CDZ Diplomatic Discussions

[Trystero]

I have put together an introductory message to CDZland. Comments welcome.

Hail citizens of CDZland!

The Sirian people extend you our warmest greetings. Our exploration vessel Voyager spotted a galley flying your flag in the eastern reaches of the known world near the Kingdom of Merlot, and hurried the news to our high council. The entire Sirian nation rejoices at our meeting.

We hope our message finds the CDZland Kleptocracy prospering. Our friends the AMAZON, who reside to the north of your vessel’s current location, and the Quatronian people have impressed us with tales of your fair people and their honorable nature. We therefore would like to offer any vessels of CDZland safe harbor within our open Sirian borders, and their crews the hospitality of the Sirian people.

We are currently organizing our high council to send a more formal greeting, for we feel we have much to discuss, and we hope to bring our two great nations closer together. We have heardrumors that you have been admitted into the ETTA trade pact. Once we have confirmed this through official diplomatic channels, we will, of course, happily honor the conditions of the treaty And make our technological knowledge available to you. Please feel free to send all diplomatic correspondence to sirius.mtdg@gmail.com. I will be serving, at least temporarily, as the diplomatic liaison between our great empires. We look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully yours,

Trystero, humble servant of the Sirian Empire

[Irgy]

Spurious capital 'A' here:

...of the treaty And make our technological...

... And that's about all I can find wrong with it. And that doesn't really count as anything wrong anyway.

Not really sure what we should be saying to these guys, we've become their allies before we even met them, it's an odd situation really. The more you can encourage communication the better though I think, even if there's possibly nothing much to talk about.

[Trystero]

OK - greeting message sent. I will start a thread for CDZ correspondences once we hear back from them.

[azzaman333]

I wouldn't expect CDZ to be particularly active in diplomacy, tbh.

[Trystero]

Why is that? Its members?

[azzaman333]

Originally Posted by Trystero

Why is that? Its members?

I don't believe they have the most active players.

[Trystero]

Still no reply as of yet from CDZ. Should I send a brief note to warn them about the barb city on the arm to their north?

[Irgy]

Originally Posted by Trystero

Still no reply as of yet from CDZ. Should I send a brief note to warn them about the barb city on the arm to their north?

Sounds like a good gesture to me.

[AlphaShard]

That would be a very good Diplomatic idea.

[Trystero]

OK - I sent this message:

Hail CDZland,

This is just a brief note to pass along some pertinent information our scouts obtained. Our scouting vessel, Voyager, is south of the Kingdom of Merlot, and we believe you reside on the other side of this arm of the great star. We therefore wanted to warn you that Voyager has spotted the cultural border of a barbarian city on this landmass. Since you might have, or might be planning to send your explorers there, we wanted to warn you of this development. We hope all is well in CDZland.

Respectfully,

Trystero, Sirian diplomat

[Trystero]

We got a couple of replies from CDZ:

Greetings Trystero,

The people of the CDZ are glad to finally meet the Sirian people. It is also nice to have now met all the members of the alliance as this will make communication a lot easier.

We have a number of resources available to trade, although at the current time we have not been able to establish trading routes. When that does happen we have crabs, gold and sugar to trade.

We look forward to a long lasting and productive friendship

Regards,
Robi, Team CDZ

Greetings Trystero,

We are aware of the barbarian menace and have taken suitable precautions in the area, however we thank you for your kind warning.

Regards
Robi, Team CDZ

[Irgy]

That's odd, the first of those didn't come through to my forwarded email address, although the second did. Where did they send the first one (with the resources)?

[Trystero]

Yeah - Thunderbird sent the first message to my spam folder. Maybe because we received two in rapid succession? I logged into the actual Gmail account, and it's there.

[Irgy]

I can't see why your spam filter would cause me to miss the email though? My thunderbird isn't running a spam filter, so the copy I should have received can't have been filtered. Does gmail have its own spam filter? Does this have anything to do with you setting yourself up with IMAP?

[Trystero]

I don't think my filter caused your problem, just that it might be indicative of a problem with that mailing in general, since we both had problems receiving it. The gmail account seemed to receive it OK. If you haven't had problems getting other messages, I doubt it's the IMAP setting. Maybe it was just a fluke? Let's just keep an eye on it.

[Lord Parkin]

[Delurking]

I only got the second message from CDZ as well. Weird. Maybe sometimes it just screws up or something.

I agree that these guys are unlikely to be hugely communicative. On the bright side, this may make them an easy first target after Merlot and Mavericks are taken out and the 4-way alliance comes to an end. Might take some pressure off us.

[grant2004]

I don't know about that. The Amazons told us that Quatronia and CDZ already had a strong relationship when the Amazon workboat reached them, I have a feeling that once the Mavericks and Merlot are gone the alliance will splinter into a 2 vs. 2. Nobody will want to be the third member of a 3 vs. 1 because they'll have to fear that the other two members of their alliance have a strong bond and will surely stick together to the final two.

[Lord Parkin]

You're right, that could be the more likely scenario. I guess we'll have to see when the time comes.

[Irgy]

This is what I'm thinking of sending to all three other members of the ETTT. Posting it in all three diplo threads, sorry for the identical-post-spam.

Greetings fellow ETTT members.

Now that we have all finally met each other, it seems sensible to co-ordinate our technology plans into the future.

Our current understanding is:
Sirius: Code of Laws
Amazon: ?
Quatronia: ?
CDZ: Metal Casting

There are many benefits to getting Astronomy on this map, so it is our suggestion to tech towards it as quickly as possible. This means there should always be one team should be researching one of:
Metal Casting->Machinery->Optics->Astronomy. Another team can get the cheaper techs of Compass and Calendar in parallel (both fairly beneficial techs on their own). It also seems wise to pursue Civil Service soon for the bonus Beaurocracy can provide to all of our research rates.

In principle it shouldn't matter which team researches which techs, if we're all sharing them. Although it may be wise for a team with a faster research rate to look after the Astronomy beeline, and the techs which will speed up everyone's research.

What other technologies do people think are important?


One final issue; Our understanding is that it is best to transfer techs as gifts rather than damnds or trades, to avoid making it clear who is trading based on who is logged in when the teams' scores increase. It should therefore be the researching team's responsibility to push out the techs as they discover them. Now that all members have made contact this should not be a problem in the future.

We have something of an ongoing problem with Iron Working however, as it seems every team has decided another team is responsible for sending it to us. The root cause is that the ETTT was still being expanded, and we had not made contact with CDZ, when Iron Working was discovered. It would be nice if the next team to log on would kindly send that to us.

Best regards,
Irgy, on behalf of team Sirius

[pindicator]

I would re-write the last paragraph to be just a little more upbeat. Like it was said in the Team Discussion Thread, having the first email to all 4 teams seem like a complaint isn't the best idea, so let's soften the complaint as much as possible.

One possibility: 'With that in mind, we would greatly appreciate it if the next team to log on could offer us Iron Working in game. It seems to have been lost in the shuffle with all the techs swapping back and forth.'

Specifically, I would avoid using any team's name to avoid the appearance of casting blame. Definitely would not use the phrase "ETTT was still being expanded" -- maybe that's just paranoia, but that sounds a lot of like we're announcing we had a pre-established relationship to other teams. (And they may in turn clue them in to our closer agreement with AMAZON.)