How to get Medicine

[vmxa1]

Sounds reasonable to me DeeoP (both).

[Cort Haus]

Not sure about paying Steam + Electricity plus sell-to-Lego-after-5-turns rights for only Medicine. Why would they not accept the usual NDA terms? If we can't trust them with NDA's now we have no future anyway.

Have GoW said anything to us echoing ND's terms? If not, let's not give them the farm before they've asked for it. It was agreed that Electricity would be traded for Industrialisation, and I don't see what's wrong with that. GoW have been happy to strike square tech deals so far.

[DeepO]

CH, the idea was to keep Lego from getting Medicine (in 5 turns), not to break NDAs. Of course, normal 20 turn NDAs would apply in all cases.

And GoW has implied they want some of our free techs, by offering them electricity, I want to avoid they trade Medicine to Lego for electricity, and afterwards ask for AT from us for keeping the no-trade clause with Lego. That tech is nearly twice as costly.

I'm still holding the save, and will keep on doing so for a couple more hours. If anybody wants to send these, or similar messages, please do so. ND I can easily attach with the save, but I haven't been in touch with GoW before, so I'd rather leave that to Sleepy, if he's still ambassador. Or Arrian, as he had last contact.

DeepO

[DeepO]

ND message sent. What about the GoW one? we need contact, guys! Somebody please do something before tomorrow night (GWT), or I'll send something. I doubt I will have a lot of time to check anything during the day, though.

DeepO

[Cort Haus]

OK, I understand now about the Medicine - Lego thing.

I am away for a few days this week - sorry I can't help, but yes I understand your point that we could/should offer GoW a tech for their co-operation. So we could give them Electricity and then trade Atomic Theory for Indust' instead.

[Arrian]

Contact with GoW

Originally posted by DeepO
ND message sent. What about the GoW one? we need contact, guys! Somebody please do something before tomorrow night (GWT), or I'll send something. I doubt I will have a lot of time to check anything during the day, though.

DeepO

FYI - I sent the message to GoW on the 19th. It went to Aggie, Master Zen, and UnOrthOdOx.

No response, from any of them. They're up to something. I have been corresponding with UnO regarding other stuff, and the PMs have been flying back and forth. Yet when I send him something on the ptwdgI, silence.

Not good. I will send a followup note.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

well, if they don't start answering us by next turn, we say we can't afford the wait, and will start on Medicine ourselves. I'd hate it, as it would isolate us.

I fear that by building the two tech wonders, and now being firmaly en route to ToE, we are being perceived as number #1 threat again.

DeepO

[Arrian]

I sent a very short followup to MZ.

We also need to formulate a response to Vox, regarding a trade for nationalism.

They want luxuries and gold. Let's work up some sort of a proposal. We have 2 luxuries to trade them, yes? So maybe both of those for 20 turns, plus some gold?

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Arrian, let's try to do a lux only deal, and see if they would want that. Let's say 5 20-turn lux deals or something like that. Problem is we currently don't have the cash to spend on acquiring techs.

We should formulate a response to Vox, but if at all possible, we should wait for ND as well. At least until they had a few days on previous message. We did promise them in chat to trade them Nationalism for Steam...

DeepO

[vmxa1]

Re: Contact with GoW

Originally posted by Arrian
No response, from any of them. They're up to something. I have been corresponding with UnO regarding other stuff, and the PMs have been flying back and forth. Yet when I send him something on the ptwdgI, silence.

Not good. I will send a followup note.

-Arrian

Not sure what they could be up to though. It makes no sense for them to not take some deal from us to get a bunch of techs dirt cheap. Even if you want to try to eliminate us, it would be wise to take some deal?

Maybe they just don't care any more?

[DeepO]

No... maybe they're dealing with Lego. atm, Lego needs a tech partner to beat us to the ToE. If they do promise 2 techs where we only promise 1, GoW knows who to choose.

So, pressure GoW, please, so we know what's going on.

DeepO

[Arrian]

I think MZ is just really busy IRL or something. He's ignoring me in BOTH ptwdg's.

I got a response out of UnO, but he basically told me some internal stuff about GoW and asked me not to pass it on, so I can't post the PM. Basically, UnO is no longer really involved in GoW, and MZ is running the show.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

This is not good. MZ is already busy with the ISDG as well. It might not be deliberate, but we're going to need some answers soon, or we have to do stuff that will hurt us in the end.

The problem is we can't be too pushy either: For us it is critical to get Medicine (at least not let Lego get it, plus it would get us on our way to a tech advantage, instead of costing us 5 turns (4 on tech, 1 on gold)). If we show GoW it's critical, they will either overprice us, or turn to Lego.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

Aiding Lego is so not in their best long term interest. Again we do not have enough land for them to over take Lego, if they could get it and hold it.

I doubt Lego would let them hold it anyway. The only play is if Lego agrees to aid them for the purpose of slowing us down. Not intending to actually see us taken out. Then GoW/ND could benefit form tech and cash from Lego, while Lego get all of us to loss lots of units.

[Arrian]

MZ says 2 turns more on medicine if they get gold from ND.

We're 3 turns from electricity, right? That would be PERFECT. We gift Steam power to GoW on T190. They discover med on T190, and gift it to us. We discover Elect on T191, and immediately begin on SM.

The potential problem here is that they're still looking for our ToE techs "for free." Then again, reading MZ's PM, it's not really for free, because he talks about researching other industrial tech and giving us that.

So I fired off a response with some more brainstorming.

Basically, I'm thinking we trade Elect for Ind, S.M. for Sanitation, Atomic Theory for Replaceable Parts, and Electronics for a tech to be named later (refining? steel?).

AFAIK, those are pretty uneven trades. The other issue, of course, is how we are going to handle ND. I'm betting ND thinks they can fund GoW or GS research and get all sorts of goodies out of the deal. If GoW researches Industrialization with ND help, does the trade for Electricity mean that both GoW *and* ND get Electricity, and we get Ind? Hrm. At the VERY least, we ought to be able to pass on whatever we get from them to Roleplay (at a later date, to keep Lego's costs up).

Do you like my ideas? Too much? Too little? Let me know. MZ also seems to think there is a chat for thursday. Is that something we do now as a matter of course? If so, who will be there?

Finally, we still need to come up with a response to Vox for Nationalism. They want luxuries and gold. We won't have gold to give until we get S.M. After that, we can certainly afford to pull up and go max tax for a few turns. What do you guys think is a reasonable gold amount to couple with 20 turns of our luxuries? 1000 gold? More? Less? I've really no idea.

I actually don't know the beaker cost of Nationalism, but I'm guessing somewhere around 3000. Let's say that each luxury is worth ~40gpt to Vox. Over 20 turns, that's 800 gold. We have 2 to trade them, right? So that's 1600 gold. Of course, I'm pulling those numbers straight out of my... um... imagination. Anyone have a better idea?

-Arrian