DIPLO: Legoland diplomatic contact LOG

[DeepO]

response to redstar:

Redstar1, glad to see that you might find a possibility to get to Bob, let's hope you can find a safe passage which doesn't involve taking risks.

If you don't find it, know that we are willing to meet you half way, our relative isolation makes it easier for us to send a galley ourselves then for the Bobian teams, we believe. I'm not sure how much you picked up from them, but it seems that war is brewing on Bob, they might want to put all production towards troops instead of 'wasting' it on galleys.

As to the 10 tiles in between us: maybe. We consider it quite likely, given the shape of our continent (it's not that wide, but it wiggles), we would not offer you a map of our coast otherwise. (BTW, we are talking of all the Eastern coast we explored, so including what we know of Vox too). If you are interested in a trade of coastal information, please let us know quite in advance... If we were going to send a galley your way, we should include it in our plans. And our economists hate it when they need to adjust short time planning for unforeseen events

BTW, if you would get into contact with a Bobian civ, don't go sailing around the continent just to meet us, that would take far too long. For you, it wouldn't be good to have only 1 contact, as monopolies tend to increase prices, and perhaps the civ you'd meet would try to keep your contact hidden. My best advice is that you try to meet at least 2 civs asap, the moment 2 teams have something of value (like e.g. a contact), they're impatient to sell what they got to everyone they know, because otherwise the other will be first. We were surprised to see our contact being brokered around extremely quickly, let's hope you meet many teams fast as well.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Redstar1,

no problem on being brief, I can understand time constraints perfectly well. Allow me to be a little less brief

Coastal information trade: this was discussed in our team, but if you would be able to get into contact with us without the need for minimap sharing, it would change things on our side. I certainly can't promise we'll accept it, although so far everybody has been positive.

Our prime concern is getting you involved into world politics asap, as we fear that Bobian teams are growing strong, and have the ability to grow even stronger. If a war would break out, it would break game balance in case one team can take most cities of another. Having another partner on a relatively isolated location would be good for us in all aspects, it should balance the game out more.

This is why we would be willing to invest resources, and intelligence to get you 'in the game' so to speak. Other teams are certainly not getting access to this data, but I hope you understand that unless it is necessary, we probably won't give out information which in the hand of the wrong person could jeopardize our safety.

In our forum, there has been a lot of talk on how you would be able to get up to speed in research. If possible, we want to take an active role in this. After last chat, we hypothesized quite a bit on what research would be worth to us, what we would need as bottom price from you, and what would be possible for you to give without draining your resources too far. If you would know the current discussions, I think you would be pleased... we're talking about prices unimaginably low, certainly compared with what I had to assume in last chat.

There's one possible issue, though. Would you be interested in acquiring all techs you currently miss from us, perhaps together with all contacts you need? If we would get some sort of exclusivity deal, we will probably be able to outbid any competitor.

We're working on a precise proposal, but one of our concerns is that Bobian civs do not acquire more gold to fuel their war efforts, as it could become dangerous. Denying them the extra cash is worth a lot to us, it doesn't even matter which team gets cash, as more cash on Bob can eventually mean more cash for whoever wins, and takes the last cities. In the plan we had in mind, the only cash getting to Bob would be the sum needed to get us 2 in touch, and no, we wouldn't be planning to take your whole treasury either.

I'm sorry if I have to be mysterious here, this whole thing is currently under debate, and I can't give you a real proposal. But would you at least consider getting an exclusivity deal with us, if the price is right? What that price will be can be discussed later...

DeepO

DeepO,

I don't have a lot of time to reply right now so apologies for the breifness!

We are increasingly of the opinion that we are very close to sighting Bob and as such we have arrangements in place to maximise our contact. This does not detract from our plan to pick our way over Bob to yourselves, and of course Vox. What we want to avoid is the scenario you mentioned where one other team has a monopoly on our contact. We can assure you this won't happen

I shall put forward your proposal for sharing coastal information.

Talk more later...

[DeepO]

quantum_mechani wrote on 09-03-2003 18:28:
This arrangement seems quite fair... unfortunately (for this deal anyway ) our galley recently discovered a channel to Bob, which weans our first contact will have to be with a Bob civ. From where the channel is located this first civ will probably be GoW.

