Vox Controli - correspondence & foreign affairs

[Kloreep]

From the save e-mail.

You're up. We have almost completed a deal with Roleplay to send them nationalism for cash, however they have requested our world map as well. Part of the New Voice treaty was that we cannot send our world map to anyone without the prior approval of Lego so I need to ask whether we have your approval or not. I attached a screenshot of what we do know of your area so that you know what we'd be giving them.

Thanks,

Rhoth

If they're okay with it, I don't see any reason we wouldn't be. They don't see more than an embassy and some coast scouting reveals.

[Spiffor]

I think they're knowledge of our geography is common anyway, so I don't see anything wrong either. Chances are, everybody knows at least that much from us. Unless they did some coast-scouting since the New Vox Treaty.

If they haven't scouted our shores since this time, it is all right for them to give nationalism to RP. It's not like RP can threaten us, and everything is good if it can help the Voxians finishing their buildup phase

[ZargonX]

Actually, I think most of the civs see even more than that of us anyway. After the ND scout incursion, I'm pretty sure that GS, ND, and GoW can all see Karina.

[Kloreep]

I don't think they can see Karina's tile, but I think they do see enough of the tiles around it to know a city's there.

[vondrack]

Thanks for posting this, Kloreep (I was AFK yesterday evening and went straight to bed after coming home).

I agree with everybody - there is no harm in letting Voxes trade their WM.

[vondrack]

I asked Rhothaerill for an update on their economy. Here it is:

Hi Vondrack,

Per your request...

We are currently researching communism at 50% science with a +6gpt surplus. We will receive it in 13 turns. At 0% research we currently gain 85gpt, though that will rise in a few more turns when some of the lesser cities complete marketplaces. At 100% research we have 213 beakers per turn with a loss of -67gpt and it speeds up research to 7 more turns.

By the way, we're also starting work on our navy now. About 10-15 turns and we'll have several warboats in the water.

Regards,
Rhoth

[vondrack]

I have exchanged few emails with Vox. Here they are:

Hi, guys!

You're up. Thanks for Replaceable Parts. And I must really be out of it. I had thought last turn that the dyes you guys were sending had been switched to a standing order but they disappeared this turn. Would it be possible for you to send them again? Thanks.

The ingame luxury trade mechanism is weird. If you watch the F4 trading screen, you can see them going down to "[1] dyes", then just "dyes" on the following turn - and then simply disappear. I did my best to send you the dyes prior to the previous gift deal expiring, but you apparently had no chance to accept them.

I am 100% sure I sent Replaceable Parts AND DYES in one package (terminated the current dye supplies in order to be able to add them to the deal) - it seems you got only the tech, but not the dyes. Sigh. The better I know it, the more often this game is driving me crazy.

Just btw... there is a partial workaround for the luxury "1t gap" problem. Let's say the dyes expire after you end your 900AD turn and we renew them immediately in 900AD (which is what happened). Now, when you get your 910AD save (and accept the dyes from us), use the first 'build complete' pop-up to go into the city screen and use the arrows to scroll through all your cities after the one that has just finished something. For each city, take a worker off any tile and immediately put it back there - it forces the game to recalculate the happiness, actually putting the renewed luxury into effect (which would not be the case if you did not use this trick). Prevents riots, prevents losing WLTKDs... it's legal now (after the teams approved using the F1 tricks in general), though very weird. :|

And last but definitely not least - guys, would you be able to use some extra workers or labourers? We are getting into troubles with our research - we cannot compete with the GoW+GS tandem. We already miss
Sanitation (which ND+GoW+GS have), Scientific Method, Atomic Theory, and Electronics (which GS has), and we are likely to start losing even in the middle tech tree branch soon. If you were able to speed up your
research to some 200+ bpt, it would really help, since you would be able to do the techs others have researched, but refused to trade to us at a fair price.

E.g., Sanitation is now at about 1500 beakers, which could be like 7t.

We are not really having that much spare cash now, but we would be easily able to send some extra workers to you - to be used to improve your terrain, or (more importantly) to be joined to your cities to boost your commerce.

Are your cities ready for extra population? Would it be okay to send you a couple of new citizens? If yes, how many? Let us know.

Best regards,
Radek aka vondrack

Rhothaerill's response:

Hi Radek,

That must have been my mix-up with the trading. I thought the way it worked was it just said dyes (1) and then the next turn it was gone (like SP games). When it just said dyes with no number I assumed you had just had it continue indefinitely. Oh well, live and learn. And yes, the only thing that appeared in the FAM box was the tech not the dyes. Maybe Civ4 PBEM/MP tech trading will be more intuitive...I hope.

