Dimplomatic Scholia: Ambassador's Office - Vox Controli

[nbarclay]

From Beta regarding peace negotiations:

Hi nathan- sorry about the dealy. I presumed Eli was dealing with you guys, and he just wrote me this morning to ask me to do it.

The deal is generally OK. There were one or two clauses that raised eyebrows, but nothing I don't think we can get past.

As to moves - I have pulled the two Elite Immortals out of the south. They are in a galley in Harry's Hideout. The few northen units are in Wittlich. The southern units you can see.

HarryH had a great idea for getting the units out of the south. The galley will take awhile to ferry all the units- and we would rather load him up now and send him on his way.

Harry suggetsed loading them into Dissidentville, and then we gift you the city - which would teleport them to The Voice. And then we would move them outside the city. Any thoughts on this one?

And as it looks like I will still be the one making the moves - and I have never had to dismantle a civilization before - whi can I discuss with as to the optimum way to do it.

It is good to be on 'civilized' terms again.

Will get back to you with our response on the peace plan after work today. Gotta go now.

Regards ... Beta.

[nbarclay]

Here's Vox's response to our peace proposal. It looks like they're accepting everything but our no-embargo provision, which they would be willing to give at least lip service to if we would absolutely force them on it.

(part 1 of 2) (part two follows on the back of a wounded Immortal).

Nathan - Vox's response:

Greetings People of Vox Controli,

Greetings.

1. Vox will have up to 18 turns, or until workers and settlers equaling its current population (with settlers counting as two pop points), whichever comes first, to evacuate. During that time, only workers and settlers will be produced unless Gathering Storm grants an exception for some special purpose. (This addresses both your fear of not having time to get enough out and our belief that it should be possible.),

Agreed.

3. When leaving, Vox promises not to raze any of it's worked tiles or remaining cities. (This includes abandoning cities by building settlers without GS's consent.) Vox also agrees not to sell any city improvements other than barracks and cultural improvements. (We don't want to spend huge amounts of gold or shields replacing improvements you can get just a handful of pocket change for selling.),

Agreed

4. Vox will not allow any landings of forces other than GS on it's territory during the evacuation period. Any such forces already there will be asked to leave. (The original version referred to "hostile" forces, leaving an at least theoretically interesting loophole regarding forces claiming not to be hostile.),

Agreed. (and there are no foreign forces on our soil now.)

8. Up to 2 GS War Chariots may patrol Voxian territory during the evacuation. GS and Vox will attempt to minimize interference between GS's patrols and Vox's unit movements. Aside from warriors needed as MPs to address happiness problems, Vox will keep its units outside its cities to avoid ambiguities in verifying numbers and types of troops. (Verification would be worthless in a city showing a veteran pike, and not worth much more in a city showing a veteran spear or veteran or elite immortal. Also, concern about freedom of movement runs in both directions.),

Agreed.

And some additional provisions:

11. Vox will not use pop rushing in any city without GS's approval. (Assuming you want to evacuate as much population as possible, pop rushing will not be in your best interest anyhow, and we prefer not to inherit unhappiness from additional pop rushing.),

Agreed.

12. Vox will give Gathering Storm Engineering when research on that is completed. (Were it not for your attack on us and all the gold we had to spend rushing troops to defend ourselves in the early stages, we would almost certainly have researched it ourselves long ago. We would therefore consider it grossly unfair for you to try to charge us for it, nor would your simply refusing to provide it to us at all remedy the problem. Receiving Engineering from you would also help make up for the huge loss we took on Feudalism, a loss which we believe to have been caused in part by other civs' reluctance to make deals that would provide us with gold to fight you with. We therefore regard getting Engineering from you as a matter of simple justice.),

Agreed.

13. If applicable, Vox will sell or trade its free industrial and modern techs to Gathering Storm on terms at least as favorable as those on which it provides them to any other nation. This includes giving Gathering Storm an equal opportunity to pay with techs or other commodities rather than gold. Commitments required in return for land in your new home will not count in this regard, however. (This protects against your making excessive demands for thoe techs as a way to exact revenge, just in case you might consider such a thing, while providing you with reasonable compensation. It is my hope, however, that our teams will be on good enough terms to make this provision mostly superfluous.),

Agreed.

Part 2:

Part 2 of 2. (sorry for the blood in the hallway..)

