Current Diplo : RP GA and GoW/ND Tech deals

[asleepathewheel]

ah great

estimated 1200 gold for the upgrades. how much is pike to musket. I'm thinking the primary use for the defense is to eat an attack, which pikes having the same defense and hp as cavs, the pikes would go first, so perhaps we wouldn't need to upgrade the pikes, as hopefully we would only receive 10 attacks upon landing.

so if you cut out the pike-musket upgrade you would cut out a huge chunk of that expense. Add that to the 600 ND is possibly giving for physics and we aren't down much, are we?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
OK, the chat is done. Logs to follow.

1. All agreed to trade tech amongst ourselves, locking Lego out. I think Zayxus agreed to that. GoW certainly did.
2. GS do Steam, GoW do Med, ND do Nat. All trade.
3. GS does Electricity. GoW does Industrialisation. ND may be behind - doesn't matter.

Timing is an issue and there's ToG in the way. These yet to be resolved but the deal is there in principle.

ND want to pay cash for GS tech. Offered 600 for Physics. A bit low, but we might want to compromise when the time is right.

GoW/ND want a 3-way hit on Lego, claiming they won't do it without GS involvement. Will offer us SP.

GoW seek Industrialisation. They seemed pleased with our proposal. GoW will persue Vox over their free tech.

For my part, I held to the line of the team as the consensus had it in the last discussion, while holding the door open to the possibility of a GS contribution. I had little doubt that this was a genuine proposal.

[vmxa1]

Lego may realize by the time Steam is learned, that an invasion is coming. If they do, they would have to rethink railing all their land.

RR's would be used against them, once cities are captured or razed.

A 90 calv invasion would likely be able to eliminate Lego in short order. It could be necessary to have prearrainged land ownership agreements.

Should we be thinking about a possible double cross offer from Lego? I am wonder, if I was Lego and saw this coming, I would have to expect all three teams are involved. No way to split GoW and ND, so the best bet is to try to make a deal with GS.

Bobians can't really afford to go for a jumping on us as we do not have enough land to win it for them. They would still be faced with the same situation and minus our help.

[vulture]

I think 600g for physics is reasonable. The danger is that if we try and push signifcantly higher, GoW will strike some kind of deal of 200 gold now (to pay us) in return for physics when the NDA runs out (if ND are willing to wait that long).

Remember previous tech deals - the only real solution to being undercut by other civs is to get all our value for the tech on the first deal, and regard anything for the 2nd and later deals as a bonus - being prepared to sell low rather than get nothing. If they are willing to offer 600 up front, I'd be happy to take it - particularly as we'd want not to eat their cash reserves to slow down their research too much (although their industrial research doesn't push us towards ToE, so it's not as important, except for mobilisation and riflemen).

[Cort Haus]

Fair point, Vulture, though we might want to raise them a little. Full cost of Physics is >1500b. Only we have it, so minus 10% {edit - no, 20%, GoW have it too) deval is still twice their offer.

Surely they'd expect us to haggle their offer up a bit.

[vulture]

True - they'd probably offer a lowball to start. It's probably worth trying for a little more, but we should get the deal sorted quickly, and not lose out like we've done in the past. Who is our ND representative? Perhaps we should give them authority to finalise a deal without getting further approval here, to speed up the negotiating process (within certain constraints - not going below X gold, although from my point of view, we're already above the minimum, and just need to see if we can improve the deal any).

How are we going to play this with Lego? They used to have a 3-way research pact with ND / GoW. Now its the other way around. Surely they're going to notice that tech deals aren't so easy as they were in the recent past, and (hopefully) no teams are willing to get in to long term partnerships with them. That might give them a rather big clue what's coming. Should we get in touch in the near future and start trying to negotiate a long term deal with them, which falls though, or should we leave that job to GoW?

And I think we need to get ND involved in the second tier IA research, so they don't go looking for other suitors. Unfortunately, the only techs available when we go for Electricity and GoW go for Industrialisation are Sanitation (no real benefit for us, only others), Espionage (we don't like spying, so aren't depserate for this either) or Communism (useless for us as a government right now - although if we get land on Lego it might boost our output. Plus police stations, which are useful more than vital, and take time to build). Or ND could send cash to us and GoW to speed up research, in return for getting the techs once they're done (or do that whilst slowly researching an optional tech...)

