Foreign Policy: Spanish Apolyton

[Maga_R]

I do not think Spaniards are tricksters or are looking for the pretext to declare war on us because we unintentionally broke not a very clear agreement. And if they would like to exploit language difficulties, they would not say that they appreciate us communicating in Spanish with them

My reading is they clearly focusing on REXing now - and think they can out-REX their neighbors. That is why they are not offering us more usual half-half land split deal, I think.

If they were looking for pretext to attack us, offering city reservation deal does not makes sense. They clearly say we have a right to claim a city even in very provocative location, and they would not attack it (at least for 15 turns, lol).

I think the simply have good UU, so they are not worried about being rushed. But they want to expand without wasteful settler races, so they are offer a deal answering to their needs, not necessarily ours.

BTW, do we know that such 15 turn city reservation deal is unusual on Spanish Apolyton? Perhaps what you guys consider "standard NAP" is actually weird and exotic to them?

also they might see us as someone of their class - we being together at the bottom of the score

 

[YossarianLives]

We received a message from the Spaniards back on December 14.

Hi!!
According to our deal, we are glad to announce a new city! It will be placed west our capital, one tile north and one tile east from a cow resource that its 7 tiles west from our capital.
There's also a corn resource just two tiles north from this location.
It will be a nice and very productive city with this resources and some hills in the surrounding area.

Hola! Deacuerdo a nuestro acuerdo de reserva de lugares, les anunciamos que estaremos fundando una ciudad en esta locacion. Es 7 casills al oeste de nuestra capital, uno mas al norte y una mas al este de un recuerso de vacas que hay en la zona. Tambien hay un recurso de maiz dos casillas al norte. Sera una linda y muy productiva ciudad con estos recursos y algunas colinas en los alrededores.

Un saludo

The message also contains a screenshot of the area they are talking about. Since this is against the rules, I emailed r_rolo about it. I decided not to post anything here because I thought that might make it easier for r_rolo to rule on the least intrusive solution if I was the only member on the team to see the screenshot.

I sent this to r_rolo's CFC email on December 16 (the day I saw the message):

Hi r-rolo1,
I am participating in the ISDG on Team CFC. We have recently received an email from the Spanish team containing a screenshot of a small area of land between our two teams. It is my understanding that this screenshot violates the following rule:

"04. Out of Game Actions
...
d. Sharing of Map Images - Map images / screenshots cannot be shared outside of the game until it is possible to share maps in-game."

I wanted to inform you about this so you can let us know how to proceed. The email was unopened when I checked it this morning, so to my knowledge I am the only team member who has seen the screenshot. I also informed Caledorn about this through chat. He advised me to email you, and I do not believe he has seen the image.

Thanks,YossarianLives

I also forwarded him the Spaniards' email with this message:

Hi again r_rolo1,
I just sent you an email from your CFC profile about a possible rules violation in the ISDG. I am forwarding you the email that contains the potentially illegal screenshot, so you know what I am referring to. Sorry about the double email, but I wanted to make sure to cover all our bases.
Thanks,
YossarianLives

On December 18 r_rolo replied to my original message:

First of all, sorry for the delay in the response. This one slipped my yesterday peruse on the received emails. That said ...

Can you forward me the email in question ? Just to check if it really breaks rules and to use it as evidence in case it really breaks them ... But yes, direct screenies of the game are, as far as I understand the ruleset, forbidden .

My reply:

Hi r_rolo1,
As requested, I am forwarding you the email that contains a screenshot. The tiles revealed in the screenshot have all already been uncovered by our team, and we would have been able to deduce the location based on their written description alone. I think this was probably an unfortunate oversight by the Spanish team. As I mentioned in my original email, I have not informed the rest of the team about this, so I am probably the only member who has actually seen the screenshot (nobody else has mentioned the email in our subforum).
Thanks!
YossarianLives

I haven't heard anything since then, so I guess I'm operating on the assumption that r_rolo's call is "play on". I apologize to the team if anyone thinks I responded inappropriately. I especially apologize about the delay in being able to engage in diplomacy with the Spanish team. When I checked our email today, I saw this message sent on December 20:

got it? its this ok ?

I think we should immediately reply that we have received their message and respect their city reservation. Something short like:

Sorry about the delayed response. We received your email, and we will not settle around your reserved area.

In Spanish:

Disculpe la respuesta tarde. Recibimos su mensaje, y no pondremos una ciudad cerca de su area reservada.

 

[cav scout]

We should be careful about throwing the Spanish team under the bus for sending us the screen shot. I think they probably just aren't as familiar with the ruleset as we are and it was an honest mistake.

