Embaixada da Kazakhstan

[KingMorgan]

Worrying turn of events. iirc Kaz have never formally requested assitance in their war, if they ask then we should give it. I'll be disapointed if they backstab us at this point, can;t see it tbh, the best chance of victory they have is with us. SANCTA will use, abuse and then spit them out. Of course, big question is does Kaz realize this?

 

[Renata]

OK, we need to decide what to do about this. If they refuse to give us edu/philo, they have de facto signed on with SANCTA whether or not they admit it or ever give SANCTA any material aid (or act overtly against us in any other way). The consequences for us would be dire (please correct me if I'm wrong). No lib, no lib tech, no universities anytime soon, no Oxford anytime soon. An economy which is not prepared to be going it alone on tech without Kaz, no standing army, and new units coming soonish for our opponents.

Does that about sum it up, or am I being over-alarmist?

 

[ZPV]

Well, I see two options:

1. Present a scenario not too different from reality, such that kaz have some (small) chance of winning the game, and to do that they must remain allied with us. To do this, I would suggest telling them that an imminant "breakout" is not the best strategy to pursue, but instead allow Sancta and Cavaleiros to beat each other up (stressing that we will have to fight each other, if we want to win the game), and then strike while the two big teams are distracted. Once we and sancta have cut each other down to size, they should be able to make territorial claims stick, something they cannot do at the moment. Furthermore, for this scenario to happen, Cav and Sancta must be evenly matched, or else one will cripple the other without being weakened enough to allow Kaz a chance. Without Kaz on our side, we will fall behind, as our economy is a metaphorical drain, and our military is non-existant (although we don't have to tell them this), and Sancta will pull away after winning Lib, powered by financial cottages and (later) dike-enhanced navies. Thus, if they want to have a shot at the win, they need to stay allied with us.
(in USun's terms, try to talk them back to a "top side" mentality)

2. Try and go on without them. We still have MS on our side, who can provide gold and the promised GS. We will have to abandon thoughts of the future for a while, so we will build HE in whichever city has the highest production now, since Sancta only have us for a neighbourly target. We can lightbulb Education instead of Printing Press, and one of us and MS can send gold, while the other builds Oxford and researches quickly. I suspect we have the better super science city (I haven't seen MS's land), or at least we will once we have the capability to build Oxford, so we should really do the research. How we do this while simultaneously churning out units is not clear.
(kaz becoming neutral or defecting is not insta-win for Sancta. Yes, they have the advantage, but the fat lady won't sing just yet)

 

[oyzar]

The following message is most-likely coming to you soon via email.

Dear CavKaz brothers:

We are very happy to see Cavalieros' exponential growth. However, our team has become increasingly worried that the fundamental premise of balance of power that has been the backbone of our alliance is becoming irreversibly skewed. As the western end of the CavKaz alliance grows, unfettered by SANCTA, the eastern side is threatened.

Our CavKaz alliance has recently been placed in jeopardy by the recent SANCTA attacks. We are therefore desperately in need of action to be taken to re-establish the balance-of-power between us. This will help the entire CavKaz alliance by enabling us to push SANCTA out of CavKaz land.

Towards this end, we propose that you gift us the four (4) closest cities to our borders so that we have enough cities to build an army and press the conflict with SANCTA. Once we have cleared the SANCTA dogs from our lands, we can re-asses the balance of power and re-divide our CavKaz cities as appropriate. We are also willing to return your gifted cities to you outright, once the SANCTA threat has been beaten back.

We also request that you gift us a battle group of units to fight SANCTA. This can be accomplished by moving the units into the territory of the gifted cities. We are happy to return your forces to you, once SANCTA has been sufficiently beaten back. We further request that you immediately declare war on the SANCTA enemies.

We hope that Cavalieros is willing to continue maintaining a balance of power in the CavKaz. We hope that we have performed as true friends to our West CavKaz brothers in the past, and that we will continue to support each other in the future. As you are aware, our alliance has lasted well beyond the original agreed obligatory period (Turn 115), a true testament to our commitment to each other.

We are happy to formally accept your proposal for a balance-of-power alliance, if that is the primary obstacle to your full co-operation to destroy SANCTA. We are therefore willing to sign your proposed treaty with the sole addition of a clause preventing either of us from declaring war on a third party without the other's consent. Please be advised that we have always felt that our conduct (ie. tech gifting) was a constructive acceptance of the balance of power arrangement, so we did not feel that a formal agreement was needed. However, if ink on the page puts our CavKaz brothers at ease, we are most pleased to oblige, as always.


We are confident that you will aid us as requsted, so that our glorious alliance can continue forward, even stronger than before. We look forward to your response, and will wait to hear from you, prior to further alliance-related action on our part.

Sommerswerd of Kazakhstan

I got a pm from sommerswerd.

 

[Rusten]

F*** off

 

[Calis]

They have a strange sense of humor

 

[Renata]

Everyone on MSN just got an earful of my opinion. Language rules wouldn't let me repeat it here.

 

[oyzar]

Renata sier (23:43):
are they trying to force us out?
surely better just to backstab us without the notice, inthat case

I think this accuratly describe the situation.

 

[Renata]

Should you or I send a super-sweet PM asking them just that? It's not a redressing of the balance of power they're asking, not really.

 

[ZPV]

Not today. Best to sleep on it IMO

 

[Renata]

I think you're right. But in any case, here's one possible approach:

To Sommerswerd and Team Kazakhstan:

We asked for a balance of power agreement some 50 turns ago; you delayed, obfuscated and refused to sign any such thing. Now that you are no longer in the more advantageous position of the two of us, you wish to correct your mistake, at our expense and that of the alliance as a whole. What’s more, you hold our informal tech-sharing agreement and any chance at liberalism hostage in the bargain.

