Author Topic: Dwilight, Case #559, "Strategic capital move?"  (Read 2543 times)

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Dwilight, Case #559, "Strategic capital move?"
« Topic Start: September 05, 2019, 07:29:27 PM »
Quote
Dwilight
Complaint #559
Date: August 21, 2019
Title: Strategic capital move?
About: Rosalind Foxglove

This case deals with the move of Westgard's capital from its original location of Gelene to Eidulb. At the time of this move, Eidulb was a fairly central location within the realm, particularly given the expansion to the southwest it had been engaging in. However, it was also very near to the front line of their war with Tol Goldora. Over the course of a couple of weeks, the Titans investigated and deliberated on this case, and eventually concluded that the capital move was not in violation of the rules of the game.

As the rule against strategic capital moves is fundamentally one of intent, that always makes judging such moves much more difficult than many other Titan issues. However, over the years, we have developed a number of more concrete criteria that we can use in determining whether the move was most likely strategic or most likely not. These are:

- Was the strategic advantage of recruitment closer to the front an important element of the discussions of moving the capital?
- Did the capital move actually bring the capital closer to the front?
- Was there a historical or cultural reason to move the capital to the new location?
- Was the new location a more central one, more likely to make region maintenance easier for the realm as a whole?
- Are there other significant in-character/roleplay reasons for the move?

In this case, the most important thing our investigations revealed was that the discussions within Westgard were firmly anchored around centralization of the realm and a proposed merger with Astrum.

Tangentially, we did find that certain foreign officials privy to the discussion were advocating for the capital move on purely strategic grounds; they were each given an official private warning, particularly as they have all been playing long enough to know better.

In our discussions, we had to address multiple complicating factors: the proposed merger with Astrum, the unsolicited illicit advice of foreign leaders, the push by Tol Goldora up the western side of Westgard immediately prior to the merger, and the loss of western regions after the merger.

The main issue with the merger with Astrum was that it was not, and could not have been, approved, given the sizes of the two realms. Unfortunately, I personally contributed significantly to the confusion on this point, as I was asked for advice on this over Discord, and got mixed up about the requirements we have set for merging realms (no more than 15 nobles, as opposed to regions). This resulted in Astrum and Westgard believing for some time that their merger would go forward, when that was not the case. However, ultimately, the fate of the merger is irrelevant to the case, as the people involved in the discussion believed in good faith that the merger would be allowed to proceed. Thus, their intent was clearly not strategic in that respect.

Though, as mentioned above, certain foreign leaders were advocating for the move on strategic grounds, because none of them were members of Westgard, we decided that their transgressions were not directly relevant to the primary issue of whether the move itself was legitimate. So far as we could tell, their advice did not actually cause anyone involved in the discussions within Westgard to take up the idea.

The strategic situation on the ground was a tricky point, as by the time the capital move occurred, Eidulb was just a couple of regions from Goldoran territory. However, it quickly became quite clear from the message histories and the timing of the region takeovers that the efforts to move the capital significantly predated the Goldoran western offensive. Indeed, I can personally attest to hearing of discussions of moving the capital from months before this incident. Thus, we determined that the specific proximity of Goldoran regions to Eidulb at the time of the move was not enough of a factor to outweigh the clear intent demonstrated previously.

Some Titans did raise the issue of the current state of Westgard's regions, and the fact that, subsequent to the capital move, Eidulb quite clearly lost its central status within the realm. However, once again, the only factors that are relevant to the Titan case regarding the capital move are those that predate the move itself. Later events do not affect our judgement.
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