Iron, Vox, and Legoland

[Togas]

This is excellent news.

I'm in favor of giving away iron for 2 techs. Especially if we can get a jump on Education!

We need to keep GS informed, and have them blockade Vox's port, not ours ... hopefully many turns after Vox gets the iron and kicks a little more GS butt.

GS will eventually understand why we did this deal, and so long as we remain honest with them, there will be little long term sting over it.

--Togas

[Hot Mustard]

I like it.

We should find out what Lego is researching. I don't agree with Education next. Why? Once we have Republic, there's no reason to rush for Democracry. I think we should go for Invention and then Gunpowder. The sooner we have Muskets defending, the safer we are from ND and GoW.

[mrmitchell]

Theo,Chiv, + <100g IMO. Considering they "seemed too happy".

Good plan for GS

[ruby_maser]

Justifying the Iron trade...

I haven't heard any more discussion on this, and from the screenshots of our last save, the workers in the group which is roading near our second iron resource have all by-passed the iron. I was under the impression we were going to build a colony soon

Anyway, I was thinking about how we could spin this in discussions with GS, how we could make it seem less of a threat. One possibility we could use to make the act seem less aggressive is this:

We claim that we have had a long-standing Resource Pact with Vox to provide any resource that the other lacks through the course of the game, if we had a surplus to give. We are now obligated by our pact to hook up the iron and supply them, though at a cost. Though we do not want war and though we can clearly see how the war has unfolded in GS's favor, we cannot break from our obligations. This alone was the reason for the heated debate in GS's "public announcement" thread; we were being threatened with war simply for fulfilling the terms of a very old treaty.

Furthermore, we are telling you (GS) this because we wish to avoid being drawn into a protracted war by trading the iron, which we must. We can abide a war to blockade their port. That action would make perfect sense on the part of the Gathering Storm. What we are seeking to avoid is a costly and bloody conflict between are two great nations solely due to a diplomatic lapse that should never have happened and responsibilities on our side that we should never have committed to.

Obviously, this is all fluff and should be tagged as confidential info that we have provided GS. They should know that Vox would deny it as part of the treaty itself, and we have only spoken up out of concern for peace and stability and our own national security.

Its just an option that could be used to help confuse their understanding of our intentions...

[GodKing]

Na. Just tell the truth. Vox asked us for the iron. We traded for it. We got a good deal. Sorry if you don't like it, but oh well.

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by GodKing
Na. Just tell the truth. Vox asked us for the iron. We traded for it. We got a good deal. Sorry if you don't like it, but oh well.

Remind me. Weren't you a diplomatic ambassador at one time? You don't seem two-faced enough to have ever made the cut

We may need to make GK the second casualty of the Inquisition, as well

[History Guy]

I like this.

[Nuclear Winter]

I was thinking of justifying to Vox that we will need all our pikemen on our land to defend from an invasion from GS, specially one aimed at cutting this iron, and ask for whatever they can give us now and later a discount in engineering (just a discount, so we can get other things from them right now, in a very likely scenario that they will fly over to valhalla before giving us engineering...). They will most likely accept as they are in desesperate need of Iron. If I understood things properly, Lego will lend even more gold to Vox after our Iron, so that Vox can rush and upgrade their spearmen. Then GS blockades Vox, and we sit while they desesperatedly fight one each other for opening or closing the ports, and while Vox attempts one last attack on GS, with Pikemen, with foreseable destructive consequencesto both, and the final Vox defeat as a consequence (or an unlikely but very optimistical stalemate between them).
I guess this could do the cut. Just signal me to PM Beta when you need it.
Nuclear Winter
remebering when we considered the war being a ruse between Vox and GS...

[BigFree]

I Like R_M's wording.

[mrmitchell]

I like ruby's wording too. First though, we need to check with Vox to make sure they haven't said anything that would contradict that.

[Togas]

I'm not in favor of lieing to GS about this non-existing pact. I don't think they'll buy it. If it truely existed we would have brought it up earlier, AND we would have given Vox iron earlier.

I am in favor of taking GK's approach.

--Togas

p.s. Death seems to have made GK suddenly one of the wisest amongst us.

[BigFree]

We could make that a stipulation in the iron deal for Vox. Vox has to agree to state that we indeed had such a "resource pact" in the past and it was activated when GS cut their supply.

I'm pretty sure that Vox hasn't said anything to them about not having a pact as such, so implementin one retroactively won't be too hard.

I'm waiting to hear back from Lego on this deal now. We are two turns from hooking up the Iron now. One to move a worker onto it, and another to build the colony. If Lego comes back with a yes to the proposal, we need to send GS and Vox their repective messages rather quickly. I want them both to recieve their messages before we actually give the Iron to Vox.

There's also the matter of the timing of the Iron. Do we tell Lego that we want Theology before we trade Iron to Vox? What if they want to wait until we actually give it to Vox first? We can cut the Iron deal afterwards if we wanted to be mean about it, though it would cost us our Iron too as we would have to cut both sources since when we cut the first source, we will lose Iron first, whle the other Source of Iron is shipped to Vox. That's the way that Civ 3 works. Once we cut the second source of Iron, Vox's supply will be gone and the trade will be nullified and we can connect up either source and it will go directly to us and the deal will not be reactivated until we do so in game.

So Lego is should be pretty assured that we would go through with the deal and not just take their one tech and run.

[BigFree]

We would not have brought it up earlier if we were discussing it among ourselves whether we should abide by it or not. Also, we could not have given it to them earlier cause we didn't have the second souce hooked up; it wasn't a priority at the time for us.

We can lie or we can say we did it to benefit Spain and not to hurt GS. Either way works for us, but which allows GS to have better relaltions towards us?

[Hot Mustard]

"A tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

It's too dangerous to lie. I like GK's approach as well. GS members seem like the type to appreciate blunt honesty too - and they'll be sure to smell a rat if we give them a long winded, nicely worded, excuse.

[ruby_maser]

I hope you are one of the people who voted for the iron trade then.

Then, you could consider it a concession to people like myself who didn't want the d@mn thing in the first place, but who are more than willing to do it if we do not blatantly p*ss in the face of a nation that has the ability to take away any competitive chance we would have in this game.

...or maybe, as Togas says, there really is a correlation to being dead and being wise.