Team Info and Contacts - Banana

[sooooo]

I think it looks good.

[sunrise089]

Ok, so we ended up offering Mon, Aesthetics, and Lit for Machinery at a later date, right?

[Zeviz]

The message looks good. Thanks for writing it.

[ruff_hi]

email from Banana

Swiss Pauli and Members of Ralms Beyond Team,

After further consideration, we have decided to accept your proposal under the following conditions:

1. Since we are not granting Compass to you now, we want to be your fair market source for this tech once you find a need for it.

2. At some point, we may have a similar need to "borrow" your Horses. Should such a time arise, we would like the same consideration that you have been given by us (looking at it in a strictly numeric fashion, you are getting Iron for a steal at 143 research points!).

3. If I were ever to find green-suited Macemen suddenly on our shores, I would sure feel a bit stupid. Therefore, our team would like to enter talks for a non-aggression pact, preferably for 40 turns or more.

If your team accepts these minor requests from Team Banana, we will send Iron to you by 0500 GMT ( midnight EST). I won't be at my home computer until then. We would like Monarchy and Aesthetics this turn, and Literature on Turn 115. You will receive Machinery from us on the same turn you acquire Metal Casting.

In regards to your future trade proposal, I will have to give it some thought. There are some lower level techs I would like to get first (Calendar, Currency, Music) but would definitely welcome further discussion on your proposal. What tech are you currently researching?

That's all I have for now. I look forward to your response, and to future enlightenments!

Respectfully,
Donovan Zoi

I sent them this as acknowledgment ...

"Email received - copied to team thread - expect answer this evening / tomorrow."

[Kodii]

Hooray for calling the bluff

I don't see anything wrong with what they've approved.

[Zeviz]

Their proposal sounds good.

For NAP, we can go even father and say "open ended NAP of at least 40 turns that requires a 15 turn warning to cancel". (I don't see any scenario in which we'd want to fight them before our victory becomes foregone conclusion.)

[Dreylin]

Jut some words sketched out, as we probably want to get back to him quick. (not exceptionally coherent as it's Friday night and I've been down the pub for a while....)

Bananaman,

TeamRB welcomes your e-mail, and agrees to your terms.

To answer your last question first; we currently find ourselves neighbours with a non-communicative team in possession of Jumbos & Cats, and feel a need to be able to field similar strength units against them. Our research runs in that direction for now, but beyond that we have also been considering several of the same techs you mentioned and look forward to cooperating further to avoid duplicate research. We will certainly consider you our only source of Compass.

Regarding Horses; assuming we can maintain our supply - and are not in dire need ourselves at the time - they will be made available to you as needed. Our metal would also be available, should something untoward happen to your supply.

Regarding a NAP, we welcome your suggestion, and are in full agreement that this will be valuable to both our empires. 40t is agreeable to us, provided a suitable cooling-off period is added to the end wherein neither side can declare War. If you were amenable, we would suggest inclusion of an auto-renewal clause. e.g. after 30 of 40turns, if neither side notifies the other of a desire to cancel the agreement, it would automatically renew for 20turns. This ensures at least a 10turn "notice period" of intent to cancel the agreement, and saves the bother of re-negotiating the agreement as it nears expiry.

All the best,

TeamRB.

[Swiss Pauli]

I'd like to move quickly and send a short email agreeing to all his requests, then follow up with a longer one in which we discuss the 'rolling NAP', and longer term tech exchange (e.g Music for Calendar).

Note that he's not insisting on having our horses for nothing, but simply that we're prepared to offer them at a reasonable price. If we're at war, I'd say we have the perfect reason not to offer horses at that time.

So I advise:

1. Agreed - we'll not look elsewhere for Compass.

2. Agreed - we are prepared to offer you Horses on similar, reasonable terms as you offered us Iron.

3. Agreed - we accept a non-aggression pact (NAP) for 40 turns from T114. We'd like to make a 'rolling NAP', but an initial 40 turn pact will give us time to sort out the details of such a deal.

We're interested in sorting out deals for Calendar & Music, but we'd like to conclude the above deal first, if that's OK with you. If it is, send us a quick confirmation email and then each party can make the in-game gifts.

[mostly-harmless]

Excellent success for diplo team.

mh

[sunrise089]

Great Swiss, and Dreylin's looks fine for a basis for the follow-up.

PS - 40 turn pact is laughable to me...I know that is a lot of time, but do they think with all of the stuff going on on our own continent we're going to build 10 galleys and send them all the way across the world to play colony maintenance and then get killed by PAL?

