DIPLO: Legoland Comments

[Aeson]

1, 2, and 3... wow (why was the spacebar submitting my posts?)

[Aeson]

...

[Aeson]

1) The GS gives CoL for a 100 gold guarantee.
2) GoW gives MM for 130 gold.
3) Both teams agree not to trade the techs it has recieved through the mentioned deal, for a period of 10 turns.

If we can verify this deal was broken, should we keep the 130 gold and get MM from Vox (4 the 20g)? At the very least we should ask for some sort of compensation.

[alva]

Couldn't GoW just have sold "older" techs ? Such as IW and so on?
(I don't think Lego made a good deal though, their contact should have enough(GoW having a monopoly 'lego contact' )).

[Aeson]

If Lego can research Republic, that means they have CoL and Philosophy. Maybe Lego got Philosophy from GoW, but the timing seems to suggest GoW got Philosophy from Lego. Otherwise they would have been whoring it out before they got contact, they can't research it in 1 turn now can they?

So the possibilities are:

Given: Lego researched by themselves... Writing, IW (they said they were researching this at one point), BW (they aren't Scientific), Pottery, Map Making, and Philosophy.

- BW and Pottery could have come from huts easily, the rest could only come from huts if they had already researched all the first tier techs themselves or gotten them from huts. Even if it was by huts, Mysticism usually comes first.

1. Lego researched the above + CoL, and GoW traded such things as Mathmatics, Mysticism, HBR for Philosophy.

2. Lego didn't have time to research CoL along with all the others. They traded Philosophy for CoL along with some sort of deal on The Republic.

If you were Lego... Once you figured out it was an isolated start, would you beeline for Map Making? That would suggest that Lego researched Philosophy after Map Making, and their Galley has just now made contact. How many turns did it take their Galley to make contact, and is that enough time that they could have gotten both Philosophy and CoL?

To me it's rather doubtful that Lego researched CoL themselves. We've been at the front or ahead of the pack in research, and I don't think we could have done it.

[DeepO]

Send a second message... should have read the comments here first. Guys, I know I'm rushing here, I try to stay as vague as possible, but this one is urgent... if we want any deal with legoland, we need to make one quickly, or we or legoland lose too much.

Main problem I see is Vox: if it wasn't for them, I would take the no-whoring clause, or get legoland to sign one with us. But if we need to give it to Vox anyway, there is little point in even trying that kind of plan. Too bad, actually, I would have much rather limited republic between legoland and ourselves, then between Vox and us.

I don't see many other options then at one point or another inform legoland from our oustanding deal with Vox (at least to sharing republic once we got it), and get some way of 3-way partnership. I want to avoid that for as long as possible, though, and now is certainly not the time to tell them anything.

One, rather dubious, possible solution is that we 'stretch' the agreement with Vox, and get a 10 turn no-whoring agreement with lego. Vox can get it at turn 11. Maybe we can arrange something like that with Vox, without legoland needing to be informed of anything, but I doubt Vox wil be happy... flashing a little cash might help, after all, they are Vollidiots

DeepO

DeepO

[DeepO]

Aeson, cross posted with you, it seems. Indeed, it seems unlikely they researched CoL themselves, but there is one other possibility: delayed huts, or simply a very large continent with many huts. I don't think it's likely, but if they would somehow gotten philosophy from a hut, they could have researched CoL themselves...

If they don't give an explanation on CoL by themselves as an answer to my last message, I'll ask them, as a favor, to tell us the origins of CoL. It remains possible, though, that they haven't started on republic yet, in which case we would be the first to get it anyway...

BTW, when do we need to talk to Vox about this?

DeepO

[Aeson]

I think our best course of action is to get Lego to allow us to research The Republic. Something like 'We have already started our research on The Republic and can finish it rather quickly.'

I think getting 1/2 the gold cost of The Republic from them is a good thing. We could possibly bribe Vox to allow a delay in The Republic, or give a bit of a refund to Lego so that Vox can get The Republic in a timely manner. We could also get them to reseach another tech as part of the deal (lowering our gold intake to 1/2 the difference in beakers). Construction or Currency would both be good.

We should try to get an agreement in place for revenue sharing between us and Lego from The Republic once it becomes apparent we need to trade it to BOB civs. Whenever that may be.

[Aeson]

To get Philosophy from a hut they also would have had to get CB, WC, HBR, Mathmatics, and Mysticism first I think, with chances of Literature and Polytheism too. Unless they had 5 huts give them techs, it would have slowed them down.

If we tell Lego the nature of our CoL for MM deal with GoW, and ask if they received CoL from GoW, they will know if GoW broke the deal or not. Perhaps they will tell us, but if GoW broke the deal, and Lego finds out about it, that can only serve our purposes. It will make Lego less likely to trust in GoW. Whether we find out about it or not.

If they got CoL by themselves, it doesn't make us look bad to just inquire.

Do we have MM from GoW yet? Perhaps they are doing the same thing to Lego regarding MM. We could include that GoW is trading us MM (and selling it to many others), and we just want to be sure that GoW isn't breaking any agreements that would sour our relationship with Lego.

[DeepO]

That's an idea, GoW wouldn't get MM from lego, would they? the timing is perfect... although it would have been too risky to count on lego making contact with them to precise a eta on MM.

As to telling lego how we dealt with it: I think I more or less asked that in last message, but if they don't answer me properly, I'll ask more directly next time.

Republic shared with lego: surely sounds like a good plan to me, but I need to think it out more deeply... something for tomorrow. Maybe we can wrap it as an anti-Bobian alliance... Let's see what their answer is going to be on the eta question, that should clear many things up.

DeepO

[Aeson]

It does make some sense if they took both MM and CoL to gain time to stock up cash. They weren't very definite as to when they would get MM either.

Their 'win' at this point is probably to upgrade more Horses to Riders than ND can upgrade to Ansars.

[Aeson]

I'd just like to point out that it's probable that GoW and Lego could have worked out a mini-map pinpoint of where the crossing would occur. The date of contact would be almost definite in such a case.

[alva]

What if Lego does tell us that they got Col from GoW ?
Going public will put Lego into a rather tough place, as they are the only ones we could have gotten the info of.

An island alliance does sound good
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It's a damned pity, we didn't had a few more goody huts

[Aeson]

If it does turn out that way, I don't think we have to go public with it, or even let GoW know that we know necessarily... but it will help us in dealing with them in the future.

[alva]

But that won't help very much, will it.

Perhaps we could inform others (could slow down trade a little)
We could even try to blackmail GoW with it
( not very honarable is it )
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We could inform Vox to hold of buying MM from GoW for a while (or have they agreed to it yet?).
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If we tell GoW that we know what they did, their MM prize to Vox could drop considerably (Thinking we will sell it to VoX, something that is worth considering)
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Or we could just keep the 100 warranty gold.