Dear GodKing,
My apologies for not being able to get back to you sooner. there is certainly alot going on within our team, which tends to makes any discussion slip past proposed deadlines. Also, Meshelic lately needs to focus more and more on rl issues, and won't be able to be so active in the position of GS foreign minister, and ambassador to your people. I hope that, for the time being, me replacing him as interim ambassador won't cause any problems.
I'll try to answer all your questions in proper order.
1. Vox.
We have maybe eased tensions between our nations a little, which is good. However, at this point there is little reason to believe that Vox will proof to be the long-term trading partner we hoped to get as a neighbour. The sooner we can meet other Civs (and yes, Spain has always held our highest regard), the better.
2. Non-aggression pact.
Certainly, a non-aggression deal between our nations sounds good, but there are some diplomatic catches which make it difficult for us to agree to one formally. First of all, we have stated before that we are going to honor all deals, and generally play the game honorably. While in essence a noble cause, lately it has come to our attention that there is more then one snake under the grass, it certainly makes this game more challenging.
One of the problems here is the concept of non-aggression: we are a peaceful tribe, and would love to ratify our position more officialy. But, we can't foresee what might happen in the far future, and thus feel wary to commit to long term deals. OTOH, all deals with a fixed end date (like your 50 turns after meeting) are in itself tense, and seem to imply that it is kind of a countdown for hostilities once the deal ends. This scares us even more, as we don't like to imply this, tension is something that builds up over time, and is not supposed to eplode so immediate.
Also, it makes us a bit vulnerable, as it would take away the proverbial stick. For instance, once we would agree to a non-aggression for a longer duration, anybody could sail a settler to what we plan as our future territory, and plop down a city completely surrounded by our territory, undefended. Indeed, it could rely on us for its protection against other civs, as they most likely need to pass through our territory to reach that lone city, which we can't accept because we are sworn to non-aggression. There are more issues like this, and I agree that with a bit of friendliness and openess this kind of situation shouldn't appear in a game, but we don't want to get our hands tied on deals that initially seem beneficial for two parties, but after a while proof to be too constraining for us.
But, these smaller issues could be resolved with a few modifications... the above city-building problem can be easily resolved by including a paragraph in our deal that states that Civ A will not build a city in the neighbourhood of Civ B's territory (e.g. on the same continent within 8 tiles) without Civ B's approval. This approval should be easily given in most cases, but at least it takes away the aggressive nature of settling too close to someone's borders.
Also, the fixed duration issue should be able to be worked around with for instance a running deal: agree to 20 turn non-aggression, but negotiate all 10 turns. So, when a negotation crashes, it would still leave both parties 10 turns to prepare their defense, meanwhile trying to glue the pieces together, and reach a deal anyhow.
3. minimap / contact
In the same respect, we would welcome trading current minimaps with you, certainly as it will guide trading galleys accross the high seas relatively safely. But, those minimaps can also be used to explore possible colony sites on the other continent, and we don't need colonies of any civ near our borders soon. The available land on our piece of land is most likely going to be divided (hopefully peacefully) between Vox and ourselves, there is no abundance, just barely enough. I know, we might seem territorial to you, but at least territorial is better than warmonging. Again, it is a show of honesty that I share with you these concerns, we really would like to avoid becoming them any issues later on. And, we can understand you have similar issues when it comes to your beloved homeland, and would like to anticipate them as well.
If you could agree to such a deal, where we promise not to use minimaps to chose the best spots on the other continent, I'm sure we will be fast to trade our minimap (full proposal will need to get polled in our senate).
BTW, when I was talking about the piece of land explored, I forgot that you are expansionist... through luck, we have explored a lot of land (up until we bumped into Vox, after which scouting stopped), but surely we can't keep up to your glorious explorers. My mistake, for which I apologize.
Also, you were talking of acquiring galleys soon. We have been working toward a similar goal, but the tension with Vox has delayed our progress. Do you have a rough estimate on how long it would take for you to arrive on our shores, and be welcomed with the biggest welcoming party our people could afford? Not only would it make planning for the festival easier, but maybe it could also guide us in our research, so that we can complement each other instead of doing things twice.
4. Tech trades:
we would welcome this very much. As you have contacted many civilizations, we can only imagine you will be advanced in many disciplines. However, we of Gathering Storm are proud to announce we have the best facilities when it comes to research, and our analysists say that the gap between us and the rest of the world will most likely only increase in the coming years. Maybe we can't share any interesting techs with you now (I doubt it, but maybe), but certainly we have the potential to become your best partner when it comes to research. You are right in that this might not be the best time to discuss it, but a lot depends on when you foresee to arrive on our shores. If that moment would already be very close, it might be best to start planning common research goals, instead of just dealing with what we have.
5. Wonder agreements
Sadly, we can't commit to this deal at this point in our game. Of course, our nation also longs for the Great Library, even if we may not be so focused as other teams in building it. But we can't rule out any unforeseen situations: if one of our troops would for instance be promoted to a leader at the right time, I'm certain that the GL would be a sure demand in our team, we can't be constrained then. Case by case deals may be possible, but I doubt that we will get a majority when it comes to 'giving' the GL to any other team, however sweet the deal would be.
5. Secrecy.
Don't get me wrong, but to be honest, proposing to gain the minimap of another civ was a bit of a test from our side. Whatever the result of negotiations would have been, we were not going to acquire a minimap in such a dishonorable way. However, we liked to assess how safe our information would be in your hands, how much we could trust you. After all, this is still a fairly young world, and you never know who you deal with. I hope it didn't damage our relations, but it was one of the few options we had to test you, and you passed brilliantly.
We regard secrecy of deals very high, and will never betray our trading partners in such way. But, as you have said before, there is a difference: techs acquired through deals are not the property of the original owner anymore, and can freely be sold again. Where the tech came from is something else, we are not going to tell the origins of any tech. This is certainly different from minimaps, which do kind of belong to te original owner, and are not to be shared. Also, I told you a bit on the relations between us and Vox, this is completely from observation, and nowhere the result of any diplomatic contact between our two civs. What is said in diplomatic contacts will remain secret on our side, to the best of our abilities.
I hope this is a decent reply to your proposal, please contact me if I would have forgotten anything. Also, please don't mind my English: I'm fully aware that it doesn't grasp the little differences in meanings natively spakeing people see and understand. Whereever there is doubt, understand that I do not want to imply anything wrong, it most likely is just a language error of me. This is part of the reason I needed this much text to explain myself, I really want to avoid any imsunderstanding.
I wish you the best of luck, and let's hope to meet your explorers soon,
DeepO
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