My comments to Earthling
My own thoughts/reactions:
-If they have no contact with another team, they are really in trouble for themselves, but we want to work that to our best advantage of course. So, we probably should tell them we will go after Alphabet and hope to trade, and being able to gain their tech down the line would be great. They confirmed Metal Casting but that's as expected - they probably knew that we knew that they had that
We should signal a halfway techroute to commit them to something mid term, not short term or long term. We could say we are heading for Alphabet-then mathematics, where they should go for Calendar.
If they are lying, I still don't see that we shouldn't play along, and if anything it gives us a card to play later in some situation. But I don't see major differences if they are lying (and have contact with the next team) vs. if they are not. Either way, we give them rough estimates on map locations and say we're willing to be peaceful and trade, etc...
They may indeed be lying, but we should not pretend to know. The reason why, is that the first two turns they did not put espionage on us, and we did not espionage on them either. But we will know soon enough when we meet the next civ.
-So this goes hand in hand - if they don't have contact that really would mean they don't have a boat out yet, and have very little map information. Thus I think we could rightly expect they will not be too much pressure settling that northern petal between us, and in general they will be behind in contact etc... all game. I am liking the current setup of getting trades done before they meet CDZ at least, and if India only has us and their other neighbor to work with, we should present ourselves as an attractive option that gives them little choice.
Again, they may know more than we think, but they know one civ at maximum more.
We should clearly come out as the best alternative to India.
About other team layouts etc... - yeah, I don't hope MERLOT is too close by. MERLOT on the other side of the Vikings would be ideal
but I wouldn't trust them to be able to follow through working against India.
Merlot is populated by a ratpack of net-trolls and sarcastic types, and would be a nuisance to work with. I have seen Indiansmoke in many multiplayer games, and he got an established modus operandi. I for example, may be confusing, but not vicious/mean. I could go on about a few other in Merlot. Indiansmoke is after all King.
Still, there are a lot of things left to be put into place. On the next message, I would:
-Mention/discuss the Colossus - to us, it does not matter if they get it, and in fact this would almost be for the best, as it slows down any military or expansionist efforts by them.
We could indeed say they should do Colossus, to get parity for future joint tech research with us. This would also pacify our northern border. a non-settlement agreement for the desert for the next 50 turns would also be good.
-Give them slightly more info about where our boat came from/the map. We already hinted the rough direction of Continuum, so the real thing to do I think is confirm that it looks like there is indeed a large continent rather than many small islands. They already guessed, it's self-evident to any team that has halfway explored, and pretty much satisfies their queries for now.
Tell them we are about 16 turns south of them, which is more or less true, but rather round up than down for diplomacy's sake.
-As for tech, let them know that we are going for Alphabet, say 15-20 turns depending on how things turn out. But since we probably will be, and this is the best avenue for trade, we might as well promote it.
We should specify 18-23, as they would like about accurate numbers here, for future trust building.
A couple other things:
They've confirmed they have Rice, Gems, and Dyes. Makes it curious for what the other three teams have in commerce - maybe somebody else has silvers, making it 2x silver, 2x gem, 2x gold between the teams. Calendar resources are probably split between all teams. And I'd guess someone must have fish, maybe somebody has animal resource like pigs, so we have wheat, then there is rice, corn, fish, crabs, pigs?
Wheat for Rice, Gems for Silver and Dyes for Spice. We should establish the Rice trades right away, then wait a bit for silver for gems, as we dont need more happiness yet. We tell them rice-wheat is the first "test" of our relationship.
In a related manner, in about 4-5 turns I would consider telling CDZ we have met India. It's just enough time that it doesn't seem to fast, it may also accompany news of meeting the team on the other side of CDZ, and mostly it just means we're not hiding things from them. Warning them about the Colossus or something could be a friendly move and help move things along there too.
Here, I would rather say we lock in Alphabet for a few turns of research, then tell them, or when they inform us on their tech strategy. Ideally we should tell them in 8-9 turns, not 4-5. I will come back to why etc in another post.
