Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by sooooo
I can see us two getting along just fine for a long while.

I can see us killing them in about 100 turns .

I kind of agree with Zeviz on this one, l'd rather bite the bullet and cover our Workers then send them an e-mail asking for troop withdrawl. Such a request could make them think we are preparing for war and don't want them poking around to see our troop build up. It could also make them think we are spread thin with such a far flung settlement. Either way it encourages a military focus on their part.

Darrell

[mostly-harmless]

I would also say we should be less paranoid.
The Quechas nearby had good reasons to assume and hold those positions. Both of them saw combat against animals and had to heal.
The NW Quecha is now up to full strength and continued to scout the land to our west. Remember that those guys probably have not found the west coast yet.
I am all in favour for escorting our workers.
I am against mentioning troop withdrawal in an eMail now unless it is part of a larger agreement. Once they park fully healed troops near our borders for a longer period we will have to act.
100turns is still a long long way in the future.
We should try our best to stay on friendly terms with them.
Don't we want their religions to spread into our cities asap?

mh

[sooooo]

I too don't think we should mention a troop withdrawal.

[Zeviz]

Originally posted by sooooo


Blimey, this is a rather Hawkish interpretation of their got-it email. They did not refuse. They said they would discuss it with their team. They did not say let's discuss borders first, that comment was an answer to ruff's question of description vs screenshot.

I think you guys are getting carried away / paranoid. Let's cool down and read what the templars are actually saying. I can see us two getting along just fine for a long while.

I didn't mean to sound hawkish. All I want to say is that we shouldn't press our bluff too hard. Agressive settlement is fine, but demanding removal of their units from our borders might easily lead to worsening of relations.

[sooooo]

If we do decide to go for blue dot, maybe we could earn some brownie points with the Templars by mentioning that we are settling away from their civ to respect their civilization and to repair relations between our teams.

[ruff_hi]

email from templars
Dear Ruff,

First of all I would like to apologise for the long time I took to reply. I am in the middle of moving and preparing a year of studies abroad (MA International relations and diplomacy in Antwerp, Belgium), and it's consuming a lot of my time, hence the delay. I hope it has not been too inconvenient.

Below are the answers to your questions.

1) By evenly I mean that both our teams get an equal share of the land on this island, as well as resources. The land of does of course vary greatly in quality. The aim is to let each team have the same quality of land as another, so that one does not have all the desert or tundra or jungle and another all the grassland, plains and hills. The same for resources (including strategic resources), we think these ought to be shared by the teams on an equal basis. These conditions we consider vital for continued cooperation and possible alliance of some sort. Would we agree to form a long-term alliance, as I have mentioned before, the issue of resources would be of lesser importance, as we presume that allies share these.

2 and 3) Like I wrote in my last short message, a general description is ok with us. Meanwhile our units will just continue to explore a bit. The tiles to your southeast (close to your border, west of the northernmost mountain to your southeast) are a black strip. Also we are unfamiliar with the northern tundra region. The lands to the west we are now exploring.

We can share maps in the near future.

The border agreement is right now a bilateral one. Since Imperio is not included in it, we consider the possibility that Imperio will claim lands for itself that one of us had wanted to settle, causing the balance to shift in the other team's advantage. If that is the case, we think renegotiation is appropriate. Our team has considered to make this agreement trilateral, but because we think an agreement has to be reached soon, it is better to first agree bilaterally and later expand the agreement with Imperio. It is explicitly our goal to expand this agreement with Imperio. We expect that if your team already has a border agreement with Imperio and this initiative would come on top of it, that you would inform us, so that the agreements do not conflict.

It struck us that in your reply to our proposals you haven't mentioned our suggestion for a long-term alliance. You might have forgotten about it or overlooked it, such often happens in internal team discussion, but we'd like to hear your opinion about it. We believe that cooperation on this island is the road to success and we regard your team as an ideal partner for a long term alliance, possibly with Imperio.


Best,

Sir Aidun,
Foreign Affairs Minister of the Knights Templar

[ruff_hi]

My short response is that these guys are dreaming. They've been fiddling around with their capital and haven't got a settler out yet (PAL has 3 cities!) and want to claim an equal share of the land via agreement(!). The whole reason we selected 'cultural' was so that we would get an early start on the land grab.

The main issue is that we need to string them along until we are actually strong enough to defend what we have. The comment made by ??? re settle blue dot to release pressure on Templar is getting stronger.

