The REAL Turn 42

[Theseus]

Originally posted by nbarclay
In the meantime, we need to get Iron Working now so we can move on with our research into Writing without compromising our ability to defend ourselves.

I'm not in love with this sentence... it could be construed as exhibiting weakness.

[nbarclay]

Changed to "so we can move on with our research into Writing without undercutting our ability to maintian parity in defensive technologies." Does that sound better?

[Harovan]

Yes, go ahead, send it.

[nbarclay]

Message sent.

[DeepO]

okay on the messages, but we really need to discuss this 3-partner relation... and I can tell you now I have great reluctance to accepting Vox as a long term partner. Even if Betahound is maybe most of the cause of the problems, this attitude won't change over night.

What I do like is giving them our word to discuss this, maenwhile getting what we want now. At least Jon Miller seems to understand what partnering with a good team can give him.

Other points: who are Civ X, if they go for IW immediately? How many teams do they now? If ND, RPG and the legos are going to work together, blocking us out of the game, this can only be GoW or Lux... doesn't partnering with the 3 teams will be better in the long term?
If we can be honorable, and only accept any responsibilities for the 3-tech deal, and nothing final after that (leaving us plenty of time to prepare to attack Vox), okay, I agree. But everyone agrees that Vox has to go once we need space to expand to, so don't accept any deals that will bind us to them for a longer time then needed to prepare for war.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Shouldn't our guy on the east coast (I forget his name) take the mountain?

[Shiber]

That's Vox's lookout spot. AFAIK they left it temporarily to chase the barbarian hut. I don't think they'll take kindly to us taking it behind their backs.

[nbarclay]

I just updated the turn information at the top to reflect the current status of negotiations with Vox.

[nbarclay]

Just in case anyone misses it in the other thread, we have a chat scheduled with Vox for 8:00 pm Monday Apolyton (U.S. Eastern) time for whoever from both teams can show up. The plan is to meet in the Vox chatroom on Apolyton.

Nathan

[notyoueither]

I favour a fully open tech alliance with Vox. There may not be many other ways to climb out of the hole we are already in.

Contacts should be part of that though. After all, contacts mean faster research for both of us.

Yes, Vox will get more than us. However, there will be no other way to make Vox comfortable in the short to mid term. If they feel they can not keep up in tech, they will have no reason not to attack in an effort to improve their position. If we can tame them, they will chip in 1 tech to our 2, or 2 to our 3. In short, they improve our research by 50% or 60%, or we consume ourselves in early warfare and fall hopelessly and irrevocably behind the 'mainland'.

[Harovan]

Yes, such an alliance makes sense. I'm not against a buffer state between us and Lux, at the countrary, and we should do our best to make this state our vassal instead of leaving this to Lux. So my thumbs up for the tech alliance. However, we should leak to Vox, that our Mystics can determine, whether Vox has a tech or not.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Yes, such an alliance makes sense. I'm not against a buffer state between us and Lux, at the countrary, and we should do our best to make this state our vassal instead of leaving this to Lux. So my thumbs up for the tech alliance. However, we should leak to Vox, that our Mystics can determine, whether Vox has a tech or not.

We've already given them a rather clear demonstration of that capability in connection with BetaHound's misstatement.

[zeit]

I didn't get it all- did Vox agree to trade alpahbet for IW?

They seem to play with words, and imply that their words cannot be taken seriously (like a child that promises to take his medicine for a candy, takes the candy and than says he wants another one for the shot). In short, they said they found a better deal than what was agreed upon and we should understand that.

Indeed, an unstable and untrustwhorthy neighbor.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by zeit
I didn't get it all- did Vox agree to trade alpahbet for IW?

They seem to play with words, and imply that their words cannot be taken seriously (like a child that promises to take his medicine for a candy, takes the candy and than says he wants another one for the shot). In short, they said they found a better deal than what was agreed upon and we should understand that.

Indeed, an unstable and untrustwhorthy neighbor.

I agree that this event is not a good sign in terms of our being able to trust Vox. On the other hand, the agreement was predicated on the idea of each side contributing things of equal value to the exchange. When Vox got another offer from Lux (or however it happened) the value of Alphabet suddenly went down dramatically. Suddenly, the deal went from something equal to something that would clearly favor us.

Suppose your hypothetical child made the candy-for-taking-medicine deal and then someone else came along and offered the child all the candy he wanted without having to take medicine. Would that not make the child's changing his mind, if not fully justified, then at least a lot easier to understand? Would the child not be at least a little bit justified feeling cheated in being held to the original deal when the situation changed so dramatically?

Now consider that what's at stake for Vox right now is nothing less than a matter of life and death for their civ. Without some kind of firm commitment to peace and partnership from us, they have to be afraid that we'll leave them in the dust tech-wise and quite possibly take them out. It's a serious miscalculation on their part to think that a tech or two is more useful for their survival than building trust is, but for players used to SP, it's also an understandable miscalculation.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

By the way, it's not just us Vox is concerned about either. They're also concerned about keeping up with the rest of the world, and given that they're already falling behind, they need to get everything they can out of us if they want to keep up. And while building trust with us helps them persuade us that they don't have to die, it doesn't exactly do a lot for their ability to keep up with anyone else.