Embassy to Sirius

[galdarian]

We've made contact with the illusive Sirius. They have contacted us with a brief greeting prior to a formal greeting.

Hail and well met!

The Sirian people extend warmest greetings to the peoples of Quatronia. Our exploration vessel Voyager spotted a vessel of the Quatronian empire, the Rio Grande, in the eastern reaches of the known world, and hurried the news to our high council. The entire Sirian nation celebrated the news of our meeting. Truly the stars shine brightly upon us!

We hope our greeting finds the Quatronian empire doing well. Our friends the AMAZON, who reside to the north of Rio Grande’s current location, have impressed us with stories of the wonders of Quatronia and the just and fair Quatronian people. We therefore offer any Quatronian vessels safe harbor within our open Sirian borders, and their crews the hospitality of the Sirian people.

We are currently organizing our high council to send a more formal greeting, for we feel we have much to discuss, and we hope to bring our two great nations closer together. Please feel free to send all diplomatic correspondence to sirius.mtdg@gmail.com. I will be serving, at least temporarily, as the diplomatic liaison between our great empires. We look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully yours,

Trystero

Have we any volunteers to serve as emissary to the Sirian people?

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Here is a draft. Provolution will be taking over at the embassy to Merlot, so I'll be ambassador to Sirius unless anyone else wants the post.

Dear Trystero:

Our people are very glad to have finally met yours. We can finally communicate directly with our allies in the ETTT. The Amazon have also told us of the exploits of the Sirian people, particularly how you researched alphabet before we even started on it. Sirius is truly the brightest nation of all.

Our nation meeting yours has been a milestone in our exploratory journeys; we have now made contact with all civilizations. We have explored extensively and are happy to answer any questions you might have about other teams.

Our island possesses silver, wheat and spices in abundance, we are curious as to the resources you possess that we might be able to trade in the future.

In regards to the development of the ETTT, we have just finished researching archery and would like to trade it to you for mathematics as per the ETTT so we can start on calendar. As you may or may not know, we have offered CDZ, who lie south of Merlot and east of us, membership into the treaty. We are glad to report that they have accepted. They will bring iron working with them.

We are happy to accept your offer of open borders and to reciprocate the offer. We have another workboat, the Ganges, whose explorers were disappointed they did not get to be the first to meet your nation, as they are within sight of your borders.

On a completely different topic, as an amateur astronomer, I am looking forward to seeing what you decide to name your cities.

Cordially yours, CharlemagneXLII

 

[galdarian]

It's brief enough for a greeting and gets the main points across.

 

[cav scout]

I like it. The only thing i'm worried about is how CDZ seems less and less likely to be in the ETTT as time goes by. Maybe soften that part a bit.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Sent it.

 

[cav scout]

Got this in our gmail:

Dear CharlemagneXLII ,

Thank you for your response to our initial greeting. We learned from The Amazon, shortly after we dispatched our messenger, that you had agreed to the terms of the ETTT. We are most pleased that our great nations will be brought closer together through trade, and will be able to advance more rapidly through a more guided use of our research efforts.

We also thank you for your offer to share the knowledge you have gained through exploration, and that of your resources. We have surmised that each nation on our world was founded on an island between the arms of a great star-shaped continent. Furthermore, we have guessed that the creator bestowed upon each great nation resources unique to its homeland. No doubt this was with the hope that all of the creator’s peoples would work together to become great. Our island contains gold, silk, and fish. We’ve noted that other resources, such as clams, appeared to be distributed symmetrically around the star. This is yet another example of the creator’s grand design.

We have also discovered that although we may venture off our home island, and we may exchange knowledge with you, we are unable to trade resources until we master the use of the stars to navigate.

With regards to the ETTT itself: We will gladly and freely provide you with the technology you request, and have already offered you Mathematics in-game. We feel it best that these exchanges be made as gifts rather than requests or trades, so that the identity of the trading partners will not be completely obvious to those outside our alliance. We realize this is somewhat complicated and of dubious effectiveness, but would rather rely on discretion in these matters. Regardless, we are extremely grateful for your offer of Archery, and look forward to receiving this knowledge from you. We feel that we should shortly convene a council of the ETTT members so that we can best organize our research efforts. Nevertheless, we agree that for the present researching Calendar is a worthwhile endeavor. Our efforts our currently focused on establishing a Currency.

We were also extremely pleased to hear that you have managed to bring CDZ into our alliance. We have just encountered one of their vessels, and have dispatched an envoy to greet them. Once we have established diplomatic ties with them, we will begin a technology exchange program.

