Tech Deal Debate

[Aidun]

Señor Torquemada is making a good point here, but that is the way how this game will behave on the long term, on the short term we can best try to gan as much tech as possible, whether that be through trade or research does not heally matter IMHO.
Now that the despot seems to favor trade over research at the moment (monarchy trade) we can best continue this by trading with Lego.

Aidun Cian the older

[Togas]

new offer from Vox:

Togas - esteemed leader of the people of the squid,

Greetings, sir! First off I would like to advise you that Dissident has been inovolved in a mystical experience at the temple in The Voice - something called real life. We are not sure when he will re-emerge from the temple, so during this period of his transcendance, could you please direct correspondence to me. Jon will asssign a new foreign affairs advisor to you shortly. Thank-you.

On the matters of trade, we await your response to our earlier trade discussion. We would like to finalize it from our end. In fact, we would like to offer an expansion of the deal to include the Republic, at a cost of 160 gold payable as 8 gpt over 20 turns. This would make the combined deal one of currency, monotheism, and republic in exchange for 19 gold per turn for 20 turns. We would also insist that this deal be kept strictly confidential. You are free of course, to trade further any of these techs, as long as the source is not identified.

Please let me know as soon as possible regarding this deal, as we expect to have the techs shortly. I cannot recall if you have construction, or have made previous arrangements to receive it, but if not, we could also offer it to you at a highly discounted rate.

I trust all is well with you and your fine nation.

Regards ....

Beta
Voice of Foreign Affairs
Vox Controli

Frankly, I don't care much for Republic, as Spain will not be ruled in such a mannor, but if they will give us a decent price for Construction, we should reconsider this. Also note that we can retrade any of these techs.

Please reopen this debate.

--Togas

[Thud]

I say we take Lego's deal, and not Vox's. I would also recommend that we consider this proposed Lego-Spain tech trading alliance; the idea has merit.

[GodKing]

Stay with lego - no gpt - and re-evaluate afterwords.

[MrWhereItsAt]

We need to convince Legoland our pre-game deal is still valid. I have nothing against the Vox offer, but we don't need to impress them at all.

[Aidun]

I had some chat with ET from Roleplay yesterday

[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] ET, I'm concerned with the political aspect of the trade: we trade with Vox while the BOB-alliance declares war on them, we should obey the decision of th alliance and declare war with Vox. It is ridiculous to make a trade agreement while we should declare the war. We can't explain that to our Bob-allies. It is in Vox's interest to get that deal however, because it decreases the chance on war so that they can peacefully settle on our continent.
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] Trading with Vox at this moment is the opposite world
[E_T] What is this war is because GF had made everyone think that there was more units than we were originally lead to beleave
[E_T] I'm split with this, if we "join" the others, then we lose the possiblility of getting Mono for so cheap
[E_T] Also, we would have to trek a long way to actually send any forces to help
[E_T] This would also weaken us at home and ND could turn around and attack us while we are away
[E_T] They have to only move through their territory on roads to beat us home
[E_T] so the only thing that we can do really to "support" the others is via a trade embargo.
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] Nobody asks to support the alliance militarily, Read the message of Darekill
[E_T] but if we entered into the pact with false knowledge being presented to us about what was up there, then we shouldn't honor that pact, at least in total
[E_T] I just got home and have to run out again, so please give me a link to follow
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] I do also not oppose the deal or trade agreements with Vox, I oppose the idea to make a trade agreement wile we are supposed to have war with that civ. If Vox wants to take the risk of us having to declare war on them or to sabotate the them in some way, that is their responsibility. We can arrange an agreement thet we trade now and if war occurs we stop paying to continue when we have peace again, quite ridiculous too, but why not
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] link?
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] Now that we have that alliance we should take it serious, but securely filter the information we get through our allies, I don't trust GF at all for the info he has provided us as you can read in the Vox thread
[E_T] [Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] .... Read the message of Darekill
[E_T] link to that
* E_T is now known as E_T_AFK
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] Diplo thread
[Aidun_idle_notice_me_for_chat] last page

Togas replied in response that he found the idea, pausing trade agreements to have a war and continue the trade agreement when the war has stopped, too risky. I have posted it here to inform you of this idea, not to propose it. It is an exploration about the possibilities in the margin of what's diplomatically possible.

Aidun Cian the older

[OliverFA]

Republic is an special tech, sice we don't plan to use this form of government for many years, and our wise men don't need it to reach that new age they are talking about. For that reason I agree that we don't need to pay a single gold coin for that tech.

Eventually, when we need Republic we can either buy it or even research it a lot more cheaper (1/6 of its total cost, which by that time will probably be 4 galactic cicles due to our relative high science production and Republic low cost)

About Lego, I've been having a little chat with Togas at the IRC channel tonight. I agree that at that moment they are not in the mood to be our trade partners. That's so baaaaaaaaaaad

However, if we work to gain their trust, we might reach a point in which we can propose them that deal, and maybe start the Third Age with that tech deal in work. Of course, meanwhile we should continue to do puntual trade deals with all the civs.

[Thud]

Nimitz has gotten back to me on this. They are not yet entirely sure what they will be researching, as they apparantly have a good deal of tech trades in development. He did, however, say that they "will be researching the upper tech tree".

Sort of vague, but it suits our purposes. They don't particularly want Chivalry. This also most likely means that they will research Monotheism or have a deal in place to get it rather quickly. (it also indicates that they will change to Democracy. no big surprise there)

[Togas]

In the end, we caved in and took Vox's offer of Constr, Currency, Monotheism for 220g.

We now have all of our techs for the Ancient Age wrapped up. We may choose our Middle Age tech.

What tech should research next Feudalism, Engineering, or otherwise?

--Togas

[Aidun]

Militarily I wouldn't have to think about it: Feudalism, improves our military position just when that is so important.

But my mind tells me that tradewise, engineering is better. Then we can get feudalism by trade.

So I say Engineering

Aidun Cian the younger

[pikesfan]

We need Feudalism more than Engineering, as we don’t yet have an urgent need to quickly cross rivers.