Foreign Policy: Apolyton

It is not real threat. It is not even much possible case. Why would RB sponsor MZ for him taking the GM they would want themselves? I look at it as business trick: "Make me discount, or I will buy from your competitors down the street around the corner."

 

Yeah, but if it is a business trick .. At the very least make it sound plausible, no?

 

You know - sometimes you throw unbelievable prospect just to make people look at you more carefully. Like when kids fight and one starts: "I will cut your head off!!!" Well, everyone knows he cant be talking serious, but still, somewhere deep in your prehistoric part of the brain there is a red lamp which starts blinking: "Possible danger!!!"

 

LOL, MZ is good. That is a player with spirit! I like him LOL:

 

And this is the last that we spoke with MZ before he went offline without even saying a word. Typical example of just passively feeding one's fears and they to grow to monsters which make him plays his cards in advance.

 

Now, if we cant beat those dates, or simply dont want to bother beating them, we can tell him it is not required he to be hurry and give RB bonus for their tech by completing Feudalism this turn.

 

Will giving them this earn us many goodwill points, or is this primarily about who of us can beat RB first? Can we beat those dates only if we get a GM?

 

considering our score is skyrocketing I would prefer that we would play nice with our future allies

I think with the score growing a lot of the teams will feel that it's our problem to deal with RB...

 

My thinking is the same. Money cant buy us allies. Where nice gestures can.

I think we sweat him enough. Lets tell him we leave Econ to him and will even support him with some 100-200 gold without asking for any interest if it fits his plans.

 

And yes, with us occupying second place, more and more eyes will start to look at us with suspicion. Lets hope this will change in a while once we start slaving our army - our points will drop significant.

 

This

This

and This...

with all of that.

 

I'm late to the party but I also agree with supporting him and offering money if he needs it. He helped us with Taj and the least we can do is repay the favor with the Econ merchant.

 

Yes, it is good that he caught me on chat last night to ask me what we decided and I had told him we wont race him for Economics. He was almost unbelieving and said: "Is this final decision?" and I said "Yes. GM or no GM next turn for us, we are not gonna race you to Econ, and we will even help you with reasonable amount of money.". He was relieved, but a bit reserved. At the end he said: "I still wonder if you could have beat me to it, but it works great that I wont need to hurry it in 6. I wont even not need money if I take it in 7." He thanked us once again and said he wont be much around during the weekend. So he wanted to set that before maybe leaving somewhere?

As interesting side note, Poly had the biggest GNP last turn.

 

Very good. We need to help our alliances grow stronger. After we gobble up the Zulu lands and the other teams help us defeat RB, we're definitely going to need a loyal friend or two as the other teams will see us as the next top dog and start to plot against us.

 

I saw 2metra mention that we gave Poly 40 gold recently, 20 to repay an old loan, and 20 as a new loan to them. Is this all they needed from us for their Econ push? Hopefully, given RB's recent whipping / drafting extravaganza, they should be less of a threat to steal the GM from our ally.

How close is Poly to landing Econ, btw? Have there been any communications with MZprox recently?

 

The new 20 gold are to compensate them for us using their 20 gold way longer than agreed initially. Instead of paying interest, I agreed this will be fair - they to use 20 gold from us for the duration of how long we used their 20 gold after the agreed on period of 10 turns passed.

I dont know if they will need more gold, MZ changed info on this few times already. First he said he will need, then he wont, then again he asked if we are sure to give him money and this rinse and repeat he did few times. I asked him few times if he is sure to get that before RB and even pushed a bit by saying we might decide to take it if we think he will lose it, to which he assured me each time he will get that. But few times he told me he changed plans a bit, so it will take him more time, or he cant decide which specific way to take, etc. We cant do much about it right now anyway, so this is best we could do: push him for it and hope and pray

MZ is tricky, we must be careful with him.

 

Mz just told me this:

and a bit later:

 

As I said, it happened that the Apolyton mail was different and they did not got our proposal with the NAP agreement until very recently. After reading it, MZ commented: "But this is not a basic NAP. For example the clause where we are supposed not to give money to a nation in war with you. This is over the limit! Not gifting units is OK, but money and information?"

to which I countered:

"To whom we might be in war you want to give money and intelligence information?"

After long, long silence he said: "Nobody, I just wanted to say it is more than a simple NAP"

me: "But of course it is not a basic NAP, we look at your team as an ally."

connected with this, this is what MZ tells me right now:

 

MZ seems to be "fence riding" ... I hate fence riders

 

And another chat with MZ: