Turn 51, 1750BC

[nbarclay]

Right. Decline it and I'll send the note.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Dominae

You'll have to explain to me your logic on this one. Making decisions "as if" something is ratified is sometimes inexcusable. If the U.S. bombs Iraq, can they say they're just behaving "as if" they had U.N. approval? Similarly, founding a city "as if" a border treaty had been ratified is not an acceptable course of action, given that the treaty may have been altered.

Look at why there would be a problem in your example above. To whatever extent actions rely on an assumption for their validity, if that assumption does not hold, the actions lose legitimacy.

Nothing in Vox's choice of locations for Dissidentville could possibly be construed as illegitimate had we decided, "No, we don't want a border treaty." We could have gone to war over it, but our doing so would have been due to greed on our part, not to any objective violation on theirs.

If you want to complain about their planting a city in a location where if we wanted a border treaty, we would have to accept its location as an established fact, fine. I'm a bit miffed over that myself when they knew (or should have known) that we had serious objections to that location. But that's an entirely separate issue from the "as if" issue. Indeed, it is only the fact that we did decide to go for a border treaty that made the city's effect on defining exact borders such a pain.

Nathan

[Harovan]

Re: Turn 51, 1750BC

- EotS juggles tiles to complete a warrior next turn with minimal shield waste.

Unable to do this. The warrior is already completed this turn. 3 turns to go till we grow. What shall I do, set it at 3 food surplus, 3 shields, or 4 food, 1 shield. Starting to build warrior, we'll have to switch next turn.

EotS is at size 2 with full granary.

[Harovan]

Team Scores:

88 (+1) Gathering Storm
98 (+2) Demogyptica
76 (+1) Glory of War
95 (+2) Role Play
73 (+1) Vox Controli
71 (+1) Lux Invicta
109 (+3) Legoland

Oh, and what to do with the new warrior in EotS?

And what to do with Zonk (S of Cyclone), follow the worker?

[nbarclay]

This is going to be a bit tricky. I suspect that we'll get the shields for a worker before we get the food, unless we court disease by working FPs more than necessary, so let's go ahead and start on another warrior just in case. I'm thinking work two FPs this turn and 1 FP and one fur the following two. If the extra laborer when we hit size 3 lands on a FP, we'll be on track to build a worker the moment we hit size 4 (thereby dropping us back to size 3). If he lands on a fur, we'll hit 10 shields before we're ready to build our worker, so we can either waste shields (maybe switching to a spearman until we're ready to get our worker) or build an additional warrior and delay our first worker or two just a little. (Note that size is our long-term limiting factor on cranking out workers quickly, so only the start of our chain of workers would be affected, not the end.) By the way, the reason for starting something other than a worker right now is to make absolutely sure that if we forget, we won't end up building one before we're ready.

Nathan

[nbarclay]

Having Zonk follow the worker makes sense. How about if we have the new warrior reinforce Gold Hill since that general area is probably the most likely one for barbarians?

Nathan

[Harovan]

Ok, turn is played. I moved the new warrior towards the new city and Zonk on the worker. I am a bit worried, we have a couple of unspotted tiles in the south too, there may show up barbarians too, even horsemen. We can't afford to lose a worker due to a bad RNG roll. Although this is Chieftain, I keep to forget...

I named the city Tempest, because now I remember this was the first proposal. We should discuss new city names earlier in the future, the turn thread is not the right place for this.

[nbarclay]

When you found the Gold Hill city, check what our estimated completion time to Alphabet is. It should be a fairly exact figure.

[Shiber]

I agree. After the founding of Gold City, the ETA for Writing will be accurate or one turn off.

Btw, next city site to settle? I suppose we'll be going for another wheat city, no?

[nbarclay]

Site #4 (east coast, by a wheat near Cyclone) is definitely our next target. But it will be quite a while before we're ready to build another city.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by nbarclay
When you found the Gold Hill city, check what our estimated completion time to Alphabet is. It should be a fairly exact figure.

