Author Topic: North Vs. South  (Read 38382 times)

Anaris

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Re: North Vs. South
« Reply #30: July 10, 2014, 06:12:04 PM »
The betrayal of Cathay was the biggest sticking point there.

Which, again, was totally optional and up to you. If you didn't want to betray Cathay, you didn't have to. So if that was the biggest sticking point, you were sticking at nothing.

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There's also the point that if Kindara accepted peace but didn't want to take regions from Cathay, we might as well have wound up the realm anyway because it would have had no territory (remember that Haul and Taop are just on loan from Cathay). So the choices were: take land from Cathay. Or you can wind up your realm after peace. Or we can destroy you.

While that's not entirely fair, there is some truth to it. Either way, though, Kindara had no leg to stand on demanding territory from Zonasa. Surrender, get the war over and done with, and then maybe Kindara could have brought up the issue of gaining more territory so it wasn't one small city and one destroyed mountain stronghold.

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It's also the height of arrogance for you to feel you personally know what are reasonable terms, isn't it?

I think that one cuts both ways.

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I have to admit that my thinking here has been greatly coloured by the discussions around this subject that have been going on over in Might & Fealty. So it's probably unfair to bring them over here. To some extent, BM is running on an outmoded concept of what is reasonable and unreasonable terms, or what is appropriate in victory and defeat, that we've been trying to find ways to stamp out over in M&F.

That sounds like a really good thing to do; there have definitely been problems with that in BM over the years. But...

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Where the emphasis is trying to be put on never giving the loser terms that will humiliate them (them seeing the terms as humiliating, that is) and several wars have been stopped because of it.

This requires the winning realm to be psychic. We can't read your minds to realize that something we consider to be quite reasonable and even generous, you would find humiliating.

I cannot tell you how many times I've seen this pattern:

  • Realm (or alliance, but for simplicity we'll call both sides single realms) A attacks Realm B.
  • Realm A takes a little territory away from Realm B.
  • Realm B gets it stuff together, pushes Realm B back out of its territory, and takes a little more.
  • Realm B sues for peace.
  • Realm A says, "Give us back one or more of the regions we took from you, and we'll accept peace."
  • Realm B says, "Not a chance, we're winning this war." They proceed to take more land from Realm B.

Repeat steps 4-6 until Realm A is basically destroyed.

I can understand the desire, especially in a realm that's nearly dead like Kindara is now, to be given more territory as part of a peace deal, but it just boggles my mind how people don't understand that when you're losing a war, you don't get to demand regions be given to you that you didn't hold at the beginning of the war. It's not even all that reasonable to demand that any regions be given to you. If you want to survive at all and have a chance of regaining any vestige of your former glory, you need to accept less.

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enough territory to make Kindara a viable realm without harming Cathay.

You keep naming this as a term as if it's totally, unquestionably reasonable. As if the Empire has an obligation to make Kindara a viable realm. This is what continues to make me feel as if you're either being disingenuous, or we genuinely come at this from totally different premises about what losing a war means.

To be clear, I do not think that humiliation is a useful purpose of surrender terms. I think that the purpose of surrender terms should be, by and large, to first fulfill the objectives of the war, if there are clear objectives, and second give the defeated realm an incentive to stop fighting. That can sometimes mean just the chance to survive, and it can sometimes mean something more material. I have personally written surrender terms (as a Realm B above) that involved giving regions back to the defeated realm—regions that were theirs to begin with, of course, not realms that we had held at the beginning of the war—in hopes that they would actually be willing to stop trying to bruise our faces with their fists. (It didn't work. They refused to give up even when we'd sacked their capital multiple times. Only the Third Invasion stopped the war, and when we asked, multiple times, if they needed our help against the invaders, they were silent. So the invaders destroyed them, and we didn't help, because they never admitted they wanted it. It was very frustrating, but in the end, rang somewhat of poetic justice.)

I've seen humiliating surrender terms offered before, and I do not see how you could characterize the terms offered to Kindara and Cathay in this war in that manner. Neither realm has been asked to give up large amounts of territory that they hold on the date of the terms; neither realm has been asked to make a public apology, admission of guilt, or anything of the sort; neither realm has been told they need to accept an Imperial monitor, or forced to elect a specific noble as Ruler or any other Council position. I have seen all of these as surrender terms in the past.

The terms that have been offered to Kindara and Cathay have been mildly punitive (particularly in the matter of reparations, which I believe were intended to be negotiable), but overall quite fair. If I had been in your place, I can honestly say that I think I would have taken them. But then, I don't have your (or your realm's) strong distrust of Arcaea, which colors your responses quite a lot.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan