AC Diplomacy

[notyoueither]

Somebody needs to be. I am AWOL. Sorry, but I don't have time to pay close attention (or much at all).

[Hot Mustard]

Originally emailed by Sheng-Ji Yang
Shalom aleichem!

The centaurian people wish to express great thankfulness to you for helping us to at last come to conclusion that we should worship the one true God. We wish you to sort out your spiritual issues in the soonest time too - believing is so much better than living in question and doubt!
As agreed before we now owe you an IOU of 150 beakers or Monotheism, should you request that knowledge.
To that end, we're interested in the continuation of our knowledge exchange. Knowing you're now digging into the secrets of Construction we'd like to offer an exchange of knowledge about somewhat related disciple - Metal Casting, in which case our IOU would be fully and fairly paid as well.


On other affairs our scout has finished exploring the coastline leading up to the mighty river, which flows through your territory blessing it with fertilizing floods.
Also, the attempts to create a boat that would go without rowing seem to near fruition, which means a trade route between our glorious civilizations could be opened soon (in 50 years).
To that end, and respecting the intimacy of affairs of your people, we'd like to offer you an agreement about open borders for trading purposes (no unit traversing, just to open commerce). Later, if all goes well and both our people and yours express wish for some closer contact, we could as well open our territories to travelers and explorers.


>From your thankful friends.

[notyoueither]

Someone better answer that. Sorry, it won't be me. Can I make this any clearer?

[Blake]

Hmmm.

Well we don't want open borders until WE have a visible coastline to AC or Banana territory. Otherwise they'd be the only ones to get commerce.

Metal Casting does not benefit us, at least not until we are done killing Vox, even then we may not be wanting forges for a while. Unlike AC we are not ind.

Monotheism will be extremely useful once we have Hinduism, but not before then.

Those are the "facts" from our position, I'm not sure what we want to send to AC though.

[Krill]

Hmm, bannnings don;t work in private foa it seems.

We could say that we'll give them an OB if they gift us a work boat for a few turns...we could then send the work boat back along the coast and regift it back to them...

[Blake]

The tricky thing is the mighty river exits through Vox territory, which means we need to scout up that coast (and also clear out the Vox infestation before our trade can get through)
The other alternative is founding a city on the northern coast and completing the scoutage of that.

[Krill]

Just kill Vox.

[Arrian]

I'm fine with the proposed tech exchange, even though neither tech benifits us right away. I think we can politely explain that, to the extent the benifit of OBs would only be one-way, we'd rather keep them closed for the time being. No offense, etc., etc.

-Arrian

[Hot Mustard]

Originally emailed by Sheng-Ji Yang
Hello again from AC!


We have to apologize that we forgot that possession of Sailing by both civilizations is needed for the trade link to be fully formed from both sides.
We therefore offer a deal that goes: Sailing for our IOU once we get Sailing and later we can decide the exact deal about Construction.
We now have decided to take Currency as our next technology. Maybe you're interested in Currency for Construction deal?


Your friends @AC

[Hot Mustard]

Originally emailed by Sheng-Ji Yang
Greetings our friends at Gathering Storm!


Although your sudden and long silence has spurred doubts on
cooperation in our ranks, we're still willing to maintain diplomatic
contact.

We would like to inform you that AC is now at war with the Banana. We
need to expand and the Bananas have left themselves near defenseless.
We ask you to refrain from any help to the Bananas as we have honored
your request to shun Vox.

We want to assure you that the we don't feel this war alters our
relations with you in any way and all agreements between our two
civilizations will be honored from our side. We still have a 150
tech-beaker debt to you (a few months ago we sent 2 different
proposals to you for paying it back and would like to hear what
interests you), we still want to continue trading techs with you, we
still want to establish a trade route to you and negotiate a new
border between us.

We expect swift victory over the bananas in ~10 turns and wish you
likewise with your new catapult technology

Your friends @AC
For The Glory Of The One Yang

[Blake]

Whoa! What a surprise!

Hmm, that's applicable both to "Our sudden and long silence", and "AC declared war on Banana".


So, what do we reply with?

"Thanks, Banana are annoying."
?

[Hot Mustard]

Originally emailed by Sheng-Ji Yang
Greetings our friends at Gathering Storm!

While reviewing recent intelligence data, we've come up with conclusion that due to recent discovery of Alphabet and overall proliferation and cooperation of Sarantium and Mercenaries, they are rapidly catching up tech wise.

