing again today and was just crushed after a hundred turns - I was up to 5 cities but my only neighbour was far more powerful and I had no chance to withstand im at all. In my opinion, my biggest mistake was not going for a peace treaty when the other still would agree to it. I was not aggressive in any way but Frenzy kicked in terribly!

I urge you to play a little game on your own before you vote here and consider carefully. I think it's of utmost importance that we try to obtain a peace treaty with the austrians. They still like us a bit - so there's a chance we can get it without offering too much. Since sending proposals is almost indefinetly possible we can try what would make them give in.
I'm convinced that if we don't obtain peace now - we will be crushed rather sooner than later! Talking of war is fun - however it won't help us here at all but mean our end.

If you need more convincing stuff read Locutus's diplotips

So I propose the following resolution:

The government is to try to get a peace treaty from the Austrians next turn.

This poll will be open till January, 27th ~6:30pm GMT

Turambar · January 24, 2003, 14:52

I've also tried a few games on these settings and found the best way is to pump out warriors and crush the first civ you meet as soon as you can. That way you've a load of their cities and are able to face other civs better and maybe get a treaty with them.

I'm not going to vote until I hear some more arguments but I can not see us winning without a war as soon as we are able. Going the peaceful route will just see us dead eventually.

Remember that we are likely to go to war with them later as I believe most people will vote for that once we have the units. So having a treaty with them when we attack will just give us a bad rep with other civs and make them more likely to attack us.

Zacharov · January 24, 2003, 15:41

I agree with Turambar, You should crush the first civ you meet as soon as you can, but it is too late to crush the austrians now, they're too big and powerful. We should try to get a peace treaty now.
War is not an option, until we've at least 7 or 8 cities or until we have a huge army. When we make war, we must be able to win the war in about 20-30 turns. (winning the war = capturing at least 50% of the cities of the enemy). War is too costly.

(I've played impossible for 1,5 years now, about 50(or more) times.)

mapfi · January 24, 2003, 15:43

Well - if we could pump out warriors but now with two cities at most and warriors every 3-5 turns we won't be able to keep up with them. In about 30 turns we will have the first Frenzy stacks coming towards us and the AI nicely mixs them with archers so they become a most deadly weapon.

Zacharov · January 24, 2003, 16:56

peace it is then.

Pedrunn · January 24, 2003, 19:22

Either we assume a agressive attitude and kill the Austrians or a peaceful and ask for peace. I dont like mid-terms

Therefore since we are every day more peaceeful toward the austrians and no war in my sight so we should ask the Peace Treaty.

Turambar · January 24, 2003, 20:21

Quote:

but it is too late to crush the austrians now, they're too big and powerful.

But it's not! Even with the delay building city 2 which will be done soon anyway we can still pull it off!

As soon as the settler is built we must pump out warriors and attack as soon as we can!

Quote:

War is not an option, until we've at least 7 or 8 cities or until we have a huge army.

The only way I can see us getting that many cities is through conquest. One thing I've noticed about SAP on Impossible is that if you wait to build settlers you run out of places to settle as other civs expand and sandwhich between them.

HuangShang · January 24, 2003, 20:44

if we dont crush them early, they'll crush us.... dont u people read the art of war

Turambar · January 24, 2003, 21:17

Then vote "No" Huang!

HuangShang · January 24, 2003, 21:36

i did but where still losing

Tamerlin · January 24, 2003, 22:22

I think we should not go at war with the Austrians now but that it will be necessary in a near future. Concluding a peace treaty with them can only give us a bad reputation when we would break the treaty and in need of peace treaties with other civs.

Zacharov · January 25, 2003, 08:46

Quote:

Originally posted by Turambar

The only way I can see us getting that many cities is through conquest. One thing I've noticed about SAP on Impossible is that if you wait to build settlers you run out of places to settle as other civs expand and sandwhich between them.

As long as there are places left to settle we should use them. We should conquer other civs, but only when there is no place left to settle.

We cannot win a war against the austrians with only two cities and we don't want a war that lasts for several millenia.

Anyway a peace treaty will buy us time to build an army.

Locutus · January 25, 2003, 11:51

Quote:

Originally posted by HuangShang
dont u people read the art of war

Actually, according to the Art of War, we should NOT attack, not yet anyway: 'if he is in superior strength, evade him' (Ch 1).

But there's a very important reason for us NOT to make a peace treaty: it's inevitable that the Austrians will be the first nation we attack and most likely we'll attack them fairly soon (first of all because it's a good idea to strike early, while they're not fully prepared, and secondly because there's too many warmongers amongst us to play peacefully for very long). If so, and we have a peace treaty with them, it will cost us a lot of trust and regard with the other civs as well, which will make future negiotations with other civs much harder. It's obvious we'll have to destroy the Austrians sooner or later, but we may want to form alliances with other civs later on in the game. So we should not become any friendlier with the Austrians than we have to (though we shouldn't unnecessarily piss them off either, for now), to minimize the diplomatic cost of a future war.

mapfi · January 25, 2003, 12:15

Quote:

it's inevitable that the Austrians will be the first nation we attack

That may be so - but we don't know where any of the other civs lay. Before we even can put up a fight we need to grow - we won't be growing if we go to war because with an enemy like this war will be very costly and need all resources.

