Dimplo Scholia: - Vox Controli - comments

[Shiber]

Excellent letter, especially the quote from the book of Wisdom.
I agree with DeepO's last comment. When we're negotiating for information, we shouldn't provide Vox with an excuse to use in order to give us misinformation, or avoid the topic.

[nbarclay]

Minor revision to the paragraph regarding other, connected lands:

Second, although you have told us about the lands you call North Estonia, you sounded like there is a third part of the land mass connected to North Estonia. Our cartographers remain highly curious about that land, and as I indicated earlier (although it may have gotten lost amidst the flood of more urgent issues), it would be easier to determine what should be regarded as fair eventual borders between our peoples if we knew more about those other lands.

[DeepO]

It's difficult... I don't know how to word it better, but somehow this is still not perfect. Oh well, forget about it, if they don't answer what we want them to answer, we can always ask again later

DeepO

[zeit]

I really like the patent idea- nothing brings people together more than sharing something others can't have. This will help build trust, which is to my suprise, seems to be built, at least between Nathan and Betahound.

But the one thing that concers me right now is that roading effort by Vox, and beyond that, the race for territory. Vox might be using a maximum spacing pattern of city placement to grab whatever territory is available, if that is what they are up to with this road.

I can think of two ways they see this course of action (wide space between cities:

1) they concluded that "fairly" placing cities, making an effort to maximize the output of their cities, and so forth, just won't go, so they are taking they're shot at denying us as much territory as possible, hoping that by some miracle we fail to take advantage of our position, and by the time our economy is geared up, they have entrenched themselves in key positions and are cranking up Immortals.
2)They believe that we are tuned for economic development, and are not concerning ourselves with going for war, so they think that as long as they cooperate with us- in tech deals and so forth, we will not attack, nor complain or try to hurt their colonization effort, so they allow themsleves to disperse their cities without fear.

I know #2 is more like an explanation of #1, but i thought i should split those, because each of them means something different for us, if #1 is what drives them- then let them try it, they will find, that unfortunately, we will be ready for conflict sooner, and that they will be the ones to be caught off guard.
But, if they think we are doing what we can to avoid war- as a way of life (or "play", to be accurate), while our actions supports this kind of thinking, we should consider making our moves of warmongering more secretly, and deal with them swiftly and quickly.

I don't know what drives them, but whatever they are up to, i think now the ball is in our court (there is such expression in english, right? ), we can out pace them, and also out build them militarily. We should try to find what is that they think, that drives them to road and possibly settle a far city, relatively exposed. I would suggest an earlier war if this is what they are pulling.

[nbarclay]

If they go for a wide spacing, I'm inclined to favor a two-step approach. (1) Point out that we're using a tight build pattern and that if their citizens try to claim a lot more land per capita than ours do, it is likely to be a source of future conflict. (2) If they don't heed our warning, their looser spacing will only serve to weaken them in the short term (due to greater distance corruption) so we can stick to our "unless we trust Vox" game plan and attack sometime around the time we're finished REXing or not long after. The only real difference their land-hogging efforts would make is to make the "essentially finished REXing" point come sooner.

Nathan

[alva]

Vox's capital has dropped from the F11 screen btw, they probably build their settler(after 8 truns in size 2).

Lego jumped from nowhere to 3rd place...temple+2 luxury's?

[nbarclay]

Either Vox has a source of fresh water, or what they built was a worker rather than a settler. We'll probably find out soon; presumably, their next city will be on the bottleneck (since their worker didn't stop to road there).

Nathan

[Theseus]

With the infamous "Bull****" communique, I think that our future with Vox becomes fairly well defined.

I find it hard to believe that the Vox team approved those letters... it indicates to me that they are more or less unstable, and will not be a good long-term trading / research partner (as well as continuing to be idiots when it comes to communicating their position and weaknesses).

In the short term, however, we need to ask ourselves what we REALLY want of them, and what we are willing to risk in exchange.

I say we do whatever is necessary, up to and including completely humiliating ourselves (whatever that means), in order to get Iron Working and in-game contact with the other civ. They want to settle towns above the Spinebreakers? Fine... we'll deal with that later. Even if they settle everything above the jungle, they'll have what, 5-7 towns total? And we'll have 12-15?

Deal with them for now, and take appropriate defensive measures while we oh-so-peacefully build and expand... but as far as I'm concerned Vox just signed its own death warrant.

[Harovan]

1 - They lie, according to the beaker analysis they already had IW the turn we discovered Alphabet. We should let them know that we know this.

2 - What they do is betrayal, and we should let them know, that the other civs will be informed as soon as we make contact.

3 - We could prove not to have contact with a simple screenshot of the F4 screen (or F8). The other question is, should we do that?

4 - The speed of research could be explained by the presence of a river as well as the size of our city (which they could see all the time).

5 - Theseus is right with Vox having no future. And I also agree with his way to achieve this.

[Dominae]

Could someone clarify for me precisely what Vox is angry about? Do they think we're researching Mysticism or something and are not planning to give them Alphabet?

If Sir Ralph is right about the timing on IW, then their lies are a cause for us to get mad, for sure. But what what's their problem?


Dominae

[asleepathewheel]

So its our fault that we know how to play the game better than they? f*ck that.

Send them the histograph shot, it will be identical to theirs, except for their knowledge of the 3rd civ, correct? Blacken the citizen numbers. Everything else is public knowldege.

Send that to them.

They will feel like dumbasses then.


did that hut settler advance us that much over them?


it will be obvious when they trade is IW if they had it previously, as they will have at least one iron hooked up that we can see.




