Saturn Embassy & Intelligence

Sullla · Jun 18, 2009

Kaleb, you are fishing for information here. My post was referring to Kaz and SANCTA butting heads on the disputed issue - I can't remember if anyone from Saturn even posted in that thread.

I don't blame you for trying though.

donsig · Jun 18, 2009

Sommerswerd said:
@ Donsig, I am curious about what info you think we might gain by asking saturn why they broke the deal. It seems to me that their response will either be 1, Silence or 2. Lies. Neither of these would be helpful to us. Is there something else you are thinking of that I am overlooking?

Asking why isn't meant to get any information from them Sommers. It's the beginnings of laying a guilt trip on them. Remember we gave Saturn a couple techs up front. We should be reminding them of this and maybe even insinuating that we will make sure other teams know they can't be trusted.

damnrunner · Jun 18, 2009

I think everyone already knows that they back stabbed. Not much to gain by "guilt tripping" them.

As I have mentioned in our discussion on the Cav Treaty - other teams can't be trusted. No matter how nice they seem. And their is really no cost associated with betrayal. That is why I have had issues with setting up a treaty that assumes the other team is 100% honest.

It was a gamble giving them the tech up front but we were ok with it. Of course they could have gotten much of this tech from sacnta anyway - so it was not really that much of a loss.

donsig · Jun 18, 2009

Proposed note:

Greetings Lord Parkin and Team Saturn,

We offered the math for feudalism deal and you didn't accept. We thought we had a deal and we even gave some techs up front. What gives guys? We had hoped to explore more tech trades with your team but that seems impossible now.

donsig of Kazakhstan

Anyone disagree with sending a note like this? If not then please discuss, edit and revise as usual.

damnrunner · Jun 18, 2009

I think that is ok - at worst they share with Sancta - we seem naive and dumb.

I think that projecting weakness is fine right now. The weaker we seem the easier time we will have dealing with Sancta militarily. Of course if we want to sue for peace then we need to project strength.

Kaleb · Jun 18, 2009

I sent another in-game trade request to trade Feudalism with Saturn and asked for them to let us know if they wanted to back out of it. Just checked email and we have this:

Greetings Kazakhstan,

Unfortunately this year we come to you with some bad news: we have decided not to trade Feudalism to you at the present time. Let us make it clear right at the outset that this does not necessarily mean that we wish to cancel the deal completely - however, we wish to postpone it for the time being. I can assure you that this has not been a light decision, and there has been a great deal of debate amongst our team regarding this matter. Let me take this chance to enlighten you a little on our reasoning.

For some time now, we have been watching with dismay as you have blasted up the tech tree with Cav, leaving our poor nation in the dust. We were even more dismayed recently when it became clear that you had invited the Mad Scientists to join your tech trading group. This in particular made it clear that you were obviously and deliberately trying to exclude Saturn - perhaps because you or Cav had us on your "hit list" of nations to conquer.

Frankly, at this point the game is not even close to balanced, to the point where almost seems a joke. You and your two partners have an insane technological edge on the world, which no-one else can hope to compete with. Additionally, you have made Feudalism next to worthless for us in terms of trading value. MS and Cav have responded to our many trade requests with complete and utter silence; in fact, the only time we heard from Cav in recent times was when they enquired about the Feudalism deal we had with you (no doubt wondering when they could expect it'd be passed on to them as a freebie). In hindsight, the reason is obvious: you were planning to spread it around to your buddies, just like Civil Service and all those other techs have spread like wildfire between you.

In short, we cannot with a clear conscience pass a powerful military tech to you when you have so clearly aligned with two other nations and are warring with the only remaining nation besides ourselves. Simply put, this would irreversibly skew the balance of the game, and make it even more of a joke than it is presently.

Regards,
Lord Parkin of Saturn

We should pass this on to MS and Cav. Looks like the sides are set...

damnrunner · Jun 18, 2009

That was foolish of Team Cav - to ask about our tech trade deal with Saturn.

How about this response - it would need to be approved by MS and Cav.

Frankly everyone is on our hit list - we do plan on winning the game after all. But that is all in the distant future and for the time being our only real geographic rival is Sancta. We don't know how much exploration you have done but it looks to us that Sancta is also your closest neighbor.

It is true that we have had a fruitful relationship with Team Cav and MS - but this relationship is still fairly open ended and our team has had exhaustive debate about how we want to move forward. Right now however - we are happy to trade technology amongst each other.

As to our previously agreed to tech trade, your concerns are legitimate. Would you agree to honor our trade if we agree not to trade Feudalism to MS and Team Cav - and if you agree not to trade Math to Sancta.

