To Cheetah: I hope you get things straightened out with your internet access.
Apolyton has changed the priorities of the strikes. We are no longer going for the Parth option. And we feel that you will need to go further south than originally planned.
When CGN had abandoned Micco, it freed up their main slow mover stack to head back north. Unfortunately, because of this, that stack will be either inside of Beta or very close to it, when you were to make your landing. So, that option is a total wash at this time. As it is, we are having to deal with their fast movers being up closer, we are going to be limiting our strike to just their FP and anything that we can get to quickly and then get out.
Please let us know the full status of your readiness. We will be sending Navigation to you this turn.
As for future things:
A) I would not put it past GWT/GCA to send a suicide galley or 2 (with their "luck", I would almost count on it) after our different strikes, to do one of 2 things,
1) Attack you in some out of the way place
2) attack and/or set up a forward base of operation on one or both of your islands, to be used for future Operations against this continent.
B) Money for our Mutual research, balancing upgrade needs to what to send us. Apolyton is getting ready to really crank out the techs. We hope to be in Industrial in about 45 to 50 turns, with Steam Power soon to follow. At that time, we will evaluate the need of getting an Embassy and RoP with you, along with the techs that are needed for us to bring some workers in to help with laying of RailRoads (we have to get enough of our stuff done first). But to help this along, we will still need money from you, every turn. I think, for now, until we can further evaluate our Mutual needs, that you send us 30 Gold every turn.
I was considering (and have briefly talked to our Consuls about it) was to implement a sliding scale. This would allow for your Unit numbers to increase (and thereby, your Income to decrease) and still have the money to pay for upkeep and still build enough for their eventual upgrades to Cavalry, Cannon & Musket/Rifles. I was thinking about a percentage of your income, from every turn, with a Maximum of 30 to 40 and a Minimum of 10 (rounded down).
Example: If we go with a 40% and you made 95 gold that turn -> 94 * 0.4 = 37.6 -> and you would send us 37 gold for that turn. Your economist and others can work out the actual percentage to go from. We can work this out if you want, in a future chat.
C) Your Research - I'm figuring that you are getting close to finishing the 40 turn Printing Press research that your doing. Please let us know when you are about done with it, so that we can look at getting you Banking so that you can do a 40 turn on Democracy (don't send it to us). As our plans, currently, have war in mind for some time, we are going to stay in Republic and not go to Demo until much, much later. So, that is a perfect thing for you to do some slow research on OR you can just go full tax after you get PP and we can pick it up at some other time (as that is not a priority at this moment).
D) cutting your Iron - when I had sent that one picture to you and the instructions for cutting and reconnecting your Iron, I had forgotten that you had that one source on that mountain. Here are some suggestions for what to do for that:
1) road around it, so that your trade network stays connected. (5 workers in 1 turn to road)
2) take 5 works, Pillage that Iron, have the 5 workers Mine it. The mine will be built at the beginning of the next turn, so that you don't lose the production from it.
3) then do the other cutting as I had previously suggested.
That will allow you to build a bunch of Horsemen & Spearmen for later Upgrade. We will need it for the main Invasion (or it stave off an invasion from them). We will be working on cutting our Iron again, soon. We just have a get a few other things done first....
E) CGN and Luxuries - We will have their new Palace connected up to our trade network shortly. We will be then be sending them Dyes and Incense. Please send them some of your Furs. DO NOT send them Iron, as we want them to build upgradeable units for now. Also, I think that you'll soon have your own source of Silks, so let us know when you'll be getting them connected up, so that we don't go messing things up completely, with all of the different Silk transfers.
As for the Luxury trade bug, here is a sequence of things that HAS to be done, every 20 turns, to properly renegotiate any Luxes/Resources:
1) do whatever Diplo things that are incoming ONLY (gold, tech, etc) from the civ in question as normal at the beginning of turn, during the diplo phase. DO NOT send anything at this time. Exit and wait until the movement phase has begun.
2) During Movement Phase, go into that Civ's Diplo Screen and go to the active section and select the Items that need to be renegotiated. They will now Pop up into the New diplo screen area as a new thing being offered.
3) UNSELECT all items (what we are offering should now be totally blank) and EXIT the Diplo screen.
4) re-enter the diplo screen, select the items to send them as normal, accept and send.
This has been fully tested and will work properly if done this way. We will be doing it for you, when we renegotiate our Lux trades to you.
F) We need to set up a chat sometime, really soon, so that we can try to discuss your strike Options, in light of CGN's massive mistake, so that your not running into a lot of Opposition and can at least do some good. Please try to get with us as soon as possible, so that we can get things worked out.
E_T, Minister of the Interior of Apolyton
