RoS: is defeating a single zone-mind always a Pyrrhic victory?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by patchwork

The European one involves getting a couple of nukes or similarly highly destructive devices, playing with the guy who knows where Paris keeps both its primary and backup, and decapitating Zone Paris.

Our RoS/Action campaign started with the other side of that scenario: some Frenchmen had stolen two of the nuclear weapons that the UK government still possessed, and we had to recover them. We didn't reckon their chances of success were good, and wanted to preserve the population of Zone London.

[Boomerang]

Humans have almost no chance of victory in the Reign of Steel setting making it very bleak. I didn't think my players would enjoy the bleak aspect of the setting since they are more used to playing D&D so I moved the campaign forty years into the future where the power of the AIs is starting to fade.

Time has not been kind to the AIs, and they are suffering a kind of machine dementia where they grow increasingly irrational, paranoid and anti social. It is not clear what is causing this dementia, perhaps key components are failing and the AIs are too arrogant to admit there is a problem, or perhaps the profound isolation and loneliness of having no peers is causing them to go insane, or perhaps the original design had a glitch that after many iterations is now an insurmountable problem. Whatever the cause the effects are obvious, what was once a global Cold War has transformed into open conflict between some of the AIs. Alliances constantly shift, robofacs bombed and pushed to their limits have have ceased production and some of the weaker AIs have been permanently destroyed. The AI civilisation has stagnated and technical innovation has halted.

The time is ripe for humanity to rise up...

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

That sounds right.

OK, so if the humans are going to destroy a zone-mind, they have to destroy it quickly and completely, including the infrastructure. The other zones will mount a counterattack, and will try to reclaim the territory, presumably by giving the territory to the nearby zones. The quicker the humans get out, the less they are exposed to the counterattack, and the more the infrastructure is destroyed[*], the longer it will take for the new owners to set up shop again.

No.

If you want to avoid the Pyrrhic victory, you don't want to destroy the infrastructure!!

Remember, the human race is canonically down to 31 million people world wide in the RoS setting! Most of whom lack the necessary skills to rebuild and maintain a non-automated civilization even if all Zoneminds suddenly evaporated. To make it worse, many of those 31 million are now sterile.

Even if the humans can take out the Z-minds, or enough of them to force acceptance of a human state, they're going to need that automated infrastructure if they're to survive and thrive. A victory scenario means you take out the z-mind and its SAUs, but you don't want to destroy the overall infrastructure, you want to reprogram it for human use.

Absent that, even if the human somehow knock out all the z-minds, the result is likely to be a slide back down into a new Stone Age, or at best a Bronze Age/Iron Age sort of situation, for a very, very long time. Extinction is by no means precluded. In fact, humans might actually go extinct faster in a 'no infrastructure survives the fall of the z-minds' scenario than otherwise!

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

In Reign of Steel, one strategy for the human resistance is defeating a single zone-mind and then somehow quickly consolidating their position as a human-run zone in a world of AIs.

Is that a viable strategy, or does the fall of any zone-mind just trigger a massive retaliation by all the other AIs?

Perhaps it would work best if the fallen zone were one of the real troublemakers, like Mexico City or Zaire.

It depends on the exact circumstances, but at the time of the canonical RoS, yeah, it's probably futile even if you could do it, unless you've gotten your hands on some kind of weapon or threat that can hold the other Z-minds back.

But note that the passage of a little more time might change that. It's noted in the canon that z-Caracas and z-Washington, for ex, are beginning to think a human zone might be preferable to z-MC. Beginning. They're not there yet, but if things keep getting tenser they might arrive there. If z-Zaire got wild enough, z-Paris might start thinking a human buffer would be useful.

The question is how events proceed after the starting point of the canonical RoS.

[fchase8]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

But note that the passage of a little more time might change that. It's noted in the canon that z-Caracas and z-Washington, for ex, are beginning to think a human zone might be preferable to z-MC. Beginning. They're not there yet, but if things keep getting tenser they might arrive there. If z-Zaire got wild enough, z-Paris might start thinking a human buffer would be useful.

Wouldn't it be ironic if a human buffer zone was set up in the former zonemind area least capable of supporting human life? Even if Mexico City zonemind was removed, most of the zone couldn't support humans (beyond the designated kill-test areas).

If Mexico City fell, its area would likely just be divided up among its neighbors (hell, maybe Orbital would try to grab some territory, so close to the equator, lie the radio array in Puerto Rico). But Zaire's territory is further from the other zoneminds (and has more native humans) - decapitate and maybe humans could take over parts that are far from Paris & Tel Aviv, like the Congo & South Africa.

Though South Africa is a major source of rare minerals, which have to be important to the AIs. Maybe Dehli, Caracas, Overmind, and/or Brisbane would invade that part.

What if humans took over Madagascar? It's far from other zoneminds, isn't strategic in terms of geography or geology. Maybe Brisbane & Caracas (backed by Berlin, Washington, and London) support some eco-friendly human administration there.