It's virtually identical to the arrangement I saw between kaz and that team that played portugal in the last game. One team will start mooching a little. The other team will expect compensation. They will dicker over the terms. People will get mad and quit. My brain will explode at the walls of text that result.
I'll cut in right there for a few things- lots of other Q were former Kazakhs, but yes, I was a Cavaleir(os). I left the game/simply became too busy last fall for out of game reasons, and missed the end stages anyway.
Though the ironic part is about the alliance - I was constantly encouraging my team to stop helping Kaz get too far ahead and plan a backstab down the line, which we did not. But what did happen, is those two teams really did get far enough ahead in tech and development to take on the remaining significant enemy, and I think Kaz ended up with the largest and winning empire. In short - the alliance did work in that game and yes, it was similar to this, because trades were taking place with very little regard to research costs, and the third team dragged in (Mad Scientists iirc) was basically given crazy amounts of free tech just as the third, smaller team.
So here's what is next, for this game - I really apologize about the air of inevitability, but I feel that way extremely strongly. Some set of teams will form an alliance similar to the ETTT, and if teams get left out (a 3v3 could become more even, but otherwise no) they will end up eliminated. I tried to make as good a case I could as the start of the game for turning off tech trade entirely and other rules to discourage such gameplay, but I simply don't believe other teams will give up on such alliances even if we do. Actually, I forget who voted for what but I know it was some other teams who won that vote and possibly newbie calls on the tech trading/similar rules, but again, I'm not surprised by some of these treaties and I really think we do have to live with them being kinda inevitable.
The simple matter is a formal alliance thing like that is necessary in a demogame - in a normal MP game maybe you just have somebody who is your friend and across many games there's kinda a friendly expectation you trade and work together, or maybe not, but these are teams of people who don't all know each other, so we have to make the treaties/deals themselves sound all fancied up and reasonable.
That said - we DO have options, but we would want to get acting fast. The lines I am thinking of:
-Ally with CDZ plus a third team, and make it a 3v3, that is possible. I am against this personally, because I don't like a couple other teams' possible playstyles (MERLOT, for one) and this doesn't really get anyone on a sure path to being neutralized, or even necessarily keep our alliance alive. But maybe we could even swing it as all four in the south against Sirius and AMAZON in the north.
-Go with some plan that involves cutting off the Vikings. This is risky because it means we need MERLOT on board, and convincing AMAZONs to take MERLOT along, because we'll need other allies if we want to stagnate and strangle CDZ.
-Go to several teams with a Treaty of our design, and tell the AMAZONs those critiques- the ETTT is just too vague or unsure to even be worth amending to us. So if our own treaty sets more specific proposals about trade, beaker value or whatever, we could do so if we want.
I do want to mention a couple of things - if we do go with AMAZONs I absolutely still agree on a long term plan. Some good ideas I think are still worth considering (much like I said in Cavs last time too, but they still apply) - even while in our alliance we could work on getting slight land, wonder, and other economic edges. I do think we could manage to have the best economy or at the top of the 4 allies which could work for getting a friend to turn into a 2v2 at least.
Other good possibilities/things to remember - We hope to get as much Indian land as we can to ourselves, and that falls to our own efforts and work - if we beat Sirius to the majority of conquests, wonders and land and resources etc, we could be the largest and most powerful.
And for military - if we get our cities and growth set up right we don't have to be the worse off, even Vikings and Sirius won't be indomitable at sea forever. We and AMAZONs are charismatic which really helps around the three promotions time and we can look for things like Circumnavigation bonus, good use of great generals, and all around smart settling and city defense.
But yes, this alliance in the end probably takes us down to 4 teams but won't guarantee a win, but then again that's not less than we might ever get anyway, I don't agree it's just the same as just starting over. And as far as hassle and worries go, I really would enjoy working with all four teams involved more than perhaps the others like MERLOT.
And one last thing, sorry it's buried so far down here - that drafted message is too informal/lacking the right touches I think. AMAZON sent, if not flowery
, but messages with more to them than in game descriptions. And after all, if we are talking about Mavericks and want to bash their heathen religions and affronts to the gods (Colossus too remember), or MERLOT's instability and inherent violence of the system, they'd probably appreciate it too.
Still, guess we work out our team views/if we all still like the ETTT before a final decision - my vote will stay onboard I think.
