Spartan Diplomacy

[Chaunk]

... password?

NM, found it. Sunburst for those who, like me are incompetent at browsing

[Micha]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=3130812#post3130812

Scroll down to "09.10.2004"

[Mead]

Originally posted by Chaunk
D:AP should be our next goal to my mind. Consider that we have a massive advantage in SPs, and hence we can assume in tech and infrastructure too (Although that might be marginal, or perhaps even imagined). We don't therefore, need to focus on build techs, but on conquer, to limit our weaknesses.

D:AP has become a massively stronger tech in this game than in most, and so I'd say we should push for that, and then MMI (With Bioengineering on the side for clean reactors).

Very nice analysis.

In that vien, perhaps we could encourage sparta to forgoe the AV (Possibly) in exchange for an early (clean) D:AP, and a combined conquest of either a human faction or a push into the hive. Spartan jets powered by Morgan ec.s makes a VERY strong team. The build techs they are proposing will leave us like fat cats, too weak to defend our own very nice prize.

I agree. This probably is the Spartan overall stratedgy. There a few dangers for them on this stratedgy. One, is that we get too strong for them defeat. Another, is that someone else gets to us first and captures our empire before them.

So I think they want to grow us, protect us from other predators, keep us from getting too capable of self defense, and kill us when it looks like we might be able to break free.

I'm not sure on this point, but we don't have HEC I think? So perhaps a tech leapfrog could be the start of the deal. We both research HEC asap, and the team that gets it first gifts it to the other in exchange for that team switching to SFF. This is then gifted back, and both teams start on D:AP. D:AP -> NG, NG -> Bio-engineering or MMI as allowed. The deal would probably have to stop there, but consider the techs we'd then have:

Noodles, missle weapons, Plasma armour, clean or choppers.

This is after we get PEG, yes?


I agree with the DAP, after we finish the tech for PEG.

I am thinking that after we get, and maintain our ability for adequate self defense, that we should continue to focus on builder techs to focus on our strengths and pull further ahead. I would like a lot of probe teams (and probe ships).

Mead

PS

If you notice my messages in the Spartan embassy I am acting very concerned and eagar to cooperate with Sparta on the Hiverian military 'threat'. As you can see in my posts in our forum I am not too concerned by th Hive right now. They have no transports (either made or under construction) and they are still a long ways off from us (the southern fungus barrier is coming in handy).

I am not sure what, if anything, it will do with those units, but we will have a fair amount of time to figure out what to do if they start to head towards us.

[arginine]

I suggest we have a serious, focused discussion (edit: within our faction) on what our goals are: techs, military, pop-boom vs. ICS, terraforming, etc. Only then can we really enter a synergistic relationship with another faction.

Good point.

My position:

We can steal military techs from other factions. The Hive is a rich source of technology (the number 1 in tech) and we have a pretty good chokepoint between us and them and a fair distance from their cities. I'd probe them for all they're worth, including their map data (which should be VERY handy). We have the industry needed to pump out lots of probe teams. With modern weapons tech we can build a modern military. (The Spartans say the Hive is researching Superconductor).

We have a good chokepoint, and as long as the Hive remains on land we could beat their toops as they trickle through. We can have our navy bombard them, then a base with comm. center (for instant healing) right next to the exit. The exit will be on terrain with minimal def. bonuses.

As for city development, I would initially go for an ICS to greatly increase our power. I would then use that power to make a moderate military. I would also use that power to pump out many clean formers. Probe teams could come as needed.

For the longer term, I would then either
1: tear down some bases in order to pop boom. Ideally the bases we will leave up will already be placed. I made a map of locations that would be good to have popboomable cities.
OR
2: ICS the entire island and build sea bases and have them grow the old fashioned way with lots of nutrients and food (We could grow 1 pop in 4 turns)

The Spartans are going for Env. Eco. and I. I. (I think) so we could buy/trade the techs off of them.

