Cavaleiros Embassy

your territory is a huge assest. a map trade lateron is worth it's weight in gold!

I can think of two reasons:

1. If we don't stop them, then they gain in infomation, maybe contact with another team a little sooner, which affects tech trading oppurtunities. If we can stop them, then it's a cost/benefit analysis who gets what out of the deal; with Kaz we couldn't stop them, so it didn't matter, but we can stop the cavs, and stopping the team that is currently brokering all of the tech in the game is beneficial to our position. With the Cavs, they aren't our natural allies, so is goodwill necesary?
   
   
2. They will be able to use espionage to calculate when we are going to complete builds such as the Collosus etc. This can be pretty potent when used well. As it is we can;t stop them seeing into IS, but we can stop them seeing into FC

OK, question; do we want to send this letter now, ie in the next few hours, so they can discuss it, or send it in about 20 hours and risk them asking for a pause instead of just sitting outside our borders for a little bit?

i say wait. they can ask for a pause.

It's true Cav is a far more natural opponent than Ally of ours - but imo, we really need to avoid being antagonistic right now.

There's a big difference between being "non-allied" and "enemy #1."

If anyone wants to make the case that stopping the Cav workboat is actually worth starting a shooting war - then I'd like to hear that.

However, I would argue very strongly against attacking and sinking their workboat. (see: becoming enemy #1)


Therefore:

1. If we're unwilling to sink their boat, then there is nothing we can really do to stop them (since they can just declare war and move through our territory).
2. If we can't stop them - then we might as well try to appear magnanimous and "allow" them to do what they're going to do anyway.

At least that's my reasoning.

Now - it'd be nice to try to extort a deal out of them for OB... but we're almost certainly going to see a pause in the game for that... which I'm ok with... but is everyone?

Me, I'm a cooperative sort of guy. I'd just as soon allow them to do something we can't really stop them from doing anyway, and there are advantages to not making them declare.

We could give them the option of the way of twilight vs. the way of daylight, like we did with Kaz.

Proposed note:

Version 1:

Namaste, Methos
The Ninjas salute the mighty Cavaleiros.

We are most pleased to have met your people and to be beginning a new relationship.

Based on your expressed desire for Open Borders and to secure safe passage for your brave vessel through our waterways and on to whatever mysteries the west holds…

we wish to offer you two paths. You may follow either one with the blessing of the SAN.

The Way of Twilight:
We agree that you'll declare war – and thus pass through the borders of the Inner Sanctum – with the eternal Shogun's personal guarantee of safety for your vessel. Then, as soon as your boat is past our borders, we will sign a peace deal and continue negotiations of friendship.

The Way of Daylight:
We agree to an Open Borders deal AND a trade of knowledge. Along with the lopsided benefit you'll receive from Open Borders (map knowledge, potential new contacts, trade routes when you learn Sailing), we will also offer you Metal Casting (or some other mutually agreeable technology to be determined) at a 100 beaker trade value discount in a trade that will be executed some time after turn 90 - in exchange for the secret of writing given to us at the same time we sign Open Borders.
​

What say you?
We eagerly await your reply.


General_W, Daimyo of State, SANCTA.

An old silent sea…
A letter dispatched abroad,
Diplomacy starts.

Click to expand...

EDIT: SENT!

Thoughts?

I really do agree with the General here. We are in a precarious position here, especially here. Sure we can't remove the fact that they all see us as the most dangerous team, but throwing challenges out there, tossing thoughts of war at the people we meet whether we are going to eventually going to war with them or not is simply associating us as the team to go to war with first.

Personally, I do agree with you, General; I don't want to really piss them off, I can see trying to be machiavellian and slowing the tech pace down as being useful to us, and to do that we need to be friends with everyone. I'm just trying to indicate another way of handling the issue, even if it isn't as "friendly" as is considered the norm over here. I'm used to demogames that get brutal very quickly from Poly, with long, close borders instead of masses of land to each team with bottlenecks to hide behind.

OTOH, we need to make them aware that we are doing something useful for them, and we want something back in return; the writing offer is such a compromise between both of our teams. They need to be aware that we can screw them over, but we would prefer the mutally beneficial path. Again, giving them the choice is an option that mitigates the damage to an extent because we are not outright agressors. Unfortunately, to pull it off now we would require that they stop outside our borders for a turn (even if they only moved forward one tile, they would still have to pause for a turn), so it is probably not viable.

In which case we are back to Memphus' proposal of reusing the Kaz diplomacy, with the added choice of try to trick them to wait for 10 turns through trickery.

I'm OK as well with a pause if it suits our aims (yeah, I'm a "insert insult" person who only looks out for his own best interests); they and MS are unlikely to get the turn finished until saturday afternoon GMT, and then the next turn would likely stall on sunday. A pause would likely occur over the weekend end, only delaying the game for 1 turn.

EDIT: I like the proposal.

Something we may want to add is that we are researching sailing and would consider trading it to them for a suitable tech...we should probably do the same thing for Kaz.

I would NOT sink the boat.

I fully approve of the Twilight/Daylight option note.

i do like including sailing in there! but looks great!

works for me.

We would have to state that trading it for writing is a no go though (writing costs us 100 base beakers, sailing base 125). Makes us seem nice, although they wouldn't have an awful lot of options on what techs to trade us.

EDIT in response to below: no way should we trade sailing for writing.

Cool - looks like we've about got a consensus here.

How does everyone feel about just offering Sailing (149 monopoly cost) for Writing & OB?
Probably more appealing to them than waiting ~20 turns for Metal Casting.

How soon do we expect sailing exactly?

Timing for sailing depends if we are willing to drop below the 50 gold barrier; now that we know the the method of removing bad events, we ideally only want to keep 20 gold incase of positive events, or 60 gold so that we only need 1 turns of max gold to upgrade a warrior to a spear or axe. (This needs to be decided by the start of our next turn. The only arguement against his is that the teams haven't decided anything solid yet, although it looks like Saturn, and Kaz would vote to ignore at least the bad events, so if we chose to ignore them as well that would be the quorum required).

If we were to go for it 100%, we would get sailing by eot t74, if we were to save gold for a turn, we would get it eot t75.

Sailing for writing and an OB sounds good.

?

Sailing is worth more than writing and is also a monopoly tech at this point.

So I say it isn't worth it.

The more I look at it we shouldn't even mention sailing just go with what we have above.

I think the only tech that really makes sense to us would be alpha (Monarchy doesn't provide us with anything other than blank beakers until we are ready to get fued, and writing is worth less than sailing), and trading alpha for sailing and OB just isn't worth it from their perspective. Memphus is probably right that we should not mention sailing to Cavs, if the aim is to just get writing for "free".

if sailing is a monopoly tech, I don't think we should trade it for writing.

By the time we get sailing, in 3 turns, it may no longer be a monopoly. Even it is it only takes the other teams a few turns to get, especially after we already know it. Its not like we would deprive them of anything buy refusing to trade. However it would be convenient to get started on libraries a few turns sooner by getting writing through a tech trade.

I think sailing for writing makes sense and gives us a cheep opening to Cav. Giving them more trade options might also help keep them on more formal terms with Kaz.