Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[mostly-harmless]

Originally posted by ruff_hi
I added Sooooo's comment and question. I actually like the reference to stonehenge, just trying to keep them on their feet regarding our ability to read the game, work out things, etc. Did they get a cash bump when Imp finished the 'henge? Can we tell if they got a cash bump?

I am against the Stonehenge reference.
We (C&D) are 95% certain that Templars never attempted Stonehenge.

Perhaps make the statement less specific:
"We are following with interest the religious focus of our neighbours."

mh

[sooooo]

It's not a particularly wild thought to think Templars were building stonehenge. They are industrious and founded a religion. You don't need a ministry of truth to postulate that.

[ruff_hi]

draft updated ...

Sir Aidun,

Thanks for the follow-up. Only a short note at the moment - will need to discuss with team. However, it seems that the 3 people on our land mass have all met. We've met PAL (as you know). We noted the building of Stonehenge and are following with interest the religious focus of our neighbours.

Regarding your questions, we do not know of any other civs other than the ones you mentioned. Thanks for the information on Imperio - we have located them too. We can tell you that their capital has floodplains and gold. Contact with them has been sparse. Why do you ask?

Beginnings can be difficult times.

Cheers,

Ruff
Your Voice to the Realms Beyond Team

[Zeviz]

Sounds good.

[mostly-harmless]

Originally posted by sooooo
It's not a particularly wild thought to think Templars were building stonehenge. They are industrious and founded a religion.

True, but there are two more industrious civs out there, plus two more civs which started with Mysticism and Imperio the only civ that can chop at the moment.
We know it would have taken Templars ca. 23 turns to complete Stonehenge, considerably stalling their expansion.

You don't need a ministry of truth to postulate that.

Correct, the ministry of truth is on record for doubting the "Stonehenge next" theory right from the beginning.

Anyway, I like the draft message, but would replace "3 people" with "3 civs".

mh

[ruff_hi]

changed people to civs and sent the email.

[ruff_hi]

reply ...

Dear Ruff,

I'm not sure what you mean by "will need to discuss with team" - do you refer to a discussion of my previous email, or just ordinary team discussion? In the case of the former, we'll wait with interest.

The reason I asked about your team's diplomatic contact with Imperio is because ours is somewhat hindered by a language barrier. We speak no Spanish and they speak little English. Just like your team's contact with them, ours has been sparse too.

Thanks for the info about Imperio's capital. The combination of floodplains, gold and some nice hills and forest around seems like a good combination.

As for our religious focus, we are the Knights Templar, a religious order, and so religion plays an important role in our lives. Religion can unite and divide. Since, however, we do not associate ourselves with one religion in particular, we are openminded and hope religion can help unite rather than divide the world in which we live.

Best,

Sir Aidun

[regoarrarr]

Thoughts on how should we respond to their recent reply about our settling in the south?

[ruff_hi]

from Templar

Dear Ruff,

We feel we need to contact your team urgently because of your plans of building a new city south of your capitol. We realize that it is every team's right to build new cities, and we have no intention at all, to deny you that right, but we do question the wisdom of your current settlement plan. Likewise, your team is not obliged to inform its neighbors of any settlement plans, but in some cases it is perhaps better to do so. We find it peculiar that you have not informed us and attempted to settle in secrecy while we have a quecha nearby. We are deeply concerned and alarmed by the unexpectedness of your move and we are considering how to respond. In great part this depends on your reply.

The mapmaker placed our civs close to each other and we have to live with that, but we assume that you understand that the territory between our capitols is for that reason a disputed one. Your decision to settle straight into the direction of our capital is in that light remarkable. What do we have to think of it? Is it an act of agression, a forward base from which to deploy units?

We ask ourselves what we have done wrong to deserve agression? Or do we perhaps misunderstand intentions you have as of yet not communicated to us? We have peaceful intentions, especially with your people, and would like to continue the mutually beneficial ad-hoc cooperation that has characterized our relations since the start. If possible, we would love to enter in more formal cooperation, but we have so far waited to announce this, trusting on the aforementioned ad-hoc cooperation.