This is something else we could try to throw in:
The question is - going forward - do you want to be allied with Sancta, remain neutral, or join us. Sancta does after all have land near yours and if we get the upper hand in this conflict you are welcome to it.

donsig · Jun 18, 2009

Sides may be set but we could also invite Saturn to join in on the imbalancing act against SANCTA. Here's how I would reply to them (cross post with damnrunner):

Greetings Lord Parkin and Team Saturn,

We are happy to hear from you even if your news is not good. First of all we'd like to assure you that if we did have a "hit list" of nations then yours would not be on it. We have made some nice deals with both Team Cavaleiros and the Mad Scientists though we thought we were also doing the same with you. :confused:

We'd really like to explore more tech trading possibilites with your team but since you are holding up on a deal we thought was sealed, that we partially paid for up front and that would give us access to a needed defensive unit makes us wary to say the least!

We did not declare war on SANCTA - they are the aggressors. Since they have attacked us we have naturally turned to our friends. We hope to include you in this category. If things are as unbalanced as you say then why would you willingly join the smaller faction instead of the larger? The SANCTA bullies obviously think they have you "in their pocket" as evidenced by their note declaring war on us (which we forwarded to you) so we can only conclude that they have convinced you that it is impossible for you to join the rest of us in the free world. We wish you had talked to us before swallowing the ninja lies.

We would like to conclude our deal as arranged but we cannot wait very long as we need longbows. If we cannot come to terms soon then we will have to research feudalism ourselves. We can understand your concerns and we have our own - we really do not want math being passed on to SANCTA. We'd really like you to stop trading techs with SANCTA. In return we could help you gain access to some of the techs you mentioned in your note. This would make things even more unbalanced with SANCTA being on the short end, but would that be so bad? SANCTA appears to be close to your lands. Would we not all benefit by eliminating the threat of the bullying ninjas? If so then we should begin actively working towards that end.

We hope you will consider our offer to cooperate and reply to us soon.

donsig of Kazakhstan

Please discuss, edit, revise, etc.

Sommerswerd · Jun 18, 2009

This message from EDIT: Saturn(not Cavalieros oops :blush:

) bolsters my suspicion that our foolish failure to include them in the 4-way has come back to haunt us...

Geez... Duh, Why can't we just offer to bring Saturn into the alliance? We can Isolate SANCTA, whom we are at war with, AND we can at least get Feudalism. We can always betray them later... They can't really complain, since they already betrayed us.

Saturn has mentioned that they have not dismissed the possibility of trading Feudalism to us. This is an obvious string-along designed to put us off teching Feudalism. We should offer them a last-chance choice. Tell them that they can enter our 4-way alliance against SANCTA, in which case the alliance will share all tech equally with them, or they can refuse, in which case we will immediately tech Feudalism ourselves.

Lastly, please don't insult Saturn's intelligence by trying to deny that we are allied with Cavalieros or trying to imply that we are not allied, it will just bolster SANCTA's characterization of us as liars that are trying to isolate them (Saturn) and reinforce the claim that we are trying to isolate them.

Just for the record, we have now been betrayed by three of the teams in this game...:

1. SANCTA sneak attacked us in the middle of tech negotiations
2. Saturn reneged on our trade agreement (under SANCTAs influence)
3. Cavalieros has left their "Kazakh brothers" alone in the SANCTA war

Not to mention the fact that SANCTA fooled us into delaying teching Metal Casting with a string-along tactic, then revealed that they were aware of the CavKaz alliance, (and thus had no intention of trading with us).

We are shaping out to be the MTDG game's biggest suckers. I wonder what trick we will fall for next? Any guesses? As P.T. Barnum said... "There's a sucker born every minute" :lol:

Indiansmoke · Jun 19, 2009

Yea, expected really, they are no fools to give feudalism like that...no worries we don't need feudalism we will have machinery shortly.

I would hold off any replies to them and wait for feedback from Cav and MS on what to say to them.

Kaleb · Jun 19, 2009

SANCTA didn't sneak attack us at all, we showed up right next to a city they wanted and they killed of our unit. And we weren't in tech negotiations with them. We were kind of both stringing each other along.

This message from Cavalieros bolsters my suspicion that our foolish failure to include them in the 4-way has come back to haunt us...

Hmm, interesting interpretation of history there. This tech trade was an initial step to see if they could be trusted as we were wanting to explore the possibility of allying with them.

damnrunner · Jun 19, 2009

Lets reply with just a time bound counter offer (or more than one). I say we need a response by the end of the weekend.

Getting in to the psyc part is all 2nd guessing and fairly pointless. Lets just make our offer and leave it at that.

Offers:
1.
Do the Math feudal trade if both sides agree not to spread the tech around.

