Team Free Embassy

I am ok with this.

With Babe, should we bring SABER into the fold? We maybe should think about getting SABER into the MA if neither FREE nor us get Feudalism.

Right now, Feudalism is probably the most important tech in the world.

General_W said:

My reason for bringing it up was to remind FREE that they can afford to be generous with us. Afterall, they have nearly double our population!

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My concern about the comment on population and score lead is that it makes us look like a weak and undesireable ally. And we are not asking FREE to be generous with us, are we?

But it's no big problem, I hope. So let's send it off!

Well - we've debated that section on polytheism so long, it now appears to be obsolete!

This just in from FREE:

Dear Wise Peoples of The Council,

I am very glad to announce that the dark days of anarchy are over and Team FREE is now a republic! We of FREE are so happy that those wild and unproductive times will not happen again. The stars beckon and we are ready to run to meet them.

Polytheism
On a more practical note, now that our economy is functioning again, we will honor our part of the SABER deal that did not quite happen, though the end result was the same. We will send you gold each turn as you research Polytheism and enter the Middle Ages. Let me explain the details of how FREE will do this.

The key is to keep it simple. So, for this turn, I looked at what we expect to have in total gpt from Turn 91 to 92 and sent half of that to you. The actual number was a fraction, and this time I rounded it up. The next time it is a fraction I'll round it down. Round up; round down.
I'll also send the Budget Box (my name for it) in the lower right hand side of the screen, that will show the full amount we expect to gain on the IBT. This is so you know we are not playing with the numbers.

Team FREE will send this each turn until we receive Polytheism. On the turn we do recieve that tech we will send you gold for the following IBT, but after that the gpt will cease. (You learn Poly on Turn XX and send it to us that turn. We determine the amount of gold to send and send it on Turn XX, which you get on Turn XX + 1. No more gpt for Poly after that.)

So, on Turn 91:
Expected Team FREE GPT for Turn 92


and we sent 47 gold to you.

As Turnplayer for Team FREE, it will be easiest for me to email you the details on what have been sent to you each turn. azzaman333 is fully capable of doing this. But that puts an extra burden on him to check for messages and then compose a message to send to you, and to try to do this between our turns. It merely makes more sense for me to do that task as part of the turn.

For other matters between our two peoples, azzaman333 is the proper contact person.

In other news, The Great Lighthouse has been built this turn in Larry Flynt's Resort, Team BABE.

Sincerly yours,

Art Parry
aka CommandoBob

Let FREEdom ring,
Let the white dove sing...

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EDIT: Therefore, I propose we send a note like this as Version 3:

So we will get around 140 gold (or do we get an extra turn of gold?), either way I'm happy with that.

Overall I think our reponse is great though I do agree with zyxy that we don't need to mention pop and score at all, our anarchy is eneogh reason for FREE to start on the education path.

good letter, fine with the deal. We could express that we won't need the screen but trust them (as long as it exceeds 40gpt ).

I agree with zyxy on population and with Aigburths remark. No need to make us smaller than we are...

Well, we never said yes to this. They simply assume we are agreed to this, and we don't have to accept it . Apparently both sides now think of us as the junior partner.

So this deal gets us about 3*47 = 141 gold? For a tech worth 360 beakers that's severely underpaid. Do they even know about tech costs?

Of course we can improve things by delaying Poly for one turn. In that case, better not give a turn estimate in the letter...

Please realize that we will still have to go through anarchy, and with all the stuff we keep giving away that will now put us rather behind team FREE.

Why don't we simply add a line to the letter saying we prefer our ideas? I can easily refuse the gold in-game.

Actually zyxy is right, since we were researching this on behalf of FREE we should get the full cost as compensation and not half the cost as if it were a trade (afterall we have already paid them half the cost by giving them the other techs)

FREE said:

You learn Poly on Turn XX and send it to us that turn. We determine the amount of gold to send and send it on Turn XX, which you get on Turn XX + 1. No more gpt for Poly after that.