We certainly hope that we will not have to resort to military means to solve this problem.

We urge you, in the name of peace, friendship and our good intentions to your team to respond to this message as soon as possible, at least before next turn, and to propose a solution to the problem at hand. Let us please continue the cooperation thusfar and possibly expand it.

Regards,


Aidun
Foreign Affairs Minister of the Knights Templar

[ruff_hi]

Initial response ...

Email received. I'm just a spokesman for TRB and will need to get information from the team planners regarding some of your issues. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.


fuller response ... really need team input on this ...

Thanks for reaching out regarding our settler and presentation of your concerns. As you know, we have quite a number of scouts out and have a good view of the land. The land to our North is (by and large) a ice wasteland. The land to our West and East has some attractions but nothing major. The land to our South, while towards your Capital, does hold our desired second city site. We have specifically identified a site that contains no strategic resources (metal, horses, stone, ivory, marble) so as to pose as small a threat as possible.

We too have peaceful intentions, thus the careful site selection. We also were not trying to hide our settler (you will note that he did stop within site of your unit), rather to avoid barbarians as he was unprotected for some of his journey.

Further, we expected that your first expansion would be towards the strategic resources to your North East and that the site we have selected was not in dispute.

[Sullla]

Heh. Templars are full of bullsh*t, is what they are. "Oh, I'm sorry, we'll just sit around in our desert/tundra wasteland, which has no resources whatsoever, and leave you all of that lush grassland in the south. Feel free to take as much time playing around with religions as you like." Bah!

More seriously, Ruff's initial draft seems pretty good. I would add something like this in there somewhere:

"I'm sure you have discovered by now that our continent is fairly small; there are few directions that we could move our settler that would NOT be towards your capital."

We should also stress multiple times that we do not intend this as an aggressive act, but only as a means to claim a fair share of the land for ourselves. I think the draft does an adequate job of that, just could be even stronger. I don't think it's out of line either to state (politely) that we are under no obligation to tell the Templars where we plan on settling cities. After all, they haven't informed us of any of their plans, have they?

We can also mention that we contacted them several times without getting much of a response. We've desired close cooperation all along, but this is the first time that they've seemed to take any kind of interest in replying promptly. If that southern region was supposed to be "their" land, why didn't they tell us sooner? We could have worked out an agreement had our team known. [A total lie, but they don't have to know that!] Since we received no messages on the issue, our team assumed that each civ was free to settle as they saw fit. Tell that something like that...

I personally think they're a bunch of whiners who are complaining only because they picked a lousy opening strategy. But we don't have to tell them THAT.

If the Templars are going to freak out about this, we should step up our diplomacy with Imperio proptly. I know we mostly envisioned working together with the Templars, but we can swap that around fairly easily to the other team on the continent. At the very least, I think we should inform Imperio (en Espanol) of what is going on, so that the Templars don't try to poison them against us. We can present their demands as unreasonable and flip it around so that ye old religious team comes off as the bad guys. darrell, is that something you might be able to draw up?

[darrelljs]

I'd go one step further and offer a pact of non-aggression for, say, 100 turns. I'd suggest the continent is only large enough for two civs and offer to divy it up accordingly, ceding all lands east and offering to help claim those lands from Imperio.

Of course, we don't plan on keeping to this pact past the 50 turns and all the land is ours, but they don't need to know that until we have Iron .

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by Sullla
At the very least, I think we should inform Imperio (en Espanol) of what is going on, so that the Templars don't try to poison them against us. We can present their demands as unreasonable and flip it around so that ye old religious team comes off as the bad guys. darrell, is that something you might be able to draw up?

Sure, but it wouldn't be until Sunday probably; my daughter's birthday is today and we have a party on Saturday. Just a list of the points to make in the message and I should be able to cook something decent up.

Darrell

[ruff_hi]

draft in our gmail acct - not sent

I've always tried to couch my words as if I am on their team, but actually positioned on TRB. Thus build the trust between myself and their team and maybe gather some information that they didn't want to let slip. Hence some of my comments below ...

