Embassy to Team Sirius

[Sommerswerd]

Sent this PM to Irgy, because we are supposed to tell Sirius our tech plans... etc.

Dear Sirian Allies,

Our Diplomat is unusually busy, so I am dropping Sirius a line to give some quick updates:

1. The AMAZON voted to tech Theology next. We would like a religion, and we will need Theocracy to fight Merlot.

2. We have Monarchy available for our friends

3. Merlot declared war and murdered our defenseless scout, Dora The Explorer, in a cowardly sneak attack. Dora was casually hiking and enjoying the breathtaking views on the hills of Western Marthaton, when a Merlot warrior crept from out of the brush a bludgeoned her to death with a tree branch. The AMAZON people are calling for vengeance

4. A Kleptocracy galley called Furiey is in our waters, en-route to you

5. The Mavericks have a great engineer coming next turn. They want to use it to bulb Machinery, but only if they can trade it to someone. If they cant, they have indicated that they will use it for a wonder instead.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on all of this.

Sommerswerd, Captain of the Zenobians

 

[Sommerswerd]

Got this PM response from Trystero:

Captain Sommerswerd,

It would seem our diplomatic envoy is similarly indisposed. I am having trouble reaching most of the team, so I will update you somewhat unofficially. Also note that our turnplayer ended this turn sooner than I would have wished, since we are trying to coordinate our actions. I apologize.

1. The AMAZON voted to tech Theology next. We would like a religion, and we will need Theocracy to fight Merlot.


2. We have Monarchy available for our friends

We understand the tech choice, and thank you for offer of Monarchy. We are hoping to complete Code of Laws on turn 69, and will of course share it with you. Hopefully, this can serve as a back up religion if your pursuit of Theology fails.

3. Merlot declared war and murdered our defenseless scout, Dora The Explorer, in a cowardly sneak attack. Dora was casually hiking and enjoying the breathtaking views on the hills of Western Marthaton, when a Merlot warrior crept from out of the brush a bludgeoned her to death with a tree branch. The AMAZON people are calling for vengeance

We noted this development, and would have offered aid sooner, but as I said, we have had trouble convening our council. Also, we are just now hooking up metal to construct a fighting force, so our military is somewhat underdeveloped.

4. A Kleptocracy galley called Furiey is in our waters, en-route to you


5. The Mavericks have a great engineer coming next turn. They want to use it to bulb Machinery, but only if they can trade it to someone. If they cant, they have indicated that they will use it for a wonder instead.

We have just established contact with Mavericks this turn. They offered to trade us Metal Casting and Machinery in 2 turns. They arrived in a work boat near Arcturus on Bode, and claim to have a trireme close behind. We have discussed preventing Merlot and Mavericks from contacting with Quatronia to prevent them from forming a competing trade alliance.

Unfortunately, if we sink their WB, there is little we could do to stop their trireme, and our cultural border will not pop in time to prevent them from passing. We would like time to build up our forces on Bode, so we would prefer to let them head toward you peacefully, since we could not prevent this in any case. Do you know if any Merlot vessels have passed you heading toward our waters? We would appreciate your feedback on these matters.

We have not responded to their trade offer yet, and I have been stalling them while we devise a plan.

Best regards,

Trystero, Sirian diplomat

 

[damnrunner]

This is a proposed dotmap for Jenniland. I claim elephants for us but think Sirius is well compensated with 2 really good cottage city sites.

Land wise we are about even though they will end likely end up with a few more of the shared tiles (purple) due to their higher culture output. For this reason I think we should try to settle the more northern city asap so that we can get a jump in the culture building.



At the far north either team could build a city. Might make more sense for them as they can get more benefit from water tiles later in the game. But for the same reason we may want it in order to deny it from them.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Im not a fan of the elephant location. I think it should be on the coast not 1 tile inland. Putting cities 1 tile inland means useless water tiles with no lighthouse to make them useful.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sent this PM to Trystero:

Trystero,
Sorry for the long delay in communications. We have not seen any Merlot boats, and Quatronia reports that a Merlot Galley that was near their scout workboat has since turned around. We also have not seen the Maverick workboat you spoke of. Is the boat still in your waters?