We of Team Cavaleiros find this completely unacceptable.

We have been discussing among ourselves for weeks how to tackle SANCTA militarily. If we did not share our thoughts with you, it is only because we were hampered by lack of anyone willing to make a final decision and say “this is what we will do”. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you from making such a plan yourself and making it clear that the future of our alliance depended on our following through. That would have been an appropriate way to handle the situation. Extorting cities and units from us in such a manner, particularly when you could not even use those cities as efficiently as we can, is not.

You have one opportunity right now to offer a more moderate approach to redressing your undeniably poor position – at SANCTA’s expense, not ours – or we consider this alliance formally over, terminated for cause.

Sincerely,
Renata dos Cavaleiros for Team Cavaleiros

 

[ZPV]

I think you're right. But in any case, here's one possible approach:

To Sommerswerd and Team Kazakhstan:

We asked for a balance of power agreement some 50 turns ago; you delayed, obfuscated and refused to sign any such thing. Now that you are no longer in the more advantageous position of the two of us, you wish to correct your mistake, at our expense and that of the alliance as a whole. What’s more, you hold our informal tech-sharing agreement and any chance at liberalism hostage in the bargain.

We of Team Cavaleiros find this completely unacceptable.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. It is very good!

We have been discussing among ourselves for weeks how to tackle SANCTA militarily. If we did not share our thoughts with you, it is only because we were hampered by lack of anyone willing to make a final decision and say “this is what we will do”. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping you from making such a plan yourself and making it clear that the future of our alliance depended on our following through. That would have been an appropriate way to handle the situation. Extorting cities and units from us in such a manner, particularly when you could not even use those cities as efficiently as we can, is not.

This line of argument is not without merit, but I think it needs to be reworded a little. In particular, Kaz have relayed some plans to upgrade maces to redcoats, to repeat their failed attack on SANCTA and use galleys to send a couple of knights around the mountains to be sunk by Dutch triremes.

Perhaps the alternative we present to extortion of cities and units could be to ask us to make our minds up. Oyzar went round in circles with them, unwilling to commit to things he wasn't sure we wanted to/could provide. If they had called him out on this, that would have been a more reasonable approach.

You have one opportunity right now to offer a more moderate approach to redressing your undeniably poor position – at SANCTA’s expense, not ours – or we consider this alliance formally over, terminated for cause.

I'd just end the sentence after "not ours". There is no need to indicate just yet that we would immediately end our "alliance", in this case I think a vague threat will be more effective.

I agree with your style in that we don't want to present too many arguments all at once. If they are willing to talk, they will do so. If they are borderline, a short message like this will seem more friendly and less intimidating than a long one explaining exactly why they are wrong and we are right.
Good call on that one!

 

[Niklas]

I think we should make it clear that our own idea of adressing the balance of power is to go smack some SANCTA heads and give the spoils to Kaz, instead of giving them our own cities. Why would our cities be better off in Kaz' hands than in ours, if the purpose is to build up military to attack SANCTA with?

 

[Renata]

Yeah, I think you're both right.

I'll be around this afternoon to finish this up, so if there's a basic agreement, I'll edit and send it out in maybe six-seven hours, OK?

 

[slaze]

Yes, more important than the balance of power is the collective sum of our combined power and it would be unwise to lessen that by handing cities to kaz.

However, it's probably time to step in and help; they're acting desperate and all we've really done is committed to build ourselves courthouses and workers.

I propose we stop building more settler/workers, spam Horse archers, remind kaz of the importance of keeping lib away from sancta, and promise a mass assault into the TKY area in the next 15-25 turns.

We had a good thing going on with kaz and if we don't do something we're gonna lose it.

 

[oyzar]

Horse archers are rather poor against elephants. We have already stopped spamming settlers, we really need to focus on our economy before we can spam any mass of units. When we do mounted probably isn't best (knights are better than horse archers though).

 

[Calis]

Maybe they wanted to wake us up with that kind of approach. We should really consider building troops (whichever) and support them against SANCTA. But the agreement should include that before that, we want to get lib to deny it from SANCTA.

I don't think that only thinking about our economy is the key here. If we join Kaz in their war, SANCTA also has to focus on military. I am aware that our economy has to improve oyzar. But we should think about what is more important: a strong economy but standing on our own, or the second strongest economy backed up by allies. and we are rather close to lose them. And maybe they draw MS with them.

 

[Renata]

OK, another try. First paragraph is the same, but the rest is a bit moderated. Tell me what you think.

To Sommerswerd and Team Kazakhstan:

We asked for a balance of power agreement some 50 turns ago; you delayed, obfuscated and refused to sign any such thing. Now that you are no longer in the more advantageous position of the two of us, you wish to correct your mistake, at our expense and that of the alliance as a whole. What’s more, you hold our informal tech-sharing agreement and any chance at liberalism hostage in the bargain.

We of Team Cavaleiros find this completely unacceptable.

The way forward is and has been clear. We must relieve SANCTA of their forward territory and transfer it to you. The devil, as always, has been in the details, and we admit to a certain lack of decisiveness on that score. That must be amended. But the way to do so is not to threaten us, hold our own future hostage, and consign our alliance to a worse-than-zero-sum result even if we accept the demands. Offer us something more moderate, and we will work with you to make it happen.

We await your proposal.

Sincerely,
Renata dos Cavaleiros for Team Cavaleiros

 

[Renata]

Oh, and if people like it, feel free to send it out tonight with or withotu my name attached; I won't be sure to be around.

 

[oyzar]

I am fine with it.