Sarantium Embassy

[PJayTycy]

I don't understand it either, but your idea, they want to trade our techs to The Horde, seems plausible.

We should ask it directly to be certain though. It's no good to build up a relationship based on assumptions of unclear texts.

[-SafaN-]

Honorable Centaurians, dear friends,

We honor the Glory of the One Yang and would be honored to learn of it in more detail. As Buddhists, we are very open and accepting of others' views and beliefs. Maybe one day we can share our respective understandings of the universe.

We understand the timing of the trade as you have described and we believe it is no barrier for a mutually beneficial trade like the one we are preparing. We are also pleasantly suprised by your act of generosity.

Your proposed 3T agreement would seem fair to us under any normal circumstances. However, we feel that the circmstances are everything but normal. As we have written in our previous message, our continent has seen virtually constant war from the very start of the game and Sarantium has suffered dearly. Several of our cities have been destroyed. The Sarantium that you meet lies in ruins. Thanks to this ultimate sacrifice, our civilization still exists. Worse is that during the war our enemy, thanks to being on no less than superb land and all necessary strategic resources, and incredible luck, alltogether having made it virtually invincible, has barely suffered from the war. We are not your equals, my friends, you are leagues ahead of us. But we persist to continue despite everything.

Against this background we ask you that you make a tiny exception for us. We have been weakened too much to ever become a frontrunner in research for the rest of this game. We will under your 3T agreement never realistically have the opportunity to trade techs to you that you could not already have acquired through other means, while every tech you have, would be new to us. We would therefore accept your 3T agreement for all our trade relations with any other team in the game, except with the Horde, a civ on our continent that has suffered just a little worse from the constant war than we have.

Please consider our compromise so that we may perhaps once, at some point in the game actually be able to become something of a trading partner to you. Let us please know what you think of our compromise, because we are completely open to negotiations with a generous and honorable civilization like yours. Since we do not wish to ask too much of your generosity, in turn we propose to pay the original amount of gold, were you to agree to the proposed compromise.

As per your earlier request, we have not advised either of our continental neighbors of our contact with your civilization and we will honor this agreement in the future.

Cheers, and safe sailing.

Best regards,

Aidun
Official Representative of Sarantium

anyone understand what they mean? they want to be allowed to trade techs they got from us with the horde?

[PJayTycy]

Sent this message along with the turn:

Our dear friends of Sarantium,


We thank you for your swift reaction but we are afraid we have to
decline at this moment.
The timing for HBR isn't right yet, and we have some paperwork to do first.

=> Since the timing for HBR is important we will initiate the trade
ourselves in 5-7 turns. For this waiting time we will halve the sum of
gold you were prepared to give us.

=> Before we trade techs with any civilization, we ask them to sign
the following "Tech Trade Treaty", often referred to as "3T".


===============================
1.a Technology trades will be based on beakers with equality being the goal.
1.b Differences can be made up in gold immediately or beaker-credits
can be awarded.
1.c The gold/beaker exchange rate is not fixed and depends only on
mutual agreement.

2. Each of the civs agrees not to retrade any technology acquired in
trade from one of the others; without prior agreement of the
researching nation.

3. Arranged trades are kept even if a tech to be traded for is
acquired by other means.
===============================


We hope you understand our desire to formalize this tech trade and
make sure everything goes smooth, without rushing it.


Greetings from your new friends,

Team Alpha Centauri
For The Glory Of The One Yang

[binTravkin]

I'd drop 1.d - there has never been such point in our transactions with GS and it hurts us since we're the ones building 80% of the wonders.

[PJayTycy]

so, what about

1.a Technology trades will be based on beakers with equality being the goal.
1.b Differences can be made up in gold immediately or beaker-credits can be awarded.
1.c The gold/beaker exchange rate is not fixed and depends only on mutual agreement.
1.d Techs that lost the availability of a one-time only bonus (ie: world wonder, religion, great person, free tech, ...) will be worth less than their in-game value.

2. Each of the civs agrees not to retrade any technology acquired in trade from one of the others; without prior agreement of the researching nation.

3. Arranged trades are kept even if a tech to be traded for is acquired by other means.

[binTravkin]

We get 100 gold when running full gold, and 250 beakers when running full beakers.
Since our costs are ~75, that means 175:250 or 1 gold = 1.43b, but I was meaning literally "difference can be paid in gold, per agreement" and that's it, since the rate is fluctuating over time and over civ.

[PJayTycy]

Originally posted by binTravkin
PJay, we need to add that difference can be paid in gold, per agreement (since 1 gold != 1beaker).

So, what is a general accepted conversion rate ?

For us I think currently 1 gold ~ 1.3 beakers (how much gold+beakers do we get at 100% tech and at 100% gold)

But that will change with other civics, other buildings, more/less cities, ...

[binTravkin]

PJay, we need to add that difference can be paid in gold, per agreement (since 1 gold != 1beaker).

To decide who gets the trade we need to eval their diplomatic status, their overall power (and tech amount) and what do we get.
In case of equal trade possibilities, the weakest of all three should be the preferred partner as long as it is not at war with both others (in which case next weakest).
So, now it seems that the list would be like

Horde
Sarantium
Mercs

in that order of preference.

[PJayTycy]

This was our Tech Trade Treaty with GS and Banana :

1. technology trades will be based on beakers with equality being the goal.
2. each of the three civs agrees not to retrade any technology acquired in trade from one of the three; without prior agreement of the researching nation.
3. trades arranged are kept even if a tech to be traded for is acquired by other means.
4. each of the three teams agrees to an embargo on the team known as Vox. Technology will never be traded with Vox and borders with them will remain closed forever.
5. tech trade arrangements among member nations will be common knowledge to member nations - ie. when a trade deal is finalized all 3 members will be notified even if only 2 parties are involved in the trade.

Which could be changed for Sarantium into :

1. technology trades will be based on beakers with equality being the goal.
2. each of the civs agrees not to retrade any technology acquired in trade from one of the others; without prior agreement of the researching nation.
3. trades arranged are kept even if a tech to be traded for is acquired by other means.

With 5 turns waiting time, there's the chance we'll meet other nations and get other/similar trade proposals. What will we do then to decide who gets the trade ?

[-SafaN-]

Message Proposal:

Our dear friends of Sarantium. We thank you for your swift reaction but we are afraid we have to decline at this moment. The timing for HBR isn't right yet, and we have some paperwork to do first.

- You are not to trade techs you didn't research yourself. This is for every tech you recieve from us. We will do the same for all techs we recieve from you.

- Since the timing for HBR is very important we will initiate the trade ourselves in 5-7 turns. For this waiting time we will halve the sum of gold you were prepared to give us.


---

This should be sent together with the turn since they are the next team

[binTravkin]

We should time our HBR trade with Sarantium so that we recieve it no sooner than 6 turns. We will have horses in 8 turns and Guilds around the same time, so that will be a nasty surprise to GS.

[N35t0r]

Yeah. They won't disagree, but it's better to lay it down beforehand.

We need horseback riding for knights anyway, so it's a good deal IMO.


As for them making peace: it could very possibly be that they were getting nowhere (and they've been at war since the early game and still no one has managed to come on top) they pretty much thought they were going to get gobbled up by either us, GS, or both of us if they didn't sit up and do something about it.

[PJayTycy]

I think it's strange they had war for so long and suddenly decide to make peace... Maybe because they want to ally against us ?

In any case, if we start trading with them, we should have them sign some Tech Trade Treaty first (ie: don't trade our techs to other civs without our knowledge)

[snoopy369]

I presume you mean Circumnavigate...

[binTravkin]

What do you think?
We will be first to circumvent anyway.