DIPLO: GoW comments

[zeit]

Offer them the techs this turn- it will take another turn, which will be another 48 hours from now, more or less. By that time, we can work this out with GoW, i am sure, as HotE said they will make that deal if indeed it turns to be that GF sent their agreement. I'll edit the appropriate post in the turn thread.

[DeepO]

Zeit, two minor comments to what you send HotE: first of all, if they agreed to follow the initial, GF deal, there was no need to bring the no-whoring deal to the front again. It would have been easier on us if you didn't mention it. But, no problem, we can work with it, but in this case, the 'official' proposal should have been more detailed: the 10 turns, are they for both our techs, or per tech? I think most, if not all comments in this thread have been that it was rather unfair of leaving them 10 turns on MM, when possibly the NDA on CoL would have ended before that. I'd rather follow Nathan's initial proposal of 15 turns on CoL, 10 turns on MM, or which ever ended first.

Second comment: please include that they are required to give MM the moment they discover it.

situation report: not thank you.

Iron: maytbe possible to strike a deal, but the problem is we only have 1 source right now... you could ask them whether they anticipate to be able to trade with us soon...

DeepO

[Aeson]

And make sure they send us a high quality minimap. (GIF or BMP)

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Aeson
And make sure they send us a high quality minimap. (GIF or BMP)

Huh? I don't remember us talking about a minimap from GoW. Did I miss something?

[Aeson]

Sorry, I must have posted in the wrong thread. I meant for it to be in the Lux Situation thread.

[alva]

Iron: maytbe possible to strike a deal, but the problem is we only have 1 source right now... you could ask them whether they anticipate to be able to trade with us soon...

We still don't know for sure if we are able to trade at all.

[zeit]

I didn't want things to be dragged on- that's why i insterted the 10 turn NWA. Hote said that if GF meant that GoW accepted, then this will be carried out. But he could say this was a misunderstanding, which is a possible, although quite absurd way if interpreting GF's words. As i saw there were no major objections of the 10 turns NWA, i thought it was better to tell them: "we accept your offer on this and this" and not: "we have revisions, and are willing to accept this and this".

[Shiber]

This is not directly related to anything discussed, but I just thought that it might be a good idea to mention to GoW, in response to their talk about how they'd prefer to be our tech supplier in the future, that we did not get a very good impression of GoW following its war with Lux Invicta and the discussions that followed in ND's foreign affairs office thread. If we're lucky, they'll feel that they have to do something to make up for their lost honor and cut us better deals for a while.
Btw, judging from the way they put things (mainly wanting to be our tech supplier), I think they feel that we are technologically backward. GoW must have a pretty weak grasp on things - we're at par with the rest of the civs and are the fastest researchers, according to the demographics . Anyway, this is note-worthy, IMHO.

[DeepO]

Shiber, I don't think that they consider us backwards, it's more an attempt of getting better relations with us. The are offering to give us all research at bottomprice, if we would sign an exclusivity contract with them... and as far as I understand, they are at first interested at becoming our HBR trading partner, as they realize that their standard 10 turn NDA won't work in our case (actually, we should be close to discolusre by other civs)

Zeit: I can understand your reasons behind offering the NDA, but in this case it should have been better detailed, as the two techs have different etas... But this might be done in a footnote to the current proposed deal.

BTW, aren't we confusing GoW even more, by counteroffering when the first offer was already accepted?

DeepO

[Shiber]

When acquiring a certain tech from a Bobian civ is our last resort, I'd rather buy it from GoW, who seem to be the weakest civ on Bob, in order to rebalance that continent.
However, an exclusivity deal is a bad idea. I'm getting the impression that GoW is desperate for gold because they realize that they're the weakest civ on Bob, and furthermore, they don't want to see our money going to the other civs on Bob, so they'd give us low prices anyway, especially if we tell them that RP or ND have made us offers that are more attractive.

[DeepO]

Yeah, GoW seems to become smallest quickly, and they know it. plus, RP already mentioned that GoW was rather harsh in their diplomatic contacts ("full of threats" I think the quote was), but once you look past that they were very enjoyable trading partners, offering things at low prices.