You mean Writing, and it's 3 turns.

[nbarclay]

Thanks, Sir Ralph.

I'm inclined to suggest that we ask Vox to wait for Writing to turn their research back on, and in the meantime, we can do some more thinking and maybe some discussing with other teams to see what combination of research paths for us and Vox makes sense.

[nbarclay]

Draft message to Vox:

Greetings BetaHound, Jon, and People of Vox Controli,

While trying to address the trade situation, we of Gathering Storm realized that no formal agreement has ever been drawn up regarding our tech sharing arrangement. We have a general understanding to share all techs our two teams obtain at least for the time being, but that leaves room for possible misunderstandings later on. Of particular concern was making sure you do not view this as a game-long commitment on our part, since we prefer to maintain some flexibility as game conditions change. (After all, there could be more than 3500 years to go before this ends.)

Rather than risk the possibility that our teams might be working from different understandings of what has been agreed to, we've decided to defer accepting your tech offer for the moment while we try to clarify the agreement. Sir Ralph and I submitted the following proposal for ratification, and the vote thus far has come back strongly in support.

(1) Gathering Storm and Vox Controli hereby formally agree to give each other all technologies discovered, through whatever means, for the duration of this agreement.

(2) This agreement may be cancelled by either team under the following conditions. (a) The team wishing to cancel the agreement must provide a minimum of ten turns' notice. (b) Both sides, and especially the side initiating cancellation, are required to act in good faith to ensure that the treaty will be ended (or transitioned to some other arrangement) in a way that is equitable to both. Both agree not to manipulate the timing of tech discovery, tech trades with other parties, the ending of the deal itself, or any other factor in such a way as to obtain an unfair advantage over the other.

If this is acceptable to you, please re-offer the techs you offered this turn and we can pick up from there. We're expecting Writing in three turns, and can forward it to you then. (It would probably be better if you don't include Horseback Riding just yet, given the confusion that surrounded your getting it and the fact that our need for it is not urgent.) If this is too far from what you had in mind for you to consider it acceptable, we'll need to try to iron out the differences in what our teams had in mind.

In regard to what you should research next, I hate to suggest it knowing first-hand the pain of delaying research, but how about if you wait until we get you Writing? That will give both teams a bit more time to think about our research options, and perhaps even coordinate our research with one or two other teams.

Sincerely,

The People of Gathering Storm
Nathan Barclay, Chief Economist

Does this look okay?

[Dominae]

Originally posted by nbarclay
If you want to complain about their planting a city in a location where if we wanted a border treaty, we would have to accept its location as an established fact, fine. I'm a bit miffed over that myself when they knew (or should have known) that we had serious objections to that location.

This is exactly my point, which makes me wonder what we're disagreeing about. If you've got good reasons to take Vox's side on this issue other than you want a trading partner, I would like to hear them. For my part, I simply cannot understand how Vox's actions on this issue could be excused.

1. We attempt to negotiate a border treaty, in order to peacefully divvy up the land.

2. During these negotiations, they rush in and grab the best site.

Whether or not that site was "on the table" at some point is irrelevant. Here's the most likely scenario:

Voxian #1: The border treaty negotiations are almost complete: is our road to that prime site ready and a Settler on its way?

Voxian #2: Yes. This is excellent! We've got Gathering Storm off our backs for now, and managed to grab a nice city right from under them!

Voxian #1: Good thing we got it up before the negotations were finished, ha ha ha!

Voxian #2: Ha ha ha!

But we seem to agreeing on this. The reason I'm pushing the issue is that no one apart from me seems to care that Vox is a horrible neighbour.


Dominae

[notyoueither]

I don't think it is wise to try to plan too far in the future or with too much intricacy regarding exact tech trades. Too much can change or go wrong.

Why not set them on Mathematics? It is likely a less tred path.