Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[ruff_hi]

sure ...

Hi Hercules.

Firstly (and skip this paragraph if you want to), I just have to say this ...
Arggggggggggg - you guys are killing us. Please be up front with us regarding your ability to honour your agreements. [I really need that yahoo smilie pulling out his hair].

Phew - got that out of my system, feel better now ... sorry about going all matilda on you there.

Now, how about we discuss how to resurrect this cockup of a tech trade deal. BTW: in the past, when PAL cocked up like this (agreed to trade us A for B and then got B from someone else), they just gave us A with an apology note.

The original tech deal was:

RB to supply: ?
Templar to supply: ?
Banana to supply: ?

That is now (semi) out the window because you got ? from Imperio. How about we do the following:

RB to supply: ? to Banana, ? to Templar
Templar to supply: ?
Banana to supply: ?

When do you expect to be able to execute this deal?

Cheers,

Realms Beyond

I'm a bit wobble on the actual tech trade details ... can someone fill them in?

[mostly-harmless]

Hi Hercules,

So what you’re saying is that when Templars agreed to the three-way with Banana & RB you knew that the proposed trade between yourselves & RB would not go through and yet you didn’t even mention it to us!? All it would have taken was a quick "We agree to the trade in principle, however we already have a deal lined up for Construction, can you suggest another tech?"

Moving on; how would the following strike you as a way to restructure the trade agreement?

You offer: Drama & Theology & compensation for the beaker difference and dishonored previous tech deal
We offer: Engineering

In recognition of our desire to work together in the future, we would also like to re-raise the NAP issue as our previous agreement has now expired. We would propose a 20turn self-renewing (at 10t intervals) arrangement to be put in place on receipt of acceptance from Templars.

Regards,

TeamRB.

I worked from Dreylins original message.
Let them come up with an idea how they want to compensate us for the beaker difference and the blown up tech deal, after all we get Drama a lot later than we thought we would.

Is this something we can agree on?
We should aim to send something asap.

mh

[mostly-harmless]

Whoops, cross post with Ruff.

I feel we the "comical" way is not really appropriate for this message.

mh

[Zeviz]

I prefer Mh's message, because Templars don't have the sence of humor to understand Ruff's message. However, we should still mention that when PAL made the same "mistake" they gave us the tech for free. And we should CC Banana (including the line CCing Banana), which would mean we drop NAP request.

[mostly-harmless]

Hi Hercules,

So what you’re saying is that when Templars agreed to the three-way with Banana & RB you knew that the proposed trade between yourselves & RB would not go through and yet you didn’t even mention it to us!? All it would have taken was a quick "We agree to the trade in principle, however we already have a deal lined up for Construction, can you suggest another tech?"

Moving on; how would the following strike you as a way to restructure the trade agreement?

You offer: Drama & Theology & compensation for the beaker difference and dishonored previous tech deal
We offer: Engineering

(FYI: in the past, when PAL did accidentally something similar like this (agreed to trade us A for B and then got B from someone else), they just gave us A with an apology note.)

In recognition of our desire to work together in the future, we would also like to re-raise the NAP issue as our previous agreement has now expired. We would propose a 20turn self-renewing (at 10t intervals) arrangement to be put in place on receipt of acceptance from Templars.

Regards,

TeamRB.

Added PAL example. I would leave the NAP in. No harm in Banana knowing about it.

mh

[Zeviz]

I'd move your FYI line to the end of paragraph 1 (or make it paragraph 2) and reword it slightly:

When PAL had accidentally done something like this in the past (agreeing to trade us A for B and then getting B from someone else), they gave us A for free with an apology note. While we don't expect a free tech, some compensation for going back on a 3 way deal (such as a cash discount on the next deal) seems in order. We are CCing Team Banana on this message.

Aside from that, the message looks good.