The good news, though, is that you will likely be able to get our contact via another civ in just one or two turns. I hope diplomatic relations with your team won't be negatively impacted by not being Legolands first contact- you can't blame us for wanting diplomatic contact many turns sooner .

I very much hope we can organize some kind of trade in a few turns, so I look forward to hearing from you.

q_m

[DeepO]

Quantum_mechani,

I'm going to forward the communication between redstar and myself to you. Please read both messages first, as what has been said here is in part already outdated. My apologies for not sending this last message to the both of you, but as he answered me a few days ago, I assumed I continued the thread with him, instead of with you.

I'll post some more comments in my reply to your message (will be sent after these two forwards), could you please get some thread in your forum organized so that messages from GS are quoted there? I hate to lose opportunities because I'm unsure who to talk to...

DeepO

After this, both previous messages to-from redstar1 were forwarded to him

[DeepO]

Sent in 2 parts

Hello redstar1 and quantum_mechani,

I'm forwarding this to both of you, to make sure everyone receives my response, and knows of the current message. redstar1, I forwarded q_m our last two communications, as it seems he was not informed. I'm unsure who I need to contact, could you please clarify this to me? I remembered q_m had problems to log on from time to time, which was my primary reason to post this to you, but I'm getting a little confused here...

As to you seeing Bob: great! The sooner the both us can get into contact, the better. We'll certainly will try to get into contact with you asap, however, if you value what we have to offer, you might want to start negotiating for our contact too.

As mentioned in my previous communication, we would like it if we could become your primary tech supplier, in order to make it possible for you to catch up asap. A strong legoland is in our best interest, while Bobian civs will be a lot more interested in making themselves strong (we do not, we simply want to keep Bob from becoming omnipotent). The discussion on how we can do that is still going on, but I think I can be a lot more specific this time.

First of all, I consider this diplomatic contact top-secret, like all diplomatic negotiations. Please keep this to yourselves, we don't particularly trust people that use quotes from negotiatons with third parties to get a better deal (believe me, it happens too often in this game). Even if this negotiation would somehow fail, it will still be top-secret to us, I hope you have the same opinions on this point.

Secondly, I mentioned before that we have no interest in draining your treasury, but we want to avoid that one or more Bobian civs gets a large amount of cash, as it won't be good for the stability on Bob. If one civ would get into a position to dominate that continent, the game is essentially over. Your cash could be just that what makes one party superiour to another.

Ourselves, we don't need that cash, well, better said we would like it of course, but don't really need it to keep our position in this world. Maybe a symbolic amount of cash would be needed to pursuade all our members of the validity of this deal, but there is something else we are interested in, which costs you nothing: your World Map. We are not interested in this to invade legoland soon (if ever), but we hope that we can reach an agreement so that we somehow can use it to gain information on Bob. It looks like in the future, some kind of action is needed to keep a civ on Bob to become too large, but we have a hard time assessing the situation, as all three civs claim to be in the disadvantage, and the information we have suggests that all three of them pose a great risk to us in the long term (e.g. in the military advisor, all 3 civs have a strong military compared to us, and we thought our military wasn't small to begin with).

Basically, this is what we were thinking of:
- We give you the following techs (if you don't have them already, of course): iron working, literature, code of laws, mysticism, horse back riding, mathematics and all techs leading to them if you don't have them already (this should include all level 1 techs).
- We give you all contacts to other civs you might miss
- You give us your world map when the deal starts
- You give us your world map in 20 turns from the start of the deal. In the mean time, you try to exchange your worldmap with a Bobian civ, so that when we receive your second worldmap, hopefully most information on Bob is also included. Notice that you try to exchange it, there is no requirement that you succeed. We would be hoping for it, though, as it is the only real advantage we can get ourselves out of this deal, instead of denying others your cash
- you pay us the symbolic amount of 50 gold, if you somehow get our contact from Bob. If we need to purchase your contact, you agree to pay 50 gold, plus half of what it costs us.


