Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[Swiss Pauli]

Originally posted by 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.

We're not apologising for SF: we're blaming them for making it look like the border agreement (BA) was dead. After all, we did say that we wouldn't settle beyond Pink to give the BA a chance.

If Templars do settle in there, we put in a city for the Rice and culture crush their city. We plan to settle in there regardless of what they say, so we need to point out that their suggested spots don't meet the criterium which they themselves espoused (corridor city).

Also, we're calling Sir Aidun's bluff: he paints himself the dove in a team of hawks. By sending him a polite but firm reply, we'll see whether they really will give up on the BA. If they don't then they realise they're in a weak position.

Lastly, I think we should get a reply to Templars by tomorrow at the latest: we don't want to delay if we wish to have any credibility with our claims that their stalling is behind the failure of the BA.

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by Swiss Pauli
...
Lastly, I think we should get a reply to Templars by tomorrow at the latest: we don't want to delay if we wish to have any credibility with our claims that their stalling is behind the failure of the BA.

I want to highlight the importance of this point. The only way they'll believe that we didn't settle after receiving their message is if we reply right away.

The PAL negotiations showed that we can come to an agreement on a 24 hour notice, so let's do it with this reply too.

[mostly-harmless]

If their counterpart to C&D is just halfway up to speed, they know we settled a new city (it shows up in the trade screen). By the time they bother to send a scout/settler down there, it will be clear from the border pop that Something Fishy is not recent but quite mature, especially, since the religion helps speeding up border pops and they don't know that SF has religion.

I am fine with a message, taking a BA off the table and blaming their double move and lack of communication for it.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

We shouldn't 'cash in' their double move just yet, as it could be much more useful to us in the lead up to war. Let's keep the blame to their delay.

It's clear that Team RB leads the way in C&D, and that the likes of Templars don't seem to make any effort in this area.

[sooooo]

* bump *

[ruff_hi]

draft email ...

Sir Aidun,

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. Unfortunately, given your teams reception of our proposal, the in-game response and the extreme lack of any communication between our two teams, we thought that you had decided to kill any Border Agreement option.

You must know that we have already settled a city in the South. That said, we'll take our original proposal, your counter-proposal and see if we can develop a compromise proposal that works for both teams. Given the nature of these two proposals and the land between ourselves, it might take us a while to respond on this front.

Putting the Border Agreement to one side, is there any other aspect of the game that you would like to discuss? As we have said in the past, Team RB remains interested in mutually beneficial trade, including tech, resources and religion.

Team RB

[Dreylin]

FWIW, I like it.

[mostly-harmless]

I don't like the 2nd paragraph at all. I would get rid of it completely.

No point of telling them about SF.
No point in making out a border agreement is still viable.

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

I'd prefer something like this:

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.

However, owing to the fact that 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 on your suggestion?

Putting the Border Agreement to one side, is there any other aspect of the game that you would like to discuss? As we have said in the past, Team RB remains interested in mutually beneficial trade, including tech, resources and religion.

I agree with mh that the original 2nd paragraph has to go: it's really rather clumsy.

I disagree with mh about SF: we have nothing to hide, so why needlessly withhold the information. That we settled it when we did is their fault (according to my draft).

I also disagree about closing the door on the BA: let them do it in a fit of pique.

If they ask us for feedback, we justify Bad-Ass and grant them stone-rice down in the southern jungle.

[sooooo]

Generally I'm fine with the draft, just one minor point: I'm not so keen on this sentence:

However, owing to the fact that 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.

To be fair, it's been the templars that have kept bugging us about the BA. Every email they've sent us before has mentioned it, and we've ignored it. It was only that final email that they declined to respond to. If we were to send them this email I'm pretty sure they'll disagree with the statement that we gave it every chance to succeed.

Maybe it's best simply to state this:

We have discussed the border agreement extensively within our team over the past months. Unfortunately, the time taken for us to draw up plans (and RB accepts our part in the delay - it has been difficult to come to a firm consensus between team members) has made an agreement rather moot. We settled a city on the south coast a few turns before your email. Similarly we noticed that you settled a city halfway between our capitals (Jericho) in between our communications. We do not really want to dwell on these points, as both sites were, in our opinion, fair game for both teams. We therefore suggest that we do not have a formal border agreement and that the only city we will settle "towards" the Templars is the connecting city on the north coast between our copper city and the rest of our empire. We feel that that gives both teams a fair chance going into the middle-game.

[mostly-harmless]

I don't know why we are still trying everything to pacify these people.
We have given them free information about the map before, iirc. Revealing the exact spot of our southern settlement will give them a valuable map information.
I rather have them loose a couple of turns of settler movement by assuming the south is still open to them. At the moment we just help them streamlining their expansion plans. They don't even have to divert one of their few units to scout out the south anymore, because we are handing out free maps of the world.

