Gathering Storm Embassy

[binTravkin]

A deal which, if they agree to it, is actually better for us than war.

And I'm saying that there is either no such deal or if there is, GS would never accept it (since it's too harsh).

[Mart]

I think that sooner or later a conflict between Centauri and GS is not avoidable. The civ that will be closing winning condition will be most likely attacked, unless spirit in the loosing civ is too low for offensive play. I would avoid explicit long term commitments. As I read, the most advanced for now is agreeing on Liberalism advance.

Maniac's text might be further written, I would see the following plan for it:

• declaration of war for:
  - creating the city in dispute.
  - neglecting diplomacy regarding solving the problem.
• New peace treaty:
  - allowing taking the city in dispute, (is it size 2 ?)
  - working on the Paper/Liberalism agreement. If they do not give us Paper, it is more like we loose something, but they do not gain anything really. How about we build a settler for them? or 2 workers? So for now I would keep Paper exchange, keep Liberalism treaty. We show this way that we want cooperation and we want to keep previous agreements. This all needs still consideration if we want to add/change anything.
  - Indication that we want to keep cooperation after Liberalism, no definite declarations yet.
• In case we do not work on the peace offer/they do not accept any, we write that we loose by not exchanging advances, loose military, they cannot work on the tiles near city in dispute - we will not let them, etc.

This all will spoil our relations and trust. We should expect from now that any agreements could be quickly and easily broken. We have to live with it.

[PJayTycy]

I do not agree with your peace treaty at all mart.
First of all, I don't want their city, I want to burn it.
But, building a settler or 2 workers for them is completely out of the question.

[binTravkin]

Hey, let's just be reasonable and lay down the facts:

First what do we gain from cooperation and peaceful relationships with GS.
As we have seen, all we get is delays in diplomacy and even in deal fulfillment as well as insulting moves (such as this city).

Second - what do we gain from war - the possibility to get rid of them and acquire a lot more territory (flood plains!) and useful resources, as well as religions, 1 academy and so on. The combined territory could be enough to qualify for domination victory or at least pretty close to it.

Do we lose a trading partner? Not really - the trading partner was becoming worse as time went and we have recently met another trading partner (and will soon meet 2 more).

At last - why should we go to war now. Because GS is like 20 or less turns from Gunpowder, which would kill our military advantage for a long time if not forever. Currently we have big advantage both in quantity and quality of military, so we should use it.


Therefore I think that any diplomacy we make should be just to fool them, not actually achieve anything.

[Mart]

Considering that Gunpowder will make conquering GS much harder - if this is what we definitely want - then we should start a war now and do not stop before they are conquered.

Why not to keep the city? We seem to be able to spread soon. Location is not good? It will cost, but may still be beneficial

[Lacero]

Therefore I think that any diplomacy we make should be just to fool them, not actually achieve anything.

I strongly agree with this.
The only question to me is can we get anything out of them at this point? or are we better off fooling them into thinking we're not attacking?

[Mart]

like: "what you see is not military, but curious tourists, very friendly and they will only pillage some of your improvements and kill some of your citizens".

When they see our troops, I would straitforward say - it is war. We may explained as mentioned: offending city, lack of diplomacy before. Nothing more than that. Let them do the thinking. They will consider options anyway and maybe offer peace, then we will discuss our response, if any.

[binTravkin]

We can talk about which city to keep and which not when we get at them.

This first one is size 1 anyway, unlikely that we will get to keep it.

[binTravkin]

Message proposal:

Greetings our friends at Gathering Storm!

We are glad that the research of Feudalism has finally bore fruit. After such a long wait we were losing hope of receiving that knowledge.
We are looking forward to your future research of Paper and hope that, unlike Feudalism, it is swift and without delay. We would not like that such incidents happen again.

Your friends @ AC

[PJayTycy]

bt, sending your message and declaring war in-game looks pretty weird to me...

[-SafaN-]

yes we should not lie so obvious

i'd rather have years of no communication the this kind of messages

[binTravkin]

We cannot dow the same turn we receive a tech anyway IIRC.

And we need to send this before they get turn.

[binTravkin]

GS has received the turn. Should we send this message then?

[PJayTycy]

bt, I don't think we need to send them a message now just about feudalism. They told us they will give us feudalism, so we should trust them they will do so.

I really like the text Maniac prepared, but we only have to send that after we really declared war. If we have really received feudalism in that time, we can add a thank-you to that message.

[binTravkin]

Ok, let's wait then.

But we need to check if there is a rule vs dowing the same turn as doing trade.