Embassy to Team Sirius

[Sommerswerd]

Just got an unrelated PM from Trystero:

Greetings,

Just a brief update on the Merlot Holkan on Bode (the spoke to our south). Their unit is in the area corresponding to the location of the lake on Anjennida. It is currently 1 tile west of that lake on Bode, about 4 tiles west of the southern desert area. We will keep you apprised of it's movements.

Regards,

Trystero

 

[nabaxo]

We got an email from Sirius about 23 hours ago:

Fellow ETTA members,

We have completed our research of Paper, and have distributed it to the ETTA. We think it would be the best use of our research capabilities if we work on Astronomy as soon as Optics is available. We will need to accumulate some gold to do so, and are planning to put minimal beakers into Philosophy while we wait for Optics.

We would like to know if the rest of the ETTA agrees with this course of action, and what the others were planning to research.

Regards,

Trystero, Team Sirius diplomat

 

[nabaxo]

Hey! Now that we have paper, we can start drawing a dot-map or something of Anjennida and share!

 

[Sommerswerd]

We sent a reply to the above message via PM. I put it in the Grand Diplomacy thread, because it went to all the allies.

About dividing Anjennida... We just got a message from Sirius which I have not read yet... I am posting it right now while I try to figure out how to attach the dotmap that they included in the message:

Greetings

We hope all is well in the Amazon.

As you can see, I have attached a dotmap for Anjennida.

First, I'll explain the map itself. The orange squares are those tiles under Sirian control, and the blue squares under Amazon control. The circles are the locations of the cities. Ignore the signposts, they're just from earlier plans (although "City A" on Bode is still a planned location). The split tiles are ones which would be under some sort of cultural conflict. The tiles in the inner ring of a city are assumed to stay with that city, the conflicts are just tiles in the outer area of two cities. As long as one city is not ahead of another in culture by an order of magnitude all tiles except those marked as in conflict should be fairly stable.

Now, I'll explain the thinking behind the dotmap. Firstly, the existing Amazon city and the barbarian city were taken as given (not much can be improved by moving the barbarian city anyway). We each have three cities along the coast. There is then room for a central city, which we have assigned to Amazon. In exchange for giving Amazon the centre, Sirius has claimed the Whale city in the north. This is roughly in keeping with the idea of assigning more coast to Sirius and more inland squares to Amazon. The city placement is quite squashed overall, but the shape of the land necessitates this.

Under this plan, there are 39 grassland tiles assigned to Amazon, and 24 grassland and 3 flood plains assigned to Sirius. There are also 7 disputed grassland tiles. Sirius gets more coastline, mostly thanks to the northern Whales city. There is only a few unassigned tiles in the desert tip, where there would be room for a filler city to work an extra clams, but we have not included a city here as it would be of little value to either of us.

Overall, this is not a negotiation-opening dummy deal, this is a genuinely good deal for Amazon which we are nonetheless content to work with. Overall we would prefer not to give away so much of the valuable grasslands, but this is as good a plan as seems to be possible.

Let us know your thoughts on this proposal.

--
Regards, Irgy on behalf of
Team Sirius

Here is the Dotmap:

Spoiler :

What they are basically advocating is that same East/West division that we rejected, only in this plan they get the West half of Anjennida AND the whole Northern Spire. It is particularly disengenuous for them to suggest that some tiles will be in "conflict", because they know that their imbedded +2 in every city (CRE trait) will easily give them ownership of all those so-called "conflict" tiles.

We also need to tell them that we already have another city on Anjennida, not in the location that they suggested, but instead in a location that was pre-determined by poll, so their dotmap is already obsolete.

 

[damnrunner]

Want to replay back with the North South dotmap? I think that actually gave them more land anyway.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Want to replay back with the North South dotmap? I think that actually gave them more land anyway.

We already sent them a request to divide along North South lines. This last communique was their response. However, I guess now that we can trade screenies, sending them the visual might actually be helpful...

 

[damnrunner]

It seems they ignored our suggestion, I think sending a dotmap would be harder to ignore.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Nabaxo, can you special envoy our North/
/South dotmap to Sirius?... Unless damnrunner wants to do it?

 

[nabaxo]

I don't think I am clear on how that would look. Damnrunner, can you do it and I can send it?

 

[damnrunner]

Can do - though could I get a clean screen shoot of the landmass. the one I had before was before we exchanged maps.

 

[nabaxo]

Give me a minute.

Edit: Attached.

 

[Sommerswerd]

PM from Sirius:

Dear ETTA members,

We can confirm that we are now researching Astronomy. At our present research rate, we anticipate this will take approximately 18 turns.

Regards,

Trystero, Team Sirius

 

[damnrunner]

How is this for a dotmap.

Sirus:
1 desert
1 marble hill
3 FP
21 grass (17 river, 6 forest)
2 bananas
6 coast
1 ocean
2 clams
2 coast (non-coastal city)
1 clam (non-coastal city)

Amazon:
24 grass (1 forest [but we already cut some], 15 jungle, 2 river), I dont count the 1 tile we have on the landmass we share with Merlot)
2 jungle ele
1 jungle banana
1 lake
11 coast
5 clams


Shared
lean Sirius:
4 grass, 1 grass jungle

Lean Amazon:
3 grass, 1 forest, 1 jungle, 1 grass hill horse

toss up:
1 coastal

 

[damnrunner]

I counted these tiles up pretty quick but I think it is accurate.

In total we have 27 land tiles and they have 28. We get more of the coast,the eles, and lots of jungle. They get 2 of the 3 bananas, marble, flood plains and almost all the river tiles. They also would have to settle on a horse tile, but it looks to be the optimum location.