Along similar lines, why do we want to reveal our intention to settle Bad Ass. It is then clear to them that the cows will become contested. I imagine they will double their efforts to build up culture in Jericho, from the moment we send the message.

Seeing that I am being alone here with my hawkish opinion, I vote for soooo's message without revealing the Bad Ass plan.

mh

[sooooo]

I tried to be vague when talking about the connecting city. They did say they'd be fine with us settling one. I don't see the problem mentioning that.

The reasoning for mentioning Something Fishy is that we then mention Jericho and try to play it off as us both settling cities in contested areas in between our communications. I think that's a good point for us to make - that the border agreement is rather useless when we have both settled cities inter-communication. I think that's worth more than them wasting settler turns. If we don't mention that city then our whole point about why we are calling off the agreement makes no sense.

BTW: I meant for my paragraph to replace Swiss Pauli's middle two paragraphs.

[ruff_hi]

so, where are we ...

Sir Aidun,

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.

We have discussed the border agreement extensively within our team over the past months. Unfortunately, the time taken for us to draw up plans (and RB accepts our part in the delay - it has been difficult to come to a firm consensus between team members) has made an agreement rather moot. We settled a city on the south coast a few turns before your email. Similarly we noticed that you settled a city halfway between our capitals (Jericho) in between our communications. We do not really want to dwell on these points, as both sites were, in our opinion, fair game for both teams. We therefore suggest that we do not have a formal border agreement and that the only city we will settle "towards" the Templars is the connecting city on the north coast between our copper city and the rest of our empire. We feel that that gives both teams a fair chance going into the middle-game.

Putting the Border Agreement to one side, is there any other aspect of the game that you would like to discuss? As we have said in the past, Team RB remains interested in mutually beneficial trade, including tech, resources and religion.

Now, m-h has some fair comments on giving away free information so what about we delete the red section (below) and substitute in the green section (below).

Sir Aidun,

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.

We have discussed the border agreement extensively within our team over the past months. Unfortunately, the time taken for us to draw up plans (and RB accepts our part in the delay - it has been difficult to come to a firm consensus between team members) has made an agreement rather moot. We settled a city on the south coast a few turns before your email. Similarly we noticed that you settled a city halfway between our capitals (Jericho) in between our communications. We do not really want to dwell on these points, as both sites were, in our opinion, fair game for both teams. We have both recently settled cities within the 'corridor', so we therefore suggest that we do not have a formal border agreement and that the only city we will settle "towards" the Templars is the connecting city on the north coast between our copper city and the rest of our empire. We feel that that gives both teams a fair chance going into the middle-game.

Putting the Border Agreement to one side, is there any other aspect of the game that you would like to discuss? As we have said in the past, Team RB remains interested in mutually beneficial trade, including tech, resources and religion.

Personally, I am struggling with this section of the 2nd paragraph ...

we therefore suggest that we do not have a formal border agreement and that the only city we will settle "towards" the Templars is the connecting city on the north coast between our copper city and the rest of our empire. We feel that that gives both teams a fair chance going into the middle-game.

... because it gives away information. How about ...

Team RB is struggling to develop a border agreement between our two teams. In fact, a minority of our team are strongly suggesting that any border agreement is moot given the latest round of settlements. However, the majority of our team is still of the opinion that a border agreement between our teams is in the best interest of both.

Now this is a lie but it is a lie that a) we can get away with and b) they will believe. I don't want to mention BadAass because that will force them to try and block us with their own city (or raise the possibility that they will) but, equally, I don't want to say that the BA is done / over / kuput as I want to leave us with some wiggle room. Revealing (fake) internal strife in our team has worked before and, if you read Sir WHooise's email with an eye to that, it has worked on us.

[Swiss Pauli]

Sorry, but based on Ruff's latest draft, Templars are going to fire back our pledge not to settle beyond Pink Dot (to give the border agreement a chance). We need to address this point in our email, or it looks like we're the ones who can't be trusted.

Templars have been the ones demanding a BA, but only now coming up with a proposal, so I think it's quite fair to blame SF on them.

[Zeviz]

We should not accept any responsibility for the delay. Templars demanded a border agreement, but refused to lift a finger to achieve it. They ignored our messages for two months, replying only when they needed to stall us to secure the iron site. So we should not accept any part of the blame for the agreement's failure.

So I prefer Swiss's first draft as a compromise between being firm, while still keeping border agreement on the table.

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
I don't know why we are still trying everything to pacify these people.
...

Because we don't want them to attack us until we are ready to take them out. And when inevitable war starts, we'd prefer for Templars to look as aggressors and us as the team that made every effort at peaceful coexistence, even if we are the ones who attack first.

EDIT: The biggest problem with Sooooo's message is that it admits that border agreement is dead, but it would be better for Templars to say that, so we could say "see, we did everything, but they refused".