[Sullla]

I agree, their team seems to be made up of lunatics. Do they honestly believe they can make no effort at expanding, and claim a third of the land on this continent?! This is like Italy showing up in North America in 1700, then saying to Britain, France, and Spain "hey guys, let's divide things up equally, OK?"

Let's see... how do we say "hell no!" in very polite terms without making it sound like that's our answer...

1) We are definitely NOT agreeing to an equal division of the land. The notion of "sharing" resources is so ridiculous, I can't even comprehend why they suggested it. Would any two teams actually do that?! It's crazy.

I would probably say that we appeciate the goodwill behind their suggestion, but don't feel comfortable about sharing resources as yet. (Damn Templars don't even know where copper *IS*, and they want us to share it with them! That's pretty arrogant.) Remind them again that we already disclosed the location of their strategic resource to them (horses), before they had the requisite technology as a gesture of our goodwill.

Do not let them know where copper is under any circumstances. That should be non-negotiable.

Play for more time as far as the "equal distribution of land" nonsense, using lots of vague sentiments. Use sooooo's suggestion above; since we are going to Blue anyway, promise that we will not send our next settler in their direction. Make some sort of vague comment that we have no plans to settle "beyond" Pink Dot, which is unclear enough that we can claim to have been misunderstood when we grab Red later on. We can also tell them (later, in a future message) that Red was a response to Imperio movement, and not directed at then. They might even be stupid enough to believe that...

2/3) Are they really suggesting that we give them map info? We've got the whole continent mapped; *THEY* are the ones in the black. I would send back a message conveying polite affront at this initiative. "We can share maps in the near future." Bullcr@p! Give us something in return if you want that info. Go do your own scouting!

4) What in the world is wrong with these guys? Bilateral and trilateral border agreements?! How about you get out there and actually claim some land, eh?

Again, the best response is to continue to stall and play for time. Ask Aidun for more details - what would constitute a fair border agreement? Where does he envision the lines being drawn? (This will give us a good indication of how delusional their team's thinking really is.) I think it's perfectly fair to state that we're unwilling to agree to anything until we have more detailed confirmation.

I also think we should wait 2 days to respond. After all, we're pretty much stalling for time until we can research Iron Working.

5) Pretty much the same as above: "I'll have to talk it over with the team." "I'm not sure we can commit to a long-term alliance at such an early date." "We have every peaceful intention, but that's a lot to ask when the game hasn't even reached 2000BC yet." And so on.

Once again, is there anything we can do to start the wheels of diplomacy with Imperio? I can't help but feel that the Templars are completely crazy. I really do NOT want them as an ally we have to rely on. (It's clear that their gameplan involves trying to sit back and tech their way to a cultural/space win, while screaming and crying if anyone attacks them.)

[Zeviz]

You know a team has gone too far if even my reaction is "they must be crazy".

Our main goal at this point is to delay until we have Iron connected and a few units trained. So let's consider the strategy...

At the current rate, it will take us about 30 turns to research IW. (Assuming we don't tank our economy and don't detour to Sailing.) After that, a couple more turns to connect Iron, and some time to train units. This means that we have to stall for at least two months. This is quite doable:

1. In a couple days send them a brief "got it, discussing with team" message. This will make an impression of a semi-inactive diplomatic envoy.

2. Over a week later, send them a message apologizing for the delay, saying that our team runs things by consensus, which makes the diplomatic process take a little longer. (Being role-players, they should appreciate this excuse. )

3. In another week or so (or after settling city #3) send them a non-committal message, mentioning as Sooooo said that we have settled away from them until the borders are more clear.

A couple diplomacy cycles like the one above should get us close enough to IW. At that time, we can start assering our positions more forcefully, so that relations deteriorate just as our troops are coming out of barracks.

PS And yes, even I agree with rushing Templars now, because while I appreciate a team that puts role-playing above winning, expecting others to give you victory on a silver platter isn't roleplaying. It's just poor play.

[ruff_hi]

too late - already sent them a got it. But I agree with your intentions. We haven't said anything to them but we have communicated quite a lot. I think we should keep this up (stalling) but stall by talking a lot.

I'm travelling tomorrow - let me d/l this dialog and see if I can put together a suitable reply.