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Looking at they way FREE have worded it, they will send us gold also on the turn they get poly, so that is turns 91, 92, 93 and 94 = around 190 gold, better but still some way short of what should get for true compensation

I was thinking about the imbalance between FREE's and our research efforts. When we transfer Poly to them, they can start on the Middle Age techs right away, while we have to wait for the anarchy to be over. And then it suddenly struck me: we have been working from the wrong valuation of the change ot the MAAP all the time!. The shift of Poly from them to us represents a beaker change of 720 (360 less on their side, 360 more on ours). Therefore, I propose to send the following letter. Changes with respect to version 2 are in red or stricken.
The save is back to us, so we have a few hours to decide. Lets' wait for the americans to wake up, at least.

Dear FREE Allies,

The end of this age draws near, and it's time for us to set the stage for a glorious new era.

We hope you remain excited about building on our foundation of friendship and moving forward into even closer cooperation and alliance.

We have 4 points that we believe need to be addressed in the short term.

#1 – A Bridge
Based on our work on Polytheism, we estimate that we will enter the Middle Ages on turn 94. Since The Council is researching the last tech needed to advance to the Middle Ages, we will be the first to enter the new age. Unfortunately, game mechanics prevent us from sending our bonus era tech on the same turn as we send Polytheism. Therefore FREE will enter the MA as soon as they get the save, and could possibly draw the same bonus tech as The Council.
This makes it very difficult to craft a balanced MAAP II proposal until we know what each of our Bonus Techs will be.

We'd therefore like to propose a very broad agreement, called The MAAP Bridge to cover the turns immediately following the advancement to the new era. This Bridge treaty will be quickly replaced by a full MAAP II agreement once we both know what our Bonus Techs are.

As the Scientific Civs in this game, we hope you'll agree that getting our Alliance to Education rapidly is a top goal. Since The Council will be suffering from a revolt to Republic soon immediately after the era advancement, while team FREE will already be in Republic, and team FREE currently has a lead in Population and Score – we therefore propose that whatever the outcome of our Bonus techs, Team FREE should immediately start on the Monotheism, Theology, Education path. The Council will work on the bottom Feudalism/Engineering part of the tech tree while the MAAP II agreement is formalized.

#2 – Balancing Polytheism
We also need to reach an agreement on how to handle the Polytheism imbalance as we leave the Ancient Age. We appreciate your offer of ½ your GPT post-republic, but we think it is not an entirely fair valuation of the change to the MAAP. Perhaps you didn't realize this when you made your offer (it took us a while to figure this out too ), so let us explain why: Polytheism is worth 360 beakers, and in the original MAAP, FREE would contribute Polytheism. Now that it was transferred to The Council, this puts 360 beakers less on the side of FREE, and 360 beakers more on the side of The Council. Therefore, the total imbalance amounts to 720 beakers. We would like to suggest two options to restore the balance:
1) FREE repays the beaker amount in the MAAP II agreement, by taking on a 720 beaker higher load than The Council. The tech division can of course not be worked out exactly until we know our Bonus Techs. The period of anarchy that The Council has to go through should provide FREE the time to gather these extra beakers.
2) Option two is a gold payment. We'd be willing to accept 1 gold for every 2 beakers, which amounts to 360 gold. (Also, we'd be happy to allow you to pay that off over 10 turns if you choose this option)
since we're very near the era advancement, and since the imbalance is 360 beakers, we think it would probably be best to just agree to a different arrangement.
We have 2 ideas:
1) Evaluate a way to repay the beaker amount in the MAAP II agreement, which may or may not be possible based on what Bonus Techs we both get and what priorities in research we jointly set. If we go this route, we hope you'd agree to an upward revision of Polytheism's value, with the understanding that beakers are relatively more expensive in the Ancient Era when everyone is in despotism and is short on libraries.
2) Option two would be a fixed gold payment amount. We'd be willing to accept something like 1 gold for every 2 beakers? That'd be 180 gold. (also, we'd be happy to allow you to pay that off over 10 turns or so if you choose this option)

We're willing to postpone a decision on balancing out the MAAP until after the era advancement, as long as you agree that this imbalance will be made right by either of these options. In the interest of keeping all options on the table for now, we will not accept your gold payment this turn.

#3 – Peace in our Time!
We'd also like to advocate extending the "guaranteed peace" clause into the Bridge Treaty so that we're both covered until the full MAAP II agreement can be reached.

