Foreign affairs message

[Nimitz]

Well Togas just contacted me wanting to know some things such as do we want to start our colaboration on tech now or later such as when we meet in the game also he wants to know if we'd give a discription of our start location in exchange for theirs so we can meet faster. So do we want to do this? I'll post the message in a little bit.

[Nimitz]

Here is his PM.

Nimitz,

Already we are discussing our next tech advance and some members of my team would like to know if your team wants to begin cooperating now on tech research, to ensure that we research different paths and may trade with each other upon our first meeting.

Please see if your team is willing to discuss this. If so, let's begin to plan what paths we will each take up the tech tree.

Also, we would like to come into contact with your civ ASAP, and we would like to describe to your our location on the map, if you would also describe your location on the map to us. If you are in agreement, let's do this and try to send our warrior-scouts to meet each other "in the middle".

Are there any other matters your team would like to discusss? Feel free to PM me. Thud, who I have assigned as my ambassador to your team, is away with computer problems and I am personally handling diplomacy with your team until he returns.

--Togas

[Spiffor]

I think we shouldn't start our research collaboration before making contact with them in game. It may hurt both of our teams : just imagine we actually are on an island, we won't be able to trade techs for a long while.

We should describe our starting location in very vague terms, as we don't know if the Roleplayers are to be trusted or not. Something like : "we're near north the equator to the West of the map" would even be a bit too much IMHO

[Sharpe]

I agree with Spiffor.

It is too early to even talk about sharing locations yet. Vague but friendly is an idea. Perhaps we should say something along the lines of "too soon to tell where we are in the map, will get back to you later on this" (that is don't mention the jungle as that would be a dead giveaway)

As for shared research, we should remind them that we may be far apart from each other and joint research might result in each civ missing key techs until we met which could cause problems if either of us met a hostile civ before we met each other.

The reality is: the Role-players are probably talking to us now because they have likely noticed that we are already size 2 in Legopolis and they suspect that we may be growing in strength (our wish too of course), and they probably want to remind us of our obligation to them. A bit of psychological manuevering on their part perhaps.

However, we do want to keep them friendly as they are a good potential ally.

[vondrack]

I tend to concur with Spiffor and Sharpe. We should take our time and put together a friendly, yet quite vague response. Also, I would like to hear all or most of our active members here with their opinions and ideas prior to responding to Togas.

[ZargonX]

Yes, I think Spiffor raises some very valid points. Tech-dividing could be detrimental if we're not going to be running into each other for a while, so why hurt ourselves intentionally?

As for our location, I think I may have said this before, but I'm a little wary of the RPers. They could pretty easily roleplay themselves into stabbing us in the back. We can be friendly, not naive. A nice, vague response is probably in our best interests.

[redstar1]

Having worked for the civil service and the ministry of defence I've had quite a bit of experience drafting vague documents...

I thought it might go something like this:

Togas,

The Legoland team greets you officially for the first time! Currrently, as I am sure you are also, we are attempting to gain a clearer image of our surroundings. As such the only indication we can give is one of where we are is a hemispherical one. I beleive we are happy to trade this information for similar information from yourselves.

As for technology, we are happy to report that we are currently researching Bronze Working, no surprise to you I am sure. While we are all in agreement that ourselves and the RP team are good friends and are happy to coorerate we feel that until it can be ascertained where we are in relation to each other, and how long it may take to achieve contact we should regretfully decline to work out a common research policy. We hope you understand.

Legoland team.

[redstar1]

If it seems a little formal it is written to fall in to play with the role playing preferences of the RP team....

[vondrack]

redstar, you should have been the Foreign Minister!

[Colonel Kraken]

Rock on! That's the stuff.

[delmar]

I like Redstar's message and I would also incorporate this sentence, probably before the "We hope you understand part":

"We may be far apart from each other and joint research might result in each civ missing key techs until we met which could cause problems if either of us met a hostile civ before we met each other."

because it gives a very logical explanation for our decline that will be difficult to argue with.

[Nimitz]

Well tell me when you're ready for me to send the response so I can know when we have the final draft.

[Kloreep]

Great work. This is exactly the message we need. Friendly, and also stalls for some time. An explanation of why we don't want to tech collaborate would be good too.

[ZargonX]

I think Redstar's draft looks really solid, and with the addition of Delmar's suggestion, probably good to go. Give us a final draft, and we can decide officially.

[delmar]

Originally posted by ZargonX
I think Redstar's draft looks really solid, and with the addition of Delmar's suggestion

For the record, I copied that sentence from Sharpe's post. In case you want to hand out some credits or something...