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**Tiberius** · May 30, 2003, 08:15

I've just remembered how much they've originally asked for Feudalism from us: 200 gold. So offering Theology for 200 to them is actually a fair price.

**vondrack** · May 30, 2003, 08:21

Hm, that's a good point!

Theology is more costly beaker-wise, so offering them the same price DOES reflect the fact that it was them researching the tech originally.

It would probably be good to mention that in our message to them.

**Tiberius** · May 30, 2003, 08:37

Originally posted by vondrack

Theology is more costly beaker-wise,

Of course it is; I forgot to mention it. This is why I said that 200 would be a fair price.

It would probably be good to mention that in our message to them.

Obviously.

Let's wait for other opinions, too, but not too much because they already know we have Feudalism (they can't offer it to us anymore) and we didn't even bother to decline their offer.

**ZargonX** · May 30, 2003, 11:25

I would say an offer of 200 would be suitable. And if we can get a no-Sistene's clause out of them, as well, we'll be in very good shape.

**Kloreep** · May 30, 2003, 17:47

Let me see if I get the deal straight:

We give them Theology; they give a no-Sistine clause and 200 gold. Sounds good, but what say we make it like the Vox deal - in order to sell Theology to someone (once the 20-turn NDA is over), that civ has to agree to not build Sistine's.

Considering ND is a possible trade partner for them, I think we should include that clause.

**Tiberius** · May 30, 2003, 18:08

We are asking for 200. Since the no-sistine clause is more important than 50 gold, we would be happy even with 150, I think. This way we would get back eventually that Vox loan, only from GS

**Kloreep** · May 30, 2003, 18:13

I agree that we can lower the price. Especially if we get a no-Sistine clause attached to any redistributions.

**vondrack** · May 31, 2003, 06:18

Just received this from Gathering Storm:

Respected vondrack of Legoland.

I have not recieved word from you regarding the proposal I had sent you, but I did get an answer from looking at the save file.

Your decision to buy Feudalism from another source was quite disappointing for the team and I.
The team as a whole expected Lego to acquire the tech from us, as part of a Theology deal, as was discussed a while ago in a chat we've had.
We saw no reason to suspect you'd change your mind- that is not to say we did not expect the possibility of such development, which is also why I have sent you the last proposal, but I had assumed that we would at least recieve a refusal in the diplomatic channel, and not have to find out about it ourselves.

Sincerely

Zeit, ambassador for the Gathering Storm.

**vondrack** · May 31, 2003, 07:31

We have to respond somehow. Considering the discussion in this thread, I would like to send GS the following proposal within few hours (I am making it clear it is not official, though):

Respected Ambassador,

We sincerely apologize for not getting back to you sooner. The issue of acquiring Feudalism got tricky this week, with quite an unexpected event happening - and the team discussion on how to react and how to properly respond to your proposal, considering the new situation, lead to the delay. It was, however, our fault we did not at least notify you of the development. Accept our apologies for that.

The primary event making things complicated was that we received Feudalism from another team. We did not trade for it - we were simply sent it as "accepted" with no ties attached. This put us into a pretty delicate position, as it's rather difficult to reject such a gift without offending the donor - but we had, at the same time, parallel negotiations going on regarding the acquisition of Feudalism from you.

Now, after some discussion and hesitation, we eventually accepted the unexpected Feudalism - you do not find it lying around every day... and we are now trying to come up with a fair deal that would allow us to trade you Theology for a price reflecting our desire to maintain good trading relations, while taking into consideration that we no longer need Feudalism.

I am currently not in a position allowing me to submit an official trade proposal - but I would like to let you know there is currently an idea having a strong support in our team. According to this plan, we'd sell you Theology for a relatively moderate amount of gold, balancing the price by a "no-wonder" clause.

Let me explain: as you probably know, Legoland is quite short of luxuries. We only have one kind here, Dyes. In order to grant our people happy lives, we'll have to make extreme efforts constructing happiness city improvements, trading technologies and gold for the luxuries we lack, and so on. As part of our efforts, we consider building the Sistine's Chapel.

We are well aware of that building wonders is always a risky race, often leading to a "waste" of enormous amounts of shields. Thus, we are trying to arrange agreements with other teams that would allow us to safely finish building the Sistine's Chapel.

Would your team be willing to waive the possibility of building the Sistine's Chapel in exchange for buying Theology from us for a sum of gold significantly lower than what would be appropriate to the research cost of this technology? As no technology as costly as Theology has been discovered yet, it is a bit difficult to set a price that could be easily recognized as "advantageous"... but ATM, we are thinking along the lines of what you asked for the cheaper Feudalism, maybe even less. The no-Sistine clause is a focus here, more than the gold is...

