Diplomacy with the Anarchos

[I. Larkin]

Re: posts in "turns 37-56"
I agree that war with Greeks will give us very little and now is the best option to "cooperate".
However, if we want win not via Space Ship we have to consider war at some stage. Clear to go over ocean we have to secure our continent. There is an advantage to start war well before they may beg for MA from another continent. I see two moment when we can do it
1) We research Republic and trade it for MM+Math. As we do it well before we may staple cash and make massive upgrade of warriors to swords.
2) Trade their free MA tech, research Feudalism and go with MIs.
For first scenario we do not need Wonder in Tinta.

 

[templar_x]

Another thought re the next trades with the Anarchos:
If we are negotiating in terms of a "discount" on the next era free tech, I think we need to make up our mind whether we are willing to give Republic to them. Otherwise, I do not see that they would be giving us their tech.

templar_x

 

[I. Larkin]

Is Zeus an option for you?
In the last Cifo DG 1 Team (most are now Anarchos) build it and had a big advantage.

If we want early war Zeus will not produce enough units.

If we are negotiating in terms of a "discount" on the next era free tech, I think we need to make up our mind whether we are willing to give Republic to them. Otherwise, I do not see that they would be giving us their tech.

This is the reason why good time to start war is "straight after Republic -MM" trade.
If we do not give them Republic their research will be "too long".

 

[Memento]

Answer from Greece

Greetings, most honourable Knights!

Our people are celebrating the "We meet the Knights day" and are looking forward to a great friendship. We firmly believe, that only together we can face the challenges of a hostile world and stand up against the invaders from another land that our seers have foretold.

We'd love to share knowledge with you and we are thankful for your generous offers. We agree to the deal "writing for bronze and the wheel" and will send both technologies as soon as possible. Although your offer to pay for masonry with so little gold is very kind, we believe that deals including payment over time would severely hamper our combined research efforts. So we'd prefer paying knowledge with knowledge.

Be assured that we want to trade all our current and future technologies with you, but this has to be planned thoroughly. We think that the top priority must be the republic. In the past we have investigated other technologies hoping that we share the land with the Brotherhood who would - as we believed - aim directly at philosophy. We are currently researching iron working and would then help in any way to speed up the invention of the republic. May we ask you about your current efforts in scientific research? The oracle of F11-education tells us that some civilization may have learned about philosophy or literacy from a small barbarian tribe, and we hope that it is you and not the mysterious people of the "German Cooks".

The free people would like to strengthen our friendship with a long lasting peace treaty so our still small communities can plan for a greater future without fear of violence. (Unlimited non aggression pact, 20 or even 30 turns period of notice, first strike for the other party).

Something the free people are very worried about are tales of small tribes with little culture which may dwell in hidden places. Have you come across telltale signs of barbarians such as villages or huts? We have not seen any. In any case we want to humbly suggest not to disturb the small clans living in huts yet because some of our greatest strategists say that we can profit much more from them if we visit them as late as possible. (I.e. we can find more expensive technologies.)

A voice of the free people

--

Grüße, höchst ehrenwerte Ritter!

Unser Volk feiert den "Wir-treffen-die-Ritter-Tag" und freut sich auf eine große Freundschaft. Wir glauben fest daran, daß wir nur gemeinsam den Herausforderungen einer feindlichen Welt gewachsen sind und den Eindringlingen aus fernen Landen, die unsere Seher geweissagt haben, widerstehen können.

Zu gerne möchten wir Wissen mit Euch tauschen und danken Euch für Eure großzügigen Angebote. Wir stimmen dem Geschäft "Schrift für Bronze und Rad" zu und senden beides sobald möglich. Obgleich Euer Vorschlag, Steinmetzkunst für so wenig Gold herzugeben ist sehr freundlich ist, glauben wir, daß Geschäfte, die Zahlungen über mehrere Züge beinhalten, unseren gemeinsamen Forschungsbemühungen schaden. Darum bevorzugen wir Geschäfte Wissen gegen Wissen.