As you can see, this should leave you with whatever reserves you got, and the primary focus of this deal is to not advantage Bobian civs any more then strictly necessary. I strongly doubt that any of them is going to offer you all this for the same price (basically 50 gold plus your WM(twice)). We think that with your UU and isolated position, you are relatively safe from invasions, so a world map might not be that valuable to you. Plus, instead of going through lengthy negotiations with a bunch of civs to get the lowest price while catching up, this deal will give you instantly everything, so that you can start researching immediately, and join the worldwide tech swapping race.

If necessary, I'd love to schedule a chat in order to explain ourselves further, or to take care of the details. Also, please note that this is but a proposal, and before we could go through with such a massive deal, it should be ratified on our board. But so far, there are very few voices of opposition, so you can assume that what I proposed above will most likely get ratified on our side.

Please notify receipt of this message, I can imagine you need some time to discuss this in team, but knowing you received, and are considering it would mean a lot to my (already tensed) nerves

Kind regards,
DeepO

quantum_mechani wrote on 09-03-2003 18:28:
This arrangement seems quite fair... unfortunately (for this deal anyway ) our galley recently discovered a channel to Bob, which weans our first contact will have to be with a Bob civ. From where the channel is located this first civ will probably be GoW.

The good news, though, is that you will likely be able to get our contact via another civ in just one or two turns. I hope diplomatic relations with your team won't be negatively impacted by not being Legolands first contact- you can't blame us for wanting diplomatic contact many turns sooner .

I very much hope we can organize some kind of trade in a few turns, so I look forward to hearing from you.

q_m

[DeepO]

response from q_m:

Hmm... I doubt this sort of deal would work as a poll in Legoland determined that we would not trade WM with anyone whatsoever. As for a chat, I would like to schedule one in the near future.

I would go into more detail but I too would like the confusion with redstar resolved before continuing.

q_m

[DeepO]

redstar1 first response:

DeepO,

Hi mate! I thought you had copied Quantum on both messages as he seemed to have the same as me so i didn't mention it to him. Nimitz is the new FM but as far as I know Quantum is still ambassador so you may tal kto him regarding trades etc. Can copy me if you like though as I am mostly always around.

As for us catching up on tech I don't think we had been doing too badly as we got to pop some tech huts. As of yesterday the team voted to accept a deal from GOW for a tech trade weighted heavily in our favour. You may already know we have contact with GOW. As part of the deal GOW promised to get contacts for us to save us time. However we suspect they are charging well over the odds for our contact and as such we are considering continuing our voyages eastwards. Of course, this is between us

The deal we were offered was truthfully too good to turn down but it does not tie us in to dealing with GOW in the future. For their part of it they would recieve gold from selling our contact.

The deal you suggest is a fantastic oppurtunity also, and we will no doubt bear it in mind should our current commitments fail to be realised.

I should point out however that it is team policy that maps shall never be traded. This was discussed at length and overwhelmingly supported so i hope you understand. We are treating sovereignty as extremely important and in the interests of our national security we ask the other teams to respect that.

In saying that we welcome the contact with GS and the freindship it will inevitably bring. We are unsure of your intention (or not) to receive our contact from GOW and we would appreciate your thoughts on this matter. If we require to continue sailing east we will do so, otherwise we will assign our brave Galley to another task.

I have posted your message in the team forum so it should initiate some discussion!

Hope to hear from you soon.

redstar1

[DeepO]

redstar1's second response:

DeepO,

We have discussed things in group and we beleive we have a proposal worthy of your attention. We shal start researching The Republic quite shortly and we were thinking that perhaps we should exchange information on how long each of us will take to get there. For example, if we research Republic then you could slow research spending and make some extra gold. This extra gold could then be shared, along with the Republic whenever it becomes available.

I would propose 1/2 of the beaker cost in gold if there is no "no tech whoring" clause, 1/3 of the beaker cost if the team getting it for money would agree not to trade it to anyone else.

I should also point out that we have an arrangement with GOW and RP for trading of Republic. We do not have plans to contact anyone else regarding it.

Your comments will be welcome

Redstar1

[DeepO]

my response:

redstar1, quantum_mechani,

Sorry for the confusion, I should have copied both of you in all my messages. I received your previous messages, and although a little disappointed on the outcome, I'm glad that one of our primary concerns (having a weak legoland) is not an issue it seems.

