Gathering Storm - correspondence & foreign affairs

[Tiberius]

In all honesty, I like my proposal more. Not because it's mine, honest We just don't know how many turns did the ND invested in Currency already and how quick they can discover it. Furthermore, nobody seems to research Construction yet. The problem is, should we get beaten on Currency, we have nothing to trade with.

Edit: you are right however that this is too much money for the GoW. I'm trying to figure out how could we modify it slightly, to keep it attractive for them.

Anyway, I'd like to hear other opinions, too.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Darekill
Old news!
We have already allied with RP to get rid of this GoW Pest.......

I don't know whether this is a joke or not (half-truth, IMHO), but the more I hear about Bob, the more I feel like helping the GoW wouldn't be such a bad thing (for now).

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Tiberius
I don't know whether this is a joke or not (half-truth, IMHO), but the more I hear about Bob, the more I feel like helping the GoW wouldn't be such a bad thing (for now).

I bet it's just kidding... RPers would have to completely lose their mind to ally against GoW. They would have absolutely nothing to gain (especially because GoW's territory is so far away from RPers core that it would be useless to them), while keeping GoW alive helps RPers a lot, as ND has two targets instead of just one and has to consider two fronts.

I do not believe this a single bit... with the exception that RPers may simply not oppose ND wiping out GoW. But that I would not call an alliance.

Helping GoW is double-edged... we would help them hold longer on against ND (which would be good), but at the same time we would help them grow stronger, while being one of their natural targets (which are us and ND, due to the geographical distribution).

Tough call...

[Tiberius]

We could switch later, and help the ND, should the GoW become too powerful. But you're right: tough call.

[redstar1]

Redstar1, a few comments.

It has been very busy lately, I hope to catch up this weekend on all the diplo talk. We have been working on a proposal for you, but it hasn't finalized yet... one thing is for certain, we will offer republic as a trade to you.

Currency would certainly be a worthy thing to trade to republic (compensated to reflect the lower cost, of course), and I'm glad you choose it. It will make it possible for us to be a bit less hurried on signing a deal, as it should give us at least a few turns of room to negotiate further. It might be best to don't start negotiating it away to other teams before the time is right.

We have been thinking on making a pure tech trade between us, and dividing the market afterwards between ourselves. It looks like you got good contacts with RP and GoW for republic, so we were thinking on letting you exploit those contacts to its fullest, while we take care of Vox and ND. As long as each of us gets about half of the total gain from republic, we would be happy. Judging from your research speed, it looks like the both of us are best in research, so we should exploit that advantage to the max. And it seems that the best way to proceed is if both of us can get republic, and the last 3 missing techs as part of the resulting trade. We were thinking on keeping republic to our own, but in this case we wouldn't have enough resources to purchase the 3 techs (or, if you take currency, the other 2). But details need to be worked out, it might be possible to delay the other teams a little.

Re: CoL from GoW: we were thinking on how we could ask GoW on what happened with CoL, when we got contacted by them, to tell us they made a mistake. It's a positive sign, if they would have remained silent, it would look a lot worse. Compensation is under negotiation, we indicated very clearly to them that we did expect the deal with you to go through without delay, because otherwise they would break another deal, and we could be blamed by you for GoW's mistake.

One question though: did you tell them there was a problem, or did they found out for themselves, and contacted you afterwards? It would make a difference on our next contacts with GoW.

Please clarify one thing with me, what do you mean with decisions regarding your contact? I don't fully understand...

DeepO

DeepO,

Apologies for the very late response. We have been having some heated discussions on our forums about how to proceed I think we realise that we have currently very little to offer apart from a small treasury of gold consficated from the numerous barbarian camps we come across. We have decided to research Currency in order to pass the time

Incidently, have you made any decisions regarding our contact?

Redstar1

[redstar1]

This is very promising indeed..... It looks like GS are offering us a deal whereby we give them Currency and X gold, in exchange we get Republic with rights to trade to GOW and RP. Not bad at all!

As for GOW... we would have to discuss with them of course but I would be happy not mentioning our involvement. Perhaps drafting a vague reply as:

'As I understand it we did not make representations to GOW about the issue as we did not want to see it become a problem. We are glad however that things are being sorted out as we do not wish to be the cause of conflict'.

Or something like that

[vondrack]

Originally posted by redstar1
This is very promising indeed..... It looks like GS are offering us a deal whereby we give them Currency and X gold, in exchange we get Republic with rights to trade to GOW and RP. Not bad at all!

As for GOW... we would have to discuss with them of course but I would be happy not mentioning our involvement. Perhaps drafting a vague reply as:

'As I understand it we did not make representations to GOW about the issue as we did not want to see it become a problem. We are glad however that things are being sorted out as we do not wish to be the cause of conflict'.

Or something like that

I agree, this looks awesome.

I would diplomatically indicate that we "helped GoW realize" their mistake, just "mentioning" whether they checked all the no-whore clauses. I would specifically ask GS to keep this info to themselves and stress that GoW is to be trusted, since they immediately admitted their fault and promptly started working out a fair compensation.

This should not do too much harm to GoW, plus it would help us look better. Plus, it would hopefully make GS more willing to trade with us, instead of GoW. If we and GS become THE partners, with RPers and GoW our sphere of influence and Vox/ND theirs, that would serve our purpose great, I believe.