Seid versichert, daß wir all unser Wissen mit Euch tauschen wollen, aber dies muß sorgfältig geplant werden. Wir glauben, daß die Erforschung der Republik unsere höchste Priorität genießen muß. In der Vergangenheit haben wir andere Technologien erforscht - in der Hoffnung daß wir das Land mit der Bruderschaft teilen und Ihr - wie wir glaubten - direkt auf die Philosophie abzielen würdet. Momentan erforschen wir Eisenverarbeitung und würden danach auf jede erdenkliche Weise helfen, die Erforschung der Republik zu beschleunigen. Wie steht es um Eure aktuellen Forschungsbemühungen? Das Orakel der F11-Bildung spricht davon, daß eine Zivilisation möglicherweise die Philosophie oder die Literatur von einem kleinen Barbarenstamm erlernt hat, und wir hoffen, daß Ihr diejenigen seid und nicht das geheimnisvolle Volk der Deutschen Köche.

Das freie Volk möchte unsere Freundschaft mit einem langen Friedensvertrag stärken damit unsere noch kleinen Gemeinden ohne Angst vor Gewalt eine große Zukunft planen können. (Unbeschränkter Nichtangriffspakt, 20 oder sogar 30 Runden Kündigungsfrist, Erstschlag bei der anderen Partei.)

Geschichten kleiner Stämme ohne Kultur, die an verborgenen Orten leben, sorgen die freien Menschen. Habt Ihr Zeichen wie Dörfer oder Hütten solcher Barbaren gesehen? Wir noch nicht. In jedem Falle möchten wir demütig vorschlagen, die kleinen Clans, die in Hütten leben, noch nicht zu stören. Einige unserer besten Strategen glauben, daß wir mehr von diesen profitieren können, wenn wir sie so spät wie möglich besuchen. (D.h. wir können teurere Technologien finden.)

Eine Stimme des freien Volkes

switch to rep
We need a good plan for research and trade to get the freetech

 

[templar_x]

I think we should try to find out what they were doing.

either their land is worse, or they did not improve it, or they have settlers on the way, or they built curraghs like crazy. or they simply played really bad. no other option comes to my mind for the state they seem to be in.

I think we could go like this:
We are very interested in what the lands of the other civs could look like. So we would suggest that we compare how each of us started. We have a nice and not regularly seen food crop near our capital. Even though we have already had the means to build up new population faster, this is good enough to nurture our people. A bit away there is another piece of this food bonus, although not as great as the one near the capital. And we found a special good that made some of our people happy too, although it is not especially useful to eat.
Would you care to compare this to your founding position and area? What we are interested in is whether we can expect that some higher power, like a god, has given each civilization on this earth more or less the same foundations for their empires. Or, if the founding positions are a bite more random. Do you think that would be interesting to find out, simply by comparing what we have got, respectively?

?

Once more, what did they build? Curraghs seem to be the most logical answer. @ Memento - especially if they are not seafaring, they would need more so to expect that they would find the other continent.

Does anyone know whether ships count towards the military ranking?

Maybe they really urge to meet everyone very fast and even sacrificed growth for that. Even the Writing deal does not contraindicate this, as they need Writing to get access to the techs above anyway.

templar_x

 

[Memento]

do ships count for military strength?

yes
only settler,worker or scouts doesn´t count.


But the population is another point for military strength in f11
10 * Units / Number of Populationpoints

 

[Lanzelot]

Finding out, what they did in the beginning, and how their start looks, might be a bit delicate. Will they find it "too nosy"? I think after they offered the permanent peace treaty, it's not that important: we know that they don't plan a sneak attack, and if they have two settlers on their way, even better, then they will be a strong partner.