A longer reply will follow after discussion by my team (plus, I don't have a lot of time right now, tonight things should get better), but some fast comments:

- We certainly understand you don't want to trade your worldmap, but we figured that of all the civs in this game, you were the team that would be least disadvantaged by trading away your world map. You are least likely to face an invasion... at least that's our analysis. We're quite protective of our map as well, but this comes from pure necessity.

- It's good to see you got more techs from huts then anticipated, and trading away philosophy was probably in your best interest in the short term. I hope you got enough out of it...

- ... because what it achieved was exactly what we feared. Now GoW not only is whoring your contact around, but also philosophy. They contacted everyone the moment you two met, denying you any possibility to trade philosophy to anyone, nor your contact. Many teams will fall for this, with as a result that GoW benefits tremendously from being in the right spot on the right time. It's hard to assess exactly how many gold they will get from it, but it will translate in to hundreds of gold pieces for them, a concentration that can be dangerous on Bob. Maybe GoW is the smallest of all Bobian civs (they claim so, we have no way of knowing), but their UU is coming up soon, and all this cash to upgrade the horses they are building right now to riders... ouch.

- we're not interested in philosophy, because between my message to you and now, we acquired it as well. As to your contact: please continue your journey towards us, I'm not sure if our team is willing to give even more gold to GoW if there is no urgent need. It's not that we don't like GoW, this is simply a matter of risk management.

I hope you still view our proposal as a way to balance things out, apart from a possible Bob map, we were not to gain anything from it by whoring stuff around, whereas GoW (or any other Bobian civ, I'm sure) will take this gift from Lady fortune with both hands.

As to your point on republic: it's an interesting proposal. Allow me to post it on our board before further commenting on it. But please realise one thing: half the beaker cost in gold with an non disclosure agreement does not seem fair in this game, don't put your hopes to high on this one, as prices have been considerably lower in general. It's not our idea, by the way, as our research has always been more then adequate, but we have to follow the flow

More later, kind regards,
DeepO

[DeepO]

Thanks for your message redstar1.

It seems I won't get to respond in full tonight, (ah, that disease they call real life ), but I'm happy we're not very far apart in opinions. I sincerely hope you got a good deal out of GoW, that in itself might balance Bob. It's good to see you're keeping world politics in mind, it's one of the most enjoyable and complex aspects of this game.

Thanks for the clarification on republic, maybe we can get to a deal here. Indeed, I assumed you said that the no whoring clause would apply only to us. Negotiations will have to be quickly here to avoid any loss, but could you clarify one thing to us in the mean time: are you proposing this deal to other civs as well? Not that I would mind you trying to get the advantage where it can be found, but it would perhaps have an impact on our decision.

No apologies needed on how the market values tech, I'm sorry if I came on too hard. Please blame it on my bad English; it was an attempt on good advice . One of the reasons why GoW will probably be very succesful with your contact and philosophy is that they will charge bottom prices... to 4 civs. Right now, they are a middleman to you, even if it probably won't take long. This is exactly what created initial tension between us and Vox, and between Bob and Lux. I can imagine that GoW was happy for the opportunity, but I fear to what it can lead.

Speak to you soon,
DeepO

DeepO,

I myself have little time but I would like to respond....

I think it is fair to say that we are going to catch up on tech within the next turn or so but there is no guarantee we will be able to maintain parity. This is why we welcome freindship from yourselves.

You are correct in that we needed to trade Philosophy for short term gain but the offer was one we could not refuse.

As for GOW 'whoring' our contact and Philosophy, this was also a concern of ours, hence our wish to inform the other teams that we are Naval. We have less wish to see a strong GOW than yourselves. RP have purchased our contact from GOW. Might I suggest you contact them as regards acquiring it? I can only imagine the price may be more realistic and you have permission to tell RP that this was suggested by ourselves.

As for maps... I am afraid nothing has changed on that point. It is the considered opinion that we will never trade our maps. We currently have very little information about Bob, having only glimpsed the coast. It is also possible that the decision will be made to re-assign our navy to other important tasks.

I think you may have misunderstood the deal for Republic. We would ask for 1/2 the beakers you made as a result of 100% Tax for the duration of the research, then we would not trade Republic to other teams, that would be down to yourselves alone.

