Team Info and Contacts - Banana

[sunrise089]

Sounds good Swiss.

Still agree

[sooooo]

Looks good to me.

[Swiss Pauli]

Email gesendet.

[Swiss Pauli]

Email gesendet.

[Dreylin]

I think I proposed this a while ago, but I'm not sure:

Would we have any interest in offering our second or third Great Scientist to Banana for their second Great Engineer (assuming they are not aiming to pop a Scientist themselves)? Clearly, timings would be important.

Pros:
- Helps Banana research
- We can rush a Wonder (the Globe?)

Cons:
- Looooong distance to travel (probably only practical with Caravels)
- delayed use of Great Person

Thoughts?

[sooooo]

No, I think the scientist is more useful to us. In the time it would take an engineer to get back to our lands we could have built whatever we need.

[mostly-harmless]

While the idea is a good one and would have worked with Banana as a direct neighbour, I agree with sooooo, that the time and effort (and risk) involved is too much.

mh

[T-hawk]

Let's pick up on the Iron discussion from Banana here. The 10 turn term of the deal has run out, but Banana has not canceled it from their end yet. They may not realize it.

I'm in favor of leaving the deal in place, but negotiating something to keep the iron another 2-3 turns so that we can build a couple pikemen. Then Banana takes it back. We don't need to pay for 10 turns of iron (unless with a surplus happy resource), which is the reason to stretch an extra 2-3 turns out of the current deal rather than make a new deal.

[sunrise089]

So, sunrise, you don't see the need for pikes, but still want to keep quite about the Iron deal?

mh

Sure. We are, after all, dependent on PAL for the elephant. Plus we could always have our copper pillaged again, and then the Iron would let us still build Maces.

@T-Hawk - My order of preferences is 1) don't say anything, 2) cancel the deal, 3) negotiate to keep the iron.

[Swiss Pauli]

I think it's up to Banana to cancel the deal. We borrowed it from them as 'insurance', sent a reply to their renewal proposal (and got no feedback). Caveat donor, I say

Maybe he's feeling a wee bit guilty about the 1k beakers credit note he got from us (when Imperio wouldn't have made the trade we feared). In any event, we're well in credit with him, so he won't mind a little 'oversight' on our part regarding this Iron.

[mostly-harmless]

Still think it is the wrong thing to create even a little disturbance in our relations, especially if we don't crucially need the iron right now, but might need later.

mh

[Sullla]

I have a slight preference for not saying anything, but don't feel too strongly about it either way. I tend to have more of a "you snooze, you lose!" feeling about these sort of things. More importantly, I think we can definitely feign surprise if Banana were to come to us in 3-4 turns and ask to cancel the deal. "OMG! We totally forgot about that too! Of course we're happy to give you back your iron!" I don't see that hurting relations...

Second preference would be to cancel the iron and not renew. As sunrise points out, we really don't have a great need for pikes right now. This is not single player - you won't see isolated elephants or horse archers walking into your territory unescorted. Mounted units are going to be part of a stack of melee and siege units, which means that pikes have poor odds to attack. Maybe one pike would be nice to have, as an unbeatable top defender in Cape Town, but... I just don't think the priority is that high. So long as we have ivory for elephants, we don't really need iron for pikes. And yes, I'm aware of the conditional in that statement!

I'd also like us to use our gold for burning deficit research, not upgrading spears to pikes. We can always upgrade units should an emergency arise, like if Templars came at Pink Dot in full force before we could get the Cape Town stack over there.

Therefore my preferences are the same as sunrise. But I'm willing to be talked out of them, if that's what the team wants.

[Zeviz]

How much do we want to pay them?

Here is a suggested message:

Hi Team Banana,

Our Iron deal has expired, but we'd like to train a couple pikemen after researching Engineering, if you don't urgently need the iron back. So can we keep the deal in place for 4 more turns for a one-time payment of 40$? (We are going to train literally 2 or 3 pikes, so it wouldn't make sence for us to pay more than that.)

Thank you,
Team RB

[T-hawk]

Pikes aren't for offense or counterattacking, they are for stack defense against elephants. Nothing else has an advantage on defense over an elephant (until muskets.) Cloak & Dagger Rival Militaries hasn't been updated lately, but I remember Imperio having 4-5 elephants.

I like Zeviz's message. At the very least let's keep the iron deal in place this turn (if Banana doesn't cancel), so that we can upgrade one spear.

One more detail: if we set Cape Town to a spearman on the same turn as Engineering discovery, will the build order auto-upgrade to pikeman before building the spear? I think it works that way in single player; anybody know for sure in Pitboss? If we can do this plus one upgrade, then that's enough pikes for me and we only need the two extra turns of iron.

edited: forgot we still have 2 turns to Engineering.

[mostly-harmless]

It does work like this in SP. I don't see any reason why it would work differently in Pitboss. To be sure though, we should log in soon after the turn begins to avoid Banana cancelling the deal before we first log in.

EDIT: I would offer only 20 gold and have them raise it to 30, rather than offer 40 and have them raise it to 60.

mh