Music race

[cav scout]

Got this in our gmail:

Honored ETTT Allies,
We are all aware of the volatile situation faced by our enlightened alliance, so this letter will not engage in a re-hashing of the issue, but instead will propose a possible solution.
We all should see by now the the following four factors are obvious:
1. CDZ and Quatronia are each unhappy with the settlement arrangement on their shared landmass, one issue being, that both parties wish to possess Stone.
2. CDZ and Quatronia each find the other obtaining the Great Artist an untenable escalation of this 'Cold War.'
3. CDZ and Quatronia could each gain advantage over the other by enlisting the assistance of the M&M alliance, however, the entire ETTT is damaged by any co-operation with the M&M enemies.
4. CDZ and Quatronia would not trust each other to come up with a fair solution to this situation.
We Zenobians wish for peace and accord within our ETTT family, and accordingly, we humbly offer these solutions to the above problems.
1. In order to end this 'Cold War' and temporarily preserve the status quo, CDZ and Quatronia agree to stop building cities on the land between them for now until a settlement agreement is reached. In the meantime, we can all instead re-focus our efforts towards destroying the M&M enemies. In order to resolve the issue of the Stone, the AMAZON will immediately rush-settle near the Stone on Marthaton, and obtain the Stone in order to gift it to the party without Stone. This way both parties are assured a source of Stone, elimminating the need to conflict with each other over it.
2. CDZ and Quatronia agree not to tech towards Music any more, The AMAZON will take over teching Music, so that neither has to worry about the other using a culture bomb against them. By now it must be obvious to both of you that neither of you would trust the other with a culture bomb. We implore you both to re-direct you technological efforts, and we will tech Music for the alliance. We will use the Great Artist against the Merlot enemies, ensuring that neither of your cities are threatened by a culture bomb. This would require a tech switch for us, which we are currently voting on, but should the measure pass, we would switch tech immediately upon the Kleptocracy and the Continuum accepting this proposal.
3. CDZ, Quatronia and The AMAZON agree to declare war on Mavericks and Merlot, cancel all prior agreements with them, and to stop all communication with them for the rest of the game. It must be clear to all of us that M&M have no hope whatsoever against the ETTT, so long as we remain focused, and remain united in opposition to them. Any one of the ETTT members co-operating with M&M will inevitably bring M&M into technological parity with the rest of us and squander the advantage we have all worked so hard to build.
It must be equally clear that CDZ and Quatronia will not trust each other to refrain from seeking to gain advantage through co-operating with M&M so long as this 'Cold War' lasts. It is therefore imperative that we all declare war on M&M, so that there can be no doubt where we all stand, and there can be no alliance erroding, trust-undermining suspicion between us.
All of us know that the M&Ms are using their candy-coated sweetness to trick and lure us away from each other. They are attempting to play the alliance for fools, attempting to break us up by pitting us against each other. Friends, we implore you, do not be taken in by their silver-tongued deceptions. The ETTT has nothing to gain by breaking up. On the other hand the M&Ms have everything to gain by breaking us up. They also have nothing to lose, and can make too-good-to-be-true, pie-in-the-sky offers to any member willing to defect, because if one of us does not defect, they will lose, it is inevitable. Both of you must see this.
4. The AMAZON will serve as the binding arbitrator in the settlement agreement between CDZ and Quatronia. CDZ and Quatronia agree to accept the judgment of the AMAZON on the peaceful division of their shared landmass. As we have already stated, we will adjust our settlement plans and war efforts in order to quickly provide you with Stone. The other details of the settlement agreement can be discussed and agreed to once each of you has had an opportunity to present your needs, desires, concerns, and grievances to us. This process will be made easier by both parties halting all settlement of the shared landmass, and instead focusing on crowding out M&M. If we place the same effort on crowding out our enemies that have place on crowding out each other, we will defeat M&M quickly and easily.
Please friends, do not let the provacative designs of the wiley mapmaker fool you. The penninsulas are not intended to be shared evenly or equally. They are intended to cause conflict. They can only be shared through co-operation and trust. If you allow our friendship to unravel over this, if you continue racing to the culture bomb, you will have let the mapmaker defeat you, and defeat the ETTT. Do not allow this to happen.
Please accept our proposal without delay, so that our alliance may continue to move forward.
In eternal friendship,
The AMAZON

