Banana Embassy

[Maniac]

I sent this message to Platypus Rex. Added a Chinese flavour...

Btw, what is diplomacy about in the early Civ4 game? In SMAC you can usually immediately start trading techs, but here...

---

Greeting most honourable Platypus Rex-Tze,

We apologize for the late reply to your message. The reason is that we didn't have an official diplomat yet, so no one got around to answering you. From now on we hope communications will proceed smoothly though. You may send all messages to this Team AC address.

So... how's the banana harvest going? ;-)

Greetings,

Maniac


The tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.

[PJayTycy]

thanks !

[PJayTycy]

We got a response:

Greetings friends

Our banana harvest is bountiful, plenty for everyone. I hope there are no mind worms present in your nieghborhood.


The first order of business we would like to address will be a territory boundry.

Further disccusions will happen once both boundries are approved.

We look foward to sharing the way of the banana

Mighty Yellow Ones

We should try to get more info about the whereabouts of their capital before agreeing on borders.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Its quite hard to talk about borders without revealing the locations of our Capital Cities, and that may not be kosher according to the Map trading rule.

I would sugjest that for the time being we negotiate border POLICY so we are both on the same page. I see 2 major shcools of though, "Equal Area" and "Closest Capitol". Basicaly Equal area is ware we agree to create a border that will to the best extent possible give both sides equal quantity/quality of space. Closest to Capital says we simply draw a straitline across the map, any point on said line being equal distance from both capitols. Each side founds cities only on its side of the line (after that Cultural borders take over and determin themselves, perhaps with an agreement not to use GA's to culture bomb the border cities). CC is much simpler and only requires the cordinates of each capital afterwhich it can be drawn on a black map. Its also much riskier for both sides as neither has much knowlage and could be screwed (but I think us more likly as their is probably little to no land to the west). I think we want to propose an Equal Area based philosophy and get this agreed on as the basis for all futute desision making, that would be a major milestone as it recognizes mutual coperation and co-existence as being foundational to the relationship.

P.S. sugjest we do mention the Bear to them in next letter. Just "No Mindworms but we did spot a Bear meandering around hills NW of our base 2 turns ago, have you spoted any dangerous animals?" (But more cleverly phrased ofcorse)

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
P.S. sugjest we do mention the Bear to them in next letter. Just "No Mindworms but we did spot a Bear meandering around hills NW of our base 2 turns ago, have you spoted any dangerous animals?" (But more cleverly phrased ofcorse)

Seems phrased just fine to me.

Btw, is it the habit to discuss borders in Civ4? Not really done in SMAC, but then again many people prefer to play on large maps, starting far apart etc.

Also I'm wondering, the Banana is creative. Fixed borders with then culture overtaking, would this be in their advantage or not?


Another aspect that should be taken into account when discussing borders: access to resources! Eg it would be neat if we could both have a silk and incense resource. But perhaps their capital is closer to all those resources and thus they hope to gain access to them all with a "equal distance to capital" rule? So anyway, I think we should definitely know their whereabouts before agreeing on anything.

[ForesterSOF]

For those reasons I would let the game set the borders meet line and then we agree to keep it where it is.

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
Its quite hard to talk about borders without revealing the locations of our Capital Cities, and that may not be kosher according to the Map trading rule.

According to the Rules-thread recently created by snoopy, we are not restricted in that regard:

# Teams may trade screenshots of their maps or any other in-game element upon contact.

I think we can atleast claim all the land we see currently. Probably some more too. If they have walked +/- 20 turns constantly in our direction, that means their capital is about 20 tiles to the east. We can currently see only 9 tiles to the east (at the most distant point). It will take about 6 or 7 turns till we get to their capital.

Civ4 doesn't give us tile coordinates though, so we can't really base us on that. To have some idea about their capital, they'll have to give us the info or border agreements will have to wait till we found it with our scout.


We could use this kind of pictures to share landmass/city location info:

(blue=sea, green=land, gray=mountain, orange=our city, yellow=their warrior)

[-SafaN-]

i think thats close to a map tho so mayb not allowed before paper (a very long time)

i agree on the bear notification
would delay drawing borders until we have more knowledge about our surroundings.

the marble is ofcourse ours , and in 10 turns we know locations of copper (do banana team already have bw? i guess so since they don't have a religion)

[PJayTycy]

safan : I quoted the rule that states we CAN trade maps.

Bananas have researched one small and one big tech. I think either Mining => Bronze Working or they went for Mysticism => Polytheism and lost the race.

edit: I just checked, and Bananas can't have BW yet. Bronze Working has a power value of +8 and the banana powergraph doesn't show a +8 bump anywhere.

[Maniac]

How about sending this?

---

Greetings oh ye mighty Banana,

Fortunately we haven't encountered any mind worms yet. Thanks for asking.
We have run into another ferocious species btw which we call "bears". I'm sad to say that all our attempts to domesticate this species have proven a miserable failure, at the cost of many hunters' lives. So in case you plan to explore the surroundings northwest of our base, be on your guard. There be bears! Have you perhaps spotted any wildlife to the east that could be potentially dangerous?

Regarding border agreements, we of Alpha Centauri are favourable to discussing these. We haven't fully explored the lands in our eastern direction yet though, so it is hard for us to make any statement about territories right now. Therefore may I suggest that we wait a while with discussing this issue until we both have access to more or less the same information? Then we can discuss as equals without getting regrets later on.

May the way of the Way and the way of the Banana be compatible,

Maniac of Centauri

[-SafaN-]

very good i like it!

[PJayTycy]

Nice message to the juicy bananas.

[Maniac]

sent

[PJayTycy]

Response from the fruits:

We have run into the same furballs you have delt with.

We would like to offer our services in the exploration of the territory to your east, we both could share locations of all resources in the efforts.

We will be waiting until you are ready to resume talks on territory.

Respectfully


Mighty Yellow ones

Helping each other is all nice and all, but they don't give a really concrete way of doing this. If we want to share locations of anything, we'll atleast need a fixed reference tile we both know.
The tile with the wine resource seems like a good candidate for this. It's just outside our cultural borders and right next to their warrior (in the previous turn).

[Maniac]

If we're gonna share screenshots of our territory, I'd rather have someone else take them btw. Me starting up Civ4 takes too long to my liking.