@zyxy - The ""Marriage with a Mistress" option?
how very European of you!
Actually, that's quite clever, and just might work. Depends on how close of attention FREE is paying.
I'd be willing to try that, and just count on the fact that an established agreement for who gets which techs will naturally stop FREE from extra trading.
I have 2 reservations though.
1) Would we be ok with it if FREE also figures this out, and also tries to sell techs to other nations? (Because we'd better be!)
2) There's a small but real chance that FREE will figure out what we're doing and may be upset. Are we prepared to offer them some of our gold profit to smooth things over if that happens?
Finally, while I'm willing to try this "neglect to mention anything about exclusivity" strategy – if FREE catches it and requests us to add that to the treaty, I don't think we should fight them. It'll be great if we can get away with the ability to sell techs… but a full Alliance with FREE is still our best choice even without that ability, imo.
zyxy said:
If FREE and us get ahead of the other three in tech, we will create a triple alliance against us.
True, but it would be an alliance of the technologically backward against the superior. In an Island map, that's even more significant. Let them waste their gold and shields trying to land their outdated forces on our shares and secure them against a superior counter-attack. We'll just continue to pull even further ahead.
zyxy said:
The "family man" option seems least risky, except that we may be creating the unstoppable civ.
Well, I think this is true, except in the short term FREE will be the unstoppable Civ (and therefore a good one to have as an Ally) – but in the long term, I think WE become that unstoppable Civ. Remember, the agricultural trait will only decline in relative power as the game goes on while our Commercial trait will continually become more powerful. I think we could win a space race against FREE, for example.