 

[Bowsling]

Hmmm.
It all looked acceptable, except for a couple bits, notably their desire to "arbitrate" the settling of our shared peninsula. I'm not really sure what we should say to Amazon about this.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

It is imperative that we reply ASAP. I believe we want to maintain the alliance, and get ourselves a good one in the next stage, so we want to come off as the nice guys here, and look to genuinely solve the problem. So, a message:

Greetings to our fellow members of the ETTT. Quatronia wishes to strengthen the alliance and end this conflict, so we will agree to arbitration, and we welcome your efforts to help solve this problem.

First of all, in order to avoid further beaker wastage, we believe it would be better for either Quatronia or CDZ to finish music, and use the Great Artist to bulb. This would make up for lost beakers due to duplication. Quatronia is willing to finish music, but if CDZ doesn't trust us to that end, we are willing to allow CDZ to finish music.

The stone was never really an issue in our conflict, and we would loathe for the Amazon to put resources better served for destroying our enemies into providing us with stone, though if Amazon wishes to acquire stone anyways, then go ahead. Perhaps there can be deals made to temporarily gift stone or marble to each other once astronomy is researched and Quatronia has gotten a hold of some Maverickian marble.

Quatronia agrees not to build on the peninsula between us and CDZ- the next cities we expect to add to our empire have been generously built already by the Mavericks.

Quatronia would like to state that we have absolutely no intention of entertaining any offers made by the M&M alliance (we haven't talked to MERLOT since sinking their workboat). This is the only correspondence we've received (we got it last turns) from the Mavericks since they threatened our warrior scout:

We have built up quite a large army and are in position to snipe off a city from Ragnar which is near you.

Would you be up for the possibility of gifting some techs for the city in a deal?

We will shortly send a message turning down any such deal, even though it is that city that we believe is on our side of the line, so to speak. We apologize for not warning CDZ sooner, we are a small team and things have been hectic lately. Amazon should take note that this army will likely move by land (we can stop them by sea) and they might divert to raze the city you are planning to build. Quatronia has a non-aggression pact, signed before we'd met Amazon or Sirius, with the Mavericks that expires in 5 turns. We will declare war on them if the rest of the alliance feels it necessary, but we'd rather just wait it out another 5 turns. If CDZ is threatened before that time, Quatronia will not hesitate to do what we can to aid in their defense, whether by land or sea.

The goal of this message is to make us seem more a responsible, just nation, and if CDZ send out a negative reply, they will look very bad in comparison. We're looking at beyond the ETTT here, we need to be able to make a viable alliance with probably Sirius or Amazon. Hence the "don't worry about the stone".
Also, would we be willing to trust CDZ to bulb now that the idea is out there? We couldn't just volunteer ourselves but not trust them to do the same.

We should send this, and Amazon's message, to Sirius, to keep them apprised of events.

One last thing- I looked through the embassy, and the NAP was signed for 50 turns around turn 45 or 46. With CDZ, we made it last to T100, but not the Mavericks.

 

[galdarian]

I think that we are offering too much detail in that message. Particularly copying the full message received from Mavs. I think we could back it of a tad and still come off looking like the co-operative one. Keep in mind that the message that Amazons sent was to all members of the ETTT. THings that they address in their message are perhaps applicable to CDZ only.

Greetings to our fellow members of the ETTT. Quatronia wishes to strengthen the alliance and end this conflict, so we will agree to arbitration, and we welcome your efforts to help solve this problem.