#4 – Selling Technology to Saber
Finally, it's come to our attention that we may have the opportunity to sell a technology or two to Saber. Given the rise of BABE as the biggest threat to world peace (with their Super Galleys and Mounted Warriors) – we believe all 3 scientific Civs (You, Saber, and Us) are under the biggest threat. If BABE were able to conquer any of us, they will almost certainly become unstoppable. Hopefully our big tech advantage will provide us some measure of safety – but Saber, we believe, is in real danger. Therefore, we think giving them some minor help by selling some techs would be profitable for our alliance, but also a safety hedge against Babe. It hopefully goes without saying that we'd share any gold profit with you. What do you think?

We know there's a lot here, but how does all that sound?
Let us know your reaction on each of these 4 points, and we'll be happy to work up some more formal documents for signing.

All the best,
General_W, speaking with the voice of The Council

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You are right!!

Had we not agreed to research Poly, we would have revolted by now (okay, we'd have waited for GLH / SoZ anyway - but we need not to tell ) - it's kind of a double investment. We need to get something more back for it.

I'd really like to see Poly nearly worth a MA tech in this respect - their 5-6 turns spared, our 6-7 turns invested makes an unbalance of ~12 turns. I guess that point of view will be tough to convince them of...

Now 360g seems too low to me...

I agree with that letter, you could send it off...

Well, this is a sticky wicket, isn't it? I remember when we first drafted MAAP we were going to include just such a deal as FREE is now proposing. We should point out the different valuation of poly but we should be careful. I haven't looked but IIRC the trade we make with SABER meddled with the MAAP division, too. Did all that even out? If it did then I'm comfortable sending zyxy's version. If the trade caused more of an imbalance then we need to figure that in as well. (It may increase or decrease the 720 beaker figure.) I do like getting repaid in beakers rather than gold. I also think it's good to reject the gold for now - we still don't know if we're going to face a massive barbarian uprising.

I do think we need to change the MAAP Bridge slightly. I'm no longer sure we want FREE to work on monotheism / theology right away no matter what our bonus techs are. Right now feudalism looks very important. If we don't get that for free we may need to have it researched.

Delaying poly for a turn isn't a bad idea IF it's the only way to avoid a massive barbarian uprising. I wouldn't do it for gold.

I dunno - FREE is going to be researching at full speed while WE are in anarchy - how are we going to make that up? There is a reasonable chance that they will get through monotheism or theology while we are in anarchy - why don't we just get that???

Ok - I missed a lot. Serves me right for sleeping in.

First of all, I was persuaded to delete the reference to our lower pop score, and made that change in version 3 (which apparently people missed)

I’m a little nervous about going for the big prize here with Polytheism, but I do agree with the reasoning.

Here’s version 4 of the letter – incorporating all of zyxy’s changes and a couple other tiny changes.
On the whole, I like this and think it should be sent asap.

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Dear FREE Allies,

The end of this age draws near, and it's time for us to set the stage for a glorious new era.

We hope you remain excited about building on our foundation of friendship and moving forward into even closer cooperation and alliance.

We have 4 points that we believe need to be addressed in the short term.

#1 – A Bridge
Based on our work on Polytheism, we estimate that we will enter the Middle Ages on turn 94. Since The Council is researching the last tech needed to advance to the Middle Ages, we will be the first to enter the new age. Unfortunately, game mechanics prevent us from sending our bonus era tech on the same turn as we send Polytheism. Therefore FREE will enter the MA as soon as they get the save, and could possibly draw the same bonus tech as The Council.
This makes it very difficult to craft a balanced MAAP II proposal until we know what each of our Bonus Techs will be.

We'd therefore like to propose a very broad agreement, called The MAAP Bridge to cover the turns immediately following the advancement to the new era. This Bridge treaty will be quickly replaced by a full MAAP II agreement once we both know what our Bonus Techs are.

As the Scientific Civs in this game, we hope you'll agree that getting our Alliance to Education rapidly is a top goal. Since The Council will be suffering from a revolt to Republic soon after the era advancement, while team FREE will already be in Republic – so we’d like to propose that whatever the outcome of our Bonus techs, Team FREE should immediately start on the Monotheism, Theology, Education path. The Council will work on the bottom Feudalism/Engineering part of the tech tree while the MAAP II agreement is formalized.

