Embassy to CDZ Land

[Earthling]

With each island surrounded by ocean tiles, will that delay resource trading until Astronomy? Or does border-encompassed ocean count as coast, in trade route terms?

It will not block all the way until Astronomy I think. It may be possible that each team will have to settle a city on the "mainland" though. In other words we may not have resource/trade connection right now, but when we settle Resonance and they settle somewhere else on their coast somewhere, then we would be connected. We won't be able to scout out their land up to their capital otherwise due to ocean and it's the same for them scouting us though.

In other news, if we're reaching a consensus on some long term diplo-related things I definitely want to be on the lookout and censor anything that would ever make us seem hostile to Vikings right now - seems like we might be wanting to keep them as friends. So yeah, we can't exactly say anything to outright discourage them from "settling towards us." It's more on in-game actions and situations that pan-out. For instance if we get that peninsula and garrison it just well enough, and fully settle out the Resonance/Cosmos/etc... plan that just means we've claimed the territory on our side at least, kind of an unspoken thing.

Again, I don't think it's actually possible to even stop them from settling a couple cities on their own side of that "petal" especially if mountain ranges on in the middle, so we just wouldn't try to.

But ultimately is does matter how they are feeling and how well we need to work with them to keep them from attacking us, I agree. If the team on the other side of them just treats them poorly, it could be easy; on the other hand CDZ may decide to be bloodthirsty against everyone and it could be hard. But keeping up a firm idea of our tech situation and possibly some other things promoting alliance, like a mutual set of resource trades, could work.

I'll work on drafting up a message that we can probably send this next turn, and for that matter anyone who has some ideas on waiting for the Mavericks can also be ready.

 

[RegentMan]

I don't think CDZ will be bloodthirsty to both of its surrounding teams- a two front war will not bode well for them. However, I do believe they will attack one of their neighbors. We just have to make sure it is not us who gets the DoW...

 

[Earthling]

Well, taking into account the general ideas we have, cav_scout's list seeming pretty definitive, here's a first draft of our message to CDZ. I know I probably should cut things more to the basics. Not sure we are entirely decided on a "Non-Aggression Pact" to CDZ but guessing that we might I put that in there, it can be modified or removed if needed.

Keep in mind their last message, that this is partly a response to:

Spoiler :

Hello Earthing,

On behalf of the CDZ people I extend to you and the people of Quatronia our warmest greetings. We are greatly encouraged by your warm and open correspondence and wish to return the favour in kind. The information you kindly provided has caused much discussion amongst our people.

We haven’t met anyone else either up to this point so it nice to have met you. You may not know this but lions are terrible conversationalists.

Our boat has some other duties to perform at the present time so it can’t go along for a joint voyage at this time, so we wish your fearless crew a safe onward journey.

Our fine homeland has an abundance of crabs, sugar and gold so it would seem there is great potential for a trade agreement in the future once we can discover and open trading routes between our nations.

I am sure that our nations could learn a great deal from each other and prosper from cooperation into the future as new possibilities and capabilities emerge.

As you say there are many things to discuss but I won’t overload this first letter with to many things. I’m sure your people will need time to talk over all the possibilities just as mine do. But I do hope we can come to some agreements in the near future. Feel free to contact us at any time if there is something that you wish to discuss.

Regards
Robi, Team CDZ

Dear Robi,
Your envoys have been well received and the Quatronians again extend a welcome to their neighbours.

As for one matter we're certain you may catch sight of the Rio Grande again soon, already successful explorers for having met you, hope they don't startle you around the coastlines you may seem from Spamalot. If your captains are heading right to your West you will likely visit our fine homeland in maybe a dozen turns, give or take how you zig and zag, and if that's the journey you desire we welcome the trip. Our boat progresses to the East and will naturally keep you apprised of any interesting discoveries if you haven't gone far that way yet.