First of all, in order to avoid further beaker wastage, we believe it would be better for either Quatronia or CDZ to finish music, and use the Great Artist to bulb. This would make up for lost beakers due to duplication. It would be most sensible for the team with the most beakers currently invested in Music to complete it. We currently have X and would complete it in X turns.

The stone was never an issue in our conflict, and we would loathe for the Amazon to put resources better served for destroying our enemies into providing us with stone. Our only use for stone for the foreseeable future is to build Maoi Statues, beyond that it is not a resource the Continuum requires. Perhaps there can be deals made to temporarily gift stone to that end.

Quatronia has no further plans to settle the shared peninsular. The next cities we expect to add to our empire have already been generously built by the Mavericks.

Quatronia would like to state that we have absolutely no intention of entertaining any offers made by the M&M alliance and have not had any contact with MERLOT since sinking their workboat. We have received infrequent correspondence from Team Maverick the last of which arrived last turn. Most of the messages have requested trade however the most recent also constituted a threat. The Continuum has no interest in pursuing an agreement with the Maverick empire as we are preparing to remove their nation from the map.

We will shortly send a message rejecting their offer. We do know that they have amassed an army but we have yet to ascertain their exact numbers and make up. Quatronia has a non-aggression pact, signed before we'd met Amazon or Sirius, with the Mavericks that expires in 5 turns. We will declare war on them if the rest of the alliance feels it necessary, however we'd rather just wait until the opportune moment which we anticipate to be ~10 turns. If CDZ, or any other member of the ETT, is threatened before that time Quatronia will not hesitate to do what we can to aid in their defense, whether by land or sea.

I think this still gets our sentiments across without being overly detailed. We don't need to spell out the fact that we think ereh rO is our city. You just have to look at the map to see that it should be swapped for the city we just settled. As I currently can not log into the game, would someone please find out the figures for Music?

Whatever the outcome we need to get an army up and quick.

 

[Earthling]

Where the heck did they get the idea that Stone is a problem? I have a feeling AMAZONs are rather misled by CDZ claiming stuff that we never said, again as they said about teching Feudalism. clearly CDZ must have claimed "The Continuum are all raging about Stone" or whatever.

Still looking over other messages, will edit this post though. AMAZON's efforts are greatly appreciated nonetheless.

So... I really like galdarian's revision more, it clarifies the thing about stone, and I agree AMAZONs rushing to get stone doesn't even make sense, they've been really misled by CDZ. I agree with the reworded bulb proposal (and wish we'd said that earlier, again, but hey no more Cassandra'ing from me, I'll reserve that for other CFC games)

We should change "we will shortly send" to just "we shortly sent" - past tense and imply the Maverick "deal" they offered is closed and settled. I should edit my post on the other page to account for this.

 

[cav scout]

Words are one thing but a Great Artist is so much more...

I suggest we follow Teddy Roosevelt's advice and speak softly while carrying a big stick. The Amazons aren't being as altruistic as they are trying to come across as. They could have offered the bulb suggestion but instead they want the Artist for themselves. The stone suggestion is out of left field as well. They obviously have their own agenda and want to use our discord with CDZ to forward it. We don't need them as arbiters or peacemakers and I don't see why its necessary to reply first to their proposal. Let's get the Artist first and then show our benevolence... as long as CDZ does what we want

 

[Earthling]

Oh, well I'd still keep our tech on Music this turn and probably next, though if that does continue and we do get it I'd still rather pop the artist for a bulb perhaps and inform our allies of that ahead of time.

I think AMAZONs are genuinely trying to help though. True, if they did get it, they might spend the artist on their own city somewhere/a golden age but I don't think they are being greedy here. What I do think happened is CDZ gave some serious lies about the motivations of players involved, the concerns they have cited have never been discussed between us, so AMAZONs may think the argument is over something it isn't and that's why they proposed what they did.

