Team Info and Contacts - Imperio

[regoarrarr]

Based on my initial calculations from the BLoodbath thread (which nobody has refuted), T160 is the estimated target date. I don't think I'd want to sign anything longer than 30 turns (T155) and think I'd rather have none.

[Swiss Pauli]

Not having a NAP with Imperio only gives us another option if Imperio is stupid enough to attack Templars under those circumstance. If we do sign a NAP with each other then we both have good reasons to attack Templars. As I see it, the NAP gives us the better option.

[Swiss Pauli]

Based on my initial calculations from the BLoodbath thread (which nobody has refuted), T160 is the estimated target date. I don't think I'd want to sign anything longer than 30 turns (T155) and think I'd rather have none.

Your best case scenario had us trading for Nationalism which won't work. If PAL grabs it from Liberalism then they will already have Education. I don't see another team learning Nationalism in the medium term (and also trading it to us). As I see it, we need Philo, Nationalism, Drama and Gunpowder for Bloodbath. Seeing as Templars stiffed us on the Drama trade, we'll almost certainly be learning the last three techs ourselves.

[Sullla]

Sullla, you don't seem to to have understood that learning Philo is Plan B should PAL turn us down. There's nothing drastic is running Plan B past Imperio and Templars. The problem we have with PAL is that they *must* trust us in order to trade us Philo, whereas Templars very much wanted to trade us MC but had some kind of agreement not to do so. As it comes down to trust, we'll be able to do a lot less persuading with PAL than we did with Templars. Given the lack of responsiveness from Templars and Imperio we need to start down this path sooner rather than later. It's no good finding out in 5 turns that PAL won't trade us Philo, and not having a Plan B lined up as best we can. Don't forget that PAL already turned down Engineering when they had Philo to trade for it.

As to teaming up against PAL, we're dangling a carrot to make Imperio switch away from military to peaceful techs. It's essentially the same diplo double-talk we're making with Banana about having no plans to attack Templars.

Diplo-talk is one thing, sure. What happens if we promise to trade Philosophy to Templars/Imperio, and then we end up getting it from PAL in a trade? I don't want to see us break our word and ruin our reputation by promising different things to different teams. Just be careful with what we say.

I'll also repeat what I said earlier: Imperio is not going to have any dealings with us. I cannot see it happening. Our time would be much, much better spent chasing up PAL (and Banana), teams that have worked well with us in the past. Of course, it's not an "either-or" thing, and we can do both too...

There's also no reason why we can't trade Engineering to Templars for Theology and Drama. Templars love to tech-whore their new discoveries, there's an excellent chance they'll go for that. 'Course, we'd still need to come up with Nationalism and Gunpowder, but we were planning on that anyway.

[Zeviz]

The tech trade is impossible because we have to get Philosophy from PAL, and we don't want to sell them Engineering.

As for NAP, we can suggest a 30 turns NAP starting as soon as possible. Anything longer could jeopardize our planned attack.

[sunrise089]

I'm cool with a 30-turn NAP. We don't plan to be on the ATTACK before then....and attacking Imperio if they attack Templars will be bloody if we went in now (think 1-2 cats versus slaved longbows).

I agree with the above concerns re: Philosophy, but I take the point that this is a plan-B if we can't trade for it. In that case I'd prefer to keep the deals tentative somehow and only research Philo if we had the Templar AND Imperio trades lined up.

[mostly-harmless]

I don't like the idea of the NAP.
We keep on reasoning, Imperio would be stupid doing that, Imperio would be stupid doing this. They have been stupid in the past (open borders?, no libs?) For all we know, they have built a stack of galley in their three coastal cities and their stack moving east might be a first step invading PAL?! In that case we still don't want to go up against Templars and our hands are tied, while Imperios is at their weakest. Remote possibility, true, but I don't see our big gain from committing to a NAP with Imp right now. Let them tank their economy with military builds and units costs, while we fill our backyard. Our lead over them grows stronger with every turn.

!No NAP!

mh

[regoarrarr]

So I was thinking a bit about Imperio and what they are doing. And as a reminder, although it is fun to joke about how Imperio (or whoever) are idiots and don't know what they're doing, it's probably reasonable to assume that the people playing are makig reasonable decisions based on the information that they have and all that. And Occam's Razor and all that too. So I tried to put myself in their shoes to figure out what they could be thinking.

