Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[T-hawk]

if both teams were to cancel Open Borders, we would lose all of our trade routes - all of them - and our resource deals with PAL and Banana. Yes, this is one of the side effects of the atrocious map design, but there's nothing we can do about it.

I'd like to note that there ARE things we can do about it. We could be on the offensive and conquering trade route access for ourselves, rather than building arty-farty wonders. Or we could beeline Astronomy and take trade routes into our own hands. If we want something to resist macemen, we need to get our butts on up to Feudalism. The fact that we've chosen not to do these things doesn't mean the map rendered them impossible.

[sunrise089]

I'll take a stab at a draft based on Sullla's points...coming soon.

EDIT:

I'd like to note that there ARE things we can do about it. We could be on the offensive and conquering trade route access for ourselves, rather than building arty-farty wonders. Or we could beeline Astronomy and take trade routes into our own hands. If we want something to resist macemen, we need to get our butts on up to Feudalism. The fact that we've chosen not to do these things doesn't mean the map rendered them impossible.

Offensive - Go on the offensive with no iron, no elephant, and no horse or copper before we settled our hard-to-defend border city? All we could have done to speed up military was build 1-movers or obsolete chariots from the turn we had Cape Town online, which wasn't exactly early.

Astronomy - Even a beeline is tens of turns away, right?

Feud - Against humans, I don't think Longbows are any better than Cats+Elephant versus Maces.

[sunrise089]

Hercules of the Templar,

We are very disappointed that the team has rejected our offer for an extension of our NAP. We would like to avoid a destructive military buildup along our borders, but how is this possible if Templars keep turning down all of our offers? Your emails always state a desire for peace, but our peaceful overtures seem to be constantly turned down.

RB would like to reiterate to you that we have no desire for war with your civilization. We hope our actions have removed any doubt:
+ We have offered an extention of our NAP.
+ We have offered to trade valuable military technologies.
+ We have tried to be generous in our trade offers.
+ We have offered to share our own happiness resources.
+ We have strictly adhered to our no-scouting agreement.
+ We have honorably followed our border agreement, despite having the ability to settle beyond it.

Unfortunately, all our RB's actions and the mutual goodwill built between our civilizations count for little if we're forced into a cold-war military build up due to the absence of a NAP. Spending all of our hammers and commerce on a defensive army is not any more in our best interest than it is in yours.

NAP discussion notwithstanding, we continue to desire closer cooperation towards trading and sharing technologies. We continue to be confused that Templars continue to hold back techs that are widely available to all other teams.

Finally even if we cannot come to a NAP or tech agreement, we would like to initiate resource trades.

In closing, we continue to treasure the friendly relations that have grown between the Templars and RB, but we simply cannot understand the Templar reluctance and hesitation to all of our recent diplomatic efforts. It is our fervent hope that we can form a mutually beneficial 3-way partnership with Banana, allowing our teams to band together for safety and technological progress. We don't believe hostility between RB and Templars benefits anyone except PAL and Imperio, and why would anyone want to see the score/GNP leaders getting further ahead?!

-RB

[mostly-harmless]

Sounds good.

mh

[sooooo]

Yeah sounds good.

[ruff_hi]

not sure about the tail end of this part ...

"We have honorably followed our border agreement, despite having the ability to settle beyond it."

Suggest removing the part in italics.

[Swiss Pauli]

Good stuff, sunrise The only parts I'd leave out would be

- border agreement: the whole Jericho/SF thing was shades of grey from both parties, and could stir them up. We have enough plusses to be conservative and leave this out.

- 'we continue to treasure the friendly relations that have grown between the Templars and RB, but' should all go, as relations aren't that friendly seeing as they keeping rebuffing us.

[Swiss Pauli]

Templars demanded Currency from Imperio and got it. This must be a downpayment for a future deal (as Imperio had Currency for quite a while now) or just diplo extortion.

I'd say the latter, and maybe they even used our blockbuster offer for MC to get it: "look what RB are offering for MC, gimme Currency "

I am happy with Sulllas statement, but do we still want to offer them HBR if we do not have a NAP? I guess we might as well do it, otherwise they will get it from Imperio.