We would certainly be pleased to be able to trade resources and perhaps open our borders to regular merchant routes soon. Crabs and wheat, and silver and gold are bounties both our peoples would surely like to share. Though there is one concern, as even with the knowledge of more advanced sailing, we worry the oceans may still diminish trade, but are not sure (It seems to us, that ocean tiles only passable while within one team's culture could cut off OB or trade routes, though we hope and expect this can be remedied before Astronomy)

Nevertheless we hope to progress towards trade and peaceful relations in the future. We soon intend to pursue the art of Writing which should eventually allow us to advance our civilizations even more. So far our in the early years of our city's founding our scientists discovered many essential techs from Bronze Working to the theological studies of Mysticism and Meditation, and the domestic boon of Pottery; as is obvious our people have also long known the basics ways of the sea and Fishing. As mentioned we seek to develop the art of Writing soon enough too. Perhaps we could develop a plan for trading technologies, we don't know what your priorities are for now but much could be accomodated, and our scholars themselves could be ready and willling to discover Alphabet for trade.

Our last concern regards savage peoples or perhaps threats we may discover from other civilizations, that can take up time and attention, and knowing you are a good people and grand neighbors, we are interested in living in peace with you now. We would like to propose a 50-turn Non-Aggression Pact, on the high seas or on land, that is a first step to greater friendship and mutual understanding, and should not propose any barriers to trade or exploration that we know of.

Thanks again for warm receptions of our diplomats and as the years pass, hopefully not too fast right now though as there is much to do, we'll continue to be in reach anytime you need us.

Ambassador Earthling, Team Quatronia

 

[cav scout]

My take:

Again a great letter Earthling but probably still too formal and gamey. This is perfect diplo language for any of the other teams, just not so sure for these guys. I say we just lay it all out there with them in hopes of speeding up the courtship.

My version:

Dear Robi,

Your envoys have been well received and the Quatronians again extend a welcome to their neighbours. Festivities have been readied in our capital Continuum and Diana prepares to break out her gold rope and... oh wait, we aren't the Amazons!

We are guessing you guys would much rather keep the conversation real and to the point instead of trading tedious emails back and forth. So now that the ice is broken shall we dispense with the RP formalities and discuss the game?

Anyways, we agree that hooking up trade routes should be a mutual goal. If you head south with your workboat you will go around a penninsula and then reach our lands in around 12 turns. Our boat will continue to head east to look for your culture and then find the civ beyond you. We will keep you appraised of any interesting discovering we make in case you haven't gone too far that way.

Just so you know, we are on an island surrounded by ocean tiles (we suspect you guys are too). We were able to get our workboat out with a culture "bridge" across one of these ocean tiles (again, we suspect you have the same set-up). So do you guys know if we can get trade routes pre-astronomy the way things are looking? We think that maybe it will work since our culture is touching coastal tiles that you can reach, just haven't gotten around to checking yet.

Tech wise we have researched Agriculture, Myst, BW, Meditation and Pottery. Going for Sailing right now to be followed by Writing. What is your tech situation? It would be good if someone gets Alpha soon of course to get some trades going on.

Finally we were wondering if you guys would be interested in a NAP. Say for 50 turns to start with?

Again thanks for the warm welcome. Hope to hear back from you soon.

Ambassador Earthling, Team Quatronia

 

[Earthling]

I love that joke about not being the AMAZONs, nice.

I really don't know the members of this team that well again though, so if you feel something this direct is better, and everyone else agrees, that would be fine. We probably could be ready to send whatever our final version is tonight. Most of that message is good to use as a baseline, and I approve in general if we are ok with that as a team. It probably is good to ask them in this one though if continued diplo in that style is ok, great that you put that in there.

One thing - I didn't actually count the time their workboat would take, so around a dozen is both an estimate from me and for them, I'm not sure it's exactly twelve.

I'm not so sure about the way that trade route discussion goes either. Because if they haven't thought directly of that, this could encourage them to get settling the coastline quicker, and we probably want to at least have things secure for our own cities. Of course we're not telling them that, just not helping them brainstorm otherwise. It's something to mention, I just might revise that part. The parenthetical description I used or if different wording is out there it's fine; the part from "So do you guys know..." sounds maybe kinda lazy on our part here

It seems to us that ocean tiles only passable while within one team's culture could cut off trade routes, though we hope and expect this can be remedied before Astronomy

 

[cav scout]

Well yeah i even had a sentence where i said we are lazy but i edited it out . I just whipped that up really quick so I agree it could use some polishing.