Also, you mentioned that Mavericks threatened you with a Trireme. Have you actually laid eyes on this Trireme? We have found that the Mavericks have a propensity for what can kindly be described as hyperbole, and occasional misrepresentation. We would like to be adequately prepared to turn back whatever boats they send with the least costly means possible.

Finally, what technology are the wise Sirians pursuing at the moment?

Sommerwerd, Zenobian Captain

 

[damnrunner]

Im not a fan of the elephant location. I think it should be on the coast not 1 tile inland. Putting cities 1 tile inland means useless water tiles with no lighthouse to make them useful.

I had considered that but think we will want a city on Marthland on the coast at the same location. I beleive it would have cows, copper, and clams all in the BFC and could be a real prodcution beast city.

I don't think we can really have 2 coastal cities on the ismus as they would be so close to each other.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sent this to Sirius via PM (Irgy, AlphaShard and Trystero)
:

Hello Sirian friends,

Our brave warrior, Aristomache, has reported seeing a ferocious pack of savages forming a war camp on the north-western coast of Anjennida, just south of the river, as best as we can estimate.

She did not dare to get close enough to investigate further, so we do not know the name of the savages' new camp, the exact location of it, or the strength of their war party, but the 'culture' (if their inane ranting can even be called culture) of their native war drums reaches well within earshot of our city, Myrine.

From past experience, we know that these savages cannot be reasoned with, and they attack without mercy or warning. Aristomache has already defeated these native warriors in the past, but we have reason to believe that they may be developing better weapons.

For that reason, we will put one of warriors on horseback and send them to investigate further. On a horse, she should be well protected from whatever attacks the natives can muster.

If the native camp is poorly defended we will capture it. If it is well defended, we will observe until we can muster a stronger force, then we will capture it. These savages must not be allowed to establish a foothold on Anjennida.

We wanted to reach out to our friends before we move against the natives to hear your thoughts on what should be done with the city. Please bear in mind that we will be sending our rider out next turn.

Also, just be on the safe side, I am including the last message to you just in case Trystero is temporarily away.

Trystero,
Sorry for the long delay in communications. We have not seen any Merlot boats, and Quatronia reports that a Merlot Galley that was near their scout workboat has since turned around. We also have not seen the Maverick workboat you spoke of. Is the boat still in your waters?

Also, you mentioned that Mavericks threatened you with a Trireme. Have you actually laid eyes on this Trireme? We have found that the Mavericks have a propensity for what can kindly be described as hyperbole, and occasional misrepresentation. We would like to be adequately prepared to turn back whatever boats they send with the least costly means possible.

Finally, what technology are the wise Sirians pursuing at the moment?

Sommerwerd, Zenobian Captain

 

[Sommerswerd]

Trystero just PMed me that he is on vacation with limited internet access, so good thing PMs went to others on Sirius.

 

[damnrunner]

Does anyone else have thoughts on city placement? I expect this will come up as we discuss the barb city so we should have a plan that we can support.

The barb city is in an incredibly powerful location - but I think its location will make it harder to make the most efficient use of land on Jenniland.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Got this in our Diplo (Gmail) box on Aug 10 (about a week ago)

Greetings, people of the Amazon

Research

We are currently researching Civil Service, which will be of great help to everyone in the ETTT by providing the opportunity to become a Beaurocracy. It will be complete in about 7 turns from now, T81. We have no specific plans for what to research after that.


Settling
We are following a policy of settling fairly aggressively on Bode. We have one city named "Arcturus" up and running, and plans for another soon (which we will call "Vega") to claim a good location near stone (the stone, as expected, is in a similar location to the marble on Anjennida).

We have also noticed the barbarian city which has spawned on Anjennida. We are somewhat concerned by the wording of Sommerswerd's message, with the intention to "capture" this city. We were planning to capture the city ourselves, although not in the next few turns and we were intending to discuss it with yourselves first. The location of the city is:
* On the western coast,
* In the stretch of land (temporarily) agreed to as a no-settle zone (until we can agree on a settling plan),
* Within a BFC-range of the marble.
All three of these are reasons why you have agreed not to settle this area, and we fail to see why capturing a barbarian city there instead negates these. While the second is only a temporary measure, and the third was based on plans for a Great Library which are currently on hold, the first at least surely gives us a greater claim to this city.

Maybe this is a good trigger for us to finally get around to sorting out the settling plan for Anjennida? Between the two of us we should have revealed all the land there by now. We would be happy to come up with our own suggestion as a starting point, but we would need to know exactly where you have settled on Anjennida already.

