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**redstar1** · March 10, 2003, 05:16

There was a previous message:

Fw: RE: possible path trade with GS? part 1
Hello redstar1 and quantum_mechani,

I'm forwarding this to both of you, to make sure everyone receives my response, and knows of the current message. redstar1, I forwarded q_m our last two communications, as it seems he was not informed. I'm unsure who I need to contact, could you please clarify this to me? I remembered q_m had problems to log on from time to time, which was my primary reason to post this to you, but I'm getting a little confused here...

As to you seeing Bob: great! The sooner the both us can get into contact, the better. We'll certainly will try to get into contact with you asap, however, if you value what we have to offer, you might want to start negotiating for our contact too.

As mentioned in my previous communication, we would like it if we could become your primary tech supplier, in order to make it possible for you to catch up asap. A strong legoland is in our best interest, while Bobian civs will be a lot more interested in making themselves strong (we do not, we simply want to keep Bob from becoming omnipotent). The discussion on how we can do that is still going on, but I think I can be a lot more specific this time.

First of all, I consider this diplomatic contact top-secret, like all diplomatic negotiations. Please keep this to yourselves, we don't particularly trust people that use quotes from negotiatons with third parties to get a better deal (believe me, it happens too often in this game). Even if this negotiation would somehow fail, it will still be top-secret to us, I hope you have the same opinions on this point.

Secondly, I mentioned before that we have no interest in draining your treasury, but we want to avoid that one or more Bobian civs gets a large amount of cash, as it won't be good for the stability on Bob. If one civ would get into a position to dominate that continent, the game is essentially over. Your cash could be just that what makes one party superiour to another.

Ourselves, we don't need that cash, well, better said we would like it of course, but don't really need it to keep our position in this world. Maybe a symbolic amount of cash would be needed to pursuade all our members of the validity of this deal, but there is something else we are interested in, which costs you nothing: your World Map. We are not interested in this to invade legoland soon (if ever), but we hope that we can reach an agreement so that we somehow can use it to gain information on Bob. It looks like in the future, some kind of action is needed to keep a civ on Bob to become too large, but we have a hard time assessing the situation, as all three civs claim to be in the disadvantage, and the information we have suggests that all three of them pose a great risk to us in the long term (e.g. in the military advisor, all 3 civs have a strong military compared to us, and we thought our military wasn't small to begin with).

... To be continued

**vondrack** · March 10, 2003, 06:51

I find it interesting that the deal GS offered is - despite not being bad - worse than what we got from GoW. By dealing with GoW, we were able to keep our map to ourselves. Plus completely catch up (even if not for a very long time, likely to fall behind again, if not trading The Republic around) for the cost of one cheap tech. We should consider ourselves very lucky I believe - and smart... contacting GoW first was the right decision (even if there was very little choice).

On another note, I had an idea about a future deal with GS that might make them our good friends. As you know, we shall start researching The Republic immediately after getting all the techs promised by GoW. GS is supposed to be beelining for The Republic as well.

So, the deal I have in mind is like this: let's get together and tell each other how long it shall take to research it. The one that will be able to get it quicker (I assume it would be us) would go for it, the other team would shut their research completely, saving the cash. Once the team researching the Republic discovers it, the other team would get it for a certain share of the saved cash. I would propose 1/2 of the beaker cost in gold if there is no "no tech whoring" clause, 1/3 of the beaker cost if the team getting it for money would agree not to trade it to anyone else (admittedly, this could not be the case, if we were to buy it from GS, as we would need to trade it with GoW and RPers).

I would probably inform them that we already have deals arranged (if they really are arranged by that time) with GoW and RPers, so they know what the "whoring potential" is when deciding whether to go for 1/2 or 1/3 price option.

What do you think?

It might make them more willing to trade for our contact...

**Tiberius** · March 10, 2003, 07:52

Sounds good to me.

**ZargonX** · March 10, 2003, 12:03

Sounds like an excellent plan to me, Vondrack!

**lmtoops** · March 10, 2003, 13:27

Good plan, proceed.

**redstar1** · March 10, 2003, 16:00

Someone's not a happy camper....

redstar1, quantum_mechani,

Sorry for the confusion, I should have copied both of you in all my messages. I received your previous messages, and although a little disappointed on the outcome, I'm glad that one of our primary concerns (having a weak legoland) is not an issue it seems.

A longer reply will follow after discussion by my team (plus, I don't have a lot of time right now, tonight things should get better), but some fast comments:

- We certainly understand you don't want to trade your worldmap, but we figured that of all the civs in this game, you were the team that would be least disadvantaged by trading away your world map. You are least likely to face an invasion... at least that's our analysis. We're quite protective of our map as well, but this comes from pure necessity.

- It's good to see you got more techs from huts then anticipated, and trading away philosophy was probably in your best interest in the short term. I hope you got enough out of it...

