DIPLO: GoW comments

[Aeson]

I won't be able to put together an estimate for a few days probably. I'm swamped helping get the GOTM17 results together for the weekend, and my mind just isn't working well at the moment.

[DeepO]

Well, we're at 9 now, we are not going to be worse then that at our best... anything sooner might not be called for.

DeepO

[Shiber]

Originally posted by DeepO
However, if a few of the teams won't go for such a price, saving cash would be better...

IMHO you're neglecting something important: if not enough teams buy Feud. from us to completely repay its research cost, it doesn't necessarily make this option worse than just stockpiling gold; getting paid for something by another civ is always good, because you take away some wealth from other civs. So if, for example, we only manage to sell Feud. to three different teams and we don't make all of our investment back, we can "take comfort" in the fact that three different civs now have considerably less gold in their coffers thanks to us, and this, IMHO, would make it worthwhile.

[DeepO]

I was aware of that, Shiber, and I agree. If we would have 3 teams on 200 gold each, we would do much better to research it our own. It's with 2 civs that it becomes a problem.

We do offset the gain a little, if we distribute it earlier: the civ researching it themselves will be advantaged, and civs waiting to trade from them the same. They would receive the tech after us, and all who we trade with, but still sooner and at lower expense then with us saving gold.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

If another civ pays us less than what we spend minus what we get, they gain ground on us. If another civ pays us more than what we spend minus what we get, we gain ground on them. So if sales prices get too low, we'll be better off letting others research and buying the techs than trying to research ourselves.

[Aeson]

If we can get part of Engineering (RP?) + Theology (Lego) from it somehow then full steam ahead. Both those techs are +4 cost (96 beakers), so we'd need something else to offer too.

Who all has MT/Republic anyways?

[zeit]

Don't forget Lego- we'll get something from them as well...

What do you say about setting the price to 200 gold, or 12gpt. If we just ask for them to offer- we take the risk of bargaining on relatively low prices. But if we set the price and state that everyone gets it for the same price- we'll definitely look bad when we won't deliver the goods.

Since it seems like you're in favor of trying to sell it, i'll reply to Togas, and send something to GF as well.

You want to try and sell this to Vox as well?


Also, does anyone have an email address of someone from ND that i can make contact with- Darekill hasn't answered my PM yet...

[Shiber]

Price: 200 gold or 12 gpt looks good to me.
Vox: yes, there's no harm in that. We might get some gold out of them, as well as allow them to build pikes, which means that their beachhead on Bob would be better defended.
Loan: GoW is interested in a loan - that is good news. I suggest that we ask them when they'd like to see cash; if it's in the next few turns, then perhaps we could couple the loan into the selling of Feudalism. I'm thinking a deal where we would provide GoW with Feudalism and later Chivalry in exchange for gpt while they set their science to zero and hoard the gold they need for their upgrades would be a good idea.

[DeepO]

Vox: no gpt deal to them! Don't even suggest it, and if they ask, we should avoid it.

Lego / theo: I was going to keep that for the chat. No matter what, Lego will be interested in getting it from us, if there are no other parties to get it from, so that should be the easiest negotiation.

More GoW comments:
1. no downpayment on iron makes things a lot more difficult for us, as we can't rush a harbor sooner. It will delay our possibility to trade.

2. interest rate: as long as no war breaks out, 25 percent interest seems reasonable to me, it should be the bottom price we aim for. If war breaks out, everything becomes riskier, so logically our interest rate should rise, to e.g. 33%.

3. Vox: tell them that we are not encouraging to settle Bob, also not in pricate communication. Some of us did post favourable comments when Vox settled Bob, and we still believe that some consideration should be taken, seeing that their land is many times smaller then what could be found on Bob. It would alleviate tension between us GS and Vox if Vox would find another direction to expand. However, we are not actively asking them to find more territory, it's their decision, which we do not influence.
So, although advising them to settle Bob is out of the question, we are not going to advise them that they can't settle Bob, as in the long term we know that it will create additional problems for them as they have no room to expand to.

4. Amount of gold we could loan to them: it depends. If they really are looking for a bank, we should need to cash in money first. That is possible, but it will delay Feudalism. If they are looking for e.g. 500 gold, they should say so now, so that we can adjust plans to get it.
As we can only do that if we don't rush for Feud, ask them who else would be researching it, and if it would be worth something to them if we delay the world getting to knights (we can do that).

5. they more or less ask for an eta on feudalism. I would say that, seeing that we are the only ones in a republic right now, it would be save to assume our research power is 50% greater then anyone else's. We could easily get Feudalism in less then 10 turns from now, but we are debating whether we need to be so fast, as it would be at least 5 turns before anyone else could get it, even at 100% science. Add this to the loan question, and our eta is variable, and can only be set after our negotiations on the tech end.

6. Note that one of the necessary conditions for trade is certainly going to be an NDA on Feudalism. We know we are going to be in the time-advantage if we aim for it, we want to exploit that to the maximum, not having to deal with some one reselling the tech.

Shiber: chivalry + feud for gpt from GoW: could be, but I don't know if we shuld mention to them right now. The thing is, we could very well gain from delaying knights, we could need the cash at that moment, there is a lot what can change before we can trade away chivalry. Right now, it's too early to mention anything like that to GoW

DeepO

[zeit]

DeepO- i wouldn't want us to tell GoW that we jusify Vox's actions- so i'll tell him we discouraged their actions, but that Vox's territorial problem is where our members' comments came from. Telling them we "do not advise" to settle Bob might imply they have a reason to think we are.

[Shiber]

2. I disagree. 25% could scare them off. I'd offer them 19% during peacetime, 29% during wartime (notice that I'm using the infamous 99 dollars and 99 cents technique).

[DeepO]

Shiber, that would be too low. It's because I like GoW, that I would offer them 25% as a low interest. that's 20 turn of not having the money with you, and if you take devaluation of money as a good bases to measure interest rates on, I'm certain that in civ, gold devaluates near, or even more then 25%.

Techs you research now, cost e.g. 1000 beakers each. in 20 turns, the then-current techs cost 1250 beakers to research, even more. We also need to gain something from it, instead of offering it to them as a gift.

One comment on the send proposals: I didn't see these before posting mine to Lego, and offered them the same but with a 10 turns NDA. That does make a bit more sense, as it would surpass the turns needed for someone else to catch up using beakers instead of gold. Could we still change this to 10?

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I would tell them that we offered Vox no encouragement, either public or private, in their decision to settle on Bob, but that some GS members as individuals viewed the choice as reasonable and wanted to discourage war over it.

[nbarclay]

I'd rather save loan arrangements until closer to the time when GoW will need the loan. Too much will depend on how quickly we push ahead with research (which could easily leave GoW somewhat in debt for techs received) and on what strategy we pursue after we get Chivalry.

[DeepO]

GoW will need the loan 1 turn before getting Chivalry, I believe. That's some 15 turns from now... but a lot will depend on how much they want to lend from us.

Also, tell them that if they want to use the money to wage war, it's only normal that as their bank, we should have insight in their monetary situation to better assess the risk to us. Otherwise it would be impossible to precisely see how much we could lend them, how much they can pay back in reasonable time. We're not going to settle for payments of 40 gpt if they only gain 30 gpt, and hope to win territory soon.

DeepO