Of course if by "capture" he simply meant destroy, we would still request you to stay your hand, as it would be better to allow them to build a larger settlement and keep it for ourselves than to just destroy it. Our understanding was that you had built a Great Wall to protect yourselves from barbarians, we had assumed it was built on the mainland rather than just around your home island?


Mavericks
Mavericks appear to have settled a city themselves on Bode. This based on their name for the city, "copper city", and based on the assumption that the spokes of the star alternate between copper and horses. This could of course be some strange sort of bluff on their part. We have not yet seen the borders of the city itself, but we have similarly also not yet revealed the exact location of the other copper. Based on the number of cities they have, they seem to have yet to settle on the landmass between Mavericks and Quatronia, which we are currently referring to as "Comet". You have probably noticed that Mavericks have completed the pyramids. This was partly thanks to encouragement from ourselves for them to do so, and partly a result of having failed to find any takers for Machinery.

There is a Maverick workboat on the way around. We have let it past for now, as we think it wise to avoid showing our alliegances, which Mavericks appear to be still somewhat oblivious to. We are assuming for the moment that you will prevent it from reaching Merlot. Let us know if this is a problem. The alleged trireme has yet to make an appearance.


Religion
We have founded a new religion known as Confucianism. We understand you are pursuing your own religious Theology, but if you desire us to spread our beliefs to your shores we will be able to in the future. Our people have recently switched to a system of Hereditary Rule and Slavery. We expect to adopt an Organised Religion at the same time as becoming a Beaurocracy, and after that it will be easier to use missionaries to spread these new ideas.


Is there any news from the war with Merlot? Please let us know if you require any assistance.

We hope all is well on your shores.

Best regards,
Irgy, on behalf of Team Sirius

It would be nice if we (Special Envoy nabaxo) could draft a reply to this soon since it has been a long time since they sent this to us.

 

[Sommerswerd]

We need to respond to Sirius, but our reply has to mention that we are settling another city on Jennilund soon, as well as mention that the barb city, Carib is defended by 3 warriors and has grown to size 2, and so is ripe for capture. We also need to tell them we are probably teching Construction next (the polls are still open) and that we dont have the GW on Jennilund, but instead have it in our capital (which they should know anyway from the "Top 5 cities" demographics screen.

As has been mentioned before, it is better to avoid trying to divide Jennilund along East-West lines. We will get much more productive cities and much less cultural conflict if we go with a North - South distribution. Obviously the Southern Jungle is better than the Nortern desert, also the South is wide while the North is slim. So we have to offer them a distribution that gives them more rows in the north, to make up for our wider rows in the south.

Here is a suggestion for dividing Jennilund

Spoiler :

Key
Orange = Current No-Settle Line
Red = Proposed No-Settle Line
Yellow = Alternate No-Settle Line
Green Circles = Resources Available
Blue Circles = Possible AMAZON City Sites

We could use the Banana in the center of Jennilund as the new "No-Settle" line. That would give Sirius 10 rows to settle and we would get 8 rows. No one could settle on that (Red) line, Sirius would have to settle North of it, and we would have to settle South of it.

If they balk and say that it makes their land too small, we could offer the Yellow line as a comprimise. Another way to go would be to make the Red AND Yellow lines a No-Settle Zone, which would prevent either of us from settling too close to the other's side of Jennilund.

This way of dividing Jennilund is good because:
1. We leave it up to them where they want to build their cities instead of dictating where there cities must go
2. We are taking all the Elephants with our next city anyway
3. We ensure that we both get Bananas
4. They are guaranteed Marble with no cultural competition from us
5. They have the UB "dikes" that will allow them better use of the water tiles around the Northern Spire
6. We can keep REXing on Jennilund while we battle for control of Marthaton. Merlot will have to focus on defending their city while we can limit our action to containment and disruption of their Copper, while we REX all around them.
7. They get to take the barb city (Carib)
8. We get both Horses and both Elephants

They will obviously be unhappy with us getting all the strategic resources, but we can remind them that our treaty obligates us to give them priority in resource trades and offer to trade our surplus resources to them. So they dont have to worry, we will trade them Horses and Elephant/Ivory. We can even offer to just gift the Horses and Elephants to them.