Incidentally, re the use of units on Lego - they are units we can afford to lose really. We can't be invaded until marines, and we can get to Motorised Transport before then (if we get ToE), so we will be in a scenario of attacking infantry, and have tanks on hand in principle - cavalry become obsolete. Worst case scenario invading Lego - we lose all our units, and save 20-30 gpt in upkeep for a while.

[Cort Haus]

ND affairs are mainly being handled by of Zayxus at the moment, which is tough for them as his English is not at Darekill's level. Where's Bongo? Our MAST-ies might know how active he is in ND

I think that cash could be their contribution along the chain. Arrian has been our ambassador for ND, but if time's an issue, and with the TZ gap, I could shoot ND a quick email asking for 800, and we could accept 700. If we get a similiar price for Magnets that would be our upgrade bill taken care of.

We have no Lego Desk in our foreign office, and it should stay that way for now, IMV. The last messages with them were back during the war - all those centuries ago. Re-opening comunications now would show that something was up, and force us to lie to them. Silence is the way.

[Cort Haus]

There's a case for hanging back on Physics to lower the deval for Lego, but there's also a case for sealing ND into the new tech-alliance.

ND's other option is to hit GoW, right? That may have its appeal for us, but we are only assuming that Lego will then fight for GoW. They might sit it out to get their industrial infrastructure up.

If our goal is ToE / Hoover, an assault on Lego will help that, guaranteeing us ToE I reckon, whether we're onboard or not. Ideally, we'd sit it out and let the others damage Lego before a stalemate's reached. However, if they want us in for their own security (a valid concern, given our aspirations for territory) - and if Lego get their defensive act together they really should be blocking their east coast - an appearance by us in the west might be needed to draw away strength and leave a landing gap on the east.

[vulture]

Bongo is certainly pretty active in MAST - don't know how much ND stuff he is doing. But since Zayxus is our appointed contact, we ought to go through him for politeness, if no other reason. Do we have any good German speakers active on the team? I can do bad-to-workable German (witness my German limerick to celebrate the end of the Vox war) - I can't remember if Sir Ralph knows German, even if we were around (I always think of him as German, although not sure if that is a weird concoction of my own mind (just checked his profile - his homepage is German)). We might be able to persuade him to either handle ND diplo in the short term, or polish up any translations to make them read better.

[Cort Haus]

Sir Ralph has given official notice of inactivity on the public forum. I gather he wants a break from Civ.

Vulture, if you have some German, could you try it? Maybe Arrian could be RP Ambassador instead - he works with Arnie in the MZO game and the timezones would be better. Whaddya think?

[Cort Haus]

As ND are off-site, their Email might be better :

neudemogyptica {AT} cylusion {DOT} com

[OPD]

Copied over from the turn thread

Originally posted by Arrian
Do we have a sense of what Physics is worth so we can counteroffer ND?

I'd be inclined to say 600 gold may be about right for physics, if it were just us and ND I'd say we should be looking for about 60% of first researcher cost (about 1000gold) so that we both have the tech but they had to spend more as we actually did the research.

However we have already traded it to GoW and got a substantial return on our investment, appoximating to getting 2 techs for our 1600 beaker physics investement or 800 per tech.

If we get 600 gold from ND for it too we would be looking at having got 2 techs for 1000 gold investment where as ND would have got 1 tech for 600 gold.

On the other hand 800 gold for physics would mean we would have got 2 techs for 800 gold investment whereas ND would only be getting 1 tech for the same amount.

If we can then go on to trade physics to vox for demo perhaps, we'd be looking at even more for our investment.

This is the kind of theory mast have been working on but I guess it depends on how you see things with regard to how much benefit someone should get for being the one to actually research the tech and the power they have as a result of that.

If Lego were to research it at a reduced 1280 beakers then sell it to ND for 600 gold then the 2 of them would have more or less split the tech cost between them.

If we can get more than 600 gold then great, although perhaps looking for a luxury rather than extra gold would be a good idea.

[Cort Haus]

Yes, OPD, there are two ways of costing tech :

1. Opportunity cost to the customer. Take full price minus % deval and charge that.

2. Shared cost between participants.

I see now that ND were offering the right price under method 2. We were looking at method 1.

[Arrian]

If we get 600g for Physics, have we recouped our research cost (we traded it for Metallurgy plus gold to GoW, right?)?

If so, then 600 is reasonable.

Let's see what they say.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

We traded Physics for Chem + 100g, and Magnetism for Metallurgy + 100g. PLus 300g compensation for our lost research on Chem when they screwed up.

So yes, we've got a trade return already on Phys and Mag.