Team Blood Oath Horde Diplomacy

[UnOrthOdOx]

Well, I sent the above letter and quickly got another ambiguous response.

a most excellent reply

I do believe we asked for a shrubbery

we would like a white picket fence along that as well then

good on you lad

70 gold you say... most excellent reply

see you and the cats on the otherside then

the Horde

[polarnomad]

Sounds pretty clear to me. No more Foxtrot.

Dehordification anyone?

[inamirrordarkly]

The "white picket fence" reference seems to be a demand for some sort of border agreement.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Greetings Uno!

I would like to meet with you and discuss a way to bring this tragic and useless war to a halt.

It seems that neithier of our peoples are benefiting from the current situation and that it might be possible for us to end the bloodshed for our mutual advantage.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

PLATO
Ambassador of The Horde

I'll get an answer shortly, I got about 10 PM's to go through first.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Seems they all PMd me similar.


Ok.

Just going to paste some stuff here for use in a response.

Contract#: classified
"Revenge is profitable." -Edward Gibbon
Type: Reparations
Team: Horde
Details:
Horde archers attack and kill Mercenary axe and sack Mercenary town of Foxtrot.

Team Mercenary Seeking damages in the amount of:
Lost axe: 35 Hammers
Lost City: 125 (settler plus lost production, lost food ignored)
Total: 160 hammers, 320 gold by standard pricing.

Team Mercenary shall remain at war with the Horde until either paid or acquired reparations we deem equal.

Date of violation:
Completed:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=155125

Team Mercenary reserves the right to seek whatever payment we deem adequate for acts of war against Team Mercenary.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Proposed response:

Greetings to the Horde,

We look forward to a swift resolution to the situation, and a return to a business relationship.

The situation, as it stands, is that you attacked and killed one of our axes, and raised a city. From our FAQ thread:

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=155125

Team Mercenary reserves the right to seek whatever payment we deem adequate for acts of war against Team Mercenary.

It is a fact that we feel we MUST seek some form of payment for this offense. Our security and our neutrality are not to be violated. Failure to seek payment for such acts will only encourage others to perform similar in the future, and we cannot allow that to happen.

At the same time, a strong and healthy Horde is better for Mercenary business than either no Horde, or a crippled Horde. We have thus strived to find a fair and reasonable price for such offense. From our contracts history thread (which will eventually be made public but we cannot yet):

Contract#: classified
"Revenge is profitable." -Edward Gibbon
Type: Reparations
Team: Horde
Details:
Horde archers attack and kill Mercenary axe and sack Mercenary town of Foxtrot.

Team Mercenary Seeking damages in the amount of:
Lost axe: 35 Hammers
Lost City: 125 (settler plus lost production, lost food ignored)
Total: 160 hammers, 320 gold by standard pricing.

Team Mercenary shall remain at war with the Horde until either paid or acquired reparations we deem equal.

Date of violation:
Completed:

One can guess you are researching towards Horse Back Riding, given your current situation, at a tech point cost of 250. If this were true, agree to gift it to us, once possible, and we will consider the matter closed. This represents a 70 gold discount on our official cost report. If this is not the case, perhaps we can arrange some other techs to be gifted to Team Mercenary, or perhaps some units. These are the only means of payment I see for the immediate future.

I should warn you, however, failure to pay, should you agree will represent a further act of war against Team Mercenary.

Once we agree to a payment, we can discuss a border agreement to ensure this kind of thing shall not happen in the future.

We look forward to your response

UnOrthOdOx
Team Mercenary Representative.

[polarnomad]

That sounds lovely!

[UnOrthOdOx]

Sent with some grammatical corrections.

Assuming the tech gifting is unacceptable to them, how low are we willing to go?

Personally, I would rather get SOMETHING. We could offer a token tech in exchange perhaps?

Or, an awefull thought occured to me, what about asking for some archers in payment?

It weakens them while strengthening us, provides us police allowing us to field more 'combat' units, and is representative of the lost production.

[Kloreep]

Archers certainly sound acceptable. We could use some garrison units if nothing else, it would allow them to pay in hammers instead of gold, and we would indeed be getting some military out of them, weakening them short term.

And that's not an awful thought. That's a great thought.

[UnOrthOdOx]

How many is the question then.

[polarnomad]

If we go by our payment requirement in hammers, that would 6.4 archers. I would say no less than 4.

Otherwise, they could always build us some horse archers! That would be 3, but we could ask for 2. I've got a feeling it would be all the more painful for them to have finally completed HBR, only to have to send their first few horse archers to us.

[UnOrthOdOx]

They ARE upgraded archers, though. I was thinking no fewer than 3, myself.

[polarnomad]

Yes, that is a point I hadn't considered. I guess 3 is fair, as long as you stipulate promoted archers.

[Kloreep]

Depends on the promotions IMO. We can easily build 1-promo archers ourselves once we get Archery, and in the meantime Chariots are reasonably cheap garrisons. However, if they're willing to share 2-promo archers, those would be something valuable we can't get ourselves.

[polarnomad]

2 is too few. They sacked one of our cities!