Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[sunrise089]

At most, I would send the following in one week.

"Sir Whats-his-face,

Team RB accepts that your team worked long and hard on this border proposal, and we sincerely appreciate you efforts towards restoring our historically close relations. Team RB will review the two proposals - our original one and your counter offer and try to do what the US congress is always forced into - preparing a compromise.

Team RB"

[ruff_hi]

Originally posted by sunrise089
... we sincerely appreciate you efforts towards restoring our historically close relations.

That is just beautiful - nicely said SR.

[ruff_hi]

Originally posted by sunrise089
... we sincerely appreciate you efforts towards restoring our historically close relations.

That is just beautiful - nicely said SR.

[Sullla]

Originally posted by ruff_hi
'Shortly' in Templar's time frame is 15-20 days. Will we be in a position to settler BA by then?

20 days is roughly 7-8 turns in this game, so almost certainly not. Better use a more vague wording, along the lines of what sunrise suggested.

Since we're stalling for time (yet again!) might as well wait a little while before sending anything. We can also use the holidays as an excuse too.

[Swiss Pauli]

I'd reply along the lines of:
'seeing as we didn't receive any feedback to our message on a border agreement, we had to assume that, despite giving the agreement every chance to succeed, this proposal was dead in the water. We therefore settled the marble and dyes site a few turns ago.

Would you like to make a new proposal in light of this, or would you like us to give you feedback?'

Blames them for Something Fishy, but gives them the choice of where to go next diplomatically.

[Swiss Pauli]

I think we have a reasonable response to them about Bad Ass:

'The X 1NE of the Rice is not possible because it is two tiles away from another city. The other Xs in this area do not meet the 'corridor' requirement you mentioned. We therefore propose to settle 1E of the Rice. This will bring us into border conflict over the Cows, but we do not covet them, so we can agree not to prioritize cultural buildings in this city.'

No need to send this until we have to, of course.

The key question is, would Templars put a city in there to deny us? I think not.

[mostly-harmless]

People tend to forget that Templars totally ignored our proposed border agreement and settled Iron city despite receiving our proposal before that.
I don't believe for a single moment, that settling on the iron had anything to do with us retaining a land corridor to Cape Town.
They were scared to loose iron city after receiving our proposal and double moved a settler (don't forget that) to settle at the first opportunity (remember they settled just after the turn ticked over). Iron city is sub par as it has massive overlap with Constantinople. So lets not get fooled about that they considered our well being in placing Iron city.

Their northern proposal clearly aims at securing the cows for Iron city, which is not going to happen. But I also do not see the urge to settle Bad Ass soon as Templars will not settle beyond Iron city.

Their claim in the south is just ridiculous and shows that they are a tiny bit detached from reality here. If they feared they would loose Iron city to us, and they did fear that, they must have recognized we would go somewhere else instead with our settler. That they send their proposal that late, shows they have not thought this through.
As Sullla said, they are in for a surprise. However that will still tkae time. Even with border pop of Something Fishy next turn I don't think Templars will spot our border. We have not seen a single of their scouts down there for ages, which makes the claim even more ridiculous. In hindsight, naming the city Something Fishy gives away its likely position.

Coming to a response:
We agreed that with their settling of Iron city and us settling Something Fishy any border agreement is basically a moot point. They will be able to put one more city east of Something Fishy, claiming the stone and the rice. Our placement of Bad Ass is non-negotiable.
We might as well tell them now, stating the double move.
And lets face it Templars won't be of much use as a tech trading partner either in the mid/long term.
So I don't like the sunrise's 2nd sentence as we have no intention at all to revise any proposal nor agree to any.

If we have the feeling to respond quickly, which I would not do, we can send something along the lines of:
"negotiations have not been fruitful in the past, instead action were preferred" I am still annoyed about not receiving a single message from them for many turns after they slapped down Iron city, although we were supposed to be in negotiations.

mh

[sooooo]

I think Swiss Pauli's argument is quite good. Not sure they'll agree with it, but what are they going to do?

I think Ruff's email is a bit crude - rather than seeming to laugh at them for not keeping up with current events I think it's best simply to state the situation that we settled the city before their email.

Having those two points in an email together with diplo speak would make a decent email. I don't think we should say "we'll get back to you with a compromise", rather just state the two points.

We should dress it up as thanking them for their efforts for this plan, we just have two (very minor!) quibbles which we're sure won't cause too much of a problem. Finish it with saying that if that is the case then they can consider the border agreement settled and that our teams should move on to discussing less fractious issues like tech trading etc.

[sunrise089]

I am very cautious about the prospect of either alluding to Bad Ass or Swiss's semi-apology for Something Fishy.

Apologizing or in any way explaining away Something Fishy puts the fact that we're now considering this new agreement to the forefront, making the diplo penalty that much worse when we settle Bad Ass. Again, think of how (even more) angry we would have been had Templars settled Iron City before they responded to our proposed map, then sent a response, and then settled ANOTHER city in violation.

Arguing over the specific tile we plan to settle (to me) is even worse. Why tip our hand? They beet us to our spot last time via a double-move...I'm extremely nervous about giving them any free info.

[mostly-harmless]

Why should we reveal the existence of Something Fishy to them?

"Events taking place after we initiated border negotiations with you, have pushed a border agreement down the priority list."

mh

[sooooo]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
Why should we reveal the existence of Something Fishy to them?

If we don't, they may think we settled the city after they sent their email. I don't see any advantage in purposely antagonising the templars.

[Sullla]

Just be aware that Pink Dot has exactly one spearman in it at the moment. We don't want to get TOO confrontational just yet.

That said, I'm also not particularly intimidated by Templars right now. I've been watching the Power bar every turn, and they've done nada recently. They have enough military to defend what they have, but nowhere near enough to go on the offensive. And we'll have plenty of time to respond if they do start gearing up for war.

Some kind of middle path seems best, between agreeing to a treaty we don't intend to keep, and flinging back our refusal in Templars' faces.

[Zeviz]

I like Swiss' suggestion the most. (You took so long to reply that we had to assume negotiations were dead.)

Bad Ass is not a priority, because Templars are unlikely to settle near proposed site. So we might as well not even mention it until we are actually ready to settle there. (After we have settled all inner cities we plan to settle.)

[sunrise089]

Originally posted by Zeviz


Bad Ass is not a priority...

Is this the consensus? I seem to recall several posts to the effect that BadAss is important and should be settled before more backfill cities.

[Zeviz]

My opinion is that the city is low priority, because no other team will steal the site. We aren't playing against dumb AIs that stick cities into any hole they find. We are playing against teams that have to consider political and economic situation before making any settlement decision.

Would Imperio be insane enough to stick a weak city in an area contested by us and Templars, far removed from possible reinforcements?

Would Templars prioritize putting a completely useless (they need Cows for Iron site) city in the middle of our empire, while they have plenty of good spots in an area contested by Imperio? (If they put a city there, its only use would be a launching base for an attack, which looks unlikely in the next 2 dozen turns.)