I do think it's good to pose a few question to them though. We can learn alot about their demeanor towards us from their responses.

EDIT: Based on the screens you posted Earthing (thanks!) it looks like we may have already passed their culture "bridge."

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, don't know how we missed it, maybe workboat auto-path'd to stick as close to the coastline as possible. Just hope the screens help a little in general. They could possibly have a "bridge" on the other side though, won't rule it out yet. Shouldn't really matter either though as long as our workboat can actually make it around the coastline, which it should.

If people are in agreement on cav_scout's version, I could be ok with sending that tonight - and if I'm not back around which I might not be till tomorrow, if there aren't major changes anyone could send it on the gmail for me with my name on it still if you want, that's fine, I won't ever ask to be that "official" about diplomacy.

If we're trying to be actually specific about workboat movement we might want to verify how many turns, if not it's not a big deal, and we could revise the ocean/culture bridge discussion. But all the major points and goals of this message are good, I'd conclude the next draft is ready to go by me.

 

[RegentMan]

Love the Amazon joke.

Either version works for me, but I would send the second version. Short and to the point.

 

[Provolution]

2nd version is good.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Agreed.

 

[cav scout]

I sent the 2nd version.

 

[Provolution]

Very good, we can now wait for a response.

 

[cav scout]

I'm beginning to wonder about these guys... It's been about 4 days and we haven't heard back from them. Now this in itself isn't a big deal- it takes time for a team to draft a response, people go away for the weekend etc.

But we also had two members of CDZ jump on Provo in the Indiansmoke thread. Now I don't think that Indiansmoke was trying to push Provo's button's and elicit a wild response... but whether intentional or not that is exactly what happened.

The way that thread looks to an outside observer is:

a.) Quatronia is the first team to get a wonder and move to the top of the scoreboard.

b.) Indiansmoke makes a joke in the public forum (with the underlying intent of putting Quatronia in the spotlight and maybe get us to reveal info, etc).

c.) Provo overreacts badly, making an open accusation againt Indiansmoke. Provo's venom makes Smoke look like the aggrieved party.

d.) Provo's overreaction tweaks CDZ's team ethos of laidback fun, humor, respect and justice. They call out Provo in the forum and have their eye on him now like the technoviking.

Basically I think it's possible that they are now more wary of our team. Remember, practical considerations are often trumped by personal emotions in this game. Players and teams have been known to run their civs into the ground just to get some licks in on someone they don't like. And if they are looking for a target (and they are) then anyone who offends their sensibilities moves to the top of their deathlist.

Anyways, I don't see much we can do at this point other than wait and see. It seems best to just let the whole thing blow over... although maybe an apology or a consilatory message in that thread from Provo would help (seems to be what Robi D was fishing for).

Bottom line is we need to be prepared for the possibility that these guys won't be our friends and that we are going to have a powerful rival for a neighbor. If it pans out this way then having the Indians as true friends and allies would be critical.

 

[Earthling]

Yeah, it's possible they are fishing for info and being extra wary, which is why it's good we'll be making contact with CDZ's other neighbor soon. I'd love to see CDZ's other neighbor be worse/more annoying, but on the other hand if they are a team we could work with, that's still a possibility. I think sticking with Alphabet and playing things close/undecided on alliances right now works in that regard.

If we don't get a message back soon perhaps a brief PM asking if they are sure the last message of ours was received? I could re-quote the message there, ask Robi D if anything is up; they could be taking their time for any number of reasons though and I wouldn't get hasty. Certainly the actual game turns are taking a fair amount of time too...

 

[Provolution]

I think you exaggerate the CDZ response as a team, look at BCLG, a brit teenager who has more than 18000 posts already. He likes to kid around. Remember, Indiansmoke got a name for being merciless both on the forums and in-game, and really, people would be wary with these. Either way, CDZ would target either us, or the team north of them, and the type of civ we meet next there, would decide plenty.