 

[Duke Blackstone]

Hmm... I dont have the full picture but i highly doubt the AMAZONs are fully benevolent. Cav Scout has their number here. The fun part is figuring out what they really want. Also, why not offer to trade Mavericks for the city, and then after they have captured it just take it? Or are we the good guys?

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

I don't think the Amazons will use the GA for anything other from what they've said, too much is at stake. They are just assuming that neither us nor CDZ can trust each other with CDZ, and they are the only ones in a position to actually harm our enemies with it.
The message actually doesn't agree to most of Amazon's proposals (declaring war and not getting music), but clears up any misconceptions and makes it seem like we're agreeing to everything they said.

 

[galdarian]

While I agree that it's possible the Amazons are trying to forward their own agenda however I'm not seeing what they gain out of this deal. Admittedly culture bombing the middle city that they've settled would make sense.

Hmmm, I'm mixed. Do we think that the ETTT would dissolve because of this? If not, Procrastinating about it can't hurt our position.

 

[RegentMan]

Hmmm a delicate situation.

The "stone dispute" is out of nowhere.

We publically announced teching music first.

I dunno how the Amazons could mediate this; all they can really say is "split it down the middle." I think we should still get music; no sense for the Amazons to waste even more beakers researching it. If we wanted to, we could threaten CDZ with a culture bomb if they don't agree to trading cities with us. Of course, this would not put is in a good light.

A lot of random in this post... not too sure how to organize my thoughts.

Also, why not offer to trade Mavericks for the city, and then after they have captured it just take it?

Anything we do to help the mavericks hurts the ETTT. But I do think we all would be on board of "liberating" any CDZ cities they unlikely capture...

 

[Earthling]

Hmmm a delicate situation.

The "stone dispute" is out of nowhere.

We publically announced teching music first.

I would agree with both of these - I think CDZ has been deliberately lying to other teams about this issue, saying "concerns" or "debates" exist where none really did.

I don't care who gets the GA and if we got it I would be ok just bulbing/settling/other neutral use of it. So long as CDZ does not get it, that's the end of the line for me, but I understand if the team feels we deserve to get more in all fairness.

Keeping the ETTT together and starting wars with Mavs and MERLOT sounds like the best idea to me right now - it will quickly distract attention form any more backstabs or problems, and we are in position to make actual gains ourselves on own merit as we conquer Mavs. CDZ will fall wherever they may against MERLOT and so on and we'll eventually be able to handle any threat they'd represent for sure.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

The stone thing isn't necessarily out of nowhere- they may have taken our founding of Asymptote as an aggressive response to Spamville.
Are we good to send Galdarian's message then? I like it, and it should help calm Amazon down, and we do need to warn CDZ, so probably something more specific for them, to show our good nature. (That's why I included the message.)

 

[RegentMan]

Eh it's a little late to warn CDZ. We got that message awhile ago so it might look bad to tell them now. If we get pressed later, we can always say "We thought it was a bluff."

As much as I'd like to culture bomb CDZ, I can see Earthling's point about keeping the ETTT together.

 

[Earthling]

My goodness on those latest screenshots - don't think I've ever seen a techbar so close on how many turns it is. I mean, looking at the tech bar by eye it would seem as if we were just one beaker off and then we wouldn't have music in 3 turns.

Note our treasury seems like it will only hold out for 2 turns so on the micro we do need to make sure we do things right on the last turn, if we have to bump another city to work coastal tiles or something.

And of course I wouldn't back off from Music yet- still don't have a clear answer from either CDZ or AMAZON and regardless we're just 2 more turns away. So sure, let CDZ turn off their tech or whatever, we'll be fine.

I might entertain us using the GA for a golden age now that I think about it - I personally still feel the culture bomb would cause too much trouble but we'll see what comes.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

I'm surprised Amazon hasn't pressed for an answer. If they do, then we can send our message, otherwise we can wait until we've bulbed/ golden aged to show our goodwill. We could consider sending CDZ a message saying if ereh rO is under threat to tell us so we can help defend it.