I say talk, resources deals, and NAPs, but no more tech trades.

[Dreylin]

+ We have strictly adhered to our no-scouting agreement.

Is this one really true as well? I don't know the full details of the agreement, but I'm guessing that our "step-in-step-out" approach is not covered....

[Sullla]

T-Hawk, usually I agree with you, but definitely not on this one. There is nothing fair about needing to beeline to Astronomy to ensure safe trade routes! Astronomy, man - come on! That's... that's a Renaissance tech! And sunrise has elegantly pointed out that leaving us with zippo strategic resources near the start didn't exactly leave us an option to fight our way out either.

It's just a bad map. You and I both know how to make balanced maps, and this isn't one of them.

On topic, I think sunrise's draft is quite good. Ruff and Swiss are probably right about deleting the line about border agreements entirely; on reflection, that opens up a can of worms that it's probably best to ignore. I think we should keep the line about friendly relations though, as we HAVE traded techs and shared Open Borders for dozens of turns on end. Makes sense and sounds nice.

Swiss, you may well be right about Templars extorting Currency from Imperio. Still, if Templars/Imperio have an agreement in place not to trade us anything, we don't lose anything by offering them tech deals. And if they have no such agreement, we stand to gain - so we may as well keep pestering them, right? Even if the odds are low, anything better than zero is worth trying. Talk is cheap.

Also, it's definitely worth it to trade Horseback Riding to Templars for Metal Casting. Horse archers are one thing, but Metal Casting gets us instant Machinery from Banana, and lets us start training maces, which would be very good indeed! Plus there are some backline cities where we could use forges. MC/Machinery also opens the path to Engineering, which would be a nice tech to research on several levels (road movement, upgrade spears to pikes while we have Banana iron, etc.)

In short, I think we should send off sunrise's email once we've finished making edits, and continue trying to swing a deal of some kind for Metal Casting.

EDIT: Dreylin, they don't know about that, since all those movements happened when Templars were not logged into the game.

[Dreylin]

EDIT: Dreylin, they don't know about that, since all those movements happened when Templars were not logged into the game.

Well IF they're paying attention to their borders, they would see our Chariot sitting out there in the same spot for two turns in a row and having used it's movement on the second turn. We would have noticed, so we can't assume that they didn't.

I just think it's safer to remove the "strictly" from the no-scouting sentence.

[sunrise089]

You can't tell if another unit has moved.

[Swiss Pauli]

Swiss, you may well be right about Templars extorting Currency from Imperio. Still, if Templars/Imperio have an agreement in place not to trade us anything, we don't lose anything by offering them tech deals. And if they have no such agreement, we stand to gain - so we may as well keep pestering them, right? Even if the odds are low, anything better than zero is worth trying. Talk is cheap.

And careless talk costs lives My comment on extortion is pure speculation (unlike my opinion on the MC situation). It could be them getting Currency up front for Theo, in order to speed their research of same.

As I've maintained for some time, I think the agreement Templars mentioned was limited to MC and Maths/Monarchy, so we shouldn't delay researching MC if Templars haven't confirmed a trade.

As to the map, I can kinda see where he was coming from: 'big back yard + convenient strategics = not balanced', but he could at least have chucked us a no-food tundra Iron.

[Sullla]

Guys, I got a PM from Hercules, and sent back this simple response:

Are you there.

Can we discuss a bit of detail about proposed tech deal?

Sure, certainly. RB generally prefers to work through email contact, but this works too. Please let us know what's on your mind.

Sullla
Team Realms Beyond


He probably wanted to chat while I was online, but sadly I didn't see the message until a few hours later. Well, in any case, Templars may not be a total lost cause after all (?)

I was going to log in and end our turn, but in light of this message, I'm NOT doing that until we find out what Templars want.

[regoarrarr]

Email from Templars

It is being discussed within the team. Without prejudging the outcome
it is looking positive.

This was in response to our offer of Aest, Lit and HBR for MC