Sir Aidun,

Thanks for reaching out regarding our settler and presentation of your concerns. Firstly, this is not an aggressive act, it is not intended to be read as an aggressive act and (truth be told) our team has tried very hard to ensure that it is not observed as an aggressive act.

I'm sure you have discovered by now that our continent is fairly small; there are few directions that we could move our settler that would NOT be towards your capital. Also, we have quite a number of scouts out and have a good view of the land. The land to our North is (by and large) a ice wasteland. The land to our West and East has some attractions but nothing major. The land to our South, while towards your Capital, does hold our desired second city site. We have specifically identified a site that contains no strategic resources (metal, horses, stone, ivory, marble) so as to pose as small a threat as possible. Again, our actions are not designed to be an aggressive act in any way.

We too have peaceful intentions, thus the careful site selection and the attempt to open discussion with you. It gladdens us that you have responded so quickly rather than the usual response time that we have grown accustom to with you. Further, we also were not trying to hide our settler (you will note that he did stop within sight of your unit), rather our aim was to avoid barbarians as he was unprotected for some of his journey.

Finally, we expected that your first expansion would be towards the strategic resources to your North East and that the site we have selected was not in dispute.

Regarding the future: your communication implies that we should be sharing our plans with you? Personally, I'm not convinced that you actually meant this, but my Team has asked for clarification. Truth be told, members of my team were actually very upset about this statement and there were heated comments about "are we meant to be there vassal?". Some saner heads poured water on this but I was asked to ask for clarification.

Also, some members of my team raised the possibility of a non-aggressive pact between our two teams. We would like to discuss this with you, including the meaning of 'non-aggression', the pact timetable, renewal options, etc.

I didn't know how true this was when I wrote it but ... beginnings can be difficult times.

Cheers,

Ruff
Your Voice to the Realms Beyond Team

[Zeviz]

Ruff, the draft looks very good.

I'd also mention the desert to our south, saying something like this: "As you might have seen by now, our capital is stuck on a narrow fertile strip between tundra to the north and desert to the south, with only a few viable city sites between the ocean to the east and west. So the only good city sites close to us are in the south-western corner of the continent. You, on the other hand, have plenty of good land on 3 sides."

By the way, was the misspelling in the vassals "quote" intentional?

EDIT: Please remove the comment about not trying to hide our settler. Such obviously false statements damage our credibility without any benefit in return.

If we were just trying to protect the settler, he should have joined the warrior in the spot where it was fortified, instead of losing warrior's fortification bonus just to move him out of sight. It's obvious to Templars that there were no animals nearby, because they can see all the spots that could threaten our warrior. So the statement about hiding from animals is obviously false, and damages the credibility of the rest of our message. If there is no good response, it's best to avoid the issue.

EDIT2: Or you could just be completely honest and say that our original movement plan would have a settler spend a turn on flat ground next to their quecha, and we didn't want to test their friendhip in such a way. There is no reason to hide the truth when the truth is far better that what people will think if the lie is caught.

Originally posted by darrelljs
I'd go one step further and offer a pact of non-aggression for, say, 100 turns. I'd suggest the continent is only large enough for two civs and offer to divy it up accordingly, ceding all lands east and offering to help claim those lands from Imperio.

Of course, we don't plan on keeping to this pact past the 50 turns and all the land is ours, but they don't need to know that until we have Iron .

Darrell

No. It might be necessary to rush a neighbor when you are in the corner, but this kind of backstubbing adds nothing to the game except steering up anger. I might understand this if we were pushed into a corner with no other way out, but this is not the case here. Are we really afraid that we can't defeat even a team of roleplayers and a semi-inactive team without having to resort to backstubs?

EDIT3 (I am on a roll here )
Think of what our move must have looked like to Templars: We are by far #1 on power graph, and now we are trying to sneak a settler almost directly towards their capital. We also felt confident enough about our power to point out the location of their horses. So they are probably as worried about us as we were worried about Imperio.