A little over a year ago, I traveled to a savage land for a
twelve-month expedition with three other people. The natives of this land were
able to withdraw the resources that they needed for their own survival, but we
had to persuade them to draw enough resources for our survival as well. Our
goal as a group was to make decisions every month that would allow the natives
to give us the largest amount of resources possible. At the end of the
twelve-month expedition, my group wanted to have more resources than other
groups who visited the land as well.
During the first month, my group and I decided to establish
dominance instead of peaceful relations with the natives. This meant that we
wanted to press for resources, and we gained one resource. In the second month,
we did not want to anger the natives by asking for more resources again and
risk any hostility, so we did not press for resources. In the third month, we
pressed for resources again. Luckily, our relations with the natives and the
weather were good up until this point. However, during the fourth month our
relations with the natives were not very ideal, and unfortunately we lost a
resource. Thankfully, we gained it back during the fifth month by pressing for
more resources, which left us with 3 resources. We played it safe during the
sixth and seventh month and did not press for resources, and instead we chose
to remain peaceful. During the eighth month, the land endured harsh weather
conditions. However instead of loosing our resources, we risked our good
relations with the natives and made them work very hard by using force. This
strategy worked because by the ninth month, we still held 4 resources. In the tenth
month, the natives grew tired of our aggression and decided to fight back.
Instead of responding to their anger with violence, we took the passive
response and sacrificed one of our resources with the hope that their anger
with us would be dismissed. Therefore, our resources declined from four to only
three. It paid off because in the eleventh month, the natives were no longer
angry with us, so we could afford to press for more resources. In our last
month, my group decided we had nothing left to loose, so we pressed for
resources one last time which left us with a grand total of five resources that
we collected over the past twelve months from the natives. Since we were given
one resource for free in the beginning of our expedition, we subtracted this
from the total, which left us with a profit of four resources.
Compared to the other groups go participated in the same expedition,
we collected the most resources for profit. Our strategy was to press for
resources more often than showing peaceful relations towards the natives in
order to obtain the most amounts of resources as possible. Overall, this
technique worked well for my group since it allowed us to be plentiful in
resources.