[regoarrarr]

I think we should give them an idea of what kind of compensation we're looking for. I think leaving it open ended like that is just an invitation for the kind of stalling that we don't need

[mostly-harmless]

So what kind of compensation do we look for?
- The PAL option: Drama for free
- The tech trade and tons of cash? Templars have 138g in the bank. That is not enough by far.
- A beaker coupon? How much?

If we can get a quick consensus on that one we can put it in.
Alternatively, we can attach a "reply at once" deadline into the message.

mh

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I have no problems with being outvoted on the issue of telling them off, but... do you *seriously* want to go so far and demand a compensation?!? If you REALLY want to break contact with Templars and piss them off, a "You are idiots!" message would be much shorter and have the same effect...

Really, what do you want to achieve with this? Do you really think they say "sure, here, we give you this tech for free, and when you invade Imperio we promise to do nothing! You're our new friends now, thanks for showing us the way!"?

Sorry, but I think we're getting a bit overconfident here. I'm really at a loss as to how you think showing such an attitude to another team will improve our standing in the game in any way...

-Kylearan

[Swiss Pauli]

(Crosspost with Kylearan, but we have similar feelings on this topic.)

Let's get this straight: we don't know 100% that Templars agreed to the tech triangle. All we know is that Banana got the impression that they'd agreed. Let's not overstate our case, guys.

I don't think the talk of compensation will make things any better with Templars. PAL did it because they wanted to maintain our goodwill; I don't think Templars give much of a dämn about our goodwill.

We certainly don't want to mention what PAL did: that's a playground negotiation tactic. I don't think we should cc Banana for similar reasons.

Once Engineering is in, we should make the trade proposal without compensation (but ask them to propose something to redress the beaker imbalance).

If we're settling Twin Peaks soon we shouldn't ask for a NAP from Templars: it's a transparently cynical tactic to get a NAP then settle in their face. We are strong enough to defend Twin Peaks without a NAP. If they offer us a NAP, then we should consider it.

[mostly-harmless]

I understand your sentiment Kylearan. However, Drama unlocks our UB, which is crucial for our mid term planning (Bloodbath). We should have gotten it from Templars a couple of turns back. We didn't because they deliberately screwed us on the deal. I don't see them bothering much about how we perceive them. So what are we trying to salvage here?

As for the exact phrasing, we want some sort of compensation not only for the screwed up tech deal but mostly for the beaker difference.

mh

[regoarrarr]

I'm fine with not requesting additional compensation. I think getting Drama and Theo (for free, essentially) is fine and as Sulllla has pointed out, long-term the benefits on this continent are all ours.

But I just don't want to put vague talks of compensation on there. So in my book, either we state what kind of compensation we want, or we just agree to the straight tech-trade

I favor (loosely) the latter.

[Zeviz]

I guess I see this point. (The only way they'd pay compensation is if we had a large stack very visible on their border, but that would be extortion. The talk about compensation was mostly to show them how nice we are by not demanding a free tech. )

Although even if you want to just make the engineering for Theology + Drama + cash deal, we need to send something now, considering how slowly they move.

[mostly-harmless]

@ Swiss: I thought the NAP was crucial if we want to concentrate on Imperio? And don't we have a "border agreement" in place saying it is ok for us to settle Twin Peaks?

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

@ Swiss: I thought the NAP was crucial if we want to concentrate on Imperio? And don't we have a "border agreement" in place saying it is ok for us to settle Twin Peaks?

mh

We don't have an agreement to settle Twin Peaks where they proposed it: their nearest site was illegal (2SW of Cape Town), so we wrote back with a vague wording about 'welcoming their offer for us to settle a bridging city to Cape'. Thus Twin Peaks will be contentious for a team as touchy as Templars.

If we settle Twin Peaks without a NAP, we're effectively saying we don't fear them, and they might just get over in time to agree a NAP that will facilitate our war with Imperio. If we settle under cover of a NAP, you can bet your bottom dollar they'll not be interested in renewing, as they'll feel 'used & abused' (and they'd be right).