[quantum_mechani]

I would just like to clarify the reasons for my actions as GS ambassador.

First, despite my rare posting, I read the Legoland forums every day. Nevertheless, I am often 'out of the loop' due to turn chats happening around midnight in my time zone,

When I became GS ambassador DeepO and I exchanged several preliminary PMs. Then, about the time of the mini-map trade, I lost my connection to the internet. I was gone for about a month, though the only GS deal during that time was the mini-map trade. When I returned I set up a chat to steer GS away from building the great lighthouse (which was a big deal at the time).

After the chat things were quiet for awhile. Then I recieved a PM suggesting a deal that, in light of the GoW deal, we would be unlikely to accept. I did my best to politely decline the offer but encourage future trades.
I then found out that the deal was several steps into negotiations with redstar. Because of redstar being in on the deal from the start, I decided to drop out of negotiations and let redstar finish it. To be honest, I am not sure why I got a PM half way through the process since it was started without me.

I am unsure what should be done about the GS ambassadorship after this deal is done. I am ready to step back in as ambassador, but I am willing to let redstar continue if that is what he and the team want.
I can see that my somtimes being uninformed due to not being at chats could be a problem.

BTW, this is the second time I have written this as my computer restarted for some reason after writting it the first time. Since I had to copy it down from memory some parts may be unclear.

[redstar1]

Hey mate...

Theres no problem with you as GS ambassador... I think I was pm'd initially because they thought I was still FM for Legoland...

I think the problem at the minute is we have just got contact and so all the teams are trying to muscle in on us and work out deals. This means they have to be done quickly and decisions have to be made quickly. however all that is going to be coming to an end soon and so things will not be as urgent anymore. I for one appreciate that others aren't online as much as I am but I'm not going to take any credit for anything. As far as I'm concerned its a team effort and every little bit helps, every opinion is valid. You mention about the chats. Theres nothing official but myself and vondrack tend to talk to each other through the day and discuss things. Nimitz too pops in.

In essence I think we are all happy for you to continue as GS ambassador but of course that decision is up to Nimitz

[Nimitz]

If your around and can do the job of course I'm going to keep you. If Redstar will let you you can take over these negotiations with GS.

[quantum_mechani]

I think it would be an unnecessary complication if I took over these negotiations, since redstar started them. I will, however, gladly resume my post as GS ambassador when this deal is finished.

[redstar1]

Message sent to DeepO...

DeepO,

Apologies for the late response but a few members of our team have been away and we wanted to take the oppurtunity to discuss your proposals in full.

On the contact front I had meant 'had you thought about purchasing our contact anymore?'. This is perhaps a mute point now as we have agreed a price with ND for your own contact.

As for your proposals.. we certainly feel that Currency plus a cash sum would be a fair trade for Republic. Perhaps we can start negociating a fair cash price.

We are also prepared to consider your proposal for spheres of influence regarding trade. It seems to us like a sensible and advantageous idea. As an aside to this, we would most likely be able to acquire construction in exchange for Republic, from GOW.

As regards the CoL issue, yes, we did mention that a problem had arisen but we would like to stress that GOW immediately realised their mistake and contacted you to discuss the issue. We would like to add that we consider this a sign of trustworthiness and mistakes, after all, do happen. We trust all is well?

Last point is that as we are purchasing your contact from ND, would it be possible for you to sell our own contact on to Vox? Vox will complete our diplomatic deck of cards so to speak.

Nice to talk again and hopefully we will have many fruitful discussions in the future!

Redstar1

[redstar1]

Hi redstar1,

I can imagine this deal requires a bit of discussion, the same happens here. It pleases me that you are positive to it, as ar our people, with mere details to discuss.

One idea was to take the tech swap one step further, where the deal would become currency+construction for republic+polytheism (maybe some compensation needed, if there is a difference in beaker cost... I don't know the numbers by heart). We should be possible to trade for polytheism, if you're getting construction, we can both get to the middle age simultaneously.

Re: our contacts: I hope the deal between you and ND is not unrevokable: we are already in contact. Last turn, we got your contact (quite unexpectedly BTW, we were still negotiationg price) from GoW, as part of their compensation. I don't know the specifics of your deal with ND, so I don't know if you can still back out, but please don't spend money on buying baked air

You're right about Vox, though, I'll warn our ambassador that he is supposed to sell your contact to Vox, no matter how low the price would go.

Last comment on the CoL scandal: It's resolved now. Personally I don't think it was intentional, but it was unfortunate and did leave a memory behind. Knowing the specifics to how they figured it out was importantly though, as they did not tell us this, they tried to cover it up some more...

See you soon,
DeepO

[Tiberius]

May I suggest that whoever will attend the scheduled chat with the GS, do not, I repeat, if possible do not talk about treaties and trades with other teams (other than the Vox part). Stick to the GS deal. They don't need to know what agreements we have with the GoW, for example. They might not like it that part.

In the last chat, the biggest problem seemed to be the GoW's unhappiness about our trade with the GS. We should try to avoid this.

Of course, if they ask...better be honest.

[Nimitz]

what chat?