It is now clear that Strom and Centauri will be left alone on this continent. If we were to become rivalrious it could lead to hostilities that might result in a fruitless stalemated war in which both of us would be weakened in comparison to the other continent.

We think that in order to stay competitive while keeping hold of big territories like yours after conquering Vox and ours after conquering Bananas, we should cooperate our research and trade commerce as close as possible.

Perhaps in order to formalize this stance we should sign a new tech trade agreement between us two.

To start off - we're now researching Literature and are about to finish it in 5 turns. This is a sidestep of our original plan to go for Currency which we will continue investing in after we're done with Literature.
After Currency we plan to shoot for Code of Laws. The general idea of our tech plan is to boost commerce and minimize the upkeep resulting from prospective capture of Banana cities.

We are interested in technologies like Calendar, Monarchy, Drama and Compass, should you research them. It seems that of the named Calendar and Drama might be the most interesting to you currently as they can easily provide all the happiness you need and with the lot of flood plain tiles you have got, happiness seems very important to reap maximum benefits of that terrain.
Also, should you research Feudalism we'd be happy to exchange it for our Machinery knowledge thus opening up Guilds and Civil Service(with macemen) to both of us.

We would also like to hear your research plans and trade interests as well as any counter-offers you might have.

Also, opening up trade routes with you would be very nice and it appears to us that the missing part of the still unestablished trade route is some fogged tile near the area where your river enters tundra.
As we have lost our scout to barbarians, this tile can only be explored by you and we hope you won't hesitate to do so to boost commerce of our civs thus not letting the other continent to get ahead us.

Your friends @AC

[Cort Haus]

For a quick reply, how about

O mighty Centaurians of the Alpha persuasion,

We can confirm that we have no intention of interfering with your struggle against the Bananas, and we agree that a conflict between ourselves is most likely to benefit our rivals abroad. Indeed, the word 'fruitless' is perhaps not the best adjective to describe the future of our two Civs, as we're sure that there should be enough bananas to go round - within a framework of equitable and mutually-beneficial trades.

Our sages are considering possible immediate-term trades and exchanges as you have suggested, and we will endeavour to come back to you with some details as soon as we can. Opening up trade routes sounds like a good objective, and I'm sure we will do what we can to facilitate this.

May the stars shine on your spears, and universal wisdom enlighten your minds.

Your etc

[Hot Mustard]

PM from binTravkin:

Originally PMed by binTravkin
binTravkin wrote on 27-06-2007 06:47:
Greetings!

This message is to confirm whether GS has received following diplomatic messages from AC:
07-May-2007 09:18 A message from AC
16-May-2007 12:59 Regarding trade routes
24-Jun-2007 17:37 Re: Regarding trade routes
25-Jun-2007 23:34 A message from AC


Thanks,
Team AC

I sent a response right away, since we're overdue:

Originally PMed by Hot Mustard
Hi - yes, we're getting your emails. I'm very embarrassed that we have not responded to them (yet), and have nothing to say other than the usual lack-of-active-participants. Don't read anything into the silence, we're not about to do a flip-flop with Vox, help 'Nana, or anything else alarming.

I haven't wanted to get involved in the diplomacy myself because: 1) I don't think I'm skilled enough in that dept; and 2) time; and 3) it sets a bad precedent - the team already relies on me too much. Cort Haus has shown an interest in getting into the diplomacy - hopefully you'll get official response(s) from him shortly.

Quick nuggets to chew on for now:
- we have no problem with your war with 'Nana, and in fact expected it for quite some time
- yes, we should coordinate techs - that will require discussion - we're currently doing Monarchy
- trade contact - maybe we should arrange further map trade?
- sorry about your Scout - there are still many barb warriors in that area - our units have been occupied elsewhere - I can tell you that the area south of EotS is mostly ice and nothing exciting besides some beavers.

Cheers,
HM

Disclaimer: I guess you should consider this an unofficial message, since it hasn't been vetted by the team and is just my interpretation of prevailing GS opinion.

Cort - that looks just dandy - unless anyone says otherwise, I think you're our Ambassador and should feel free to get the messages out as a priority - don't wait very long for input that for now, doesn't appear to coming.

[Hot Mustard]

Quick response from binTravkin:

Originally PMed by binTravkin
Good to hear from you at last!

We mentioned the scout because we wanted to open a trade route at the same time we'd research Sailing.
Unfortunately there was a single tile left unexplored by both of us on the coast of that river which means you should explore that title if you want to open trade routes.
We think opening trade routes is the way to go as it offers equal benefits to both of our teams, but lets us compete better with the other continent.

In hope for further talks,
Team AC