- ... because what it achieved was exactly what we feared. Now GoW not only is whoring your contact around, but also philosophy. They contacted everyone the moment you two met, denying you any possibility to trade philosophy to anyone, nor your contact. Many teams will fall for this, with as a result that GoW benefits tremendously from being in the right spot on the right time. It's hard to assess exactly how many gold they will get from it, but it will translate in to hundreds of gold pieces for them, a concentration that can be dangerous on Bob. Maybe GoW is the smallest of all Bobian civs (they claim so, we have no way of knowing), but their UU is coming up soon, and all this cash to upgrade the horses they are building right now to riders... ouch.

- we're not interested in philosophy, because between my message to you and now, we acquired it as well. As to your contact: please continue your journey towards us, I'm not sure if our team is willing to give even more gold to GoW if there is no urgent need. It's not that we don't like GoW, this is simply a matter of risk management.

I hope you still view our proposal as a way to balance things out, apart from a possible Bob map, we were not to gain anything from it by whoring stuff around, whereas GoW (or any other Bobian civ, I'm sure) will take this gift from Lady fortune with both hands.

As to your point on republic: it's an interesting proposal. Allow me to post it on our board before further commenting on it. But please realise one thing: half the beaker cost in gold with an non disclosure agreement does not seem fair in this game, don't put your hopes to high on this one, as prices have been considerably lower in general. It's not our idea, by the way, as our research has always been more then adequate, but we have to follow the flow

More later, kind regards,
DeepO

**redstar1** · March 10, 2003, 16:17

My response (could Quantum or Nimitz give me a shout if they want to take over this?):

DeepO,

I myself have little time but I would like to respond....

I think it is fair to say that we are going to catch up on tech within the next turn or so but there is no guarantee we will be able to maintain parity. This is why we welcome freindship from yourselves.

You are correct in that we needed to trade Philosophy for short term gain but the offer was one we could not refuse.

As for GOW 'whoring' our contact and Philosophy, this was also a concern of ours, hence our wish to inform the other teams that we are Naval. We have less wish to see a strong GOW than yourselves. RP have purchased our contact from GOW. Might I suggest you contact them as regards acquiring it? I can only imagine the price may be more realistic and you have permission to tell RP that this was suggested by ourselves.

As for maps... I am afraid nothing has changed on that point. It is the considered opinion that we will never trade our maps. We currently have very little information about Bob, having only glimpsed the coast. It is also possible that the decision will be made to re-assign our navy to other important tasks.

I think you may have misunderstood the deal for Republic. We would ask for 1/2 the beakers you made as a result of 100% Tax for the duration of the research, then we would not trade Republic to other teams, that would be down to yourselves alone.

I understand that your tech level is adequate, if we have overestimated the market please accept our apologies. It seems we are trying to break into this game very late

**Tiberius** · March 10, 2003, 16:44

Very good response, redstar (IMHO)

I think GS will be a good trading partner for us in the future.

Couldn't we maybe do the following thing: circumnavigate BOB and sell the minimap (only the BOB part) to the GS? They would be happy with it, I suppose. Just an idea.

**ZargonX** · March 10, 2003, 17:27

That looks like a great reply, redstar. GS does seem like a good, reliable partner to have, so we should do our best to keep close ties with them.

**redstar1** · March 11, 2003, 05:17

More messages:

Thanks for your message redstar1.

It seems I won't get to respond in full tonight, (ah, that disease they call real life ), but I'm happy we're not very far apart in opinions. I sincerely hope you got a good deal out of GoW, that in itself might balance Bob. It's good to see you're keeping world politics in mind, it's one of the most enjoyable and complex aspects of this game.

Thanks for the clarification on republic, maybe we can get to a deal here. Indeed, I assumed you said that the no whoring clause would apply only to us. Negotiations will have to be quickly here to avoid any loss, but could you clarify one thing to us in the mean time: are you proposing this deal to other civs as well? Not that I would mind you trying to get the advantage where it can be found, but it would perhaps have an impact on our decision.

No apologies needed on how the market values tech, I'm sorry if I came on too hard. Please blame it on my bad English; it was an attempt on good advice . One of the reasons why GoW will probably be very succesful with your contact and philosophy is that they will charge bottom prices... to 4 civs. Right now, they are a middleman to you, even if it probably won't take long. This is exactly what created initial tension between us and Vox, and between Bob and Lux. I can imagine that GoW was happy for the opportunity, but I fear to what it can lead.

Speak to you soon,
DeepO

Redstar1, two more little questions (catching up on the board, but I wanted to reply to you first):

GoW did receive code of laws from us as part of a previous deal, however, there was a (limited time) no-whoring clause on it (for which they asked, BTW). Are they proposing to trade it to you? If so, that information would be of great importance to us, as it would essentially mean they are breaking a treaty. We value honesty in trades as our main priority, trust is based in most on how honorably we consider another team.