Also, their dikes which essentially give them a Moai statue in every city, gives them the better use of the water-heavy, Northern Spire. The spire would just be a waste for us to settle.

Additionally, by claiming the barb city, they have basically claimed all of the flood plains, and by claiming the Marble, they make it so that we really can't settle anywhere near the Marble, so the Northern spire is essentially off limits to us. Plus, their CRE trait makes it problematic for us to settle our cities near theirs anyway because they will be overwhelmed by their +2.

Finally... we are at War with Merlot, while they continue to avoid war with Mavs. Since they are staying at peace with Mavs, they can peacefully expand onto Bode. We can't expand onto Marthaton, because if we do, we risk losing cities to Merlot. So since we HAVE to expand into Jennilund, we can make better and faster use of the Southern Jungle, which will fogbust the Barb-generating jungle faster.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I like the North South idea for dividing up Jenniland. That will make for a far more efficient use of space.

Here is a draft of what will be sent to Sirius. There is a lot of info, so I wanted to give everyone a chance to look at it, especially nabaxo, since the letter will be signed in his name

Hello to our Sirian friends,

We apologize for taking so long to respond to your last message, our Diplomat was on a long Deer hunting expedition and has decided to extend the trip to engage in some fur-trapping as well.

Research

As you know, we are almost finished with Theology, and will most likely be starting Construction next. Catapults to use against Merlot's Royal Army will be useful indeed.

Settling

Our scouts have confirmed that Merlot has multiple dangerous units patroling Marthaton, and since they have already killed one of our units, we need to establish a military presence on Marthaton prior to settling there. Consequently, we have postponed our plans to settle on Marthaton, in favor of settling Anjennida, while we build up our military defenses there. We have already settled a city called Myrine near the Horses, and we will soon settle another city south of Myrine near the Elephants.

Our scouts have discovered that barbarian city in NW Anjennida is called Carib, and is defended by 3 ferocious native Warriors. We have also uncovered that the city is growing rapidly (pop 2) and that the Carib natives there are very agressive. getting this information cost our scout her life which was very suprising to us, considering that she was on horseback. We can only guess that she must have been surrounded and overwhelmed by the many foes in the city, perhaps even ambushed by their native patrols. As is said on our island, dead women tell no tales...

When we expressed an intention to capture the city, we also requested your input on what you would like us to do with the city once we captured it. As has been demonstrated, the Caribs are hostile and dangerous. Our people are demanding vengeance for the death of our scout and more importantly, the elimmination of the Carib threat before it becomes out of control. However, we respect your claim to the city, and will attempt to contain them until you are able to subdue the Carib natives. Hopefully you will be able to assimilate these savages into your Sirian Empire without too much difficulty.

With respect to the Great Wall, we have constructed this Wonder on our home island rather than on the Mainland. Construction was started long before we discovered that the landmasses connected at the center, and at the time Captain Sommerswerd had become convinced that all the landmasses were similarly sized islands. When we uncovered that this was a miscalculation, we voted on whether to move the project to the Mainland, but this plan was voted down, and construction was completed as originally planned. Consequently, we do not derive any benefit from the Great Wall on Anjennida, and thus are at risk from the Caribs.

One topic we would like to mention however, is your comment that "We have also noticed the barbarian city which has spawned on Anjennida." We are curious as to when you noticed the barbarian camp. The spawning of barbarian cities is certainly a subject which we consider important and we encourage you to not hesitate to inform us of any barbarian cities you might encounter in the future.

We have developed a suggestion for the settlement of Anjennida that will address many of the concerns we have been discussing over our long and fruitful friendship. We tried to come up with a plan that would protect the Sirian claim to the Marble, protect the Sirian claim to the subjugation of the Caribs, while dividing the land in an equitable way that would maximize tile usage and minimize cultural competition.

What we are suggesting, is dividing Anjennida along North-South lines, rather than East-West lines, with Sirius receiving the North and The AMAZON receiving the South. Towards this end, we favor a new, permanent, 'No-Settle' line, located at the Banana located roughly south of the center of Anjennida. For reference, this Banana is located on the same latitude as the Horse on the Sirius side. Sirius cities would have to be located North of this lne, but not on it, AMAZON cities would have to be South of the line and not on it.