14. Vox will at no time now or in the future initiate, participate in, or encourage any embargo against GS in any matters of trade whatsoever. This includes, but is not limited to, Technology, Luxuries, Resources, Maps, or any other material or immaterial elements of the PTWDG. It applies both to formal embargos and informal arrangements or understandings that would tend to have a similar effect. (Again, I hope we're just being paranoid.),

Do not agree.

As Eli stated - "Would you have agreed to a term that obliges you to not wage war against, for example, RP "at no time now or in the future"?
We dont plan any embargoes and you don't plan wars with RP, but it may happen and it's not an option we want to block."

My comment would be " This is going to be a long game. We very much plan on laying low for quite sometime, but this is something that could be pulled out in 2000 years or so and referenced as a form of Voxian treachery. By then we will have had to earn each others trust and friendship over the intervening years - and that will be worth more than a 2000 year old treaty. If you see my point. I also see the recent 'thawing' of relations going a long way to making this clause less relevant."

If this is a make-it-or-break-it clause - we will agree, but the commentary above still applies. Trust will be more important than a treaty.

15. If any former Voxian city transferred to GS attempts to flip back to Vox, Vox will reject the city when asked. Should a mistake be made in handling that, or if some quirk of MP prevents you from having an opportunity to reject the flip, Vox will immediately gift the city back to GS. (The purpose of this one is obvious. ),

Agreed.

16. The city of Dissidentville will be an exception to the 18-turn evacuation period. Vox will either hand over or abandon Dissidentville (in the latter case, probably by disbanding with a settler sped up by disbanding units), at GS's choice, within the next seven turns. Should this provision undercut Vox's ability to evacuate population equivalent to its current population within 18 turns, GS will grant a suitable extension to compensate. (Dissidentville adds very little to your production capacity, and it's close enough to our core that we'd rather get a city there going sooner.),

Agreed. Please see my earlier PM regarding the movement of units from Dissdientville to The Voice.

17. It is understood by both sides that the spirit of this agreement that is important, not just its letter. Neither side will attempt to use technicalities to take unfair advantage of the other or to circumvent the intent of the agreement. (Self-evident, I hope.),

Agreed.

As I am editing Eli's post here - I presume the other clauses were already agreed to or were non-contentious to start with.

Let me know if this is acceptable. Or do we need to work on the wording for clause 14. We can chat if necessary.

And my post of earlier today explained our moves. We would like to move more units to Dissidentville for the proposed move - but we do not want it mistaken for an offensive action.

.... Beta of Vox.

[Theseus]

Holy...

I continue to appreciate what we are learning here in the context of what we all see in worldwide diplo negotiations.

Damn, I don't understand Amy.

Tremendously well done.

The trip may have been arduous, but I think our diplo is going prety well.

[alva]

Do not agree.

As Eli stated - "Would you have agreed to a term that obliges you to not wage war against, for example, RP "at no time now or in the future"?

How about we build in a clause that's let's them buy there way out of it?

[nbarclay]

Message from Beta and my response. (And by the way, discussions really belong in the discussion thread rather than this one.)

Hi Nathan. It has been awhile. Are there issues? Anything you need from us. Please advise. Thanks.. Beta. (somewhat nervous...)

Sorry we're taking so long. I posted your response pretty quickly when I got it, but there really hasn't been much said and I've been busy enough and/or tired enough that I haven't been pushing to coordinate an official response from us (nor has anyone else stepped up and tried to). I think it's pretty safe to consider no news as good news, since even the Stormhawk Party isn't actively lobbying against peace anymore. Our team's other discussions seem to assume that there will be peace and only the last little detail or two needs to be worked out.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Message to Vox:

(Copies to Beta, Eli, and Jon)

Greetings People of Vox Controli,

Gathering Storm has decided that removing the no-embargo provision from the treaty in the interest of goodwill between our nations is acceptable to us, and has officially ratified the peace treaty as thus amended (with the subsequent provisions renumbered accordingly). Good luck in your evacuation and in your new homes. Please let us know if you would like our help in planning the evacuation.

Sincerely,

The People of Gatheing Storm
Nathan Barclay, Chief Economist

[nbarclay]

From Beta:

Hello Nathan.

Greetings to the People of Gathering Storm.