Of course, as GoW legally can't trade you CoL - assuming they keep to their part of the bargain - we would be happy to provide it to you as (part of) a deal. Would you be interested in this?

Secondly, would it be possible to know if you got a probable ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) on republic? Possibly, there is a better way than your proposal...

DeepO

**Tiberius** · March 11, 2003, 05:59

GoW did receive code of laws from us as part of a previous deal, however, there was a (limited time) no-whoring clause on it (for which they asked, BTW). Are they proposing to trade it to you? If so, that information would be of great importance to us, as it would essentially mean they are breaking a treaty. We value honesty in trades as our main priority, trust is based in most on how honorably we consider another team.

Of course we will tell them that we got CoL from GoW. We don't have a clause with GoW not to tell where did we get the techs from, and it is in our best interest to have GS work/trade rather with us than with GoW. We should however ask them not to mention this to the GoW.
Be aware! We must be honest in all of our treaties This could be one of ours best advantages in the long run. We are commercial, we have potential to have loads of money, we have resources to trade, good relations with basically everybody, we can get good treaties so lets push our reputation of good traders as far as we can.

**vondrack** · March 11, 2003, 06:21

Originally posted by Tiberius
Be aware! We must be honest in all of our treaties This could be one of ours best advantages in the long run. We are commercial, we have potential to have loads of money, we have resources to trade, good relations with basically everybody, we can get good treaties so lets push our reputation of good traders as far as we can.

I wholeheartedly agree. Since we had the luxury of staying away from the turmoil of the opening phase plus being geographically isolated from the others, we can and should become THE trusthworthy trading partner for everybody.

**Tiberius** · March 11, 2003, 06:34

Amen.

**vondrack** · March 11, 2003, 07:24

OK, this would be my attempt to solve the current situation in a way acceptable for both us and GS:

Dear DeepO,

We are happy to hear that you do not mind our deal with GoW. It really was in our best interest to trade Philosophy for all the yet undiscovered, but generally known technologies - we would not be able to make any contact on our own terms within at least 7 more turns, which would put us in a position much worse (at the very least, Philosophy would lose its value by that time, forcing us to spend gold).

Alas, CoL is among the techs GoW offered for the trade and made part of the deal. We feel honestly sorry for that, but we had no idea they were not allowed to trade it to us, if that's the case. As asking or forcing them to remove the Code of Laws from the complex deal would result in delaying it by at least one more turn, we would prefer you not opposing it. Let's hope there is a different way to solve the problem... I will outline few proposals later on...

Now, about the deal on The Republic. Our solid estimate is that we would have it researched no later than on Turn 89, so you could have it on Turn 90. Depending on whether you can have it earlier or not, we would suggest that:

1) only one of our two teams researches it, with the other one shutting down his research completely (or researching something else, whatever that team considers best)

2) the team actually researching The Repubic would provide it to the other team on the very turn it would be discovered

3) the price for the technology would be 1/4 of the beaker cost in gold in case that the recipient agrees to not provide The Republic to anyone else, 1/2 of the beaker cost in gold if no such clause is negotiated. (Note, please, that amounts mentioned are just proposals, that need not be very justified - we do not have a very sharp idea about how much techs cost in the big world... it would be very likely that we would be able to "divide" spheres of trading influence, adjusting the price accordingly).

Note, please, that we are currently considering trading The Republic to two other teams, exchanging it for other technologies we will need to enter the Medieval times. So if we were the team shutting the research down, we would definitely go for the higher price with an option to trade The Republic to at least these two teams.

We understand that such a deal would require quite some degree of mutual trust - for our part, we hereby declare that we do have such trust in GS to go for the deal, if accepted (indicated by the fact that we have disclosed our research potential without being granted the same).

We would like to point out that our intention was not to make a deal bringing us money or a tech advantage, but to increase the combined profit of our teams, accomodating you at least a bit for the fact that we were not able to make our first contact with you. If we both went for the same tech, we would spend twice as much beakers (combined) to get it, without actually gaining any significant advantage, as it is unlikely that either one of our teams would be able to get it sooner enough to be able to whore it around fast enough to push the other one completely out of the loop.

And now for the unlucky CoL issue... it is of course up to you to resolve the issue with GoW, but it would make our life easier if you let it be, just keeping it in your mind while negotiating your future deals... you may keep the information to yourself ATM, asking a better price in our Republic deal, you may ask GoW for a free contact with us for tolerating their breach... we leave this up to you.

I don't think we were prohibited from prenegotiating future deals with other teams, while GoW were busy negotiating the Lego contact & Philosophy deals... and as the CoL inclusion has been revealed indirectly by discussing a future Republic deal, GoW should not be able to blame us for any "disclosure" (especially if they broke a trade treaty without informing us). Still, we would prefer if this never surfaces up...

With kindest regards,
...

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