I would like our military to focus on sea instead of land, as we can keep troops from appearing in our territory in the first place.

Planetary Governor would give us an extra +1/trade route, but I'm doubtful we will get it.

In the long run, I would like a grand alliance of us, Sparta and the friendly AIs to bring in the trade revenues, control the planetary council and squash everyone else. In the long run, the AI could end up with some ****ty cities ICSed in a far away spot of the map to give us good trade revenues. If we got some sea bases, the trade effects become astronmical (>10 trade per city)

Sparta would play a good role here by being able to "influence" the friendly AIs to vote for us and "coerce" them to our side.

[Mead]

Latest From the Embassy:

Reply to : Lt-Col Maniac

The Junta would be interested to know when possible leapfrogging could start between us. For this reason, would be allowed to ask when you will complete the research on your current tech? Also, would you then be free for leapfrogging, or do you still have to research Adaptive Economics?

Lt Col Maniac

It's been a couple of days since I've been on-line.

Let me check with the Corp. to see if we've got an efficient plan of researching the tech yet.

Because the turn is coming up in the next day or so, our folks on our end should start coming on-line tomorrow.

Mead
CDO, Morgan Corp.

They really want to know what we are researching.

They want to know if we have Adaptive Eco yet.

Are they asking us whether we have the tech key for PEG?

What will they (can they) do with that info if we tell them?

Mead

[Chaunk]

arginine.

The main difficulty I see with probing for tech is that we'd be relying on others to do the research. We'd have no idea what techs we'd be picking up and so we may end up with a whole load of useless junk. Stealing techs for the ai hive in particullar wouldn't net us much useful stuff I fear.

I mentioned elsewhere that I loathe ICS, but I'll go with the majority on this one

Originally posted by Mead
Latest From the Embassy:

.....

They really want to know what we are researching.

They want to know if we have Adaptive Eco yet.

Are they asking us whether we have the tech key for PEG?

What will they (can they) do with that info if we tell them?

Mead

Yeah they want to know if we have adaptive econ, and I see no harm in telling them we are currently researching it. However, telling them when we finish or anything else is out of the question IMHO.

Tech leapfrogging cannot start until we have an agreed list of techs to leapfrog with and towards and I think that until we have that list we should be fairly tightlipped with regard to our current position, tech wise.

Perhaps we could come up with some proposals for tech goals and start a thread here? I'm all for D:AP/MMI as I said, and to be honest, I'd need to hear some pretty good arguements for any other course of research after Adaptive Econ. Our economy is ticking over nicely as it is, and that certainly isn't what an enemy will attack We should definatly not give any information to the spartans about possible tech goals until we've sorted them out ourselves though.

*********************

On a separate note, is posting on the embassy free for all? I'm inclined to not post myself, since I'm not a diplomat, and almost all of my trade discussions in game go something like this:

Me: Tech A for Tech B?

Them: Ok / No.

End discussion I'm a very uncomplicated diplomat I guess

[-SafaN-]

Tech goal:
this is splitted over in two beelines:
D:AP for the military,
planetary economics for the AV and the economic victory

i like the metaphor of a fat cat with no claws: we are getting stronger and stronger and i think we need defences befpre the other teams decide we are to strong.

bases: ics is the way for morganites. I'm not sure of popbooming. Population is important, but for morganites 2 bases of 3 are better then 1 base of 6, or am i wrong? Once we can open the attack on others we can expand to there.

I think we are too tightlipped towards the spartans: i can't understand why we shouldn't say when we have adap econ.
Even if they know we have adapt econ in 3 turns, what will they do?
if the angels have it in 2 they will build it, if they have it in 4 they probably cant research it faster ...
since they don't know when we started they don't know our research rate.

Greetz

[jtsisyoda]

For posting to the Spartan embassy, we've sort of stumbled onto an informal, unwritten (until now) policy: Anyone can post, but keep it short and let Mead do most of the talking. The Spartans, unsurprisingly, appear to value a show of respect: thank you's, timely responses, expressing interest, etc.