Question: If it has taken that long for them to get what should be their 1st goal in tech, what have they been doing? Hoarding cash? Building mass warriors thus requiring lots of upkeep? Researching something else? Or is their economy as ****ty as their words would indicate.

I agree with Theseus. appear to be humble, the histograph screen is proof of our truthfulness, complete proof. If they don't accept that, then well. We remember this event. We tell our children this event. someday our grandchildren shall repay them tenfold.

(what the hell is up with the hound, he seemed pretty reasonable before?)

[Dominae]

I think I get it now (sorry, long day of homework): they think we traded for Alphabet instead of researching it ourselves.

Why can we not just tell them the truth (as asleepathewheel suggested)? This proves to them that we're more powerful (a good thing), and make them feel stupid for not trusting us (another good thing).


Dominae

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dominae
If Sir Ralph is right about the timing on IW, then their lies are a cause for us to get mad, for sure. But what what's their problem?

Take my word for it. Without support of a civ knowing the tech, each research point costs actually 24 beakers. I have checked this fact by playing with the sliders for every tech possible and the results always matched. Now a six point tech like IW should cost 144 beakers, but playing with the sliders and multiplying the number of beakers per turn with the number of turns left shows, that IW costs us at most 132 beakers. To justify the price reduction, one of the civs we know must have had Iron working, when I made the test. How many civs do we know?

Quod erat demonstrandum.

[DeepO]

Very interesting diplomatic things, the ambassador in me is have a great time!

First of all, I don't consider this last message surprising at all, I can imagine that Vox is at least as worried what our motives are concerned as we are about theirs. We should make a clear message to them as to what our intentions are, and what we would allow. point per point, try to cover all the points we need answers on, and on which we're going to answer to.

Sir Ralph, some comments:
1. I don't know if this is still exact. Indeed, according to our analysis, they have IW already... but how certain are we of the method used? I thought I saw in my last PTW game that the beakers needed for a tech dropped, while I'm very certain that none of the civs I knew had the tech already.
So, why not offer them the following deal:
"Vox, our analists have come up with ways to measure the tech level of our neighbours, and we genuinely thought you had IW already, for a few turns now. Our methods were always reliable up to now, so your latest remarks on the progress of your research have raised more then a few eyebrows around here. The trust we have put in so far, after our less then ideal start is questioned again... maybe you can teach our analysists wrong, but it's doubtful.

We migth be able to teach you how to assess your neighbours general tech level, but of course such a advanced analysis technology comes at a price."

2. If they are lying, indeed this is outright betrayal. But for now, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and blame it on ignorance. But to voice my opinion: Vox can live for as long as it is good for us, but they will be the first to go.

3. Interesting idea. screenshot of the F4 is ok by me, F8 needs a bit more thinking. I would certainly go for a trade of the F8 screen, but we might come up with a deal that lets us see the relative strentgth of Civ X, while not showing their colours or name.

4. We need to do some explanation of the research pace, we don't give anything away here. River + large city, if they can't believe that, they need to play more Civ.

Further, I would stress with them to rethink our importance to them: we obviously can research a lot faster then them (speed which will only increase), so they are good to have such a partner. It is unlikely that any other partner can help them now against us, if they would double cross us.

5. Agree. As said above, Vox will only live as long as it doesn't hamper our expansion.

6. We need to teach those Voxians some strats, if we don't want to have to clean up the mess afterwards. First of all:
"we have been monitoring your progress close by (as you seem to try, reaching the wrong conclusions), and we have a question of ourselves. You say you have food-poor territory, and yet your capital grows just like a normal city does. Are you lying to us? You say you haven't got a river, but do you have a lake, or another source of fresh water nearby? Are you having food bonusses, like wine, game, cows etc?

Having a normal growth rate, while telling us you mostly have plains and hills is not really honest to us. We have given you a detailed, correct map of our surroundings, which included telling you of floodplains and a river near our capital. Of course we use that to get the most research possible, simple testing would tell you exactly how much our research capability is. We did not deceive you, but are you deceiving us?

So, a simple question, and maybe something to think about:
Do you have access to fresh water, which you will need to grow? You recent sprint South seems to indicate not. But this too, could be a deception.
If you don't have water, we might be able to deal for it, we have water, not plenty, but enough for the both of us. We maybe can bring it to you, but this will require a serious, joint commitment, and a far better relation then we have now."

7. Spacing lessons, part 1.
" Part of the reason why we are doing well, is that many of our people have mastered the art of city planning. You said you have 30 tiles in North Estonia, in our territory, 30 ground tiles are enough to provide enough for 5 cities. True, we have recently settled our 3 city, but that doesn't mean we are wasting space here. We don't want to rush for the valley above the spine breaker mountains, as it will leave both our nations less developed as they could be. So please take this advice: closer cities mean more cities. Don't waste our space by building them 4 tiles apart. We don't like that.

Having said that, it is obvious to us that you need to expand, just as much as we do. Don't worry, we are not going to settle near the isthmus soon, it would leave us with a completely corrupt, undefendable city. We are no fools... while we are not formerly acknowledging it, the grass above the jungle looks more suited for you. However, don't abuse that space: your road already reaches to 8-10 city sites, going any further at this point makes it a military road, and not a settler road. We have roads of our own, but they do not point directly at the hart of your empire."

DeepO

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
1 - They lie, according to the beaker analysis they already had IW the turn we discovered Alphabet. We should let them know that we know this.

Question:

Does the tech cheapen when a civ we haven't met discovers it?

I cant remember how it worked.