Dimplo Scholia: - Vox Controli - comments

[Harovan]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Does the tech cheapen when a civ we haven't met discovers it?

No.

[nbarclay]

Do we want to play dumb regarding their apparent deception, then, rather than calling them on it?

Remember that when we first met Vox, they already had Ceremonial Burial. Suppose they researched that themselves, and then Pottery, before starting on Iron Working. If it weren't for the fact that Iron Working costs less than it should for us to research, I would regard that as a valid explanation. (Of course assuming they're lying, that may be what they hope we believe to make the lie sound plausible.)

One thing I don't want to do at this point is start on Writing until Iron Working is firmly in hand. With how untrustworthy Vox seems to be, there is a non-trivial risk that the deal won't go through, in which case we need to research Iron Working ASAP and gold for upgrades might come in very handy. After all, if they're untrustworthy on other matters, why should we believe a word about their desire for peace?

Nathan

[Harovan]

Originally posted by DeepO
3. Interesting idea. screenshot of the F4 is ok by me, F8 needs a bit more thinking.

I don't see why, they have exactly the same information in their F8-screen. Theirs is even more informative, because it shows the extra civ they met. The score screen displays nothing than a graph of the score numbers, accessible for everyone every turn. I wouldn't know why I should pay a price for it.

[asleepathewheel]

Personally I think that the next two turns makes or breaks the game for Vox. And even if they do trade, I highly doubt any future trades with them, since we can outresearch them considerably and due to their duplicitous nature.

So

Does an undeclared state of war now exist between vox and gathering storm?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by DeepO
7. Spacing lessons, part 1.
True, we have recently settled our 3 city,

I would avoid telling them of our third city......

[DeepO]

Why not squarely tell them we know, or are very certain to know? I believe them to be deceiving us, but you're never 100% sure... Why not simply tell them we suspect more things are going on, it might make them think twice the next time they feel like lying to us.

Research: you have a point... but either this is great acting from betahound, or they do not want to doublecross us, maybe only slightly delay us.
Maybe waiting on turn, cashing in more upgrade money isn't bad, although if we get the camp, we'll have more money then we immediately need, and I think we should focus on what we obviously are good in: research.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

And just to emphasize the point regarding tech costs and research, China starts the game with Warrior Code, so we know at least one civ we haven't met has that - probably more due to tech trading. Yet the research cost for Warrior Code is right where it should be if no one's discovereed it. Unless there's some mechanic involved that no one has yet discovered (such as tech getting cheaper just from someone else's being farther along reasearching it than you are even though they haven't discovered it yet), the cost of Iron Working is the only one that doesn't fit. (By the way, I doublechecked Sir Ralph's figures just to be absolutely certain.)

[asleepathewheel]

I think its a good idea to tell them our suspicions and why we think what we do. Of course, we can be much more tactful than they, that letter was apparently typed by a small boy.

Tell them that they are offbase with their accusations of another contact, prove it by the histograph. This is irrefutable evidence, as the movements in the graph should be roughly similar to theirs, although slightly different due tot the third civ.

fire back that we have concerns about their truthfulness and why.


(maybe they are throwing this out as a smokescreen, perhaps they were hoping to get another two turns in for their warmachine) (as long as we can see 3 warriors, that means three warriors not upgradeable)

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I don't see why, they have exactly the same information in their F8-screen. Theirs is even more informative, because it shows the extra civ they met. The score screen displays nothing than a graph of the score numbers, accessible for everyone every turn. I wouldn't know why I should pay a price for it.

Sir Ralph, you miss my point. Sorry about not being too clear about it, I type as I think... not always very good for nice explanations

I don't want to pay any price for it, a simple trade should be enough. No extra cash, if they want to know our situation, they need to pay (in the form of information of Civ X, but we don't tell that).

What I want to avoid is having them tell us that they can't do it, because they don't want to reveil Civ X. Fine, so cover it. paintbrush their F8, giving the civ a neutral color (white), remove their names and anything else leading to them, and trade that F8 with ours. We know a lot more, and they can trust us.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I would avoid telling them of our third city......