I understand that your tech level is adequate, if we have overestimated the market please accept our apologies. It seems we are trying to break into this game very late

[DeepO]

Redstar1, two more little questions (catching up on the board, but I wanted to reply to you first):

GoW did receive code of laws from us as part of a previous deal, however, there was a (limited time) no-whoring clause on it (for which they asked, BTW). Are they proposing to trade it to you? If so, that information would be of great importance to us, as it would essentially mean they are breaking a treaty. We value honesty in trades as our main priority, trust is based in most on how honorably we consider another team.

Of course, as GoW legally can't trade you CoL - assuming they keep to their part of the bargain - we would be happy to provide it to you as (part of) a deal. Would you be interested in this?

Secondly, would it be possible to know if you got a probable ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) on republic? Possibly, there is a better way than your proposal...

DeepO

[DeepO]

Dear DeepO,

We are happy to hear that you do not mind our deal with GoW. It really was in our best interest to trade Philosophy for all the yet undiscovered, but generally known technologies - we would not be able to make any contact on our own terms within at least 7 more turns, which would put us in a position much worse (at the very least, Philosophy would lose its value by that time, forcing us to spend gold).

Alas, CoL is among the techs GoW offered for the trade and made part of the deal. We feel honestly sorry for that, but we had no idea they were not allowed to trade it to us, if that's the case. As asking or forcing them to remove the Code of Laws from the complex deal would result in delaying it by at least one more turn, we would prefer you not opposing it. Let's hope there is a different way to solve the problem... I will outline few proposals later on...

Now, about the deal on The Republic. Our solid estimate is that we would have it researched no later than on Turn 89, so you could have it on Turn 90. Depending on whether you can have it earlier or not, we would suggest that:

1) only one of our two teams researches it, with the other one shutting down his research completely (or researching something else, whatever that team considers best)

2) the team actually researching The Repubic would provide it to the other team on the very turn it would be discovered

3) the price for the technology would be 1/4 of the beaker cost in gold in case that the recipient agrees to not provide The Republic to anyone else, 1/2 of the beaker cost in gold if no such clause is negotiated. (Note, please, that amounts mentioned are just proposals, that need not be very justified - we do not have a very sharp idea about how much techs cost in the big world... it would be very likely that we would be able to "divide" spheres of trading influence, adjusting the price accordingly).

Note, please, that we are currently considering trading The Republic to two other teams, exchanging it for other technologies we will need to enter the Medieval times. So if we were the team shutting the research down, we would definitely go for the higher price with an option to trade The Republic to at least these two teams.

We understand that such a deal would require quite some degree of mutual trust - for our part, we hereby declare that we do have such trust in GS to go for the deal, if accepted (indicated by the fact that we have disclosed our research potential without being granted the same).

We would like to point out that our intention was not to make a deal bringing us money or a tech advantage, but to increase the combined profit of our teams, accomodating you at least a bit for the fact that we were not able to make our first contact with you. If we both went for the same tech, we would spend twice as much beakers (combined) to get it, without actually gaining any significant advantage, as it is unlikely that either one of our teams would be able to get it sooner enough to be able to whore it around fast enough to push the other one completely out of the loop.

And now for the unlucky CoL issue... it is of course up to you to resolve the issue with GoW, but it would make our life easier if you let it be, just keeping it in your mind while negotiating your future deals... you may keep the information to yourself ATM, asking a better price in our Republic deal, you may ask GoW for a free contact with us for tolerating their breach... we leave this up to you.

I don't think we were prohibited from prenegotiating future deals with other teams, while GoW were busy negotiating the Lego contact & Philosophy deals... and as the CoL inclusion has been revealed indirectly by discussing a future Republic deal, GoW should not be able to blame us for any "disclosure" (especially if they broke a trade treaty without informing us). Still, we would prefer if this never surfaces up...

With kindest regards,
redstar1

[DeepO]

redstar1, some preliminary comments (these PMs keep being preliminary, it seems, I'm sorry that I can't wait until I fully got confirmation on my board before replying to you. But timing is critical...)

First of all CoL: We do not hold you responsible for what happened, you couldn't have known they were bound by a treaty to us. As a result, of course we are not going to ask for measures from you, the impact will only be between GoW and GS. I can solemnly swear it is the thruth, though, GoW was not allowed to trade CoL yet, they needed to wait a number of turns before doing that, and they violated that agreement.