In my opinion we need to grow to a at least 10-city civ before we even consider any war. By that time Austria will send us Frenzy stacks even if we have a peace treaty. There will be no problem to provoke them to break it if we want to do that. If we however find out that they love us that's good as well - we'll concentrate our forces on the next neighbouring civ, that's sure to be out there.

On this level, with those oponents and the barbarians we won't be able to go in a war for a rather long time. So I'm really convinced - a peace treaty now is a must.

Maquiladora · January 25, 2003, 12:33

Its the Frenzy AI that wont let us play a peaceful game, although there is alot of warmongers around here. Anything that secures peace or at least prolongs the time to the AI attacking is good thing IMO.

On this occasion i think it will be easier to conquer the Austrians early on because their cities are too far away and across low movement terrain to support a full attack against us, whereas we can reach 2 of their cities with a river. So all we need is 2 cities and a little resourcefulness.

mapfi · January 25, 2003, 14:11

we just won't stand a chance with them having three times as many (soon to be more) cities and a very large tech lead - you go and attack them but I'm sure we will fail miserably

and btw - by always having a withdraw agreement (not too difficult just play on good terms) the Frenzy AI won't be able to hurt us at all. The AI really is at our mercy if we play it cool - warmongering is playing into it's hands because that's where its advantages lie. With diplomacy however you can fend them off and grow to a size allowing wars later on.

Oerdin · January 25, 2003, 14:58

So far no is ahead by a vote.

Turambar · January 25, 2003, 15:58

Quote:

In my opinion we need to grow to a at least 10-city civ before we even consider any war.

1) I don't think there's a chance of us getting 10 cities peacefully because before very long the AI civs will have settled all around us leaving nowhere for our settlers to go.

2) The AI civs and barbs won't let us live in peace long enough to get 10 cities. We must strike first to get any advantage out of war. It'll be alot quicker to take 10 AI cities than build our. We should grow at our enemies expense!

Martin Gühmann · January 25, 2003, 17:14

To answer the question were the other civs are should be simple: They are around us. We have a setup with many civs and a gigantic map, and most probably all AI civs have 5 cities already. And as I raised the settling goals and the number of settlers the AI needs to have we have very aggressive settling AIs.

So we could be very soon be sandwiched.

-Martin

ískallin · January 25, 2003, 18:35

give em a peace treaty and then kill em

mapfi · January 25, 2003, 18:44

It's true that taking AI cities is a lot easier than building them on your own. However - if we manage to put together a little army by having two cities producing warriors and then attack the Austrians, then we will get one third city - about ten to twenty turns later we will have two AI stacks taking two cities away from us, we will take one back and then the next wave comes and then good night.
The only advantage a human player has on these levels is diplomacy - because it forces the AI to obey some principles. All the other restrictions that we encounter in growth, production, PW and gold are not valid for the AI, he's got a hell of an advantage there!

Tamerlin · January 25, 2003, 22:15

Quote:

Originally posted by mapfi
In my opinion we need to grow to a at least 10-city civ before we even consider any war. By that time Austria will send us Frenzy stacks even if we have a peace treaty.

I think we would be able, and actually that we should, launch an attack when we reach around five cities.

But no peace treaty as this would lower our reputation.

Devil of Truth · January 26, 2003, 05:34

The AI will probably attack whether we have a treaty in place or not. A treaty may buy us some time but will limit our options should we need to expand. My best guess: Remain neutral; no treaties; and don’t aggravate them.

Zacharov · January 26, 2003, 08:59

We just need to survive at this stage of the game. A good reputation is of no use when we're dead.

We can always fix our reputation with gold and our map after breaking a treaty.

Gilgamensch · January 27, 2003, 05:34

I even haven't voted in the old one, reason being:

I don't know what to do. If we attack we might get erased in return. Don't forget, that the Barbs are coming. Both together will be hard to achive, I guess.

Also without Archers we 'might' get our army (which army?) whiped out.

So I tend more to the peacetreaty (for the moment)

mapfi · January 27, 2003, 08:27

I'm busy playing GoodMod now to back my argumentation. My experience tells me - that if we don't get a peace treaty now we won't get one from any other civ. In terms of diplomacy that would severly damage us. While we might be able to keep up against one enemy we have no chance if we have to battle more.

There are 10 more civs on this planet - there's got to be another close nearby. If we don't make peace with the Austrians now, I'm pretty sure any other civ will turn us down unless we give them all we have. Then we will have more than one enemy sending stacks!

I think now is the only chance we've got - the chances are also - that this discussion is purely hypothetical because the Austrians won't agree anyway. If they did however, we got to take the only chance we've got.

mapfi · January 27, 2003, 19:44

quorum not reached - no effect - finito

(and now we also got the germans! told you so...

)