[mostly-harmless]

re 1.) Not only do I agree with all of you, that this is rather ridiculous, but it would also not work, as there are only two horses (located between Imperio & Templars) and, what, 1 copper? Not much to divide up evenly. Luxury resources are rather clustered, so how do they think we would go about it? Have a nice checkerboard pattern of Imperio, RB & Templars cities to evenly divide resources???
re 2&3.) As I said earlier, let their Quechas get eaten by wolfs and face the barbs. There is nothing to gain for us giving away map info to Templars. If they want to continue scouting around our cities, fine, the best fog busting we could ask for.

"We can share maps in the near future" There will be nothing Templars could give us we would not already know.

I would not even mention Blue Dot to them. We don't have a formal agreement and Blue Dot should be of no concern to them.
How we organize our backyard, should be entirely left to us.

mh

[ruff_hi]

Sir Aidun,

Don't worry about the delay - with the speed this game is going, we have all the time in the world. To that end, the RB team might take some time to internally discuss your latest communication.

I think that I can break our recent communication down into 3 components: map information, border agreement, long-term alliance.

Maps
To be honest, my request to share maps was a bit of a red herring - we have already mapped out this continent with the exception of a few foggy tiles here and there. Thus, I doubt that your map could improve our knowledge (excluding some tiles in your capital which you probably don't want to share anyway). You asked about a strip of land to our Capital's South-East. If I understand your directions, that land is mainly open plains with a strip of water that separates us from Imperio - there is no Northern land bridge between us and Imperio. You also asked about the land to our North - that is mainly ice and tundra with some health resources (hardly surprising information).

The land-bridge comment is included so that when we do settle Red Dot, we can say it is to lock Imperio out of the lands to our North.

Border Agreement
There has been and will continue to be quite a bit of debate in The RB Team about this. You firstly discuss a bi-lateral agreement, then introduce tri-lateral by including Imperio and mention the possible need of re-negotiation. Our general comment is that these sorts of bi-lateral agreements will be very hard to reach and almost impossible if we include the possibility of revisiting them due to third party actions.

That said, we applicate the goodwill that you are trying to exhibit towards us by discussing this topic. Hence, The RB Team does not want to close down the topic of a border agreement with your team. However, we would like to include Imperio in any discussion of land that might lie between the three teams. In light of this, I've been authorized to inform you that we will not be founding a city beyond 'Pink Dot' so that we can give the 'Border Agreement' a chance at success. We have modified our plans such that our next city will go West.

I wanted to give them the impression that we are willing to keep discussing, to make it harder since we will require Imperio to be included and to give them the feeling that their comments are having an impact on our play.

Long-term Alliance
You are right - I completely forgot to respond to this component of your earlier communications. Such an agreement would be the last step in a long series of intra-team relationship way points. From my perspective, this series would go something like this:

hello -> talking -> recognition of rights -> border agreement -> non aggression pact -> defensive pact -> alliance

As you can see, there a quite a few steps involved but mainly they involve the building of trust, understanding and respect. The RB Team is not adverse to continuing down this series of steps with the Templars.

Just trying not to say NO. Diplo speak at its best.

Ruff
Your Voice to the Realms Beyond Team

The comments in blue are for background - not in the actual draft.

[Zeviz]

I like this text, but would prefer to wait at least a few days before sending it out. It's best to use a combination of strategies, so vague wordiness can be used together with slow communication cycle.

[Sullla]

Let me echo Zeviz's comments about delaying any reply, since we're stalling for time. Every other team seems to move at a glacial pace as far as diplomacy is concerned, so we'll hardly seem out of place. I'd wait about a week before sending an answer, personally.

My only change would come in the first section on map exchanges. Rather than admit to a "red herring", simply plead confusion on the matter. We thought that they meant something else, yadda yadda. Politely thank them for their offer to exchange map info and decline the offer, while wishing them well on their own scouting efforts. I do think it's a good idea to mention no northern land-bridge between us and Imperio; they will quickly discover that anyway, and it does give us a later pretext to move east with later settlers.

[Sullla]

It's been five days. Ordinarily I would say to wait longer before replying, but the Templars have four different quechuas moving around our borders, and we need to ask them to explain their actions. Ruff, can we add in a paragraph to that effect? ("It's difficult to trust when your civ seems intent on moving quechuas along our borders.") I would also suggest we mention that we are more than capable of defending ourselves, and are asking for an explanation because we would like to preserve friendly relations.

Templars just built a fifth quechua last turn. I cannot imagine that they would be insane enough to think that a rush with warriors would work against a human player, but this *IS* the Templars we're talking about...