I went back through the Imperio thread and tried to note our conversations back and forth with Imperio.

12/20 - email sent referencing Aest/Math trade
12/30 - email sent referencing Rabbits / PAL war and Aest/Math trade
1/8 - email recevied - Thanks for letting us know - we'll see if this gets the game going and we will respond to your other message that you sent us.
1/17 - email sent referencing NAP and Aest/Monarchy trade
1/18 - email received - I'm traslating the propusal to the team. I hope could reply in short time. Tanks very much for all.
1/23 - m_h talked to Imperio in game - They are discussing NAP and tech trade.
1/29 - chase up email sent.
2/5 - spanish email sent - math for aesthetics and literature
2/15 - email sent - Are you interested in trading Currency to us for Aesthetics and Literature?
2/16 - I traslate the propuse to the team. I think is a good trade. I hope reply in short time.
2/22 email received = Hi, Team RB. My team want know when you have ready the literature for trade.
3/1 email sent - thanking them for the in-game trade and promising to ship them Literature next turn.
3/9 - sent note to imperio asking about NAP
3/23 - email sent Hi Imperio, are you interested in a new NAP?

So, what do we know about them. We can assume they are decent (if not excellent) civ players. I'm not saying they've shown any great skill, but they've got to be at least decent, right? They showed enough skill to do the unit queue manipulations, and while they were certainly greatly helped by the massive gold resources, what are their rational reasonings?

The only thing I could come up with was some sort of breakdown in internal team dynamics. As I looked back, we were dealing with MiTH, who on Apolyton is X_MiTH_X. I see that he is still active here at Apolyton, though I obviously can't see if he's still playing in this game. So maybe the current team playing thinks that we still HAVE a NAP? I mean, if we make the assumption that they think that they have a NAP with us, then doesn't it make sense that they would be attacking PAL or Templars? It was interesting to read some of the old posts like the one we sent after PAL DoW'd Rabbits, and we wanted them to ship Rabbits Feudalism for Longbows, talking about how this was the only way to stop PAL from winning the game.

So maybe nobody is monitoring their Gmail account? Any thought in sending a PM to MiTH or email at mith.civ@gmail.com? Just asking if he's still the ambassador or if it's someone else?

[Dreylin]

Probably not a bad plan.

[Zeviz]

Actually, if they are under mistaken assumption that we have a NAP, it might be good to keep quiet long enough for them to declare on somebody else.

Now that I think about it, maybe silence is the best policy towards them:

1. If they are planning to attack us, they will not sign NAP anyway. If they are planning to attack somebody else, we don't want to sign NAP to keep our options open. (So if they do agree to a NAP proposal the only thing it will tell us is that we shouldn't have offered it.)

2. There is little potential for tech trading in the near future, especially if we manage to
sell Engineering to everybody except Imperio.

So we might as well ignore them until either they discover a tech we like, or we decide for some reason that we want to attack Templars and have a NAP with Imperio.

[Swiss Pauli]

If we want to see if Imperio is still actively checking their email & has interest in dealing with us, then we should ask them a very open question about tech trading:

'We have not decided what to research next, but one idea is to learn Philosophy. If we do so, would you be interested in trading something for it? If yes, then what could you offer? Or do you have a different idea of technologies we can trade to help both of us keep up with PAL?

Let us know your ideas.'

We don't commit to anything except discussion, and we ask for more than a simple yes/no answer from them.

[mostly-harmless]

Discussion is something that did not happen with Imperio in a long long time.
I agree with Zeviz, to keep quite right now, unless a real good tech trade is possible or war breaks out, in which case we spam them with abuse.

mh

[ruff_hi]

Discussion is something that did not happen with Imperio in a long long time.
I agree with Zeviz, to keep quite right now, unless a real good tech trade is possible or war breaks out, in which case we spam them with abuse.

mh

I would agree with mh here ... except maybe we tell them to go away or we will taunt them a second time!

[sooooo]

Draft:

Impero:

Please make a decision. Either (a) attack us or (b) sign a NAP with us and go attack someone else.

We have equal technology. The defender will always win in this situation. We will lose if we attack you and you will lose if you attack us. The only way to win a war in this game is to attack someone with less advanced troops.

We look forward to your answer.

Realms Beyond

Last ditch effort.

[regoarrarr]

I would support sending something like this. I think it's important to keep the lines of communication up