Welf von Ehrwald wrote:Oberon wrote:It sure seems that way. And I'm wondering where the profit is in that, for TV? In any TBS game I've ever played it has been far more useful to have a single side wielding all of the resources than to have two allied sides with the resources split between them. A single side is better able to react to surprises, and can apply all of the combined resources to handle those surprises. The sole benefit I see from having two sides is that you effectively go twice in the turn, but about the time that becomes an advantage over allying and going at the same time you're already much stronger than any opposition.
That's true, but there is reason why players don't ally with AI for a long term: because the AI sucks. You can't make good plans with them, they don't use their resources as good as you, etc. But that doesn't apply to erfworld. It has a certain tactical advantage to have an partly independent ally; you can give him a certain task and let him do it in his way. faq has the advantage of being located in nearly impassable mountains, unknown to anybody except to GK and TV. Jillian would be the perfect ally to keep Jitterati and Carpodle busy with numerous raids and attacks. TV could have used that distraction to tilt their forces to the front with GK. Or they could have tried to attack Gk at two fronts; each kingdom has a chief warlord and his bonuses. But waht Don King did makes no sense to me; he strengthens Faq at the expense of his own kingdom.
The only times I've heard of that sort of strategy being used is when:
A) The player opposes one of the combatants but doesn't want to commit to a direct fight, so they funnel money to a proxy
B) The player is prevented from direct war by an artifical limitation
C) If they controlled those resources directly bad, bad things would happen
D) Related to C, above, they're playing Crusader Kings and suffer massive penalties if they try to rule too much directly
E) They don't want either side to win, so they support whatever side happens to be losing, because either way the player loses
OR
F) The player cannot directly intervene immediately due to distance
I've done it on occasion in GalCiv, and once in Alpha Centauri in a failed effort to keep the Believers from conquering the Gaians before my expeditionary forces could arrive in strength to stabilize the front.* Maybe once or twice in similar situations, but in those cases they weren't losing as hard when I gifted the stuff and also I didn't send expeditionary forces to help out
Don't see what exactly Don King is up to, though. I do sense some sort of incredibly elaborate backstab as a possibility. It just doesn't feel quite right otherwise. Alternately, the multiple chief warlords theory may have something to it. Mind, what makes things really weird is that he isn't developing a minor ally/vassal using spare money, he's actively weakening his own empire. He could have recruited Jil on a permanent basis and claimed the city as his own, as far as I can tell. Then again, maybe barbarian warlords can't be reintegrated in the normal fashion.
The only remaining possibility is that reestablishing FAQ as an independent side improved relations with some sides we haven't seen.
LOONY THEORY: There is actually some sort of score that will determine who "wins" and reestablishing a destroyed side from a royal heir of that side is worth major points. Only Kings and Queens know about the scoreboard.
*
That actually turned out all right, as my first transport load had moved forward to retake a Gaian base when the base I'd been using as a staging point fell, then retook it and held for a long time with some air support out of those two bases smashing advancing Believer forces, even retaking Gaia's Landing. Then I broke the stalemate with a Planet Buster and reckless disregard for air force losses.
I'm just a silly psych major.
