Sarantium Embassy

[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]

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]

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

[-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]

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.

[binTravkin]

Yeah they want to share Compass with Horde.
Since Compass is such a useless tech and I don't think Horde will have anything to offer us but this same HBR, I guess we can trade this first one on such basis.

[PJayTycy]

Message proposal:

Dear friends of Sarantium,


We will gladly tell you a lot about The One Yang, but not now. This message is just a quick question for clarification. In your last message, you asked us for an exception of the 3T.

We would therefore accept your 3T agreement for all our trade relations with any other team in the game, except with the Horde

On our team we all find this information a little unclear, but we assume you want an exception to point 2 of our treaty. Is it correct you want to trade our techs to The Horde freely ?

If so, notice the last part of the second point mentions "without prior agreement of the researching nation". This means we are open to discuss these things. We can grant you the right to retrade techs on a case-by-case basis (ie: a certain tech to a certain team). However, we will never grant a carte-blanche exception to retrade all techs to a certain team. We hope you can understand this.

As a sign of goodwill, we are willing to give you Compass + the right to retrade it to The Horde in exchange for Horseback Riding + 120 gold.

This should not become common behaviour though, because we think it creates more diplomatic difficulties than it is worth.

Greetings,

Team Alpha Centauri
For The Glory Of The One Yang

[binTravkin]

Sounds good.

[binTravkin]

Sent

[PJayTycy]

message proposal to accompany our turn to Sarantium:

Dear friends of Sarantium!

We are glad to see you are still very interested in our trade. However, we didn't receive an answer to our latest message yet (sent with previous turn), so we had to decline again.

Please tell us what you think of our last message and if it is enough for you to sign our tech trade treaty.


Team Alpha Centauri
For The Glory Of The One Yang

[PJayTycy]

sent with approval of bt and lacero

[PJayTycy]

Already got a response :

My apologies. Aidun was supposed to respond to you. We were Ok with your terms. Will get a response to you later today.

[PJayTycy]

And now the official response:

Dear Centaurians,

A quick brief note: We welcome the trade deal you have proposed and we agree to the trade agreement.

Best,

Aidun, official representative of Sarantium

So, will we accept their trade next turn? I think we should if they offer it again.

[binTravkin]

Humm, it would be best if we wait a bit.
It wouldn't be good to alert GS about knights.

[PJayTycy]

OK, in that case we have to answer Sarantium about that fact, or they will keep proposing the trade every turn.