I think, we need to decide the following points:

• Permanent non-aggression pact with 20-30 turns cancelation period?
• I would like to offer the following research plan: Iron for Philosophy, MM/Literature for CoL, then we gift them Republic in return for their later free tech. Their free tech will be more expensive, but getting Republic that early will be very valuable for them, so I think they realize it's a fair deal. This also ensures that they don't "stay behind" in terms of research and continue to be a strong partner.
• This could well mean we stay at peace with them for the entire game. (Who wants to tell an enemy 30 turns in advance, that he is going to attack...?) If there will be a war, it'll be against the other continent, probably in alliance with the Greeks.
• How do you like the spaceship? Considering that wars between human opponents of equal strength take forever, this may be the fastest victory condition. I have been playing with that idea for some time already. (In any case, it would be very interesting to find out whether it's possible in PBEM...) I think we are good researchers and can micro-manage our production very well, so we should have a good chance in winning a space race. (Especially if the other continent is approx 15 turns later to Republic than we are...)

 

[I. Larkin]

5)Finding out, what they did in the beginning, and how their start looks, might be a bit delicate. Will they find it "too nosy"? I think after they offered the permanent peace treaty, it's not that important: we know that they don't plan a sneak attack, and if they have two settlers on their way, even better, then they will be a strong partner.

I think, we need to decide the following points:

• 4)Permanent non-aggression pact with 20-30 turns cancelation period?
• 3)I would like to offer the following research plan: Iron for Philosophy, MM/Literature for CoL, then we gift them Republic in return for their later free tech. Their free tech will be more expensive, but getting Republic that early will be very valuable for them, so I think they realize it's a fair deal. This also ensures that they don't "stay behind" in terms of research and continue to be a strong partner.
• 2)This could well mean we stay at peace with them for the entire game. (Who wants to tell an enemy 30 turns in advance, that he is going to attack...?) If there will be a war, it'll be against the other continent, probably in alliance with the Greeks.
• 1)How do you like the spaceship? Considering that wars between human opponents of equal strength take forever, this may be the fastest victory condition. I have been playing with that idea for some time already. (In any case, it would be very interesting to find out whether it's possible in PBEM...) I think we are good researchers and can micro-manage our production very well, so we should have a good chance in winning a space race. (Especially if the other continent is approx 15 turns later to Republic than we are...)

Well, I can’t say that I don’t like this plan, but I see many problems with it. Before we find out how to resolve it we should consider other plans.
1) Space Ship ridiculously long. I am not sure, that I will keep an interest to this game 3 or 4 years. We are not Scientific/Commercial and Greeks has obvious advantage.
2) Unfortunately it is only one winner in the game. Well, we can betray our research partner but after 3 years of trust it will looks strange. Also, there is no guaranty that they will not prepare something against us after 2 years.
3) Trade should be “fair”. MMking more expensive then CoL. But as experiment of “trust” we may offer CoL for MMking. And gift Republic then. Good question: how we ensure that they will not betray us? I am afraid, that they will be behind anyway.
4) Looks strange. Agreement should be realistic.
5) I think our Warrior may continue scouting. Will we try to block their Warrior? What they have build we may make a good suggestion from F11, but it is not that important.

 

[templar_x]

how can 4) be executed? deals can be broken, so what sense can this deal make?

templar_x

 

[Lanzelot]

I think the peace agreement mentioned by the anarchists can be enforced by taking Worf as "witness" or "supervisor". Of one team attacks without the treaty having been canceled 30 turns before in the diplomacy forum, he can just penalize the offender, (e.g clicking through the missing turns until 30, etc.)
So I think we can safeguard ourselves against a breach of the deal. And signing such a deal would secure us a huge tech lead over the other continent, as a) they cannot have Rep as fast as we can, and b) it is unlikely that the other two teams will sign a similar deal. Perhaps they'll cooperate, but most probably not to that degree, so both will always have to keep an eye on their defense. However, we can afford to put all resources into our early infrastructure and start building bigger defenses only after the infrastructure is in place and earning money...
Please comment on the attached first draft of a diplomatic response.