This approach would give Sirius Marble, Whale, Banana and Clams as well as all the Flood Plains. The AMAZON would get Horse, Elephant, Banana and Clams. The Southern part or Anjennida is obviously wider, therefore in our approach, we designate more rows to Sirius, to make up for the difference in land tiles. This approach obviously still gives Sirius more water tiles, but with your legendary water management abilities (UB - Dike), and commercial skills (FIN), we are confident that you can make better use of these water tiles than the landlubbing Zenobians. An additional consideration is that our proposal means that the onerous task of chopping away the jungle will be The AMAZONs' responsibility. Another obvious issue is the distribution of Elephants and Horses. Of course, we would provide our Sirian allies with Horses and Ivory to suit their needs, so there would be no risk of your people having to go about on foot. If the Sirians have already settled a city on Anjennida that is on or below the proposed line, we will happily capture Carib for you, right away, and then we can simply exchange these two cities. Hopefully these accomodations will allow us to reach an beneficial agreement on the sharing of Anjennida.

Mavericks and Merlot

We are pleased that you have been able to maintain a peaceful relationship with the Mavericks, undoubtedly this will make it easier to pursue the settlement of Bode. Unfortunately, we do not benefit from a similar peaceful arrangement with Merlot, necessitating our settlement of Anjennida instead of Marthaton. We will do our best to assume the responsibility of preventing Merlot from contacting Mavericks, in order to support you continued peaceful expansion on Bode. Currently, we have an Axe wielding scout headed South to block the approach by land.

The Mavericks have two cities named "Iron" and "Copper." Since the Mavericks appear to have discovered Iron Working, we assume that these names are accurate, and intended as a warning to potential enemies that they have these resources. Our scouts have confirmed that Merlot has a similar "Copper City" on Marthaton, and they are in the process of mining and roading the Copper. Have you spotted any Maverick Spears or Axes yet? The Copper seems to be located in a simliar position as the Horses, on opposite ends of the island, 7 tiles from the desert at the bottom (innermost part) of the island with a range of hills in between. There are also Cows present at 4 tiles up and 8 tiles up. We have not located the stone on Marthaton yet.

Religion
Congrats on founding Confucianism. We still desire very much to have you spread Confuscianism to us, regardless of whether we are able to sucessfully found Christianity. Buddhism has already spread to our lands, most likely because of the legends our people have heard about Stonehenge, since we did not notice any missionaries.

We look forward to hearing from our friends,

nabaxo, Special AMAZON Envoy to Sirius

 

[nabaxo]

Really lengthy, but good. Though I have my doubts that they'll agree to the new division of Jennilund.

 

[Sommerswerd]

With Special Envoy nabaxo's blessing, this (the above letter) was sent to Sirius:

Spoiler :

Hello to our Sirian friends,

We apologize for taking so long to respond to your last message, our Diplomat was on a long Deer hunting expedition and has decided to extend the trip to engage in some fur-trapping as well.

Research

As you know, we are almost finished with Theology, and will most likely be starting Construction next. Catapults to use against Merlot's Royal Army will be useful indeed.

Settling

Our scouts have confirmed that Merlot has multiple dangerous units patroling Marthaton, and since they have already killed one of our units, we need to establish a military presence on Marthaton prior to settling there. Consequently, we have postponed our plans to settle on Marthaton, in favor of settling Anjennida, while we build up our military defenses there. We have already settled a city called Myrine near the Horses, and we will soon settle another city south of Myrine near the Elephants.

Our scouts have discovered that barbarian city in NW Anjennida is called Carib, and is defended by 3 ferocious native Warriors. We have also uncovered that the city is growing rapidly (pop 2) and that the Carib natives there are very agressive. getting this information cost our scout her life which was very suprising to us, considering that she was on horseback. We can only guess that she must have been surrounded and overwhelmed by the many foes in the city, perhaps even ambushed by their native patrols. As is said on our island, dead women tell no tales...

When we expressed an intention to capture the city, we also requested your input on what you would like us to do with the city once we captured it. As has been demonstrated, the Caribs are hostile and dangerous. Our people are demanding vengeance for the death of our scout and more importantly, the elimmination of the Carib threat before it becomes out of control. However, we respect your claim to the city, and will attempt to contain them until you are able to subdue the Carib natives. Hopefully you will be able to assimilate these savages into your Sirian Empire without too much difficulty.