We could tell them we're finishing Adap Econ "soon". It sounds to me like a majority of us want DAP. Let's ask them what they have toward that goal, what they're researching now, and what we both can do next to get there.

[arginine]

With Adaptive Eco, we will not NEED much tech except for military tech which we can steal and a few techs that the Spartans will get. Bioengineering would still be nice.

Hmm, I've looked into sea bases and they look nice, especially if we can get some trade. The amount of nutrients to grow to a new base with Demo and Creche is 6N + 6. The amount of nutrients brought in by a fully working seabase with aquafarm is 2N + 3. By having N nutrients crawled to a base, that number becomes 3N + 3. This permits 1 pop growth every 2 turns. When the city grows, the city places the new worker someplace and then gets the food. Also, if we have 20% psych and some trade routes, the energy influx almost makes enough psych to compensate for the city growth.

I would say we will have Adapt. Eco. in 6 turns (in case they DO pass the information on), then tell them we're done when we finish a few turns early. I think they would understand the need for some secrecy.

[jtsisyoda]

I'd prefer being vague to fibbing. They would understand a need for secrecy, but not necessarily a need to deceive an ally.

Args, your math looks correct; good work. Sea bases do get lots of energy and food. The problem is defense against fast ships. With adequate planes (homed to size one bases), we could patrol for ships pretty easily.

[Mead]

Originally posted by jtsisyoda
***
We could tell them we're finishing Adap Econ "soon". It sounds to me like a majority of us want DAP. Let's ask them what they have toward that goal, what they're researching now, and what we both can do next to get there.

OK.

The danger I see if we tell the Spartans when we were to finish they would be able to warn another Factions that we were close to finishing.

Just like we wanted to keep our crawlers for as long as we safely could before we rushed the HGP, the DA or Gaiains may want to keep their crawlers producing minerals for as long as possible before rushing the PEG. The DA or Gaians might also alter their tech/econ allocation if they knew how close (or far) we were from getting the tech key.

They may also be trying to balance CP and other unit rushing, with rushing crawlers to steal the PEG. If I was the DA I would greatly appreciate a warning from the Spartans as to how close we were to getting the PEG tech key.

Although whoever builds the PEG will derive a nice benefit from it, none of the other factions will get as much from it as we would.

As has been noted by all, I will inform the Spartans that we are currently researching Adapt Eco. I will not tell them how close we are to getting it.

I will NOT say anything about this until after the DA posts their turn. They only reason they would need the info any earlier would be if they were funneling our answer to the DA.

I think we still need some consensus on what to tell them regarding our future plans. If we are going for DAP then what should we ask for, and what should we be ready to start researching?

Chaunk, do you want to go with jtisyoda's suggestion about discussing with the Spartans on how we get mutually approach getting DAP?


Mead

[Chaunk]

Yeah talking towards D:AP sounds good. Frankly, I'd like to see us make our next few techs a beeline towards it (and then MMI) regardless of the Spartans. They can either get on board with this plan or lose out on a good thing. I can't see much room for negotiation with regards to eventual goal, so it's just how we get there.

We need to know what they're researching, and how flexible they're willing to be in tech choices. I'd let them know we're researching Adaptive Econ, and then say our goals after adaptive econ will be "radically different", although we haven't got the full details ironed out. That shuold give us some time to plot out a good counter proposal, as well as get them thinking.

SafaN, I'd be tightlipped to anyone. A huge part of the way I play involves around information, who has it, and who doesn't. In a normal PBEM, if someone asked me what I was researching, I'd tell them to shove it. It's just not something to ask, you need to work for the information. The Spartans don't appear to be doing that to me, just asking questions, and I for one, do not like giving answers with no reward.