Regarding the workers, I haven't talked with my team yet, but I think we'd be interested. I currently have a
plan in the works to get all of our cities up their max. tile production. It will take a little while longer to get it finished up, though replaceable parts will help speed that up a bit. Now that we have electricity and railroads
our cities will start growing again. Some of the cities won't grow too well though, so adding some workers to them would certainly help. I was intending to get all our tiles fixed up and then start adding the workers to the cities that need them, but if you need us to research faster then we can work on that. I'm trying to set up our growth cycle for several cities to grow to size 7 at the same time so we don't waste any of the luxury deals we've worked out with other teams. Depending on the amount of workers you send we could add them to Resurrection, Eternity and Panama Vox to get them closer to size 6 in preparation for growth beyond, as well as giving us the extra commerce points. So however many workers you think you can spare for joining to our cities, we can use them.

Regarding our research, we are about 8 turns more to communism (though that would speed up with more commerce points) and after that we can get sanitation for you if you need it. We can't really speed that number up with the slider without going into negative gpt numbers.

On the military front, our first ironclad will be hitting the waters soon, with a few more to follow. Now that we
have replaceable parts we will no longer need saltpeter since we can build artillery instead of cannons. We're also slowly trying to build up some gold for upgrades of our units using the ND communism deal.

Our railroad network is finally up and running around all our cities (not just through them) so that in the event we are attacked you would be able to get around to our entire island with cav's etc. Which leads to one further
thing...what would you say to one or the other of us establishing an embassy with the other? I've currently been holding around 70gold as our lowest point. It would cost us about 66 gold or so to establish the embassy to be able to request a right of passage agreement for you to use our rail network in the event that we are attacked. If we go ahead and establish the embassy now then I don't have to think about keeping gold for that particular reserve.

Thanks again,
Rhoth

And my final response:

Hi, Jared!

Regarding the workers, I haven't talked with my team yet, but I think we'd be interested. [...snip...] So however many workers you think you can spare for joining to our cities, we can use them.

OK, I will present the plan to my team and once approved, send workers at will.

Regarding our research, we are about 8 turns more to communism (though that would speed up with more commerce points) and after that we can get sanitation for you if you need it. We can't really speed that number up with the slider without going into negative gpt numbers.

Understood. Getting communism fast is not a priority - Sanitation would be (much) more important. But at least for a couple more turns, we'd prefer you not losing money on research, as we are not generating any extra gold to fund your deficit. We do have some cash reserve, but that should remain just that - a reserve.

Our railroad network is finally up and running around all our cities (not just through them) so that in the event we are attacked you would be able to get around to our entire island with cav's etc. Which leads to one further thing...what would you say to one or the other of us establishing an embassy with the other? I've currently been holding around 70gold as our lowest point. It would cost us about 66 gold or so to establish the embassy to be able to request a right of passage agreement for you to use our rail network in the
event that we are attacked. If we go ahead and establish the embassy now then I don't have to think about keeping gold for that particular reserve.

Good news about the roads/railroads in place. And a very good point about the embassy. I will bring that up in the forum.

Best regards,
Radek

So, gentlemen, we've got two issues to discuss.

1) establishing an embassy with Vox
I would simply build the embassy ourselves. It's not that we wouldn't have the money. It certainly is a much smaller deal to spend 60-70g out of 2000g than it is to spend 60-70 out of 200g. We should be generous here - it's OUR safety that is being helped here, too.

2) gifting workers to Vox
We currently have 42 workers, adding at least 1 new worker every other turn (from Invoice). I think it's getting out of hand a bit - I mean, it's cool to be able to improve so many tiles every turn, but we pay 42gpt for our worker force... besides, we are getting close to a point where most of our worked tiles will be fully developed. I would think that the optimum number for the moment would be ~30 workers on Legos + whatever we use to do terrain improvements for ND on Bob. Anything over this number can be transferred over to Vox.

I am not saying we should gift them all the excess workers at once, but I'd really consider gifting ~10 workers over the next ~10t.

What do you think about the idea? Keep in mind that with Darekill becoming the new leader of ND (see the ND embassy thread in the public forum for the news), our hopes of getting really useful support from ND are diminishing - we should face the facts: Vox is going to be our only true ally when it comes to winning the game... their ability to research techs fast enough for us will most likely be crucial. Right now, we would more than need them to do Sanitation for us, and then go through the Hoover branch - Scientific Method, Atomic Theory, Electronics... while we struggle to keep pace with GoW & GS in the middle branch of the tech tree.

Without the Hoover branch techs coming from somewhere, we will be beaten to tanks... and I would rather avoid that.

[ZargonX]

I would support giving about 10 workers to Vox. Helps both of us, really. Having us open the Embassy also sounds like a good course of action, as we can afford the extra cost a little more than they can

Regarding ND, well, we'll see how the chat goes today. Maybe Darekill will lead them in a more anti-GoW stance...