With the deal being acceptable to both, we are at peace. Again, as stated in public, Vox appreciates the position taken by GS as both noble and generous.

Now for a few details - pulllllease take the catapults. As the population decreases, our revenue falls and we could do with less units. We have started liquidating some units in the north. A numbeof workers and settlers are already produced. Things are winding down nicely.

We had to move two warriors into D'ville for disorder control. I will be cashing one in next turn to speed up the worker production there. And I may need to move a spear in. All other southern units will remain north of the city. We expect to be finished in D'ville in 5 turns - at which point - we will move all our units into the city and gift it to you. The units will be moved out of the capitol the next turn.

After taking the catapults - we will settle on peace again. And then we wil grant a ROP agreement so your WC's can traverse North Estonia more easily.

I'm sure there will be more details to work on - so this may be a Vox Daily Peace Report.

Any questions - let us know.

Reagrds ..... Beta

[nbarclay]

A couple messages from Beta yesterday that I hadn't gotten around to posting yet, and one today:

First message:

Hi nathan. One thing we have yet to discuss or confirm is the Voxian city inventory. Here are the details.

The Voice - palace, temple, granary, barracks
Miller Town - temple, barracks
Wittlich City - harbor, barracks
Dissidentville - barracks
Beta-by-the-Sea - nil
Harry's Hideout - nil
Elipolis - er - that's yours now.

So as per the peace treaty, we have or will cash in our barracks and temples. The granary and harbor will be left untouched.

As the turn seems to have gotten hung up with GoW, obviously nothing new to report from a moves perspective. So - I have some time to go work on another limerick.

Cheers ...Beta.

[nbarclay]

Hi Nathan. We have been doing some planning on the wrap-up. And we have an alternate plan that would see us out of Estonia/Stormia considerably sooner. It would save anywhere from 6 to 10 turns off the 18 (now17) turn schedule.

Essentially, we will run all our cities down to pop 1 through builds - no pop rushing as agreed to.

Note - to do this we would need to pull all our southern units north this turn. This would be done by moving them all into D'ville and gifting it to you. We still need 5 turns of food growth to get to size 2 to build a worker, so it hardly seems worth the wait. Having the units in the north allows us to cash in the Immortals and warriors to speed up the worker and settler production in the north - and save us some upkeep costs to boot.

Ok - back up north - all the cities would be size one. We would gift Miller town to you. We need to do this as it has culture built up and will prevent the palace flip to the new capitol.

We then disband The Voice - which will result in a palace move to the size 2 city on Legos Minor.

We then move some of our units into one of the remaining cities - and gift it to you. Say two turns after that, the next group moves into a remaining city. And then the third group. We are trying to manage the per turn deficit we will be incurring, and keep a small base of cities for income. A gradual approach as oppoesed to a "big bang".

So - in exchange for leaving early, and gifting Dissidentville this turn- (i) you would lose The Voice and its granary, as required per the agreement. We suspect it is not where you want the city anyway. We would have preferred our capitol to be Miller Town.

and (ii) we are asking for some gold, if it is not too bold of us to do so. No lump sums - that would not make sense. But a very modest gpt allowance for 20 turns - to cover the period from when we start going into the red - (which is very soon) and our redevlopment on Legos Minor.

Can you let us know if you are on-side or if you have other ideas which may work and accomplish the same thing. (and as I write this - I am not sure why we don't do a plan where you take the cities in cascading fashion - including the Voice. We are brainstorming on this as we go, so if you have other ideas, please let us know.)

But if we did come up with a plan to get us out sooner, we would appreciate it if you consider helping with the funding as per ii) above. Thanks. Looking to hear from you.

...Beta.

[nbarclay]

Hello Nathan.

We have just played 230bc and sent it on.

Thanks for taking the catapults.

Even prior to hearing back from you, we have opted for the early abondonment of D'ville - some 5 or 6 turns ahead of schedule. We have moved all our southern units into the town. None are fortified.

We have offered and accepted a peace treaty, a RoP agreement, and Dissidentville. When you accept - all our units will be transported to The Voice.

We have cashed in some more units up north. There are only 3 military units left in the north. Two spearmen in Wittlich City (we need them for happiness control - but as the pop drops - they will move out.) One Immortal is on a hill next to W.C. All the other cities are open. The Voice has workers in it.