If you can let us know how does this idea sound to you, we would be able to formulate/send an official proposal faster. Keep in mind, please, that I am sort of exceeding my authorization now, in an attempt to fix our fault of seemingly ignoring your latest tech trade proposal. I have not been authorized to submit this as an official proposal - though I strongly believe this will become our official proposal once our members come back on Monday and the discussion reaches a conclusion (your positive or negative feedback regarding the idea might help a lot) - but unfortunately, our team life pretty much stops on weekends, with very few active members remaining available for decision taking...

Best regards,
vondrack, Military Architect of Legoland

Whoever happens to be here, comment, please!

**Sharpe** · May 31, 2003, 10:52

I think it is fair on our parts. Perhaps offer to substitute all or part of the gold for their world map which we pledge not to trade to any other team (which wouldn't be surprising given our stance against trading our map).

If you think that the map offer will open a Pandora's Box whereby they might ask for our map, then ignore it.

However, with GoW's mapping of our coasts, very soon we will only have Legos Minor and our interior as the only unexplored area of our continent. So I am feeling that we might want to explore selling our map before GoW uncovers too much more...

**vondrack** · May 31, 2003, 11:10

Originally posted by Sharpe
However, with GoW's mapping of our coasts, very soon we will only have Legos Minor and our interior as the only unexplored area of our continent. So I am feeling that we might want to explore selling our map before GoW uncovers too much more...

First: map of our interior is an extremely valuable stuff. It will take others a lot of gold to stitch it together from city investigations. Without others knowing what is there, invasions will be very difficult to plan... I would rather waive the gold we could get from such a deal and keep that knowledge secret or difficult to obtain.

Second: I believe it was agreed that we would not trade our map under any circumstances. As this message of mine has been put together without much discussing/consulting taking part (in order to respond to an apparently upset GS ambassador), I will better stick to what was agreed upon before. As the PM is presented strictly as an unofficial communication, we can later back off or adjust the proposal.

The goal is now to find out if GS would be willing to waive Sistine's... they may be willing to do so, as they are probably planning a war of elimination against Voxes now, tuning their economy for military purposes.

One note: if we suceed to get a no Sistine clause from all other teams, what will be the first thing to do? Build Bach's...

...and only then get back to Sistine's...

EDIT: I am going to send the PM off to zeit now.

**Tiberius** · May 31, 2003, 12:36

Too bad I didn't see this earlier.
Mostly I agree with the letter, except that I wouldn't have gone into sch detail explaining how we got Feudalism. Somebody gifting us Feud means a very-very good relationship with one of the other teams, and they will start questionin themselves who that team may be. Maybe GoW and the others too will tell them "Hey, it wasn't us!" and there you go, our secret alliance with Vox is exposed.

**Sharpe** · May 31, 2003, 13:12

I know that it has been agreed not to trade our map. That has been a long-standing policy. But we know that GoW is trading around their world map based on our discussions with Vox.

From my reckoning, only RedBricks, Farmerville, Karina and the future site of Ahmyfoot will remain completely covered. That is 3 current cities of 12 and eventually 4 out of a probable 20? Fairly small in my opinion although parts of the land of other cities would also remain uncovered as well. Hardly "extremely valuable" when it is and will be a very small part of our territory.

As for Legos Minor, only the "Garland Crater" area would mostly remain uncovered and a whole bunch of useless territory.

I am not recommending that we do or do not sell our map, but perhaps we should put out feelers to find out if and how much the other civs would be willing to pay for our map.

**vondrack** · May 31, 2003, 14:55

Originally posted by Tiberius
Too bad I didn't see this earlier.
Mostly I agree with the letter, except that I wouldn't have gone into sch detail explaining how we got Feudalism. Somebody gifting us Feud means a very-very good relationship with one of the other teams, and they will start questionin themselves who that team may be. Maybe GoW and the others too will tell them "Hey, it wasn't us!" and there you go, our secret alliance with Vox is exposed.

Tibi, I would not be worried about this - I intentionally put it so that it sounds like we were very surprised to receive Feudalism the way we did (which is, after all, true). GS will question the reasoning of the donor, that's for sure. But there is more than one possible reason:

a) the donor is in a very good relationship with us
b) the donor wants to be in a very good relationship with us
c) the donor is in a very bad relationship with them (and wanted to harm them by giving us Feu for free)

I hope I put it (at least I tried) so that GS can suspect Voxes, GoW, and RP - either of these teams could have a reason to cut GS... and even if GS figure out it was Voxes giving us Feudalism, they will never be able to figure out the reason why Voxes did so - could be a,b, c...

**Kloreep** · May 31, 2003, 14:56

You have a good point; most of our cities are coastal, so they can be uncovered and then investigated through an embassy. But it would be a lot of gold to investigate all 15 or so cities. Also, I'd like to keep the Karina area out of view as long as possible; the FP is in some ways more important than the palace, since it is destroyed, not moved.

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