 

[galdarian]

We may need to draft a new message for post music race once we have the GA.

 

[cav scout]

Someone just gifted CDZ some more gold... over 100

If we get the artist I say we move him to Pulsar Plateau and ask CDZ again if they want to trade cities.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

This is not good. We should at least send a message to Amazon clarifying things, who knows what CDZ have told them. We should still win the race though-we might just have to build wealth/research in Quatron for one turn.

EDIT: We just got this. We should probably send something to show our side, though we don't want to get dragged down in petty arguments.

To the members of the ETTT,

As everyone is aware a problem has developed on the peninsula between Quatronia and CDZ. The Amazon nation has graciously taken time to propose some solutions and we at the CDZ welcome their efforts to bring about a resolution to the current situation. However, we must stress that, barring divine intervention, any and all decisions regarding the welfare of the CDZ Kleptocracy will be made by its citizens. Thus any form, other than said divine intervention, of binding judgement by a third party will not be acceptable.

While the CDZ accept the general direction of Amazon’s proposal is a positive one we feel that the history of the matter is important to consider, as only when the situation is viewed in context will we find a long lasting solution that acceptable to everyone.

The facts of the matter are we settled two cities on the peninsula in question, Spamville and Or here before Quatronia has any cities. Both of these are on the half of the peninsula closest to our island. We had planned a third city between the two and then to move on to the other peninsula.

However Quatronia decided to aggressively settle next to Spamville with the cities of Resonance and Asymptote. The usefulness of either of these cities apart from culturally crowding Spamville is marginal at best. Quatronia specifically ignored settling better land that was closer to them, clearly instigating the current situation between two teams that should be behaving as allies, by settling extremely agressively towards one of our cities.

Now it is important to note that up to this point at no time had Quatronia sought to discuss the settlement of our common peninsula, nor did they ever express disappointment at not having the stone. They never asked if we would be willing to come to any arrangements with regards to trading the stone to them. All of these actions which one would expect from an ally were never explored by them. So in response to their aggressive settling against Spamville we settled ereh rO, Quatronia then settled Pulsar Plateau.

It was only sometime after this that they came to us and ridiculously demanded we exchanged ereh rO for a settler they would gift us in return, because ereh Or was "in their sphere of influence", whilst grossly overlooking the fact that the first city they settled on the peninsula was "in CDZ's sphere of influence". This we found inadequate compensation for our city so they went ahead and settled Cygous. And now there is the further matter of researching Music, which Quatronia decided to research after we announced we are doing it.

When looking back through the event from the beginning we believe it is clear that it was never Quatronia’s intention to negotiate or find some agreement, their intention was to take whatever they could, however they could. Overall this can only be viewed as appalling behaviour towards a nation that is its ally. If a solution is to be found then it must take into account Quatronia’s role in instigating and the exacerbating the problem we have on our hands today.


After the conclusion of this unfortunate, Quattronia-instigated incident, we hope to continue our positive contribution to the ETTT, and collectively work towards a positive conclusion of the pacification of all non-ETTT civilizations in the world.

Best regards,
The Citizens of the CDZ Kleptocracy

 

[galdarian]

Someone just gifted CDZ some more gold... over 100

If we get the artist I say we move him to Pulsar Plateau and ask CDZ again if they want to trade cities.

Do we have a screenie? Can we work out who it is? This would serve us well to know particularly if it's Merlot.

While I'm at it I've just been looking at the Diplo screenie's from the last few turns. Why would Construction move from "Can Research" to "Wants" for both Merlot and Mavs?

The message doesn't paint a pretty picture for Team Q. We are sure looking like the bad guy here at the moment and if we stay silent just to get the GA it's going to get a whole lot worse. We need to do the research and refute every single claim that CDZ have tabled...

Assuming that we can of course?