Best Regards, Ulrich


Dear anarchic friends,
we begin to realize that our two nations think very similar and share the same views and ideas. Like you, we regard a better government based on free elections as top priority. Therefore we'll tell you our current achievements in research: the 3% increase in Literacy that your seers noticed, is due to us mastering the art of Philosophy. It was not easy to achieve this that early and involved some of us doing nothing but eating and thinking all day... However, we were given a big reward for our efforts: one of the new Philosophers had a brilliant idea while sleeping, and told us that having a set of laws would benefit our community a lot. After that, we felt a bit defenseless in a possibly hostile world (we did not yet know that we would meet so nice and peaceful neighbors) and therefore started investigating Bronze Working. However, we lost only one turn, and thanks to your help, we can now stop that duplicate effort and concentrate on finding a new way of government.

If you want to benefit from the new government as well, we could imagine a cooperation as follows:

• We trade Iron Working for Philosophy
• We trade Map Making or Literature (whichever appears more beneficial to both our countries when we get to that point) for Code of Laws
• We know that your wise men have the capability to discover a new technology whenever a new era in the history of mankind starts. We would trade this tech - whatever it may be - for knowledge of Republic. We realize, that this yet unknown technology will be more expensive (in terms of research cost) than Republic. But we think this can be compensated as follows: you will get Republic as soon as we will discover it. Our scientists currently predict, that this will be in approximately 30 turns. We think that it will be very valuable for you getting out of Despotism at such an early point in time, and that this should probably more than compensate for the slightly higher price of a new era technology. Also you will see that it involves a certain amount of risk for us, if we give you a precious tech like Republic, when we can expect payment for it only many centuries later. Please take this as a sign of mutual trust.

In general we think that it will be beneficial for both of us, if both countries are given this early opportunity to develop a strong economy. This is one of the reasons why we are willing to agree to a deal like outlined above. At the moment we are quite a bit ahead in research, thanks to our philosophical achievement, but we expect that your ability to build half-price libraries will soon enable you to catch up with us in that regard, and we hope that then you will let us participate in your advances in a similarly generous way.


Now we come to the next topic, the matter of mutual guarantee of security. We were pleasantly surprised by your offer of such a permanent peace agreement and accept it thankfully! Like you, we think that having to build only a minimum of military units necessary for protection against uncivilized barbarians will help our two countries develop a strong infrastructure and economy. Basically the details of such a treaty could look like this:

• Guarantee of non-aggression for an unlimited amount of time
• This deal needs to be canceled 30 turns in advance
• The mysterious being "Referee Worf" will watch over the treaty and enforce its compliance.
• Once the borders of our two empires begin touching each other, there will probably arise disputes and controversies about this or that matter. We are confident that we will be able to solve such disputes via fair discussion and compromises. Only in such a way justice and satisfaction for both sides can be achieved; violence will always do harm to both sides.

Like you, we are very surprised that up to recently we did not yet meet any barbarian tribes, neither friendly nor hostile ones. We had already started thinking that we are the only people inhabiting this world, until recently one of our ships discovered a jungle island inhabited by quite a large number of dangerous cannibals! The crew was very lucky not to get eaten by them and is now looking for more friendly shores and islands.

Please take my Regards, Sir Lanzelot

 

[templar_x]

I still do not understand how the game allows that kind of a special treaty, enforced by refs. I re-read the rules and did not find anything about it there. Not sure this can simply be made up by two parties.
I would change the last paragraphe to this:
Like you, we are very surprised that up to recently we did not yet meet any barbarian tribes, neither friendly nor hostile ones. We had already started thinking that we are the only people inhabiting this world. We are happy that we are not but did meet you to share the same turf.
I still would like to ask for the layout of their starting position. As a reason we could say that we want to check how similar each starting position is, as I stated in my post.
Marcel

 

[I. Larkin]

I think it was clearly stated in the rules that "agreements are voluntarily". That mean, whatever we "agree" we do it on our own risk. We may appeal to public opinion, but only this. We should not ask referee to make an exception for our teams. Therefore all discussion of "Worf" should not exists. We may offer "to think about how we can secure these points"?

