Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[Sullla]

That sounds reasonable.

To make sure we don't just talk in circles endlessly, I'll throw out this plan of action. Why don't we have Swiss Pauli modifiy Zeviz's earlier draft to incorporate our recent discussion, with the understanding that we'll send mostly_harmless' map along with the message. Then we can make any changes/fixes to the message as a group, and hopefully send it off sometime in the next day or two. Sound good?

[Zeviz]

So we'll be sending Mostly_harmless' map? That sounds good.

Here is my draft with all suggested adjustments:

Dear Sir Aidun,

We are glad to hear that your people are also enthusiastic about potential for cooperation. As peace-loving nations who have to rely on ingenuity to compensate for poor land, it is natural for us to work together to be able to keep up with our neighbors, who are blessed with gold mines and numerous fertile floodplains. And since most of our continent's fertile lands are located in the south, we agree that control of these fertile grasslands will determine the destiny of both of our civilizations.

You have mentioned a permanent border agreement, which should definitely be our eventual goal. Many of our people think that such an agreement should come about only as a result of a long process of cooperation that builds up the trust necessary to justify the consessions made. Such an agreement is especially difficult to commit to due to uncertainty in settlement pattern in the north-eastern part of our continent due to lack of border agreement with Imperio.

However, we understand your need for certainty, so most of the rulers of our civilization have agreed to the following interim settlement guideline, while working on a full tri-lateral agreement: In the south-western portion of the continent, large jungle provides a natural boundary between our civilization. We can pledge not to settle in that area, if Templars pledge not to settle in the north-western part of the continent. We are attaching the map on which we've marked proposed settlement boundaries. The marks on the map indicate the places where your cities could go, so we pledge not to settle there, if you don't settle beyond those marks.

Since this agreement would severely limit our expansion in the southern part of the continent, we can sign it only as a part of a comprehensive friendship pact that includes cooperation on trade, technology, and religion. The technology exchange and Open Borders agreement would provide a particularly strong sign of friendship and mutual trust.

And speaking of religion, our people yearn for the light of god and are wondering who can give them guidance. Some believe that Islam offers one true path to faith and Imperio is the only righteous nation in the world. Many others look to the twin beacons of Christianity and Buddhism shining in your southern lands. Like prince Vladimir of ancient Rus', we are ready to listen to any messanger of faith before making our choise.

Zeviz,
Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Interim Embassador of Realms Beyond

Whatever we decide, can we send something this evening?

PS I am beginning to enjoy the role-playing aspect of this, so can I keep the position of Embassador to Templars for now, while Swiss handles the rest of communication? Swiss, are you ok with this?

[mostly-harmless]

Yep, lets aim for sending something tonight.

As I said before, I would get rid of mentioning anything about Imperio.
And also add a sentence to clarify exactly what the map shows.

mh

[Zeviz]

Is it better now? (Updated paragraph 1 and added a sentence to paragraph 3.)

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by Zeviz
PS I am beginning to enjoy the role-playing aspect of this, so can I keep the position of Embassador to Templars for now, while Swiss handles the rest of communication? Swiss, are you ok with this?

Fine by me. I felt Ambassador was too modest a title, so I named myself Minister For Truth

[Sullla]

Hey Zeviz, I think that sounds fantastic! You even worked in a reference to early medieval Russia, which the historian in me greatly approves. I'll make one very minor suggestion, adding a small extra point of clarity (bolded passage below):

However, we understand your need for certainty, so most of the rulers of our civilization have agreed to the following interim settlement guideline, while working on a full tri-lateral agreement: In the south-western portion of the continent, large jungle provides a natural boundary between our civilization. We can pledge not to settle in that area, if Templars pledge not to settle in the north-western part of the continent. We are attaching the map on which we've marked proposed settlement boundaries. The marks on the map indicate the places where your cities could go, so we pledge not to settle there, if you don't settle beyond those marks. Since the check marks indicate where Templar cities could go, the actual border between our civs will naturally be slightly further north and west.

Let's wait until tomorrow to allow more team members give feedback, and then send it off, with accompanying map.

[sooooo]

Hi, I think Zeviz's email is great and don't have any changes to suggest. Sorry I can't participate more to the game at the moment; I should have more time in a few weeks.

[Swiss Pauli]

I'd add another line after the borders proposal along the lines of:

'This is our first proposal concerning the border agreement, and is - of course - subject to your comment and approval. If you can propose a more elegant solution then we would be most willing to consider it.'

This gives us plenty of wriggle-room in case they don't like our proposal.

[mostly-harmless]

Looks good with all the suggested modifications.

EDIT: Do we want to congratulate them on capturing that barb city?

EDIT2: T80 started and Templars learned a Classical Age tech. Together with a massive increase soldier points, it is probably save to assume they know Iron Working, so know about the position of Iron!

mh

[Sullla]

Let's go ahead and send the message regardless. It's a very polite email, and it sounds like we're giving up more than we actually are.

