Oberon wrote:More lovely double standards. Your position is, now, that Tram is disbelieving of Charlie's intentions when he tells Tram that he advises most strongly against parley with GK. While at the same time accepting that Charlie should be credited with Kingworld without a single bit of evidence, and when in fact the entire event was impossible from the rules as known.
Hold on...you are discounting a known magic in Erfworld...Trimancer links...as impossible? You are discounting Trams own words that he knows it was Charlie because you assume Charlie told him and he should automatically disbelieve everything Charlie tells him?
First....Trimancer links are powerful. They exist. And are known.
Second....Tram doesn't have to trust Charlie to believe him. He may also have found out from Jillain or deduced the info from his father.
I pointed out Trams words indicated he knew it was a link with Charlie. Yes, that destroyed your thinking that Tram should be on alert for "impossible" events because such events had already happened that day. We don't need to know when, where or how Tram got that information or why he believes it. That he has that information and that he does believe it is all that really matters.
Tram knows GKs turn ended because of a Trimancer link. Number of impossible events that occurred that day....Zero. Number of times Parson did the impossible? Zero.
So is Tram an idiot for suspecting Charlie of having an ulterior motivation about the parley? Or is Tram an idiot for accepting at face value and without any supporting evidence that Charlie did something which was unthinkable and impossible right before it happened?
Uhhh...I'm saying Tram isn't an idiot. He doesn't have to disbelieve Charlie to doubt Charlies motives. He seems to take Parsons dossier at face value for example. He also doesn't have to doubt Kingworld as impossible because it required a caster link. We don't know what evidence convinced him...therefore we can't say why he believes it or if he is smart for doing so.
As it is....you are possibly wrong when you say we have no evidence. None was given to us...we don't know what Tram was shown. That's just you making an assumption there. And the fact that Kingsworld was a caster link removes it and other such impossibilities from play....GK doesn't have a Trimancer link in hex. Nor can it form one. And without one, such impossibilities WON'T occur. There is no need to consider them.
As it is, your arguments appear to be that Tram is stupid because he didn't predict the impossible, that his diplomatic style upon greeting his brother is one you don't agree with because the few seconds he spent out of the who knows how many hundreds of hours before he ended turn probing his brother for information and reactions regarding decryption was time wasted, and that his lack of concern for his troops shows a lack of backbone and resolve and foresight.
Put simply....you don't predict the impossible. You don't even prepare for it. Doing so is a waste of time, effort and resources. The question is...did Tram prepare for all likely events? GK can't move, fight or flee. They are covered by archers and casters. They will almost certainly all die in a battle once it begins. GK can still attack via bomb...so the dwagons are moved to the only other place they can go ...the airspace above the atrium...so they can't attack the twoer, the king, the CW.
Did he not foresee anything likely? Doesn't seem to be the case. Should he have predicted an off turn move? I don't see any reason to expect him to do so. He appears to be a fairly smart Warlord, with a comparatively unconventional outlook....but lateral thinking is Parsons game. Not his. The telling feature of whether or not he's holding the "idiot ball" will be how he deals with this exploit. His response to Parsons opening gambit does strike me as unusual and smart - other warlords would probably have agreed with the King but Trams response was proportionate and effective while keeping his bargaining hand strong - but he wasn't ever going to stop or even delay it; Slatelys decision to hold off attacking until the field units were recalled and parley held gave Parson what he needed. I expect him to fail to save JS...but the speed and effectiveness of his commands there will be telling. Even if its a quick "We've lost...save the king" deal as he realises GK just landed a very powerful ground force inside the city itself and is growing more powerful because of its decryption.
His diplomatic style....he is greeting his brother. One of his stated aims is to turn Ossomer back. Yes...asking for Ossomer via Treaty is probably doable, but Tram still needs to see his reactions, probe his loyalty now, if only to see how strong the link is this soon after Decryption. He approached this in a conversational style and used Ossomers own words against him to test the link. Trams main priority is the Treaty, but getting info from Ossomer will help...it may confirm Charlies info if nothing else...and he has plenty of time; there is no time limit here. But this is, after all, the "greeting phase"...not the negotiation. As it is, this is a parley. The proper place, if it were needed, to specify no hostilities would have been earlier, when JS asked GK to move. It would also have been redundant....the point of a parley is to stop hostilities while talks are held. If GK was going to hold fire anyway, there was no need to ask. If it was going to open fire, there was no point in asking.
Yes...Parson did bomb the atrium. Always a possibility which is why they moved from the tower. Why should this matter? Because he's causing a hole in the roof and killing expendable JS troops. Is this a concern? No...its an inconvenience and ultimately of little importance. Troops can be repopped and they won't be needed in this battle. The building will be repaired before any enemy can get close to exploit it. If Tram can get a Treaty, the costs can be borne from the reparations. If not, they were thinking of razing a city for upkeep anyway.
So..is Tram an idiot for not wiping out the GK force when he had the chance? Not his decision actually...and he had other aims when he got back that required him to keep GK alive.
Is he an idiot for not predicting off turn movement? No. AFAICS, to him thats a physical impossibility.
Is he an idiot for his diplomatic style? No.
Is he an idiot for not insisting ona cessation of hostilities? No.
Every single point you've raised to try and show Tram is an idiot has been shown to be wrong. Repeatedly.
Trams main flaws here are not that he is stupid....its that he is an Erfworlder and isn't Parson. He sees off turn movement as impossible but he hasn't gamed the system to realise that harvesting mounts mid air at the same time causes a mass fall with a large force crossing zones and ending up on the ground and able to act. Leave that aside and his orders, with his own knowledge and aims, make sense and show a long term thinking we've not seen often in Erfworld warlords.
It is not possible to present the position that Tram thought that he had all the time in the world
They have until the turn is over. Who determines when it is over? The King. Aside from the possibility of Trimancer enhanced Kingsworld spells.
Tram himself discussed with his King about the potential for off-turn GK attacks on Jetstone property.
As a consequence of the yellows bombing the tower. A possibility he prevented. Yes, it meant they could bomb the atrium instead but I'm certain that the loss of a few troops was a sacrifice he was willing to make. After all, the GK force hadn't been acting hostile for hours, the units in the atrium could do them no harm and were largely expendable and the GK force was covered by several hundred archers and casters making it in GKs best interests not to do anything rash.
If, that is, Tram is holding the idiot ball instead of getting the things done that he said needed to get done.
One of the things he said he needed to do was talk with his brother.
I'm not even going to argue about the "supposedly horrible insults", the point is more about the time wasted than the insults
Time wasted is ZERO. You don't seem to realise this...this was a parley. No hostilities can be assumed. If Parson was going to break that rule, as he had before and they had considered, then a polite request, even backed up by 600 archers, wasn't going to stop him.
He has all the time he needs to conduct a parley with Parson. He has no incentive to hurry. There is no stopwatch, no countdown. There is no deadline. He can chat all day if he wants to....but his turn won't end until he does all he needs to, his bargaining hand won't change based on anything he does and it would be helpful for him to chat with his brother beforehand, to test the limits of decryption, to test his loyalty, to see if he can get through and to see what he can find out about the people he WILL be negotiating with and the ties that bind the decrypted to them.
And after all...he doesn't want Ossomer the decrypyted Warlord back. He doesn't want the re-turned Ossomer back. He wants his brother back.