Finally, I am happy to announce that our high council has formally installed me as our diplomatic envoy to the Quatronian people. I look forward to long, fruitful alliance between our great nations. We were also glad to hear of your interest in the stars and hope in the future we may invite you to our Sirian observatories to gaze upon our namesake.

With warmest regards,

Trystero, Sirian Diplomat

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Draft reply:

Dear Trystero:

Thank you for your speedy reply, and I apologize if our replies are not quite as speedy as yours.

In regards to the lack of trade before astronomy, our team has come to the same conclusion as yours.

We will look to gift technology from now on, it is more efficient that way. We have received IW from CDZ, and gave them about 6 technologies in return. They are no doubt quite pleased to be in the alliance. Iron working will be on its way to you shortly, if it hasn't reached you by the time this message does.

We have discovered iron in the middle of our island, and have guessed that you will soon make the same discovery on your island.

Now, to some unpleasant business. Our neighbours to the northwest, the Mavericks, have been hounding us with tech trade offers. If you recall, they have been left out of the ETTT. At first they offered us monotheism for techs totaling twice the worth of monotheism, then they offered monotheism for everything we have. In a bizarre reversal, they then offered monotheism for animal husbandry, and we politely declined the offer, having received mono from Amazon.

CDZ is currently researching Metal Casting, but in the meantime, we are a bit concerned about any potential Maverick aggression from triremes once they realize they are being left behind, and we hope we can count on our allies if necessary. (Though they can't do any real damage to us.)

We also plan to prevent Merlot, the other team left out, from making contact with Mavericks, since our cultural borders will stop their workboat. If that doesn't, our galley will. Just be aware that they have a galley north of their homeland, near Amazon.

Sincerely,
CharlemagneXLII

This is intended to plant the idea of a military alliance vs. Mavs without saying it in so many words.

 

[cav scout]

Take out the parts about "count on you as allies" and "(can't really do any damage)"

Instead put in something like, "If you get in trouble with any triremes let us know and we will do what we can to help."

It would be better to make them feel like we've got their backs (which they would then want to reciprocate) instead of feeling like we are trying to obligate them into helping us. This will bind them closer to us without making them think we are twisting their arm. And it gives us some brownie points too.

 

[Earthling]

Right, I fully agree with cav_scout's suggestion.

Has anyone checked in game the espionage/F4 diplomacy screens for a slightly better picture of who has contact/focuses on each other? Probably should do that. It was interesting that all evidence indicated Mavericks really had little investment in boats and exploration, if that continues it'll be an interesting situation regarding land/settling and borders too along with tech, but we should be able to squeeze them out.

 

[galdarian]

Roughly speaking the ETTT members know each other, Merlot knows all the ETTT mebers and Mavs know us and team Amazon. I'll post a screenie in the main turn thread this turn.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Will send this tomorrow:

Dear Trystero:

Thank you for your speedy reply, and I apologize if our replies are not quite as speedy as yours.

In regards to the lack of trade before astronomy, our team has come to the same conclusion as yours.

We will look to gift technology from now on, it is more efficient that way. We have received IW from CDZ, and gave them about 6 technologies in return. They are no doubt quite pleased to be in the alliance. Iron working will be on its way to you shortly, if it hasn't reached you by the time this message does.

We have discovered iron in the middle of our island, and have guessed that you will soon make the same discovery on your island.

Now, to some unpleasant business. Our neighbours to the northwest, the Mavericks, have been hounding us with tech trade offers. If you recall, they have been left out of the ETTT. At first they offered us monotheism for techs totaling twice the worth of monotheism, then they offered monotheism for everything we have. In a bizarre reversal, they then offered monotheism for animal husbandry, and we politely declined the offer, having received mono from Amazon. They have now offered to trade Metal Casting, but we have come to the agreement that it is not worth going outside of the ETTT to research, and will not be requesting permission to do so.

CDZ is currently researching Metal Casting, but in the meantime, we are a bit concerned about any potential Maverick aggression from triremes once they realize they are being left behind; if you get in trouble with any triremes let us know and we will do what we can to help.

We also plan to prevent Merlot, the other team left out, from making contact with Mavericks, since our cultural borders will stop their workboat. If that doesn't, our galley will. Just be aware that they have a galley north of their homeland, near Amazon.

Sincerely,
CharlemagneXLII

 

[cav scout]

Looks good, I say send it.