The irony is that it was them that asked for the non-whoring clause, which they thought would only have an impact on what they traded to us, because the only one we couldn't negotiate a CoL trade with was legoland, while they were only starting negotiating their tech. So they abused their own rule, for the only shot they had at abusing it... talk about being opportunistic

I fully understand you would rather not have this information leak out, and I presonally respect that. You were not obliged to tell us CoL was part of the GoW deal, so we owe you on this one. However, I don't know if my team will simply 'let it pass', personally I feel that GoW needs to be pointed to their mistake. They know we value honesty in trades above all else, deliberately breaching that trust must have repercussions. What exactly the consequences will be is something GS needs to discuss, but if possible, we will keep you out of it.

It is of course possible to be vague, and ask them "how can it be that legoland is about to start on republic if nobody without GoW has contact with them, and it is highly unlikely legoland could have researched CoL themselves?". This should leave you out of the loop, again, we do not blame you for this.

After discussion on our team, I'll inform you on how we will deal with it (of course, if a certain payment is going to be demanded from GoW, what exactly that payment will be falls under our "negotiations are secret" policy.) I can tell you one thing, this will certainly mean that we would be even more unwilling to pay GoW steep prices for your contact.

On to republic: I hope I'm right that this means you have not started on republic yet, while we have already. I do not know an exact eta for it (there is a scenario we use to more accurately predict these things, so I'll ask), however I'm positive we will get it before turn 89. As said, our research is quite adequate

We have been discussing the options a little, and would like to somehow split research / cost between us, instead of being each other's competitor. Not only would it decrease cost, but it would also make it possible to delay the other teams' transition to republic, giving us a (small) advantage... I can't be more specific on this, I simply don't know how my team will react. I can tell you my preferences, and rest assured that I value your team more then any of the Bobian ones, but I'm biased as I'm your ambassador. I do not want to tell you something which I later have to recall because we can't reach an agreement within our team.

One thing I can say is that in this situation, we will certainly want to have some kind of deal in place between our two teams instead of doing the research twice. I can't say for sure we would value other techs over gold, and I certainly can't comment on whether we will ask to limit who you trade it to. This needs to be discussed in GS before I can respond to that. However, to avoid any loss, please do not start on republic if you are not willing to write of the invested beakers as a loss when we will reach an agreement.

One of the problems here is that we will need the techs to advance to a next age, so somehow, we're going to need to trade for them. I do not know who is researching what in the other teams, but as there are only 3 techs left we need, and 5 teams outside of us, somebody is going to do something double. Add to this that if a war would break out on Bob (in our analysis a very likely scenario), their research is going to slow down, perhaps even onto the point that we'd better research everything ourselves. The only other team which has a shot on doing research relatively undisturbed is Vox, maybe we should include them in a deal for techs.

One rumour we heared was that somebody has been working on construction, but this rumour came in the last days of Lux. We have no possibility checking its validity. If so, Currency might be a good option for you, but again, please do not take this advice too rigourusly, I do not know for sure.

I'll get back to you on this with more precise information, also on when we consider it possible to research republic.

Final comment (for now): please do not take my question on who else you proposed this to the wrong way, again, of course you are allowed to trade anything you want to to anyone, and future techs can be negotiated. However, we quite explicititly did not trade this information to other teams, as we were still investigating if it would be possible to break the current tech-race. We are quite sure that nobody can get the republic before we'll finish it (and your eta confirms this), and we were still brainstorming on how we could benefit most greatly from this. Again, you're most likely the team which poses the least threat to our immediate survival, so we would be happy to get some kind of deal between us going which benefits us both, at the expense of other teams.

My question had two intentions: first of all to find out if you consider us 'special' like we consider you, second it was a half attempt at finding out how many teams we could not trade the republic to if we were going to let it come without a no-whoring clause. It was easier to ask this from you, instead of needing to contact all teams separately, and show our intentions. GS has the reputation of being secretive, and there is some thruth to this...

more later,
kind regards,
DeepO

[DeepO]

Redstar1,

It has been very busy lately, I hope to catch up this weekend on all the diplo talk. We have been working on a proposal for you, but it hasn't finalized yet... one thing is for certain, we will offer republic as a trade to you.

