Banana: Diplomacy Thread #2

[Sullla]

I like everything about sooooo's email, except that I concur we should simplify the confusing paragraph and slip in a mention of Closing Borders with PAL. Maybe try this:

Don't worry, we won't get sucked in by them. In fact, we've been thinking of asking you for an anti-PAL pact . We think that trading with PAL is a prisoner's dilemma. If we both agree not to do it then we both benefit. The situation is that we are teching very well together and PAL are jealous. We tech A, you are teching B with an agreement to trade A for B. PAL researches faster than either of us separately, but not so fast as the two of us together!

As part of this pact, we would like to request that you close borders with PAL. This will deprive their team of Great Lighthouse-powered trade routes, which are fueling PAL's research currently.

Or something like that, we can play around with it. I thought the rest of the message was very good at explaining things. Oh, and attach that picture in the above post with the message!

[mostly-harmless]

So what does the Espionage Dept think about sending our EP against Imperio now? Or does that look too suspicious? Can we start doing that when we declare war?

We currently produce 10ept which we spend all on PAL.
Switching now to Imperio is risking "Backstab". I would wait until we declare on them.

mh

[regoarrarr]

Agree that soooo's message with Sullla's paragraph looks nice, and also on waiting for switching any EP to Imperio

[sooooo]

Second draft.

Dear Donovan,

Two parts to this email. Firstly, news of PAL. They have contacted us out of the blue and want to be friends again. They want to open borders and trade techs and resources. We have been wondering why, and have come up with the following reasons:

1) They are planning on declaring on you and realise that they'll lose more trade routes, hence they want to open borders with us.
2) They are suffering war weariness with rabbits and expect to get more with you, hence they want happy resources.
3) They want to disrupt RB/banana trade deals.

Don't worry, we won't get sucked in by them. In fact, we've been thinking of asking you for an anti-PAL pact. We think that trading techs and resources with PAL is a prisoner's dilemma. If we both agree not to do it then we both benefit. The situation is that we are teching very well together and PAL are jealous. PAL researches faster than either of us separately, but not so fast as the two of us together!

We would again like you to consider closing borders with PAL. This will deprive their team of Great Lighthouse-powered trade routes, which are fueling their research currently.

Secondly, teching and horses.

Horses for longer could be possible but it will disappoint our general who has been looking forward to having them back. But we recognise the precariousness of your situation and they are on the table.

After the Edu for Astro trade goes through, there are only two real paths we want to take: chemistry and the lower tree and PP and the path to rifling. Since you may be about to go to war, a lightbulb seems considerably better than settling but PP is permanently the only tech you can lightbulb (it is a pre-req for Sci Meth). PP might not be useful for the abilities, but it's a prerequisite for pretty much everything good in the mid-term. It's needed for Sci Meth and hence Biology. It's needed for rifling, steam power and hence railroads. And you can bulb it without having to spend much/any beakers researching it.

What we propose is that we give you education next turn when we have it. Then you bulb printing press, finish the tech if necessary and gift it to us. After you finish astronomy and we crank out optics, one of use researches replacable parts and the other one chemistry (we don't mind which) and trade them for oneanother. We'll continue to supply you horses until T170.

This is pretty much equivalent to you gifting us half a scientist, a big favour. However, we will be able to return the favour later on since we'll have 90% odds of a scientist of our own in about 13 turns which we could use for scientific method (or even gift to you, though technically it doesn't matter which way we do it).

Let us know what you think,

Team Realms Beyond

I cleaned up a few bit of grammar, took out the A, B and C part and made the close-borders-with-PAL thing more of a request than a deal breaker, since we are asking for a free tech further down the email.

[sunrise089]

Looks good.

[Dreylin]

Yep, looks good to me!

[Swiss Pauli]

I think the second part of sooooo’s proposal is a bit unclear, and gives the impression we’re getting more than we give, so how about this:

After the Edu for Astro trade goes through, we need to pool our research abilities to get chemistry and steel on one hand, and PP, Rep Parts & Rifling on the other. There's no way we can hurt PAL without having all these military techs. PP might not be useful to you in itself, but it's a prerequisite for pretty much everything good in the mid-term (Sci-Meth, Biology, Rifling), and would be a big boost for our cottage economy.

What we propose is that we give you education next turn. We start immediately on Chemistry whilst you complete Astro. Then you bulb printing press (finishing the tech if necessary) and gift it to us, and start on Rep Parts. We complete Chemistry and gift it to you, and start on Steel. You complete Rep Parts and start on Rifling, gifting to us on completion. In 13 turns we'll get a GS ourselves, and part-bulb on Sci Meth, which we'll complete once Steel is done, and we'll gift both these techs to you.

Base Beakers from Banana: PP 1600, Astro 2000, Rep Parts 1800, Rifling 2400 = 7800

Base Beakers from Team RB: Edu 1800, Chem 1800, Steel 2400, Sci Meth 2400 = 8400

[sooooo]

I actually prefer my version; I think it's better not spelling out the actual beaker values because it makes us seem more "pally" and less businesslike. I aldo don't like the comitment to researching rifling and steel and would prefer to just let banana chose which to research out of RP and chemistry. I like the clause about PP benefitting our cottage economy though.

[darrelljs]

I definitely like Swiss's text better. I had the impression we were taking advantage of Banana prior to reading it.

Darrell

[sunrise089]

I have no objection to either version.

[Zeviz]

I like Swiss' version better, because Soooo's sounds like we are getting a free tech out of them.

We can modify Swiss' to say "Or we could spread around techs differently if our research rate turns out to be faster than yours. The main part is for both of us to get all of these techs as soon as possible."

[Dreylin]

I like Zeviz's final clause, or we may want to go the whole hog and just suggest a tech-sharing arrangement that leaves beaker costs out of it:

Right now we need to concentrate on the most efficient way to catch up with PAL's research, so we'd like to propose a full tech-sharing arrangement. i.e. any tech we research will be gifted to Banana, any you research will be gifted to RB, regardless of beaker costs.

[Zeviz]

I like that. We can even add that "our GNP is going to rise dramatically as new cities are developed, especially after we get Printing Press, so this tech sharing arrangment will soon work in your favor."

[MyOtherCar]

I like Swiss' version better, since it's easier to understand who gets what. But I would add a clause that the actual techs researched later on are a proposal and not fixed.

[shadyforce]

Don't use the word 'gift' because it implies favours rather than co-operation and don't describe any part as benefiting someone or other. It should sound like: "We give you something, you give us something, we both research some new things and swap." It doesn't matter how they earn their trade value, by research or by bulb and your message shouldn't imply otherwise.

Edit: I now realise that you owe them Education for astro. But I still think there is a way to make it sound like "here is how our alliance races up the tech tree fastest" rather than "if you do us this favour, we do you that favour".