My idea is following:
We include in the deal that bring us to MA "peace treaty renegotiation + huge gpt" (propper size of gpt may be discussed). Without referee and troops far away there is no way to cancel it. We promise, that return gpt when they trade MA tech back.

Early trade:
Sure, they will chose "Literature. " It is cheaper and more useful for them. Let's ask (insist?) MM for CoL. It will be their turn to make "small gift" for us.

We may not say anything about island, boat... Just to say we met hostile barbarians.

Then politely ask about layout, how far capital from "meeting point"...

 

[templar_x]

that idea is very smart, but they won´t agree to a huge gpt-trade when that would hamper their own research.

templar_x

 

[I. Larkin]

gpt only for one turn. (If we play honestly).
If not (we break an agreement) they will sent a troops to pillage our land and cancel gpt. We as a result will not get MA tech. Both will suffer...

 

[TheOverseer714]

There is no easy way to guarantee them keeping any agreement made, so maybe we could 'renew' the agreement when each trade is made. They want our techs, we want theirs, but neither side wants to lose because they trusted too much. I can see both of us leaping forward by each researching independent paths and trading the fruits, but also be ready to backstab at any time. Ronald Reagen said it best "trust, but verify'. I say use them as much as it benefits us, but when the time comes, prepare for betrayal.

 

[I. Larkin]

Good points, Overseer. I think even diplomatic notes should be brief. We may give less details and not plan "with them" until agreement will be vital.
Lanzelot, can you make letter as shorter as possible?

 

[Lanzelot]

I still would like to ask for the layout of their starting position.

Then politely ask about layout, how far capital from "meeting point"...

Hmm, why not simply make an embassy? They will see the land around our capital afterwards, but we can take a look into their capital, while at the same time preventing them from doing the same. (A spy mission is much more expensive than establishing an emassy.)

After we finish Rep, we should be able to afford the money for an embassy.

 

[Lanzelot]

My idea is following:
We include in the deal that bring us to MA "peace treaty renegotiation + huge gpt" (propper size of gpt may be discussed). Without referee and troops far away there is no way to cancel it. We promise, that return gpt when they trade MA tech back.

I'm not yet convinced. Republic is worth 700g plus a huge boost to your entire empire. So that gpt amount would need to be lets say 800-900 gold! If they have to save so much gold for the "first payment", they can as well research Republic themselves...
And if we go for less money - let's say 200 gold - it would still be a very good deal for them to break the agreement, keep the MA tech and say goodbye to the 200g...
And saving even the "small" amount of 200g will take them more than 10 turns during which they can't do any research at all. Not practicable.

I have no good idea, how this dilemma can be solved. (Darn that stupid rule 4.1!! ) I think the best way to make sure that deals are honored and not broken is

• Convince them that it will be much more beneficial for them to not break deals with us
• Playing honestly ourselves and building a mutual atmosphere of trust

"Trust, but verify" sounds good, but what is to be done, if there is no possibility of verification?!? (At least I can't see any at the moment.)

Lanzelot

 

[Memento]

Let us do the Philo-IW deal in the next Rounds, CoL later and hope that we find a 2nd trade partner.
Makes Techs cheaper and we have more options.

 

[I. Larkin]

800 g is 40 gpt. Plan is following: We gift Republic and ask nothing [the matter of trust].
We jointly research to MA. [I believe we research more]. We trade Construction for Currency +Peace treaty +40 gpt, say. (they can collect 40, it is not a big deal if they in Republic).
They get Monotheism, say and offer it to us for 35 gpt. They pay 5 gpt as construction - currency difference. If they will not give us next Tech they will pay 40 gpt to us.

But we may tell this details later. Just ask if they agree Republic now MA tech later deal.
And what they can offer to secure this.