The plan was simple.

The Volcano Hounds were going to make use of their halved movement cost in volcanic regions to run up to the border of the other faction’s territory, get back into our own territory, and start moving toward a spot where they would be able to meet up with our Settler unit the next day to escort them.

Everybody was nervous about who we were going to find, but it needed to be done. We needed information on who they were and what they wanted. Whether they were going to be enemies or allies.

Early neighbors in 4X games could often either make or break an entire match. In the event of them being friendly, you could get into defensive pacts with them and protect each other from the more hostile competitors and maybe even win the game together. In the event of them being hostile, they were often a drain on resources and a reason to swap focus over to defensive preparing at best and an early extermination and loss at worst. With some games, it was simply impossible to win after getting hostile neighbors near your starting position. Especially if they specialized in early game harassment while you don’t.

Even I couldn’t pull something out of my ass to win against impossible odds in those cases.

Hopefully, they would turn out to be friendly.

But my gut told me that Thad’s own gut feeling was the right one.

When the Volcano Hounds made it to the tile adjacent to the other faction’s border, an option became available for me after hovering over their settlement center to make contact with them.

They could surely see that we were there at that point since our unit was in a region they discovered and right next to their territory, so they would already know there was another faction nearby.

All I had to do was actually open communication channels with them.

So, with everybody still waiting with me at the Council Pavilion, I chose to make contact.

A wide screen opened up over the table and showed a tall man with pointed ears, red hair, and a braided beard that ran down to his chest. His attire looked like a combination of warrior and mage going by fantasy stereotypes, and he had blue warpaint decorating his sharp facial features.

He had all the looks of a haughty, noble elf with a punchable face… while also looking like he was trying to be a stereotypical Viking.

Going by what I heard already and how Thad let out a loud sigh and walked away, I thought it was obvious who we were dealing with.

Thad was right.

“An independent faction?” the man on the other side of the screen asked. “What is that supposed to mean? I have never heard of such a faction.”

At least he was open to talking, it seemed. Now, I was tempted to be honest and tell him what happened, but he didn’t need to know that it meant we lost our patronage and access to unique buildings and Hell’s population. If anything, his confusion was good for us. It meant he might be less likely to attack us since we had an unknown element to us.

But at the same time, being honest could help us.

It felt wrong to take Thad’s exact word on them. I didn’t want to fall into the classic traps of discrimination and take another’s word on a different group of people who I never even met before and form opinions on them before I have a chance to meet them.

But I had to remind myself of something important.

Even though it was a “game” with real leaders and real people staffing the settlements and military units, it was still being treated like a game. There was nothing discriminatory about investigating another player’s style to figure out how to best deal with them.

I had to view them as a rival player in a game that I wanted to win.

And I wasn’t about to hope that I could make friends with them by choosing to work with them in spite of what I was told.

“The name is Clay,” I said. “And yours?”

“Tolith Firson. I am here to represent and seek glory in the name of my king, the Tree Father, Ull,” the elf Viking, Tolith, answered.

“Nice to meet you, Toth.”

Toth tilted his head as if thinking that he misheard me. “What did you say?”

“Names longer than four letters are for French pastries.”

Enna, Zira, and the other demons around were either looking at me shocked, for whatever reason, or planting their palms against their faces. Meanwhile, I could hear Thad laughing somewhere in the background. It was a real loud and deep laughter, too. He sounded like he might just be going insane. It was the kind of laughter that somebody had when they decided to laugh death in the face because they knew they were screwed either way.

I potentially broke him.

“You would dare insult my given name?” Toth asked.

“It’s not an insult,” I answered. “It’s just easier to call people by nicknames.”

“You must wish for an axe of Ull’s children too sever that head from your shoulders.”

“I’ll pass, but I appreciate the offer. So, let me cut to the chase here. Want to be friends?”

Toth leaned back, looking even more insulted by my offer of friendship than when I gave him his nickname. “You—do you have any idea to who you speak?”

