Foreign Affairs - Volume 2

[Jon Miller]

E_T said 10 turns or so until writing

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

note this is jsut them talking to eachother on the apolyton channel

Jon Miller

[Dis]

what's going on? did you play the turn?

[Beta]

Jon - thanks for the running commentary. Very interesting. And if we can take it all at face value - and there is no reason to think otherwise - then yes, it would appear that others are ahead of us in research.

It also throws out the three continent theory, as it would appear that RP/Spain and GoW are next to each other. Maybe Lux and Neu D are on a landmass by themselves. But if not, then it would appear that from East to West, it goes, Lux, Neu D, RP, GoW, Legoland. I haven't heard anything from or about Legoland.

So - if RP and Gow are in contact with each other, and some other civs, there may be lots of tech trading going on, and they may well be ahead of us. Three civs researching and trading together would be ahead of two.

Too bad we have no way of contacting Legoland. They have a peaceful, builder theme, and it would be good to get in a loop with them.

[Kuciwalker]

Any comments on my idea?

[Dis]

I'm not sure what you had in mind.

City spots are too general, because eventually we hope to put cities everywhere anyways.

What kind of reaction were you looking for?

[Dis]

and yes we are now last in points .

So I'm figuring this is because we are behind in tech. We should catch up with our agreements with Lux. but it will still take some time.

[Beta]

I think being last in points is also a function of our limited geography. Other than the cows, we do not have any high output food tiles. This has limited our groth realtive to the others. We have done minimal tile improvement because the road is key to us not getting trapped in North Estonia. Hey, c'est la vie. Puts us in a 'sleeper' role. But just wait. We get a few more cities in - get some Immortals produced - take out GS - hey - we're a somebody.

Sky - I understand the intent - but - what city sites do we talk about. We have already told GS that chokepoint us next. We could suggest south of the mountains - but we don't want to scare them into building there any earlier. We could say north of the mountains, but that is in fact where we plan on building. There aren't a whole lot of other choices. We could say northwards, but they already have an idea that space is limited up where we are. It may calm their nerves, but then will be seen as a blatant intent to mis-inform them when their warrior - Thud I think it is - sees a settler go trekking by. I think it will be easier to stick to our plan, and do some fancy talking when GS inquires what we are up to. Not that they could do much about it, though.

And to be honest - I don't know what we gain by finding out whether RP/Spain are gossips or not. It would seem that jon does a fine enough spy job by eaves dropping during chats.

[Jon Miller]

see, us being behind is something we have to fix

either by being sneaky, or by war with immortals

Jon Miller

[Wittlich]

At the present, I'm not too concerned about being last as far as the points/score goes, since these do change throughout the game...we just need to concentrate on expansion. If our empire stagnates, this has a detrimental effect on our score...

[Dis]

I think that will improve as we gain tech. We only have 4 after all. Or 5 if we got pottery.

And just to note a lot of gossip is going on esp. on irc. So I think it is safe to say that if we put something out there, many people will find out about it.

[Beta]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
see, us being behind is something we have to fix

either by being sneaky, or by war with immortals

Jon Miller

I vote for war.

And in response to Dissdent, I thought we have pottery now - or did the second half of that trade not go through with Lux - the 10 gold and 1 per turn deal? It was agreed to.

And pottery should give us six - masonry, bronze, iron, ceremonial burial, the wheel, and pottery. We are working on our seventh - which we can then trade for an eighth with Lux.

(and a ninth if we want Alphabet from GS. )

[Beta]

Hi - speaking of war with GS, is everyone playing a bit of SP Civ3 involving the Persians and the Egyptians? I have been - 2nd game now. Just the first part of the game - to get a sense of Immortals and spearmen vs spearmen and chariots. Immortals can chew through anything at this point. Get a stack of them next to a city and it is toast. But they do take awhile to get there, and the AI will use chariots to take down any undefended (ie. no spearmen) and especially wounded Immortals. It will also attack a small stack, pull down the spearmen, and then go after the Immortals.

Having some horsemen around for the Persians has been useful to kill off wounded chariots. Then they are immediately killed themselves. This is a moot point as we won't have horsemen anyways.

Roads right to the border - that is the ticket. And even into neutral territory if need be. And camp out on hills and mountains.

Back to my game.

[Dis]

yeah we should have pottery. I haven't looked at the game for a while. I can take a peek.


We should update the thread of everything .

I think I'll do that.

Thread of Everything updated. Yes we do have 6 techologies. Lux also has our 6 (since we can't trade ours to them, so I assume they have them). I use this process to figure out what GS has also. The only thing we can trade them is Iron Working. So I assume they possess 5 of our 6 techs.

[Dis]

The time has come. Unfortunately

[To BetaHound, copies to Dissident, Eli, and Jon Miller]

Greetings BetaHound and Vox Controli,

At long last, the time has come for the second part of our technological exchange. Our scholars have worked out the basic shape of the letters of our new alphabet, and while they would keep fiddling around with the last few details forever if we let them (you know how scholars can be), we have told them that they need to move on to other tasks. (What good is an alphabet, after all, if they don’t figure out how to use it to write?)

We are still just short of a point where we could present a formal offer of Alphabet through the Interface of the Mystic Game, but if you could initiate the agreement by offering Iron Working on your end of the Interface, I feel confident that we will be able to present Alphabet on our end immediately after. Then, once you indicate to the Interface that you accept the deal, the first major trade agreement between our peoples will be brought to a successful conclusion.

Speaking of Writing, our people would be very interested in some sort of additional trade agreement once we learn that skill. Our fondest wish is to gain full diplomatic contact with other nations, and our people are ready to offer a proposal in that regard. Once our researchers finish learning how to write, we would offer you that knowledge in exchange for helping us to establish formal contact with your immediate neighbor plus some minor, far less valuable technology that you have researched. You would benefit from an exchange of knowledge on terms highly favorable to you, and we would benefit by obtaining contact beyond your borders more quickly than would be possible otherwise. (For that matter, once you learn how to write, you may also be able to arrange contact with more distant nations.)

If we arrange such an agreement, however, we would like it to include “patent” protection (as our first lawyers contemplate calling it when they someday write their Code of Laws) on the technologies involved. Under the concept of a “patent,” each side would retain an exclusive right to sell or trade the technology it researched for some limited time, say twenty turns, after the exchange is completed.

There is no need for urgency in working out the details of an agreement involving Writing, since our Writing project is not expected to be finished quickly. But it seems prudent to go ahead and let you know what we are thinking in order to reduce the risk of duplication of research efforts. Please consider our proposal and let us know what you think when you get a chance.

(Continued on next camel; maybe if we had paper to put our heiroglyphs on instead of these stone tablets... )