Spartan Diplomacy

[jtsisyoda]

Trust is not exactly running high between us yet, so if they're reluctant to send tech pre-accepted, I'd say that part's optional. I don't think it's critical to get the techs one turn earlier.

[jtsisyoda]

Mr. Mead, your understanding is correct. We accept the proposal and are ready to go with the trade. Since the turn is going to be in your hands first, though, it might be more sensible for you to add to the table and preaccept your end of the bargain (including the annual treaty payment). Otherwise we both waste a good years' worth of time in the matter.


Major Kassiopeia, Diplomatic and Foreign Affairs Officer of the Spartan Junta.

Should we do as Kass suggests?

[AndiD]

Go ahead and let's get this started. Perhaps we could remind them at the next negotiation that we were overly generous the first time. ;-)

(Maybe Kass is a bit upset every time he plays the minigame... :-D)

[Mead]

Originally posted by jtsisyoda


Should we do as Kass suggests?

Yes.

Although I am worried about the potential for them cheating us, we should honor the deal. They can only cheat us once. And, if they do, we will ensure that it is well known that they can't be trusted. They should know that their reputation is worth far more than the one time benefit of cheating us in a trade. Plus, I am relying on them looking forward to the income stream.

(Can someone explain pre-accepted trades and how we can be cheated?)

I was authorized to make the offer and I did so.

Although it is too late to withdraw the offer now (since it has been accepted), I note that, as long as Sparta acts honorably, it is a better deal than we were willing to accept.

Initially, they offered us Gene Splicing at 250 (15 EC for 20 years). Then they offered Etical Calculus at 10 ECs for 15 years. We were willing to accept that. We managed to get it reduced to 8 ECs for 15 years.

The deal is for better than we were willing to accept. They left money on the table, I'm not sure how much, if any, 'money' we left on the table.


In any event, an authorized offer was made by an authorized official of the the Morgan Corp. The offer was accepted by an authorized member of the Junta. We have a contract. We are bound to honor it.

Mead


PS
How is thier reputation for keeping their word in the mini-game? And, how good is the reputation of the team members over there for keeping their word in general in PBEMs?

[arginine]

I think they've traded gene splicing since the offer and figure we can get it from other factions now and thus have lowered the price.

The same could be said of ethic calc.

True, we are getting 2 equivalent techs for 1 tech and 120 EC. But we are giving the Spartans our potential gain from trading Ind. Eco with the friendly AIs...

We did not establish about how much trading the tech to the 2 friendly AIs was worth....

[Mead]

Originally posted by AndiD
Go ahead and let's get this started. Perhaps we could remind them at the next negotiation that we were overly generous the first time. ;-)

(Maybe Kass is a bit upset every time he plays the minigame... :-D)

Done.

I posted this in the embassy:

Date Posted: 30/10/2004 9:19 PM

Mr. Mead, your understanding is correct. We accept the proposal and are ready to go with the trade. Since the turn is going to be in your hands first, though, it might be more sensible for you to add to the table and preaccept your end of the bargain (including the annual treaty payment). Otherwise we both waste a good years' worth of time in the matter.


Major Kassiopeia, Diplomatic and Foreign Affairs Officer of the Spartan Junta.

Major Kassiopeia

We are pleased that you accepted our offer and that we now have a deal.

We will do as you suggest. As you note, time is of the essense. We understand that the annual installment payments of 8 ECs per year for this deal are in addition to the the 'Morgan Bonus' profit sharing. So, if Sparta's share of the Morgan commerce bonus is 5 this turn, the cash transfer will be 13 = (5 bonus profit sharing + 8 installment payment).

It is good working with you and we look forward to future mutually profitable joint ventures.

Mead
CDO, Morgan Corp.

Mead

[jtsisyoda]

Good work, Mead. This was an important step for our faction. Thanks to everybody else, too... your input helped us find a deal we could live with.

[arginine]

If we want to be aggressive, in our dealing with the Spartans, I would like to repeat an extension to our deal...

get ethic calc now. The Spartans hold onto gene splicing for a while.