“A Viking elf named Toth who worships a tree daddy?”

Thad’s laughter grew even louder and more maniacal. Meanwhile, Enna couldn’t look and Zira settled for planting her face firmly against the table’s surface.

“Is this how your people try to make friends? By mockery?” Toth asked.

“For me it is,” I answered. “Having the same sense of humor is important among friends. In a perfect world, you’d be bantering right back with me, giving me some silly nickname, making fun of my face, or whatever else. I tease you, you tease me, we all laugh about it together at the end of the day. But I understand some people are too sensitive for that sort of humor, so I understand if it’s off-putting to you.”

“Do not mistake my pride for sensitivity!”

“Sounds like you’re sensitive about your pride, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s alright to be sensitive. Especially as a man. We men need to build each other up and reaffirm that we’re allowed to be sensitive. And if it’s too sensitive of a subject for you, I’ll try my best to respect that.”

Zira groaned and mumbled, “You… are so annoying. No wonder my father approved of you originally.”

“I wouldn’t be American if I wasn’t annoying,” I said to her before returning my attention to the fuming Toth.

“Do you have no honor?!” Toth shouted at me. “You—”

“Listen. You settled some tiles that I would like. You have ten days to remove your settlement. If you don’t, we’ll be taking it from you by force. Remove it, and we’ll share some of the wood with you and look into forming deeper bonds. Keep it, and it will only be the first settlement we take.”

Toth looked utterly dumbfounded by my response, and I didn’t give him a chance to reply on his own since I closed the communication window.

“That went well,” I said.

“Cl-Clay,” Enna spoke up, “I—I don’t… I don’t think that… went very… well.”

As for Zira, she rolled her head onto its side to look at me and said, “We’re screwed. Why… why would you do that? You did the absolute worst thing you could have done. As your people would say, you found a hornet nest and then, not only did you poke it, you took a hammer to it, danced over it, and laughed in their faces.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I tried.”

“Seriously, do you have any explanation for that?”

“I do. I asserted dominance. They weren’t going to be friends with us no matter what I did. So, I let them know that we’re ready to put them in their place if they try anything. They don’t understand what it means for us to be an independent faction, they clearly expected to be treated differently than how I treated them, and I put them on the defensive by telling them that we were going to attack if they don’t obey our demands. The whole point is to get in their heads. Obviously, I have basically no intention of trying to take their settlement from them. But if I can distract them to make them think that I’m going to attack, it not only forces them to prepare for an attack, but it makes them think that we’re a threat who won’t wait for them to make the first move.”

“I… so, that was all to get into his head?”

“It was. What I just did bought us ten days. At the end of those ten days, he’ll realize I’m full of shit and don’t actually have a way of taking the settlement from him… unless I do find out a way. These next ten days are meant to buy us time to figure out what we’re going to do about them. When you play competitive 4X games, the best way you can win is by getting into your opponent’s head. Convince them of your plans while you accomplish completely different goals. Make them defend spaces you have no interest in to leave the spaces you actually care about unprotected. Make them react to you. You never want to be the one reacting. If you’re the one reacting to somebody else’s actions, you’ve probably already lost. So, thanks to the art of bullshit, we just took a step ahead of them and now they’re forced to react to us.”

“… huh. That… makes sense. Well, I suppose I did pick you for a reason.”

“Don’t worry. Unless we can figure something out in the next ten days, we’re fucked.”

“Oh. Right. Wonderful.”

“We’ve got this, Zira.”

Zira sighed and… smiled. “I’m looking forward to see how you drag us out of this mess.”

“You can count on it.” I looked at Enna who still seemed like she had no idea how to react to anything that just happened. “You’re in charge. I’m going to go throw up now.”

Enna’s eyes widened when she heard that. “I-is something wrong?! Are you alright?”

“I feel fine. Just nerves.” I stood up from the table and did my best to hold it in for as long as I could. “I’ll talk to you more later.”

With that, I rushed back to my tent so nobody else would have to see me hurl.