My response to Indie, which was dismissive as it should be, would win over more people other places. Remember, Indiansmoke is not THAT popular, and people know his style from long ago.
Mavericks answer was kind of open anyhow, whereas CDZ was very closed even before this.

The initial message you wrote to CDZ, Cavscout, has by no means been reciprocated, and their boat has been on its way towards us since we met. I still think being dismissive to main forum action was fair enough from my side, which still gives us plenty wiggleroom later .

 

[cav scout]

Well i'm pretty sure BCLG is a 22 year-old law student... but yeah, the CDZ guys seem to like to kid around. My point is we don't want to inadvertantly stoke their passions and get some forum-kid type vendetta against us. Loosing the metagame PR war means enemies > allies = we loose.

 

[Provolution]

I still think poking out Merlot as potentially the bad guys down the road would be good. After all, Indie made this a directed measure, and over-emphasizing the thing by targeting me to his team internally, as he probably is not that popular. I guess, since Merlot after all started with mysticism, and failed to get both a religion, and Stonehenge for that matter, and they finally realized that happiness was hard to come by for "Merlot". My guess would be that Indie lost some support internally, and that his attempt to fire after me was his little Greek twisted version of the Falklands War, which was all about targeting something external in order to rally his people behind him.

His behavior could also show they might be heading for Ballcourt (3 happiness), which means a direct route through math and construction, in order to compete on happiness parity, as they forfeited both religion and Stonehenge (which you need to be charismatic anyways to get advantage from, and they gambled we would not go for it).

 

[Earthling]

Well, I asked Robi D in a short PM if we'd gotten their email address correct and all, I'm pretty sure we should have and they got the last message, maybe it's just a hold-up on their end, but I'm not too worried about it yet.

I don't think we're really in too much trouble regarding enemies or diplomacy, it's really still very early and nothing bad or wrong has really happened.

As for MERLOT - I do think there is some up with them, it's been that way for a long time. They could be working on some plan and diplomacy etc... but it's also possible they've fallen behind, done poor micromanagement, and with only one turnplayer/"King" of the team aren't taking their turns very well anyway. But they are not our near neighbors at least and trouble they stir up hopefully does not come our way. At this early point when we go after Alphabet we could still just easily trade with anyone and if some teams turn out not to be good allies for the long run that's fine, we can't ally with everyone anyway.

I do think it's slightly promising news if India hasn't explored a lot, that they are not too likely to get overexcited/head out and meet CDZ early or something. Right now we have some good cards, having the most knowledge about what everyone is doing and I think we have decent plans internally/domestically too.

 

[Earthling]

Short message (by PM) from Robi D. Guess we be on the lookout on our email account, whomever checks in here could check on that, I'll look again later today too. It's all right if they had some delay, I'm not worried, though maybe surprised they didn't have some other diplomat/player at least check on the messages, it seems like they have some active people.

Hi Earthing,

Sorry for the delay in responding, I assure you there is no malice behind it. I unfortunately caught a case of the flu over the weekend and am only now starting to get back up on my feet so our reply will take a little longer than usual. And while I can't say anything officially, unofficially your letter was well recievied.

Regards
Robi

 

[Earthling]

Just a short bump, we're still awaiting a full response to the last message as far as I know. However, I'm thinking that regardless, tomorrow we ought to inform them we ran into a MERLOT workboat. We said we would tell them exactly that sort of thing, and they discover in a turn or two anyway, it's no big deal, but just something to be on the ball about. (We'll also check/verify that CDZ/MERLOT have no other diplo/espionage contact yet though, that they weren't hiding something)

Edit: I'd like to send a short message today, so here's what I'm proposing:

Greetings people of CDZ,
We bring some more news from our explorations we think is of importance. A flotilla of fishing boats led by captain Indiansmoke, of the nation MERLOT, is approaching from your East; they ran into our workboat, and likely will come across your waters quite soon, in maybe 3 or 4 turns.

While we know we await more discussion of plans for the future in mutual interest, just wanted to give you this heads up as soon as we could.

Earthling, Team Quatronia