DIPLO: Legoland Comments

[zeit]

I wouldn't say i'm dissapointed, we and Lego definitely have a big gap of misunderstanding- they just work from tech agreement to the next. I bet for them our agreement is nothing more than a good opportunity of long term single tech trades.

I thought of this, and if we want to create an atmoshpere of partnership, we have to be direct and honest. I thought about openning a secondary channel between redstar1 and myself: i even made some personal letter to him .
There's nothing of official diplomacy in it, and it's more of sharing my feelings on the nature of our relationship, the need for trust and honesty. I also wrote that this does necessarily not represent the feeling of the deal, at least not to my knowledge, and that i ask him not to post it on their board or to treat it as an official document. I think this sort of more direct and honest channel without word-tricks and clever diplomatic language might be needed, if we want this relations to be long lasting and true. After all, common interests and good deals are important, but alot of emotion is involved, and i felt like i wanted to share some of my thoughts and feelings about this with someone from Lego.

Can i have you approval DeepO?

[Shiber]

We have Monotheism from Vox. Shall we send an in-game offer to Lego anyway, along with a diplomatic note stating that we're happy to hear that Lego has good trading ties with other civs and that they found a good deal for Monotheism, but we're always ready to negotiate, and if Lego would make us any offer in return for Monotheism that is better than the other offer that they've got then we'll consider it as any other deal. Or something. You diplomats better make it sound good, anyway you get my point.

Btw, didn't Vox promise not to trade Monotheism to Legoland?

[zeit]

Btw, didn't Vox promise not to trade Monotheism to Legoland?

I don't quite remember, but it doesn't look good- either that, or they got it from on of the Bobians- that would mean we're just on two different frequencies...

[Shiber]

How could they have gotten it from one of the Bobians? Vox were the first to get Monotheism.

[DeepO]

Zeit, I don't mind in creating a second channel, but what would you want to accomplish that can't be reached in 'official' communication? I agree that Lego might think this as a bunchh of single tech deals, and for the moment that's fine, as we want that too. This relation might grow over the turns, and we should discuss where we want to take it, but in the end, you need two people to dance (or a lot of alcohol and a mirror). We will need to follow Lego, so I wouldn't mind if they told what they want, like we have been telling at least part of our intentions.

First of all, we need to discuss amongst ourselves what we aim for, and leave Lego the time to do so too. If that stage is over, we can start to take this deal further, for the moment, the focus should be on a eas way of getting techs, and our techs distributed to at least one team.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Comments from last chat:

1. the Legos weren't talking, maybe I squeezed a bit too much info from them last time. It felt to me that they were deliberately keeping the lid on any info. This could also be because Nimitz simply is another personality to deal with then redstar1 or vondrack, which seem to be more in our favour.

2. They don't need pikes, and again, they made that abundantly clear. I wanted to aoivd them getting the idea that if they would just wait until everyone else has it in the world, they get it a muchly reduced price. Not sure if I succeeded, but I didn't want to scare them away

3. Chivalry - Theo shouldn't be a problem when we get there, they obviously want to get to knights when Bob get their knights, and not 10 turns later. Theo would arrive at the latest in 20 turns, so maybe taking that mark as a deadline for chivalry isn't bad (it should be easy to get there in our GA, saving money in the mean time)

4. I talked a little on possibilities, but they don't know either how to proceed. I did offer to take our deal one setp at the time, as it would be easier to accept, and leaves opportuniy to reacting to certain events in-game

5. I didn't outright tell them we weren't happy on last deal, where they got Mono elsewhere, but I think the little remark of us not finding it fair if they would get feud elsewhere will be understood.

Basically, not a very shocking chat, but okay, to build confidence in each other.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Last message I mentioned to Lego we had maps of Bob (seeing as we told this to GoW, and are assuming other teams now this as well, I thought it to be ok to tell them). I made an offer on screenshots of Bob, which they may be will be interested in. Also, I can imagine that they're interested in knowing how much we know of their continent.

So:
1. Are we willing to give Lego screenshots of something they can also buy elsewhere? Vox would sell them their map too, if they sold it to us. So I assume that if we are able to trade them information, any gain we make is a good one.

