I'm tired of typing and I don't really care to continue this on for much longer. I have seen the way these types of back and forth things can go (again I'm reminded of the Last Night Troll) but real quick, I'd just like to respectfully leave my parting opinions.
Fair. I'll reply to those I believe are worth replying to, with such considerations on both ends.
I wasn't calling it dumb, I was calling it suicidal. For all I know that was your objective, in which case it would be quite an intelligent way of going about it.
1. It
was dumb. More on that in a second.
2. It was more of an attempt to go out with a bang, to make the most of a loss I saw as inevitable, because (circling back to 1 as promised)...
3. ...I hadn't given it much thought. Which is arguably the definition of "dumb".
We didn't have a chance to suffer for skimping on Alice's Gift, or from antagonizing the elves, or anything like that.
What led you to assume we would have? I recall no indicative signs that we were in for any serious karmic retribution. It wasn't about morality, it was about intelligence and being clever.
Mostly that it wasn't the right gift to give Alice.
From my perspective you seem moderately biased towards the idea that "bad guys" suffer because being "evil" is "wrong" and "just retribution" is unavoidable. I also take it that you view me the opposite; referencing the "unrealistically cold and pragmatic" comment. Perhaps there's a bit of truth to both. Honestly I do try and look at things from both sides of the coin. I suppose it doesn't matter, it looks like I'm just tired of seeing one type of behavior a lot on certain forum games and you tired of seeing the other type of behavior. Again probably based off where we respectively frequent. It just made me sad to see the spiritual successor to one of my favorite suggestion games dying and I admittedly got a little annoyed at the immediate and vehement opposition to my suggestion on the mere grounds of it being "evil".
And yet, the evil is not always the most effective...especially for someone who needs the worship of his/her/its followers. The best path to a game over in this kind of god game is to make sure that no one wants to worship you.
I appreciated the amusing comment, hence the smiley. It saddens me greatly that my attempt at reciprocating what I saw as a friendly gesture has resulted in you snapping at me. If anything I said seemed like a personal attack, you again have my apologies. I suppose my humor can be a bit off but usually I'm just trying to get people to crack a smile while simultaneously arguing my view.
Actually, I thought you had completely missed my point. Damn the Internet and its inability to convey meaning well!
If we have, quote, "already lost the battle," by definition we cannot salvage it...
Besides, I find the kinds of "salvaging" you suggest to either fall into the category of "winning" ("impossible," by your suggestion) or that of "will soon lead to guerrilla warfare without any equipment or much training in anything useful against a god with a wide variety of troops who can bust guerrilla warfare".
Try and carry that logic over to real life military practice. If a battle is lost and there are survivors on the field, would a general shrug it off and say, "Hey, we already lost and can't salvage it. No point in trying to evacuate those troops stuck over there." I'd say there's a marked difference between "winning" and "not losing completely". The former seems currently out of reach. I'm aiming for the latter.
Also what makes you assume the enemy god has troops well suited for rooting out stealthy guerrilla warfare troops? It's clearly not the greatest solution but it was no less suicidal than the suicidal charge idea proposed before.
As to the first: The difference is that we are completely surrounded, by enemies who can literally flood the battlefield. We don't have much of any chance of getting
anyone out. Maybe one or two, if we directly intervene.
As to the second: Vague memories of what the enemy god was, combined with the fact that these would be "random villagers playing guerrilla warfare until they desert" rather than "stealthy guerrilla troops".
I've heard this argument before and it's a personal pet peeve of mine. Who gets to choose the character of the main character? The players. Am I not at the moment a participatory player in this suggestion game? Is the opinion of other players somehow more valuable than mine simply because they found out about this suggestion game before me?
Let me put it this way.
Let's say that you were watching a Batman movie (or a Batman knockoff movie, if you prefer to avoid the complications of Batman's past continuity). For the first 60-70 minutes, Batman was a superhero who emphasized his refusal to kill anyone. Then, he gets cornered by the Joker, before calmly shooting him in the head and turning down the darker route. Would you like that movie?
We're telling a story together. A new director or similar entering halfway through filming shouldn't make the protagonist's actions during the final act of the story discordant with everything else, why should a new player do essentially the same?
The best solution is relative. In this case, I'd say the best solution (relatively) is not dying. My suggestion may potentially have resulted in survival while the others seemed less likely to do so. Of course that is somewhat opinionated but I think the logic behind the thinking is somewhat apparent. They do have a much more powerful army than us and they have already killed just about all our followers.
Who not dying?
As noted, turning everyone into monsters when they already told us clearly that they didn't want to would make them not want to worship us.
And we need worshipers.Are you trying to save the villagers? Aw, how sweet and discordant with the rest of your argument. Therefore you probably aren't.
Sorry, do monsters not count as followers? Seriously, because I may have missed that mechanic. I suppose that would invalidate my plan somewhat. As long as they give off mana and can reproduce and are intelligent, I personally would consider them viable followers.
Viable, probably.
Willing? Probably
not.
Fair enough, we don't have to transform anyone into monsters but can we all agree retreat is a good idea?
We can retreat? I thought we were surrounded.