[Mead]

This is what I posted in the embassy:

Reply to : Lt-Col Maniac

The Junta would be interested to know when possible leapfrogging could start between us. For this reason, would be allowed to ask when you will complete the research on your current tech? Also, would you then be free for leapfrogging, or do you still have to research Adaptive Economics?

Lt Col Maniac

Unfortunately, we still have to research Adaptive Economics.

Please let us know what are you currently researching and what you suggest we research? Please also let us know what is the beeline that you are thinking of us jointly executing?


Mead
CDO, Morgan Corp.

PS

Please note that if this gets too technical I may have to bow out and have another more experienced 'tech tree' person do much of the discussions. I will, of course, be available to act on any agreements that may be proposed.

I'm not sure how the Spartans are going to take this post.

I don't tell them that we are actually researching Adaptive Eco; merely that we don't have it yet. We'll see if they notice. They may think that we are reasearching something entirely different. If they complain then I 'll tell them.

I'm fishing for information, I don't actually tell them what we are doing and I ask them what they are researching.

I act dumb (I admit it's not too difficult of an act for me to do) about tech things and ask for their assistance in what they think we should do.

Let's see how they respond.


Mead

[arginine]

I think we should say something about being ready to start joint research soon, which we will. Our only concern is them getting information that would effect us getting the PEG. The Spartans want to deal. We still haven't told them, or have even decided ourselves which beeline to go for next: DocAP or Bioengineering. DocAP seems to have majority support. Lets decide and then tell the Spartans which beeline we want.

For the undecided:
DocAP will get us military tech (weapons and jets). Bioengineering will get us clean units (no more support worries).

[jtsisyoda]

Googlie:

We apologize again for our tardiness in replying - the Junta meetings are currently being sparsely attended as Captains are lergely in the field on manoeuvers.

Our short-term research goal is Intellectual Integrity, as we wish to build the CDF (we share a fairly long border with Yang, and in the inevitable conflict we'd rather not fight him with one hand tied behind our backs)

But we need to get Doc Loyalty in order to proceed, so that will be our immediate goal (we could probe it from Yang, but that will prolly trigger the vendetta that we're not quite ready to face yet, so would rather acquire it by other means, with self-research as a last resort). We will likely switch next year to Doc Loyalty when our current research effort matures

We were therefore wondering if you would be interested in a combined project to research Intellectual Integrity. We think this tech is not only useful for us, but also for you, as it is together with AdapEcon, which you will soon have, a prerequisite for Planetary Economics and the Ascetic Virtues, which you indicated you consider an important secret project for you.

As to longer term co-operation in leapfrogging - we see Doc Air as a distinct possibility. We both have Gene Splicing and in a few turns we expect to acquire HEC, prereqs for SFF, and if we both researched that, as soon as one had it the other could switch to Doc Air.

There are other possibilities - for example, sharing in the cost of acquiring Env Econ in a few years, and other such deals

But there's some food for thought there , and we await your reply with interest

Lieutenant-Colonel Googlie

Googlie again:

We are pleased to inform you that our diplomacy efforts to acquire Doctrine: Loyalty have been successful.

We will now turn our attention to Intellectual Integrity, and following that will be able to work on a leapfrog with you towards Synthetic Fossils and Doctrine: Air Power, if these are mutually desireable goals for our two factions

From your comments, the timing might then be more suitable as well

Then arginine:

While it is not yet 100% official, most of Morgan Industries is in favor of us jointly researching to D AP. The details and conditions have not been finalized, but a simple example would be:

Sparta researches Synthetic Fossil Fuels then trades it to the Corporation.

The Corporation then researches Doctrine Air Power and then trades it back to the Federation.

I imagine that The Spartan Federation would like some time to think this over.

I hadn't noticed their response until now. I see this as good news. DAP looks just around the corner if this goes through. Perhaps they can send us Intel Integ, too (we can skip D:Loy for now?), so we can get Plan Econ with the Ascetic Virtues SP at some point. Getting pop 6 bases without Hab Comp's would be great.