Even if Templars do know about iron (and I agree that they almost certainly just researched Iron Working), they might still agree to our proposal, not expecting us to move so quickly towards the center of the map. After all, our proposed map does allow them to take the iron, if they settle rapidly at one of the northern yellow check marks. (Should they do so, our next city goes at the marble.)

[mostly-harmless]

If they agree to the proposed map, they can only settle two tiles away from iron. That will allow us to settle Pink Peaks and grab the Iron with superior culture. That was the whole point of the map / border agreement, no?
Anyway, lets send the message, Zeviz and see what happens.

mh

[Zeviz]

Sent, including Sulla's suggested clarification and attaching Mostly_harmless' map.

[ruff_hi]

response ...

Dear Zeviz,

Your previous letter has been received with mixed feelings by my team. In this letter I will explain why. First, however, I will start with the positive news.

My team is enthusiastic about the cooperation you propose on the four fronts mentioned in your letter: Border agreement, trade cooperation, technological cooperation and religious cooperation. While we think that we should talk more about the details of technological cooperation, we feel that there is a common understanding of the road our teams should go down and also how to go down that road. This is truly a big step in the negotiations and we trust that these will continue to be as positive as they have been until now. Based on this, we suggest that we proceed to open our borders. We would prefer, however, to stick with a no-scouting clause such as you suggested in your previous letter. In addition to opening borders, we will try to send a missionary soon, but in any case not before we have completed the agreement entirely and both sides have agreed to it.

Now the bad news. We understand that your team is in fierce competition with Imperio for land of quality, but we are confused as to what you mean by that exactly. In your first paragraph you mention that the most fertile lands are located in the south. We wonder then what is meant by 'the south'? Does it refer to the lands along the southern coast? Or does it refer to the land south of your capital? We don't think you have especially bad land, at least not worse than we have, so we don't see how 'the south' would have better land. In fact, because you settled Pink Dot all those turns back, to us it would seem that you yourself claimed a sizable portion of 'the south', one that is expanded even further in your border proposal.

In this light we do not understand your offer to exchange land: We would not settle in the northwest (what does that term, the northwest, mean? To us it means the land west and northwest of (beyond) your capital, where we will obviously not settle), while you would not settle in the jungle. We do not consider this very generous. Even if you would consider your own land bad, we wish to remind that it does have forest, which means a lot of free hammers. Jungle offers nothing. It is unhealthy, it takes a lot of time to clear it, the clearing doesn't produce any hammers and we're left with only grassland.

What's more you're limiting our options for expansion in your settlement plan to essentially our current cultural borders, while allowing yourself to settle beyond yours in the land between our current borders. Where is the balance? Where are the "severe limits on [your] expansion", you speak of? And not least important: what about your team's pledge that "we will not be founding a city beyond 'Pink Dot'", which can be found in Ruff's letter of 25 August? Your statements are conflicting considerably with your proposed plan, which makes it difficult for us to estimate how much value we have to attribute to your statements and pledges.

To be honest, our team feels this border proposal is not entirely fair, not an equal exchange and not the kind of cooperative commitment we had expected to see from your team. We suppose you did not intend it to be that way, but to us it seems tricky, and we don't like that.

So I'm going to put the ball back in your team's court. Take your second chance. We have positive hopes for our future cooperation. We also think the border issue will not be difficult to resolve. Our pledges stand and so does our offer regarding open borders and religion, but there is no border agreement right now, even through negotiations on it will continue.


Best regards,

Sir Aidun
Foreign Affairs Minister of the Knights Templar

[sunrise089]

Let's just ask them to send us a map. They are crazy to think grassland tiles aren't valuable, and the offer we made split the land between Pink and their border.

Their assumption is that we should split the borders based on starting positions, in which case Pink is the extreme vanguard of our settlement. They are sadly mistaken about that...there is no need to punish ourselves because we settled in a prudent manner.

[Sullla]

All the Templars ever do is reject the offers we send them. They've made zero effort to grab land for themselves, yet they seem to expect us to passively give them all of the disputed territory between our civs. I mean - we're 81 turns into the game, people! They haven't sent so much as a single settler north or west of their capital. I'm really sick of their bullcrap.

I'll echo sunrise. Ask them to propose their own map, if they're so unhappy with ours. This isn't the worst turn of events either - we've clearly taken steps to try and work out an agreement with Templars. If they continue to reject our requests, we go ahead and settle Pink Peaks. "Hey, we tried to make a border agreement, and you kept turning us down." All negotiations must be backed by some kind of real-world force. Otherwise, they're nothing more than bluffs. I've seen a lot of rhetoric and no action from Templars so far in this game.

We REALLY need to find Rabbits and Banana soon. Templars and Imperio are unlikely to give us much of anything in terms of trading, and we can't rely on PAL as a tech partner.