With respect to the Great Wall, we have constructed this Wonder on our home island rather than on the Mainland. Construction was started long before we discovered that the landmasses connected at the center, and at the time Captain Sommerswerd had become convinced that all the landmasses were similarly sized islands. When we uncovered that this was a miscalculation, we voted on whether to move the project to the Mainland, but this plan was voted down, and construction was completed as originally planned. Consequently, we do not derive any benefit from the Great Wall on Anjennida, and thus are at risk from the Caribs.

One topic we would like to mention however, is your comment that "We have also noticed the barbarian city which has spawned on Anjennida." We are curious as to when you noticed the barbarian camp. The spawning of barbarian cities is certainly a subject which we consider important and we encourage you to not hesitate to inform us of any barbarian cities you might encounter in the future.

We have developed a suggestion for the settlement of Anjennida that will address many of the concerns we have been discussing over our long and fruitful friendship. We tried to come up with a plan that would protect the Sirian claim to the Marble, protect the Sirian claim to the subjugation of the Caribs, while dividing the land in an equitable way that would maximize tile usage and minimize cultural competition.

What we are suggesting, is dividing Anjennida along North-South lines, rather than East-West lines, with Sirius receiving the North and The AMAZON receiving the South. Towards this end, we favor a new, permanent, 'No-Settle' line, located at the Banana located roughly south of the center of Anjennida. For reference, this Banana is located on the same latitude as the Horse on the Sirius side. Sirius cities would have to be located North of this lne, but not on it, AMAZON cities would have to be South of the line and not on it.

This approach would give Sirius Marble, Whale, Banana and Clams as well as all the Flood Plains. The AMAZON would get Horse, Elephant, Banana and Clams. The Southern part or Anjennida is obviously wider, therefore in our approach, we designate more rows to Sirius, to make up for the difference in land tiles. This approach obviously still gives Sirius more water tiles, but with your legendary water management abilities (UB - Dike), and commercial skills (FIN), we are confident that you can make better use of these water tiles than the landlubbing Zenobians. An additional consideration is that our proposal means that the onerous task of chopping away the jungle will be The AMAZONs' responsibility. Another obvious issue is the distribution of Elephants and Horses. Of course, we would provide our Sirian allies with Horses and Ivory to suit their needs, so there would be no risk of your people having to go about on foot. If the Sirians have already settled a city on Anjennida that is on or below the proposed line, we will happily capture Carib for you, right away, and then we can simply exchange these two cities. Hopefully these accomodations will allow us to reach an beneficial agreement on the sharing of Anjennida.

Mavericks and Merlot

We are pleased that you have been able to maintain a peaceful relationship with the Mavericks, undoubtedly this will make it easier to pursue the settlement of Bode. Unfortunately, we do not benefit from a similar peaceful arrangement with Merlot, necessitating our settlement of Anjennida instead of Marthaton. We will do our best to assume the responsibility of preventing Merlot from contacting Mavericks, in order to support you continued peaceful expansion on Bode. Currently, we have an Axe wielding scout headed South to block the approach by land.

The Mavericks have two cities named "Iron" and "Copper." Since the Mavericks appear to have discovered Iron Working, we assume that these names are accurate, and intended as a warning to potential enemies that they have these resources. Our scouts have confirmed that Merlot has a similar "Copper City" on Marthaton, and they are in the process of mining and roading the Copper. Have you spotted any Maverick Spears or Axes yet? The Copper seems to be located in a simliar position as the Horses, on opposite ends of the island, 7 tiles from the desert at the bottom (innermost part) of the island with a range of hills in between. There are also Cows present at 4 tiles up and 8 tiles up. We have not located the stone on Marthaton yet.

Religion
Congrats on founding Confucianism. We still desire very much to have you spread Confuscianism to us, regardless of whether we are able to sucessfully found Christianity. Buddhism has already spread to our lands, most likely because of the legends our people have heard about Stonehenge, since we did not notice any missionaries.

We look forward to hearing from our friends,

nabaxo, Special AMAZON Envoy to Sirius

 

[damnrunner]

Great

 

[Sommerswerd]

This was sent today by Sirius to the whole ETTT Alliance:

Fellow ETTA members,

Based on feedback from other teams, we will pursue Paper next to enable trade map trading. This is not necessarily a high priority for us, but other members seem to have the immediate tech needs covered. Our current understanding of the research plans are:

Sirius: Paper
Amazon: Theology > Construction
Quatronia: HBR (partial) > Optics
CDZ: Machinery > Feudalism

We are always open to discussions of alternatives.