When the units are transported north - we will be moving quickly to cash in the remaining offensive units. If your WC's can make sure they do not block the two tile road movement to Miller Town from the Voice, it would be appreciated. (let's us move and disband units all in one move)

All other units will move to a spot outside the city and remain unfortfied until Voxodus day arrives.

We have one galley - with no passengers - coming up over North Estonia. It was the one trapped on the east coast when Elipolis was taken. It will not be embarking any units - but simply moving on its way.

Now - we expect we can wrap things up quite early. Well ahead of the 18 turn schedule. Which would be a plus to you, along with the D'ville early transfer.

So at the risk of being a pain in the butt - I bring up the question of a cash "allowance" to carry us over the next 20 turns. I know this must be extremely difficult for some on GS to stomach - but 2we are on a new path. We are being co-operative. And we are offering a large 10 or so turn benefit to you. Again - I appreciate that you could just move in and take what you wanted, but we are trying to make this work best for all.

Vox is keen on getting out as early as possible - although my seaside villa in Beta-by-the-Sea will be sorely missed (but you are not getting my favorite rattan chair - it is already packed and set to go.). And I expect some of the sentiment on the GS side is the earlier the better. So - the cash would really help it work from our end.

As to The Voice - I think there has to be a plan that keeps it in place for you. Maybe we should set a chat date and discuss logistics. We will make absolutely no moves to disband it until we have discussed it in full.

Regards - all the best - Beta.

[Octavian X]

We decided to reject peace due to happiness concerns, as I recall.

As to the cash, I'm not sure to our financial situation, but I would support such a donation.

[Theseus]

Does anyone else feel like MacArthur?

Jesus...

Yeah, fine let's give'em something, just for exposing the Vox neck so.

(On the other hand, I've got to imagine that there is some seething resentment in Vox somewhere...something to keep in mind)

[nbarclay]

I sent the following to Beta regarding the Dissidentville situation:

I'm afraid we're going to have to wait until next turn to accept Dissidentville. The Stormhawks have managed to fan the fires of war into a morale boost that helps us in a battle I'm afraid we can never have peace from - the battle against unhappiness. We're afraid that if we sigh a peace treaty without adequate preparation, we'll have riots. I've boosted the luxury slider to compensate for the loss of the "negative war weariness" factor, and we should be able to accept Dissidentville in our next turn with no problem. Sorry about the delay.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

A couple messages from Beta in the last couple days:

Hello Nathan. How's things?

Enjoy Dissidentville. Be kind to the folks there. I am posting a People's History in SPIN shortly.

As to the turn - we cashed in more Immortals last turn. I have moved ALL units to the hill outside Wittlich City where you can view them. There are no units left in any of the cities. We are still on a fast track to exodus.

Any response on a monetary incentive to us clearing out quicker? Cash flow is getting poor.

Have a good one ... Beta.

btw - started my first AU game the other night. AU402. I got the Greeks on the mostly desert island with lots of barbarians. Hate to see how far ahead the other civs are when I finally meet them.

[nbarclay]

Hi Nathan.

We are getting down to the final stages of planning at our end. And we need two answers from GS.

First - The Voice. Do you want to capture it, or do you want us to abandon it?

The plan currently in the works would see us gift you Miller Town before something is done with The Voice. (Miller Town has culture built up, and will prevent a palace jump, AFAIK). The Voice is either captured or abandoned. The capitol jumps to Legos Minor.

On the next turn after that - we will move our units into one of the three remaining cities - and gift it to you. We would then gift the other two cities a few turns after that. We are thinking of minimizing the cash flow loss we are currently experiencing.

One of the issues here, is that if you take The Voice - you will have to declare war. Does this cause you problems. If we abandon the Voice - we can do this all through peaceful means. It is up to you.

Also - we will have to wait one turn to declare peace again.

And the second - any thoughts yet on our proposal of an early exodus in exchange for a nominal cash flow allowance to help us through the resettlement period. An early wind-up will require cashing in more military units than planned - hence our proposal. As we have yet to put a number on the table yet - how about we suggest 6 gpt for 20 turns. That is 120 gold in exchange for us clearing out some 8-10 turns earlier.

Please let us know. We have some 'disbanding' decisions to make next turn.

Many thanks ... Beta.