[Kloreep]

Definitely help Vox out.

[Tiberius]

Help Vox

[Spiffor]

Yep, give Vox all our workers past 30 once we are done with improving our tiles

And it is good to have Vox research Sanitation. We will need these hospitals to resist the Triad's onslaught. +shields, +money, +research, +defense. This is vital, now that a unified block of three powers exists.

I don't think we should be overly concerned by tanks. Tanks have 2 moves, which makes it very difficult (if not impossible) for a tank army to attack several cities in one turn. And with enough artilleries + cavalries, we can destroy these enemy tanks quite easily. Especially since our country will soone be entirely railroaded.

[vondrack]

Received some new information from Rhothaerill, in response to my email informing Vox about our research-related decisions. To make it easier to understand, I'm including my email first:

Hi Jared,

Okay, we'll go for espionage at 100%.

Great, thanks - we have internally agreed on going for Scientific Method in 4t ourselves now (after finishing Combustion), saving cash and letting others research Mass Production and Flight first, lowering their costs for us - the leading researcher is slower than us... we've caught up by 2t on them on Combustion alone, I think. We'd be done too fast with Mass Production and would only lower the cost...

As to the amount of gold it would take to upgrade all of our forces I don't have the numbers with me, but it's basically 120 gold per upgrade for each one of them. We have about 18-20 units to upgrade so it's in the neighborhood of 2400 gold for all of them. I'm currently trying to peddle communism to the last two teams that don't have it (GoW and RP) for some gold or techs so we'll see how that goes.

This sounds doable. How fast would you like to upgrade? I think we should be able to send you 100gpt to keep you researching at 100% plus 120gpt to let you upgrade one unit per turn. This might improve soon - I am not exactly sure how much we gain by growing our cities past pop 12, which is going to happen very soon.

Would that be acceptable?

We shall, of course, do our best to deliver the upgrade gold faster to you, but I am trying to be reasonable here... 220gpt is what we can afford at this very moment and at least for the next 5 turns. Also, we shall need some gold for our own upgrades.

Our likely research path from here is going to be Scientific method - Mass Production. Then Atomic Theory, Electronics, Motorized Transport, Flight, and Radio (Flight looks like a very good one for you, after you finish Espionage... it's a mandatory, yet basically dead-end tech...). GoW/GS/ND tech-embargo us, so we have to research everything ourselves, thus being able to deliver all techs you might need to proceed to the modern era. If you trade your techs to others, you might prefer gold over techs or pick optional techs.

Have a nice weekend,
Radek

An now Rhothaerill's response:

Hi Radek

I finally had a chance to get to Civ today. Our current science output at 100% is 263 beakers per turn. That will obviously start rising dramatically in a few turns though as our cities grow to size 7, and then a few turns after we'll be joining about 20+ workers to the various cities.

Regarding unit upgrades it will cost us 2140 gold to upgrade all our laggardly units to current standards. Regarding how fast we want to upgrade, that is more dependent on your team if you're going to subsidize our upgrades. I want to get the remaining catapults upgraded first, then the pikes. The pikes aren't quite as important as the catapults in my opinion.

Researching flight after espionage is fine with us. Espionage shouldn't take us all that long to research so we'll have flight ready for you before you need it to advance to the next age...plus we get that nice free tech in the next age too. :-)

Thanks
Jared (Rhoth)

So, there we are. 263bpt at 100% sounds promising (it's almost 1/3 of our current research output at 70%) - should mean an 8t Espionage research. And 20 workers joined to Voxian cities means -20gpt on upkeep and quite a boost to their commerce/research. I believe we could easily see them doing up to 350bpt. And that, gentlemen, is enough to do Flight in 12-13 turns, even if the cost does not drop (-1t for every team getting it before Vox).

[vondrack]

I have mentioned this idea in the turn thread, but would like to repeat it here, so it better stands out...

What about allowing Voxes to do whatever they wish and/or are able to with the techs we gift them. I mean - if they are able to sell them to anyone for anything even remotely useful, then by all means... let them do so!

We are completely out of the trading loop, as we constantly research stuff already discovered by others - means we almost never have even a theoretical shot at selling a tech to GoW or GS, which are ahead of us tech-wise. ND will not trade because of strategic implications - and, IMHO, also out of fear they'd be attacked if cooperating with us to a larger extent than just a simple, single lux-for-lux deal.

So, here is my idea: let's tell Voxes to try their luck with trading whatever tech they receive from us, unless specifically told otherwise. Let them keep whatever they can get for it, be it gold, luxuries, workers... anything.

I would also ask them to NOT trade Espionage to other teams, for obvious reasons.

[Tiberius]

Yes, sounds good

[lmtoops]

Makes perfect sense.