I agree, that if possible we should do business with GoW for the moment, but there are a few problems with this: we are in the front what tech is concerned, so once we start negotiating for something, it is likely only the original civ has the tech. Further, in most cases we only have one thing to trade with at a given time (namely the tech we just researched), and we want to trade it to all teams at once to avoid them selling it to others. This means that although i might be possible to get 2 techs in return from e.g. GoW, we need to be able to find another team who is willing to trade something else, like gold or workers, or in general we're losing on total that one tech can bring us.

So... I think that for a while, we're going to need to stay to 1 on 1 trades for all teams who are active in research themselves...

DeepO

[zeit]

HotE responded with apologies, as well as acceptance (he will inform GF to send the money). I did not recieve a clarification regarding the NWA, but since i already offered him that, i don't want to withdraw it just like that, if you want, i can ask him to clarify things up "in the name of the team".
You want me to?

DeepO- you're probably right- i just thought its best to respond to their counter proposal anyway, and since the NWA is not such a big burden for us (we have the deal with Lux secured, right?), i thought its best to appease GoW, and perhaps HotE as well (he made some effort to strighten things out, as he should), to make sure the deal is finalized and that everyone is happy.
Who knows, maybe it worked- HotE mentioned they recieved RP's offer for CoL, but accepted ours.
I hope me being a bit too nice to them didn't hurt the team's effort, and i'm sorry if it did, i acted out of my own judgement in that one...

[DeepO]

well... getting back on the ND(W)A now will mean they will ask for it without any question. I'd rather get MM first, and see with what kind of message it will come. Maybe the start on this by themselves.

I like the previous two messages, but still there are a few possible problems. The NDA is one: are they expecting us to follow this from now on? We didn't agree to this, but it culd look that way. In one of the future messages, this should get detailed.

Further, I expect they are going to offer us MM the turn they get it, but nowhere was it said that they needed to. This should be detailed, just to make things clear.

I think you handled the map things well, and also the political situation, with one minor problem: you want GoW to stay out of all wars? This is kind of against their principles, they are mercenaries! They like war

Iron question: I would say that in principle we would welcome this kind of deal, but that we currently aren't able to send them iron, which possibly might change. I strongly suspect Lux has been telling GoW that we have a border treaty with Vox (hence the previous question to our relation, and the mentioning of it now), but we should not tell them we've got two sources, one promised to us.

Better tell them that maybe it's best for them to establish that one lonely colony, and in case of an emergency we possibly might be able to help. Personally, I don't mind selling our only source away to a team, if the price is right, and the duration is not 20 turns, but more like 5...

Map trades: I'm not sure they understand that for us our maps are sacred, and we are not interested in trading them for anything. Maybe best to repeat it.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Originally posted by zeit
HotE mentioned they recieved RP's offer for CoL, but accepted ours.

This must be why ND didn't get back to us on the matter of selling CoL - RP offered it to them for a bargain, behind our backs (thanks Togas...). Perhaps we can still save the day by sending ND a harsh message, and stating that buying our techs behind our backs will not earn our trust and respect; just realizing that we know might scare them away from buying CoL from RP and they'll swing back and buy it from us instead.

Originally posted by DeepO
Personally, I don't mind selling our only source away to a team, if the price is right, and the duration is not 20 turns, but more like 5...

Neither do I (though I'm sure Sir Ralph wouldn't approve), but is it possible, in-game, to trade a resource for a period of time other than 20 turns?

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Shiber but is it possible, in-game, to trade a resource for a period of time other than 20 turns?

I think it is, but it would require a bit of creative use of the in-game diplo options. If you declare war, all your resource deals are ended, no? By making peace the turn after, you can do it whenever you want. IIRC, but I'm far from sure, gold is suspended, but lux / resource deals are not, they simply end.

Otherwise, it's probably possible that the team who got the iron gives it back after 5 turns, thus trading away it's only (lended) source.

Anyway, it looks like we're going to have 2 sources anyway

DeepO