EDIT: take out the part about our cultural border stopping them, as this doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Sent it, changed "our cultural borders will stop their workboat" to "our cultural borders might stop their workboat".

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Here is their reply:

Dear CharlemagneXLII,

We thank you for your offer of Iron Working, we look forward to receiving it from you, and hope we too have an accessible source of iron. We should have Currency in a few turns, and will share that with you as soon as possible.

We also thank you for the warning about the Mavericks triremes. We should have a city established that we could use to close our borders to Merlot shortly. If it arrives before then, we should have a galley in position to stop the work boat. We would have much more trouble with a Maverick trireme at this point, obviously. We are currently attempting to settle the arm of the great star closest to Mavericks so as to deny them access to strategic resources. We are unsure of how effective this will be if they also have iron on their home island. Regardless, since Mavericks lie between our empires, we agree that we should coordinate our actions against them to our mutual benefit.

We will keep you apprised of further developments.

Sincerely,

Trystero

 

[cav scout]

They seem to think that Merlot is sending a workboat there way even though we clearly said it was a galley. We might need to make sure they aren't confused so they can deal with that galley when it shows up.

 

[cav scout]

We need to ask these guys if they are capable and willing to sink the Merlot galley coming their way.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

That galley has turned around hasn't it? Still, they will probably send it that way when we sink their WB. So a short message like this:

Dear Trystero:

Just a brief note to point out that it is a Merlot galley that could be headed your way. It is currently in Merlot waters, probably being used for transportation, but could go try to make contact after we sink their workboat. We just want to make sure you know what you're dealing with, though we hope this doesn't change anything in our plan to prevent contact between Merlot and the Mavericks.

CharlemagneXLII

I still think its worth it to sink the WB now even if Sirius won't sink the galley, since that delays contact quite a bit still- remember it will take them around 30 turns to reach Mavs, our workboats are only now reaching Amazon.

EDIT: Sent.

 

[galdarian]

Recieved the following from Sirius which was sent to all members of the ETTT.

Greetings fellow ETTT members.

Now that we have all finally met each other, it seems sensible to co-ordinate our technology plans into the future.

Our current understanding is:
Sirius: Code of Laws
Amazon: Monarchy
Quatronia: Calendar?
CDZ: Metal Casting

There are many benefits to getting Astronomy on this map, so it is our suggestion to tech towards it as quickly as possible. This means there should always be one team should be researching one of:
Metal Casting->Machinery->Optics->Astronomy. Another team can get the cheaper techs of Compass and Calendar in parallel (both fairly beneficial techs on their own). It also seems wise to pursue Civil Service soon for the bonus Beaurocracy can provide to all of our research rates.

In principle it shouldn't matter which team researches which techs, if we're all sharing them. Although it may be wise for the teams with faster research rates to look after the Astronomy beeline and the key economy techs such as Civil Service which will speed up everyone's research.

What other technologies do people think are important?


One final issue; Our understanding is that it is best to transfer techs as gifts rather than damnds or trades, to avoid making it clear who is trading based on who is logged in when the teams' scores increase. It should therefore be the researching team's responsibility to push out the techs as they discover them. Now that all members have made contact this should not be a problem in the future.

The likelihood of disguising what's going on is low, but for the moment in particular we have not even made contact with Mavericks, so it is unlikely they know all of what's going on. It is better to keep them in the dark for as long as possible.

With all that in mind, we would greatly appreciate it if the next team to log on could offer us Iron Working in game. It seems to have been lost in the shuffle with all the techs swapping back and forth.

Best regards,
Irgy, on behalf of team Sirius

I have since offered them IW in game. I think we need to quickly respond to this email an volunteer ourselves for the Compass -> Optics beeline NOW.

Greetings Irgy of Sirius,

The Continuum is always pleased to hear from our partners from across the world.
The Q have been discussing similar things and were drafting up an email even before we received word from our neighbors.

In regards to our technology paths we also wanted to align plans for the near to long term. We are indeed researching Calendar as you so rightly acknowledge. Depending on what or treaty partners think our short term plan was to then head for Compass as it aligns with the will of our people. It may therefore be reasonable for us to also finish of that tech path by researching Optics.

Looking forward to hearing the thoughts of our other Tech partners,
........

The longer we delay this email the less likely we get +1 movement for circumnavigation which will probably decide this game.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Looks good to me.

 

[cav scout]

Put in how we are almost finished with Calendar, we don't want them to think they will have to wait for us to start Compass. And you might casually mention that we want Compass for our UB.