Why? If they can't see that, they're morons. I'm sure most other teams suspect it... we have been topping the F11 screen for a while now.
[edit: meaning they see the drops in capital size too, and the increases in power. they can't seriously believe we outnumber them in troops 2:1]

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by DeepO

Why? If they can't see that, they're morons. I'm sure most other teams suspect it... we have been topping the F11 screen for a while now.

DeepO

I see.

I still would avoid telling them our exact strength. Maybe they think we have more than 3 cities?

[nbarclay]

Here's what I have so far of my draft response. I'll let you go ahead and look over what I've done so far while I work on finisihing it.

Greetings BetaHound and Vox Controli,

On the subject of cows and bulls (and what comes from them), our analysts find it almost impossible to believe that you do not already have Iron Working. According to their analysis (and this was originally conducted the turn before the last one we took, although I have since confirmed the figures personally), Iron Working should cost us twice as much to research as Warrior Code if no nation we know has either. Similarly, Writing should require one third more research than Iron Working. Since you are our only in-game contact at present (your suspicions notwithstanding), our analysts say that only your having researched a technology should create a deviation between anticipated and actual research costs.

With every other technology we can consider researching, costs (as best we can pin them down) follow a consistent pattern. But the cost of Iron Working is lower than it ought to be if you have not yet researched it, and at the rate we can research Iron Working, we ought to be able to research Writing one turn faster than we can – unless the contact situation makes Iron Working cheaper relative to its theoretical cost. If you are telling the truth, there is some great mystery here by which the assumptions our analysts base their work on is invalid. But I hope you can see why we would be extremely skeptical regarding your claims of not yet having discovered Iron Working. Either you are lying to us, or our understanding of the world we live in is seriously flawed.

Regarding our own research rate, if you have been watching the Roster of Great Cities, I’m sure you have seen that Eye of the Storm has been consistently at least size 3 and often size 4 on the International City Size Scale for quite some time. Eye of the Storm has not worked land producing less than two commerce in centuries, and Hurricane has sometimes had access to two commerce and sometimes just one depending on priorities of the moment. Add to that the commerce from the city sites themselves (with capitals inherently being especially wealthy) and you can see for yourself that our research rate, although quite rapid, is not impossible. (And I should note that at Sir Ralph’s insistence, we had already started researching Alphabet based on your conditional acceptance of the trade proposal before you sent your final acceptance, leaving us a turn ahead of where we would have been had more cautious policies prevailed.)

Next, in regard to your claim that Bronze Working was worth more to us than The Wheel was to you, the fact that we would have researched Bronze and then Iron ourselves had you not agreed to the deal renders such short-term comparisons irrelevant. On that path, we would have had Bronze Working in plenty of time to build any spearmen we might want, and would be getting Iron Working through our own research about the same time we will get it from you assuming you keep your word. So the true benefits of the exchange are in terms of long-term prosperity, not short-term military advantage, and on that basis, the agreement was clearly in your favor. We, unlike you, sacrificed a turn’s research to make the deal work. Further, based on what you have indicated about your own research rate, a trade at equal value saves you significantly more research time than it does us compared with each doing the research ourselves. And that is not even considering the risk on our side and (I assume) hope on yours that you might be able to exchange The Wheel and/or Alphabet for gold and/or additional knowledge. (We never requested a patent on either of those technologies and, in fact, explicitly acknowledged your right to trade them when we proposed the trade agreement. The patent concept is strictly in connection with trades involving Writing and beyond.)

[DeepO]

no... I wouldn't tell them we are 5 turns away from our 4 fourth city, though, but our exact strength does not come from our 3 cities, but from the foresting we did in between, and they have no way of knowing that.

BTW, I just thought of something: for the past few turns, we have been dropping in size in our capital, which could also be explained as poprushing... maybe the other teams are not so sure about our real strength after all... but no harm in telling Vox we have 3 cities, otherwise the power graph would think we have a huge army running around.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Nathan, so far, so good. It's diplomatically precise, let's hope they understand this, and don't need a "learn to speak diplomatically in 21 days" course accompanying it. Then again, they may need it anyhow

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

I agree it is good.

What about the f8 screen with citizens blacked out. yay or nay? I say yay. doesnt cost us anything and doesn't reveal anything they don't already know.