2.
Offer a 4 way round of tech trading. Something like we do machinery, Cav does paper, Saturn does (compass, theology?), MS does ???. (one team here could even contribute $$ to help speed research - but that would take a good amount of trust. Point out that Sancta has anemic research and that joining us will result in much faster tech progress. Going forward they will not be able to do many trades with Sancta and will essentially be on their own anyway.

cav scout · Jun 19, 2009

I think we should continue to engage Saturn, even if they outright declare an alignment with SANCTA. Who knows what the future holds? We might need Saturn down the road at some point.

damnrunner · Jun 19, 2009

If we want to send a note we need to do it today and have an offer that expires. Otherwise we do risk being strung along.

I think I have made my views clear.

Kaleb · Jun 19, 2009

MS won't finish HBR for a couple of turns anyway, so we've got a little while before we start trying to get Feud by other means...

donsig · Jun 19, 2009

Wow guys I can see there's no point in changing my signature yet.

We have two proposed notes with not much feedback on either. We can't unilaterally offer not to pass feudalism onto Team Cav and MS, nor can we take it upon ourselves to invite Saturn into our TTA.

We have one team member saying hold off talking to Saturn until we get feedback from Team Cav and MS though we've made no effort to write to either about Saturn's note.

I doubt we can get a note to Saturn in time for them to give us an answer back by the end of the weekend. Things just don't move that fast in an MTDG. Feudalism isn't that big a loss - with two tech partners we can get it soon enough and by not doing the trade we force S&S to tech math themselves. The trade is not important here. Peeling Saturn away from SANCTA is and the psychological aspect is all we have to work with. Let's project the sense that not doing the trade is no big loss for us (after all we have two tech partners) but them joining SANCTA is a big loss for them. Then we imply they can brought into the TTA so we can isolate SANCTA. All we can do is make the implication now and then we talk to MS and Team Cav about a foursome.

I must go to work now so Ican't contribute further at this time.

damnrunner · Jun 19, 2009

Could we send Saturn the offer of trading math for feudalism if neither team agrees to share with others.

We send this and Saturn's original note to Cav and MS with a message asking if they would be ok with it. If Cav and MS are not ok with it we can always decide not to do the trade.

Sending this note has no downside and a potential very large upside. It may also delay Saturn from teching math for a few turns as they negotiate among themselves.

The idea of trying to bring Saturn into our alliance is also tempting. We should bring it up to MS and Cav to see what they think. I don't think Saturn should get the benefits of tech we have already worked ion together - but going forward we could cooperate with them.

I suspect Saturn has real concerns about allying with a tech partner that is 100% military focused and has very low tech rate.

donsig · Jun 19, 2009

I do not think we should offer not to pass feudalism to Team Cav and MS unless we talk to them first. If Saturn does have concerns about allying wioth SANCTA (and the tone of their note does suggest they are only turning to SANCTA because they are excluded from the Kaz/Cav/MS alliance) then we should offer to be generous and share what we already have to pry Saturn from the clutches of the ninjas. If we don't make them full partners then they will only assume SANCTA has got things right and we're out to get Saturn.

Now, if we did offer a deal where we wouldn't pass feudalism on to MS/Cav then Saturn would want to trade with those teams anyway, and if that happened then they'd pretty much be able to get what our alliance has anyway. The trouble I see here is that we risk having everything our alliance has going straight to SANCTA.

mikotian · Jun 19, 2009

I think we send the Math v Feudalism trade proposal along, with the stipulation that we don't spread the respective techs.

If they don't respond to that, screw them.

Then we wait maybe 10 turns, and give Feudalism to our partners anyhow. They can't prove whether we passed the tech, or our partners teched it themselves.

Not including Saturn in a 4 way alliance was not a mistake. We always knew that it would end up in a 3v2--which is good for us and good for the stability of our 3 way alliance.

Sommerswerd · Jun 19, 2009

Kaleb said:
SANCTA didn't sneak attack us at all, we showed up right next to a city they wanted and they killed of our unit. And we weren't in tech negotiations with them. We were kind of both stringing each other along.

Hmm, interesting interpretation of history there. This tech trade was an initial step to see if they could be trusted as we were wanting to explore the possibility of allying with them.

OK

since you seem to be skeptical of my "interpretation of history"... I will waste time trolling all the prior statements on our forum in an effort to protect my honor/credibility, with respect to the statement that I advocated a 4-way alliance... since you imply that I am misrepresenting history.

As far as stringing each other along... (I also predicted that BTW) if we were stringing them along and they were stringing us along... THEY WON (because they (SANCTA) have Alphabet and we don't have Feudalism). We should avoid string -along contests with SANCTA in the future.

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