Quatronia alerted us to a Holken at the eastern end of the arm between us and Mavericks. Our settlement on this arm has been under constant barb attack, so we have not been able to fully scout this arm. We are even uncertain of the location of the Mavericks city. The only unit we have nearby is a wounded archer, which is far enough away that it is doubtful it could prevent the Merlot unit from contacting Mavericks, and is likely to be ineffective. If the Holken takes an indirect route (i.e. it heads north) we could intercept it with an axeman.

Sincerely,

Trystero, Team Sirius

So now we know Sirius is getting Paper and CDZ is getting Feudalism, and we also know that M&M will soon make contact and Sirius feels unable to stop them.

 

[Sommerswerd]

This was in our gmail box:

Greetings again to our Amazonian friends


Carib


We agree that barbarian cities are worth letting each other know about as soon as possible, were simply slower in getting our message out. We respect that you did indeed ask our opinion before capturing it, I apologise if our response was a little defensive but we wanted to be clear on the matter.


It is good to hear it is filled with only warriors. With the technology for macemen we may then even be able to take this city with a single unit.



Anjennida


While we are certainly willing to consider suggestions such as the one you have made for the settling line, we are not happy with the proposed distribution of land. We place very little value in the desert tip in particular, and while we agree that we can do more with working the seas we hardly consider desert and coastline to be a fair trade for the jungled grasslands in the south. By my count this deal would leave twice as much of the grassland in your territory as ours, and while we agree there are things to compensate for that it still seems like a poor deal. Also, the horses cannot be shared as resources until the discovery of Astronomy, leaving us with limited military options in the meantime.


Another (less important but worth pointing out to help the next iteration) weakness of the above division is that for all that it shortens the cultural border on Anjennida, it also creates a new cultural border across the very narrow channel between Anjennida and Bode. We have an excellent city location planned on the coast Bode which would include at least one tile of Anjennida in its BFC, so if that area of Anjennida is part of your land then a new cultural conflict is created across the channel


However, the idea of dividing the land in a way other than vertically is appealing. We would consider options with a different dividing line than the one proposed.


Personally however I still think the best way to tackle this problem is to create a sensible dot-map, and assign cities from that in a fair way. We would happily make a proposal using such a method ourselves but we still don't know the exact locations of your existing cities, which we would obviously need to account for. The discovery of Paper for drawing maps soon may make this process somewhat easier, but it may be worthwhile resolving it before then.



Religion


We will endeavor to spread Confucianism to your cities as soon as is practical. We also congratulate you on founding Christianity.


Best regards,


Irgy, on behalf of Team Sirius.

The letter basically embraces the North-South dividing line idea, but then asks us to negotiate with ourselves on the location of the line...

In other words," We like the idea but the line is too high... come up with a lower line and we will consider it."

They also suggest pre-dotmapping All of Anjennida as a solution, and ask for the location of our cities on Anjennida in order to facilitate dotmapping.

One of their complaints about giving us the whole south is that it overlaps 1 tile with a city site on Bode that they have their eye on.

In our reply, I think we should politely decline their invitation to negotiate with ourselves, and also decline the pre dotmapping approach. We can just remind them that The AMAZON Constitution mandates that each individual city site be individually polled, so the method they suggest is unworkable for us, and we insist that if they want a different dividing line, that they suggest where they want the dividing line to be.

Also, we can tell them that the one tile overlap can be accommodated, and that their concern about horses is minimal because we will have Navigation soon, and anyway they are at peace now, so they really don't even need horses yet.

I will send a reply along these lines, signed by Nabaxo, if no one objects/suggests anything else.

 

[nabaxo]

I think that conceding a little with the line wouldn't hurt too much and it would help diplo. But I agree, I would rather see them suggest the new line.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sent this to Irgy and AlphaShard:

Thanks for your reply,

Participation has been low lately on our team so we are just trying to give more people a chance to weigh in before responding. In other news... one of our mounted Hippolytes spotted native Axes in the jungles of Southern Anjennida. Be careful with your units in that area.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Sorry, double post.