The Spartans start researching neural grafting.
We start researching gene splicing.

Spartans finish researching neural grafting and give it and gene splicing to us.

We get gene splicing, stopping its research and start on bio-engineering.

We finish bio-engineering and give it to the Spartans.

I would prefer that we and the spartans agree to not trade neural grafting or bioengineering.

I am concerned that an AI will already or soon have neural grafting, in which case the Spartans merely have to acquire it and then pass it off as 'researched'. I would prefer to just get neural grafting and research it for ourselves.

If we want to be secret for now, all we really have to do right now is ask the Spartans to hold onto 'gene splicing' and say we want our research to be faster, as we won't need gene splicing yet.

[Mead]

Originally posted by arginine
If we want to be aggressive, in our dealing with the Spartans, I would like to repeat an extension to our deal...

get ethic calc now. The Spartans hold onto gene splicing for a while.

The Spartans start researching neural grafting.
We start researching gene splicing.

Spartans finish researching neural grafting and give it and gene splicing to us.

We get gene splicing, stopping its research and start on bio-engineering.

We finish bio-engineering and give it to the Spartans.

I would prefer that we and the spartans agree to not trade neural grafting or bioengineering.

I am concerned that an AI will already or soon have neural grafting, in which case the Spartans merely have to acquire it and then pass it off as 'researched'. I would prefer to just get neural grafting and research it for ourselves.

If we want to be secret for now, all we really have to do right now is ask the Spartans to hold onto 'gene splicing' and say we want our research to be faster, as we won't need gene splicing yet.

We already agreed to the deal.

Let's not mess with it.

If we try to modify the deal now we will appear to be uncertain, unpredictable, and unreliable. In other words a bad trading partner.

Although it is possible to ask the Spartans to unwind the deal, they have no obligation to do so, AND it would be very unwise.

I strongly recommend against trying to get out of (or modifying) the deal.

I am not an expert at the tech trees, but I do know that we need stick to the deals we make if we want to be succesful at diplomacy.

arginine, we are stuck with the deal we made. I see that you have a good feel for tech tree stategy, give us some suggestions at what we should try to get next from Sparta and the other factions.

Mead

[jtsisyoda]

We finish Prog Psych this turn, so our tech cost will already be set by the time we receive the techs from Sparta next turn. If we asked them to delay Gene Splicing, it would have to be for four or five turns until we finish our next tech. I'd rather just get the techs now, to lock in our profits.

[arginine]

The only alteration to the Spartan trade deal in my proposal would be them giving us Gene Splicing several turns from now instead of right away. I see no harm in asking the Spartans to give us Gene Splicing several turns from now instead of right now unless we think they will break our agreement.

I guess what I was proposing was another tech trade, only taking advantage of being able to switch techs without losing any research (points?).

[jtsisyoda]

That's a good idea, but so much went into getting this finalized, and the Spartan techs were already in the window, that it might be best just to take the tech now. Simplicity and closure and all that.

[arginine]

Oh well, I guess the Spartans will just give both techs next turn. No biggie.

Getting the clean reactor soon would be a big boon to us, as we could then crank out those needed formers. We might want to try to get Spartan assistance in getting the tech early.

In particular, I think we should offer some preliminary pricing on some techs.

Neural grafting would run ~250 EC (we won't have to get SoTB as a preliminary tech) and flat out offer ~400 EC for Bio-engineering.

We should put restrictions on the techs so they can't sell/trade them for about 20 years or so (but also promise we won't trade/sell the techs either). We emphasize our buying prices will go down with time (as they will). Also tell them that we will not be open for purchasing those techs for several turns. We are giving them 'advance information'.

[AndiD]

They won't have too many ECs to spare I'm afraid. With running Planned and not running wealth they have 0 ECON, -2 EFFIC and that means a low energy output. They might get some extra creds by hunting worms though...

[arginine]

I meant for us to BUY the techs from them.

On another note, the Spartans said they thought the Gaians and Angels were going for D: AP. If so, why do the Angels have Progenitor Psych? This may give us an opportunity to test the Spartan's honesty if we ask the right questions.