[Sullla]

I agree, huge success for our diplomacy! Banana is our most natural ally, and it looks like we both realize it. Having one completely solid partner (rather than the shifting and uncertain relationship we have with the other teams) will go an extremely long way to promoting our situation in this game. If anything, I'd be even more lovey-dovey, with lots of talk of partnership and coordinating our plans from here on out. Banana NEEDS us to counter PAL's strength on their continent, and we would prefer working with them to anyone else (PAL too strong, Imperio/Templars local rivals).

Agreeing to whatever NAP Banana proposes is cake. We are emphatically not going to attack them anytime in the next 100 turns. They're on the other side of the freakin' world! That's an easy one.

EDIT: Thought of one other thing. We should try to get Banana to pressure Templars as well into sending us Metal Casting. After this "acceptance" email, maybe we can send a combined Banana/Templars email discussing the need for group cooperation, which would include our teams sharing techs and not holding them back from one another. Anyway, it's something to think about, at least.

[Swiss Pauli]

OK. I'll send my brief acceptance email now, and use Dreylin's draft as the basis of the follow-up email to be sent once Banana confirms the deal.

A quick check of Donovan's local time tells us he's at GMT-6, so we best hope he's an early riser if we're going to get the deal done this turn

[Swiss Pauli]

email sent:

Hi Donovan,

We're keeping this brief to try to squeeze in the deal to T114 if we can, so in answer to your points:

1. Agreed - we'll not look elsewhere for Compass.

2. Agreed - we are prepared to offer you Horses on similar, reasonable terms as you offered us Iron.

3. Agreed - we accept a non-aggression pact (NAP) for 40 turns from T114. We'd like to make a 'rolling NAP', but an initial 40 turn pact will give us time to sort out the details of such a deal.

We're interested in sorting out deals with Team Banana for Calendar & Music, but we'd like to conclude the above deal first, if that's OK with you. If it is, send us a quick confirmation email and then each party can make the in-game gifts.

Best Regards

Swiss Pauli

[Swiss Pauli]

Hi Team Banana,

Following up on our earlier discussions, we'd like to present our current ideas for you to consider:

In the short-term, we find ourselves threatened by Imperio's Jumbos & Cats, so we're learning HBR and Construction. If a worried Team Templar contacts you when they see that we possess these techs, please assure them that we pursuing this path to defend ourselves from Imperio, not to attack them. We've not been successful in persuading Templars of our peaceful intentions, in spite of offering them a long term NAP.

Regarding our own NAP, we would suggest inclusion of an auto-renewal clause: i.e. after 30 of 40 turns, if neither side notifies the other of a desire to cancel the agreement, it would automatically renew for 20 turns. This ensures at least a 10turn "notice period" of intent to cancel the agreement, and saves the bother of re-negotiating the agreement as it nears expiry.

Regarding Horses: assuming we are not in dire need ourselves at the time they will be made available to you upon request. Our metal would also be available, should something untoward happen to your supply. Another future proposal we'd like to discuss, would be a post-Guilds deal whereby we gift you our Horses for a period to allow you to train Knights, then you return the favour by gift us Iron for us to do likewise.

(a) As to Calendar and Music, we're happy to research Calendar ourselves as we have resources requiring plantations and to trade it to you for Music (the GA compensating you for the extra beakers).

(b) As to Calendar and Music, we're happy to research Music ourselves and trade it to you for Calendar (the GA compensating us for the extra beakers).


Finally, to return to Philosophy for a moment. If PAL are learning this tech, it's possible that they are planning an early move for Nationalism, with the intention of drafting an army to annihilate you. As a first suggestion, we recommend you focus sufficient Espionage spending on PAL in order to maintain visibility of their research. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say!

Best Regards

Swiss Pauli

I realise the bit about Templars might need to be removed, but I feel it's worth discussing.

The Calendar-Music thing needs work, esp if Imperio claims the GA (though I'd imagine they're learning Guilds atm).

I see that Banana has 394 versus PAL's 204. I think this let's them see research? Which could well be how they knew about 'Philo in 4' (or three as it is now). I mentioned the unlikely Nationalism play to at least alert them to the power of the draft, and also to try to ease them towards the Feud/Guilds path.

[Dreylin]

I actually like the bit about Templars, and we could even look to expanding it along the lines of:

It was clear from your coordination of discovery of MC & Machinery that you have worked together with Templars before. If we can bring them into a three-way alliance/rsearch block, maybe together we can start to challenge Imperio & Pal's domination.