As a sweetener we could recommend that they get the desert north. It is fairly crap land, but with dikes they could actually find the long coastline pretty effective.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Gmail from Sirius:

Esteemed Amazonian allies.

We thank you indeed for informing us of the brewing situation. I had noticed the somewhat ridiculous settling pattern of the CDZ-Quatronia peninsula (our name for it is "Hoag", I will use this name from now on unless I hear of a more official title), as well as the fact that they seemed to be settling it in preference to settling the M&M peninsulas. I had also noticed that they had been a little unreliable in their claimed tech path by switching to technologies on the music line. However, I, and as far as I can tell the rest of the team, had failed to put the pieces together, so we appreciate you filling us in.

We appreciate and thank you for your efforts to bring the alliance back in order. We will give our support to the proposals made, although having only been included as a BCC in the proposal sent (which I am not disputing the wisdom of) this does not seem to me to involve us saying anything for the moment.

We would however like you all to consider the following.

The ETTT's benefit is to propel four teams to a substantial technology lead, at the expense of the remaining two. Once those two rivals have been eliminated, the ETTT will naturally come to an end. We need to consider what will happen afterwards. We would assume that our strong alliance and friendship, supported by the ASP, would remain. We had also previously also assumed that CDZ and Quatronia would stick together as well, having made a close alliance themselves and encouraged to band together by the Amazon and Sirius alliance. This would then lead to a fair fight between north and south, eventually followed by a fair race to victory between us and yourselves once we were the only teams remaining, which seemed like a good enough prospect for us.

However, one thing which would be substantially better for both of us than a fair fight between north and south, would be to see a great deal of infighting in the south, while we, with our close co-operation and good co-ordination, steamroll over the lot of them. As such, we would question the merits of doing too good a job of healing the rift between CDZ and Quatronia. This division has risks, but could also be a great opportunity for us in the long run.

We would argue that when it comes to the ETTT giving us a significant technology lead over M&M, sufficient to defeat them, it has already substantially done its job. Indeed there is already dissention among our team when it comes to the wisdom of continuing to trade away the GNP lead we have to more than half of our rivals, and exactly what the right time to dissolve the ETTT is going to be.

The one thing however that we absolutely need to avoid is one of CDZ or Quatronia gifting a large number of technologies, the fruits of the ETTT, to one of M&M. I say "gifting" and "large number" with reason though. A fair beaker trading agreement between one southern ex-ETTT member and one of M&M would not for example constitute a threat, as it would preserve our existing technology lead, which should still be sufficient for us to defeat our M&M rivals. Given the weaker negotiating position of M&M it would be crazy for either of CDZ or Quatronia to agree to anything stronger than that. However, as foolish as it might seem, we agree that this prospect of gifting of technologies outside the ETT is still a considerable risk that we need to take seriously.

So, we see the priority as being to reach an agreement which ensures that the technology lead we have established is not given away to either of M&M. We acknowledge that healing the rift between CDZ and Quatronia, is one quite effective method of acheiving this. However, it is not necessarily the only way. We hope that you can see the arguments we have made in favour of some rift between those teams remaining, and take that into consideration when arbitrating their dispute.


This all does also bring into focus the need to ensure our own peninsula of Anjennida does not lead to similar problems. We would like to let you know that we are hopefully only a couple of turns from capturing Carib. We would also be glad to hear your thoughts on the generous proposal we have made for the settling agreement, although we are happy to allow you whatever time you require to consider it.

Best regards,
Irgy, on behalf of Team Sirius

So it seems that the Q and CDZ were not communicating with Sirius about this. If this is true and not just pretending on Sirius part, then this is a good sign, and we were especially right to keep Sirius involvement a secret.

This is because if the other alliance complains to us and not Sirius, then we have truly placed ourselves in the ' preferred ally' position. Both teams are seeking to protect their relationship with us.

It also shows more respect for us, as both teams seem like they want us to either mediate or take their side. They sent the story to us, not Sirius.

Since they don't know that we are talking to Sirius about this, it preserves our special relationship with Sirius as well, as is evident in the above letter. Sirius still considers us their preferred partner.

Sirius is right that this tension between CDZ and Q will make things easier when the M&Ms are gone. It will be easy to pick a side and kill the other. We will have decide as a team who to side with.

 

[2metraninja]

Yes, it seems that we are the most respected team on the map

 

[damnrunner]

Has anyone had a chance to look at the north south dot-map I did? We should get a proposal back to Sirius shortly.

It seems we are the defacto diplomatic center of this game. That gives us great influence but may also make us a target if we mess things up. So far so good though.

 

[2metraninja]

I think it is fair division. Although the 2 city sites in the north desert look too nice to just give them for nothing.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Has anyone had a chance to look at the north south dot-map I did? We should get a proposal back to Sirius shortly.

I really like the general idea that you conveyed which was the Nort-South division, but there seems to be too much cultural conflict (6 tiles! for the western cities and 5 tiles for the Eastern ones).

Also, there is no way I would found a city on top of a horse on that land. Remember there are no anywhere else in the Anjennida jungle. You really, really NEED the pasture or else the city has no production and cant build anything.

That's one reason I prefer a dividing line to a dotmap. That way, each team can just put their cities where they want.

Maybe we can send them a couple choices... that usually works well. I will try to draw something up, and we can just send them the different dotmaps we have come up with, and tell them, "We can accept any of these... you pick one"

 

[damnrunner]

Problem with a dividing line is that they will think through a dot map for their side. I think the concept of a dividing line is good, but we need to actually do dot maps to test them out. Very much like the idea of sending over several options.

The horses thing sucks - but any other option looked even worse for unused tiles or tiles in conflict.