#2 – Balancing Polytheism
We also need to reach an agreement on how to handle the Polytheism imbalance as we leave the Ancient Age. We appreciate your offer of ½ your GPT post-republic, but we think it is not an entirely fair valuation of the change to the MAAP. Perhaps you didn't realize this when you made your offer (it took us a while to figure this out too ), so let us explain why: Polytheism is worth 360 beakers, and in the original MAAP, FREE would contribute Polytheism. Now that it was transferred to The Council, this puts 360 beakers less on the side of FREE, and 360 beakers more on the side of The Council. Therefore, the total imbalance amounts to 720 beakers. We would like to suggest two options to restore the balance:

We're willing to postpone a decision on balancing out the MAAP until after the era advancement, as long as you agree that this imbalance will be made right by either of these options. In the interest of keeping all options on the table for now, we will not accept your gold payment this turn.

#3 – Peace in our Time!
We'd also like to advocate extending the "guaranteed peace" clause into the Bridge Treaty so that we're both covered until the full MAAP II agreement can be reached.

#4 – Selling Technology to Saber
Finally, it's come to our attention that we may have the opportunity to sell a technology or two to Saber. Given the rise of BABE as the biggest threat to world peace (with their Super Galleys and Mounted Warriors) – we believe all 3 scientific Civs (You, Saber, and Us) are under the biggest threat. If BABE were able to conquer any of us, they will almost certainly become unstoppable. Hopefully our big tech advantage will provide us some measure of safety – but Saber, we believe, is in real danger. Therefore, we think giving them some minor help by selling some techs would be profitable for our alliance, but also a safety hedge against Babe. It hopefully goes without saying that we'd share any gold profit with you. What do you think?

We know there's a lot here, but how does all that sound?
Let us know your reaction on each of these 4 points, and we'll be happy to work up some more formal documents for signing.

All the best,
General_W, speaking with the voice of The Council
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EDIT: Sent 5/26/07

I also just had a chat with Azzaman!
Here’s the text:


Thoughts?
I agree this should be sent asap.

It's fine for a proposal though now that BABE has the lighthouse I think we'd want feudalism researched first if neither of us get it as a bonus. Looks like a 2 out of 3 chance that one if us will get feudalism so no point in changing the letter now. If we don't get feudalism we can always ask them to do that before monotheism or theology.

snip- nevermind Azzaman decided to go to sleep, so I didn't send it.
Still waiting for more coment.

Looks good to me! Well done, all!

I'll play the turn shortly (dinner first).

fine with me also.

Go ahead.

Ok. Good enough.

Hooray for the Team!
I'll send this right now to team FREE gmail.

We can always tinker with this more over the next few turns.

EDIT: here's what was sent:

Good job catching that imbalance, guys.

My preference is for Free to repay in beakers, but at the beginning of the era. If the beakers get repaid in the late MA, they are worth less to us.

About the Anarchy: remember that Free had a especially long anarchy, so we should not mention our looming one. We were able to continue full speed ahead through 2 entire techs while they languished. That's part of the cause of the imbalance. Really, their anarchy hurt us as well as them.

I would like to send this to FREE to sound them out about a potential defensive pact and about helping SABER. Comments?

Dear FREE,

In view of potential threats posed by BABE, team SABER recently approached us with the idea of a defensive pact. We think this is a good idea! Perhaps we should also start thinking about such a pact between our two nations?
With the present state of technology our respective militaries cannot cross the oceans to lend aid in the other team's lands, but our money somehow can, and a loan alone would provide some relief in times of war. What do you think?

We have another question which has to do with the potential pact with SABER. As SABER is rather backward, an essential part of a pact with SABER would involve transferring militarily valuable technologies to them in case they are attacked by BABE. We feel that such a move would be in your and our interest because it would enable SABER to effectively defend themselves. We really fear the prospect of a successful BABE invasion of SABER; this will make them a threat to us all!
At present the transfer would only involve HBR; in the near future it would be Feudalism (which we don't have yet of course) and its prerequisites. Of course, we will take care that the treaty is limited enough so that we don't help SABER to obtain Sipahi's (our other great fear).
Without your consent we of course cannot sign a treaty that includes the potential transfer of technologies covered by MAAP, so please let us know as quickly as you can how you feel about this.

All the best,
The Council

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