Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[ruff_hi]

I'll draft a query email to them about their unit movements. How do we know they built a 5th quechua? Clock and Dagger?

Do we have information on how and where they have been moving? Do they look like they are scouting or staging for an attack?

[ruff_hi]

Sir Aidun,

Our turn player noted that you have 4 quechua near our borders and asked me to contact you about this. Subsequent to that, at least 3 other team members have raised concerns about these units. From our prior correspondence, my understanding is that you are using these units to scout (another team member asked why you are building quechua instead of scouts) in an effort to catch up on the map information that you are missing. I've tried to allay Team RBs concerns about this but it would obviously be better to hear this information 'from the horses mouth' (so to speak).

No doubt you have a bunch of units to move (including your units over near Imperio) and didn't think about the implications of these movements.

Please help me reduce these concerns.

Ruff
Your Voice to the Realms Beyond Team

[mostly-harmless]

Can we include something along the lines of:
- being concerned of their military buildup (as a slight hint about their latest Quecha).
- puzzled why we don't see any scouts (more suited for recon) but Quechas only
- puzzled that all activities are directed towards us and none whatsoever towards north/Imperio

mh

[Sullla]

Ruff, we know that Templars trained a fifth quechua because their Soldier score went up by 2k (14k to 16k) without any increase in overall score. The only possible way that could happen is from building another quechua.

I would go ahead and send the above message right away, adding in mh's question about why all their units seem to be over by us and not Imperio. Probably also mention that we are considering their previous treaty email.

[Zeviz]

Yes, send the above, including a question why they "aren't interested in Imperio, who just settled their second city towards Templar capital as well". (Always good to direct their attention towards Imperio.)

[ruff_hi]

I just sent this to The Templars ...

Sir Aidun,

Our turn player noted that you have 4 quechua near our borders and asked me to contact you about this. Subsequent to that, at least 3 other team members have raised concerns about these units. From our prior correspondence, my understanding is that you are using these units to scout (another team member asked why you are building quechua instead of scouts) in an effort to catch up on the map information that you are missing. I've tried to allay Team RBs concerns about this but it would obviously be better to hear this information 'from the horses mouth' (so to speak).

No doubt you have a bunch of units to move (including your units over near Imperio scouting their second city) and didn't think about the implications of these movements.

Please help me reduce these concerns.

Ruff
Your Voice to the Realms Beyond Team

[ruff_hi]

email from Templars in response to our 'units' email ...

Dear Ruff,

In cases like this it seems best to me to be straightforward.

The reason why we have units near your borders is for scouting reasons to reveal the remaining fog patches and for verification.

Our foreign policy is aimed at establishing secure relations with your team which guarantee peace between our teams for a long period and reducing the threat your current strategy poses to us. To that end we have approached you with suggestions for an alliance that would make a NAP unnecessary. As long as negotiations for either an alliance or NAP and additionally a border agreement have not even started, we have been taking precautionary measures which include the peaceful deployment of military units such as military sentinels.

Your team might not perceive that its strategy is threatening to a neighboring team like ours, but to us it is. As long as your strategy is perceived, by some of our team, as threatening to us, we will, in the absence of a formal alliance, take whatever measures we deem necessary. Likewise we understand how our actions could be perceived by you. We wish to stress, however, that our measures should be understood as a response to your team's strategy.

We are and have always been open to ideas at establishing frameworks for maintaining peace on this island and we will continue to be in the future. As we work out such ideas and both our teams take part in them, this we believe, will help you reduce your teams concerns.

Best,

Sir Aidun
Foreign Affairs Minister of the Knights Templar

I think we should send them our other draft (see above) that talks about future relationships.

[Sullla]

I concur.

I also think this team is completely schizo, moving units around our cities while simultaneously asking for border agreements and alliances. Whatever.

[sooooo]

Yes let's send them something like the draft above. Maybe we should reply to this paragraph:

Your team might not perceive that its strategy is threatening to a neighboring team like ours, but to us it is. As long as your strategy is perceived, by some of our team, as threatening to us, we will, in the absence of a formal alliance, take whatever measures we deem necessary. Likewise we understand how our actions could be perceived by you. We wish to stress, however, that our measures should be understood as a response to your team's strategy.

With something like:

We understand your concerns but we wish to reiterate that our expansion is peaceful. Your civ has concentrated on early relgions; we admire this and hope it will benefit both of our civilisations down the line. Our civ, not starting with mysticism, stone, marble or the industrial trait, have not pursued relgion or wonders. Thus we have strove for workers, settlers, and generally tried to boost our economy quickly. We hope that early technological advancement of our own civ will help all the civs on our continent by mutually beneficial technology trading.

Our first city, on reflection, was maybe too close to your civ. However, it is a good economic site which is what we are aiming for in our early cities; there are not many of them close to our capital. It does not gain military resources which we would think would have been more threatening. However, we do not wish that this decision of first city placement will sour relations between our teams for centuries. To this end, we will not expand past Pink Dot, and our next city will go west, away from your civ. We have scouted near your capital and have seen a lot of fertile land, so despite taking one of the fertile spots in the south there is still a lot of good land for you.

[mostly-harmless]

I would not mention where we are going to settle our next city.
Templars are way behind when it comes to expansion. Assuming they have not such a good knowledge of the other civs expansion rate, I would count on them misjudging our expansion rate. They have just scouted the Blue Dot area, so we won't see another Templars unit there any time soon.
If we can keep up the picture of being a 2 city civ for as long as possible, while settling Blue Dot, I would prefer that.

mh

[ruff_hi]

hmm - I sent the long draft this morning. @ MH - that doesn't work - they just have to bring up the diplo screen to see how many cities we have.

[mostly-harmless]

Hmmmm.
Will they do that regularly?
Even so, we don't have a settler ready yet for Blue Dot. No point in revealing our mid term plans to them.

mh

[Zeviz]

I thought it's impossible to bring up trade screen until writing. (You can open diplo screen, but trade screen isn't there.) Or is that just in SP games?

As for Templar posting scouts on our border, that makes perfect sence to me. Don't forget that we have by far the highest soldier score, and they have no way of knowing whether that score comes from techs or Axes.

PS It's best not to make specific promises like "no expansion past Pink Dot", because that can be interpreted as "we will never expand past Pink Dot".

PPS We might want to keep relations with Templars somewhat tense, so that when the war eventually does come, we have at least some pretext for it, aside from "we have swords and they don't".

[mostly-harmless]

I just tried and could open diplo/trade screen to all civs we have contact to and find out for example that PAL 2nd and 3rd cities are named Thebes & Memphis.

mh

[ruff_hi]

short reply from Templars ...

Dear Ruff,

A short and quick reply to smoothen the communication and prevent us from talking past each other due to the time between our letters. We appreciate your plan to refrain from expanding further south and to expand west instead. We will, however, maintain some military sentinels in place until permanent frameworks for long term peace and cooperation have been formalized. Still, we like the cooperative athmosphere that breathes from your letter.

A more extensive reply will follow.


Best,

Sir Aidun
Foreign Affairs Minister of the Knights Templar

I think that we need to keep up the communication - this is an example that oil can smooth stormy waters. We just have to try hard not to agree to anything and to not tell them that 'we are thinkin o' killen you'.