2.If we would agree to selling them screenies of Bob, what would be a good price to ask? Information for sure, e.g. screenshots of any other accessways to Bob we should get. Maybe a current minimap from them would also be very nice to have ( I doubt they'd go for it, though). Gold seems obvious too, but how much? 100 gold for starters, going down to 50 at least in negotiations?

DeepO

[Shiber]

I won't mind if we sell them some screenshots. I'd wait at least until the chat to hear if they can make any offers themselves, though. Or maybe it'd be wrong not to use this evening's chat to settle a deal.
I don't see how a current minimap or screenshots of any other accessways to Bob could help us right now. Gold sounds good though.

[DeepO]

3. Are we going to sell screenshots of Lego to them, which they could ask as confirmation of how much we know?
I would only sell Bob, and possibly the island GoW settled (but Lego will know this already). Leave them in the dark on Legoland. If they ask, maybe we can arrange something, but my offer would be for Bob only.

DeepO

[alva]

I would be amazed that Vox hasn't sold them already, doesn't hurt to try though

[Shiber]

We might as well offer them screenshots of the Voxian homeland, just to see if they'd accept. If they'd show interest, we'd know that they probably don't have this part of the world map and we can back out of it later.

[Theseus]

RP is signing its death warrant...

[Shiber]

IMHO we're overreacting on the public PTW forum. Almost all of the posts regarding Lego's Pyramids are ours. I suggest that we keep a lower profile.

[DeepO]

Chat ended... not very special. Again, a lot of text came from us, but there were a couple of interesting things from Lego.

First of all, they don't want to get into an embargo, not now, not in the far future.

But, I think they are becoming more aware of RP, at least there seems to be some voices of opposition rising, were before there were none.

They have maps, got them from ND right after meeting them. Our maps are a lot more recent. ND also established an embassy, so they asked if we could see their capital. They were rather disappointed when I told them we could, however I don't know if this was because ND promised not to trade, or simply because they assumed they didn't want to trade

Vox: they still don't beleive how we can be so calm about the situation, they assume, like everyone else, that we would be sh!tting our pants for those immortals. We explained them a few things on Vox's situation. Also explained that RP would most likely be one of the reasons for the attack

They are interested in Vox's gold, and they have been thinking on offering them asylum. (they said it was a wild idea of the moment, of which I don't believe one thing. They were asking how we would react, but very covertly.
I explained to them that we don't care, as long as Vox is off our continent were they hide, however that they needed to be extremely careful when doing something like that, because of the diplo repurcussions. But if it would keep Vox's gold out of RPs hand: sure

GoW is something like their friend, however they are closely monitoring them. RP scares them more, though. and I think I took every opportunity to set them up against RP, maybe even too much.

At one point, they were asking how close we were from RP. I was very inclined to ask them if this was RP asking for this information, or them. But, instead I simply answered that we could not reach them with a galley directly (which is true, but it might change next turn if we would build the GL). Fishy, that one...

For next chat, I would certainly like a list of things to ask Lego, they have been very open with us, in that all we ask gets answered (and sometimes more), and I think as long as I keep typing more text as them, they will feel the need to do this. We have only given out info that is either a view on the situation (and then more my view then GS view, although these will be the same in many occasions), or facts that we also disclosed to other teams (well, the closeness of us to RP is one thing, but if GoW sails 2 more turns, all of Bob knows our coast) They want to asnwer, but I was seriously out of questions... so, if anyone wants to know something, simply post it here, and I'll ask next time

Last thing: Lego has 2 irons which they can't trade until getting astronomy, but somehow, only 1 shows up in the city view. They asked us if anyone knows if there is some bug known where this happens. Of course, they can't simply ask this on a public forum, so it's good that they come to us. If anyone would know about it: please let me know. It could only strengthen our relation, and something tells me we will need that later on, if we don't want to fight 4 teams at once.

DeepO

[alva]

and I think as long as I keep typing more text as them,

-

They are interested in Vox's gold, and they have been thinking on offering them asylum.

To be honest, now that we are at war, and Vox trying (albeit funny) to hurt our reputation, for which we have to work very hard for and is someting that can be a limiting factor at times, I would prefer to see them out of the game.
So if Lego offers asylum, we need to be compensated, and the deal should be good IMO.

I don't see any good coming from Vox remaining in the game, and certainly not as close neighbours to somebody we might very need in order to win.