Currency would certainly be a worthy thing to trade to republic (compensated to reflect the lower cost, of course), and I'm glad you choose it. It will make it possible for us to be a bit less hurried on signing a deal, as it should give us at least a few turns of room to negotiate further. It might be best to don't start negotiating it away to other teams before the time is right.

We have been thinking on making a pure tech trade between us, and dividing the market afterwards between ourselves. It looks like you got good contacts with RP and GoW for republic, so we were thinking on letting you exploit those contacts to its fullest, while we take care of Vox and ND. As long as each of us gets about half of the total gain from republic, we would be happy. Judging from your research speed, it looks like the both of us are best in research, so we should exploit that advantage to the max. And it seems that the best way to proceed is if both of us can get republic, and the last 3 missing techs as part of the resulting trade. We were thinking on keeping republic to our own, but in this case we wouldn't have enough resources to purchase the 3 techs (or, if you take currency, the other 2). But details need to be worked out, it might be possible to delay the other teams a little.

Re: CoL from GoW: we were thinking on how we could ask GoW on what happened with CoL, when we got contacted by them, to tell us they made a mistake. It's a positive sign, if they would have remained silent, it would look a lot worse. Compensation is under negotiation, we indicated very clearly to them that we did expect the deal with you to go through without delay, because otherwise they would break another deal, and we could be blamed by you for GoW's mistake.

One question though: did you tell them there was a problem, or did they found out for themselves, and contacted you afterwards? It would make a difference on our next contacts with GoW.

Please clarify one thing with me, what do you mean with decisions regarding your contact? I don't fully understand...

DeepO

DeepO,

Apologies for the very late response. We have been having some heated discussions on our forums about how to proceed I think we realise that we have currently very little to offer apart from a small treasury of gold consficated from the numerous barbarian camps we come across. We have decided to research Currency in order to pass the time

Incidently, have you made any decisions regarding our contact?

Redstar1

[DeepO]

Hi redstar1,

I can imagine this deal requires a bit of discussion, the same happens here. It pleases me that you are positive to it, as ar our people, with mere details to discuss.

One idea was to take the tech swap one step further, where the deal would become currency+construction for republic+polytheism (maybe some compensation needed, if there is a difference in beaker cost... I don't know the numbers by heart). We should be possible to trade for polytheism, if you're getting construction, we can both get to the middle age simultaneously.

Re: our contacts: I hope the deal between you and ND is not unrevokable: we are already in contact. Last turn, we got your contact (quite unexpectedly BTW, we were still negotiationg price) from GoW, as part of their compensation. I don't know the specifics of your deal with ND, so I don't know if you can still back out, but please don't spend money on buying baked air

You're right about Vox, though, I'll warn our ambassador that he is supposed to sell your contact to Vox, no matter how low the price would go.

Last comment on the CoL scandal: It's resolved now. Personally I don't think it was intentional, but it was unfortunate and did leave a memory behind. Knowing the specifics to how they figured it out was importantly though, as they did not tell us this, they tried to cover it up some more...

See you soon,
DeepO

DeepO,

Apologies for the late response but a few members of our team have been away and we wanted to take the oppurtunity to discuss your proposals in full.

On the contact front I had meant 'had you thought about purchasing our contact anymore?'. This is perhaps a mute point now as we have agreed a price with ND for your own contact.

As for your proposals.. we certainly feel that Currency plus a cash sum would be a fair trade for Republic. Perhaps we can start negociating a fair cash price.

We are also prepared to consider your proposal for spheres of influence regarding trade. It seems to us like a sensible and advantageous idea. As an aside to this, we would most likely be able to acquire construction in exchange for Republic, from GOW.

As regards the CoL issue, yes, we did mention that a problem had arisen but we would like to stress that GOW immediately realised their mistake and contacted you to discuss the issue. We would like to add that we consider this a sign of trustworthiness and mistakes, after all, do happen. We trust all is well?

Last point is that as we are purchasing your contact from ND, would it be possible for you to sell our own contact on to Vox? Vox will complete our diplomatic deck of cards so to speak.

Nice to talk again and hopefully we will have many fruitful discussions in the future!

Redstar1