We should let r_rolo1 know that we are not upset in any way with Spanish Apolyton and that we do not believe that they purposely violated the rules. We were ethically bound to bring this to his attention, but in this case no harm was done. It is our hope that he will admonish the Spanish team with a gentle warning and reminder of the rules and leave it at that.

For the Spanish team- it is important for them to understand that we didn't turn them in to get them punished or to gain some sort of advantage over them in the macro-game! A minor mistake was made and would have been compounded if we didn't properly report it.

 

[2metraninja]

We should let r_rolo1 know that we are not upset in any way with Spanish Apolyton and that we do not believe that they purposely violated the rules. We were ethically bound to bring this to his attention, but in this case no harm was done. It is our hope that he will admonish the Spanish team with a gentle warning and reminder of the rules and leave it at that.

This.

For the Spanish team- it is important for them to understand that we didn't turn them in to get them punished or to gain some sort of advantage over them in the macro-game! A minor mistake was made and would have been compounded if we didn't properly report it.

And this.

 

[YossarianLives]

So should we send something like this to r_rolo:

Hi r_rolo,
We wanted to clarify that we are not upset in any way with Spanish Apolyton and we do not believe they purposely violated any rules. The email from Spanish Poly has now been shared with our team (with the screenshot removed, of course), and we feel that no harm was done in this case.

Should it come from me or from Team CFC?

Here's another draft message to the Spaniards.

We received your email, and we will not settle around your reserved area.

Sorry about the delayed response. We wanted to check with r_rolo about the screenshot because we weren't sure if they are allowed in this game. We told him we thought it was just an oversight.

Is there anything else we want to say? We can say something about how I notified r_rolo without telling the team, and that the rest of you have just found out about it, if you think that would help.

 

[cav scout]

Those notes will work just fine Yossarian

 

[YossarianLives]

I have sent both messages above. I sent the message to r_rolo as a reply to the email he sent me, so that one went out from my personal email address.

 

[YossarianLives]

Message in from the Spaniards:

ok. finally your response and the reason of the delay! I had check again the rules set and as you said its not allowed , its was my mistake. No intention of abusing of rules. Luck for us you had understand me.
Anyway, I would like to know that I was doing something wrong as soon as you notice it and report it to admins. At least to explain myself.

He's right that we should have let them know right away, and we should apologize about that. They seem fine with everything though, and we should continue trying to keep friendly status with them.

 

[YossarianLives]

Possible response to the Spaniards:

You are right that we should have told you about our concerns earlier. We'll make sure to keep better communication in the future. We're glad we've been able to work together so well so far and hope that both our teams can continue cooperating in the new year. Good luck with your nice Cow / Corn city. We'll be in touch.

Team CFC

 

[talonschild]

Approval.

 

[2metraninja]

Yes, send that Yossa. Nice and short.

 

[YossarianLives]

Message sent

 

[YossarianLives]

We have UCiv's graphs now, and they show a recent spike in soldiers:

Spoiler :

What does the team think about sharing this info with the Spaniards? It might help us initiate conversation about their neighboring teams and how they're feeling about the game right now. It could give us insight into why they are running such a light military. Also, it could earn us a few brownie points with them.

On the other hand, we may want to attack the Spaniards in the future. They have the smallest soldier score, fewest techs, and least pop of our nieghbors, so they could be the softest target. If this is the case, it might be best to steer away from any topics that might encourage them to build military. Barring input from the team, I think I will include something about UCiv's power in our next message to the Spaniards.

 

[cav scout]

I don't feel like sharing this info with the Spaniards. Better for us to just quietly build our military.

 

[Maga_R]

I agree with cav scout not to share info about uciv's military

But I think, Yossarian, you can anyway try to initiate a conversation how they feel about the game, neighboring teams, etc

 

[YossarianLives]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad we're discussing this now, instead of holding up a future email trying to hammer down the team sentiment. Based on the comments, I will not share info about UCiv's power score with the Spanish.

Here's a different approach, then. This is a message that could be sent after they plant their reserved city:

Congratulations on your new city! It is a very strong location for you. We are going to focus on our economy a little longer before we place more cities in this area, but we will let you know when we want to make a new reservation.

How are things going with your other neighbors? We still haven't met the CivFr or the Apolyton yet, so those two teams remain mysteries to us. Do you know more or less where they are located on the map? We thought the Apolyton was west of the Germans, so if they are east of you then that would confirm an east-west world-wrap. Have you noticed any lands south of you? It appears to be just ocean south of us. Realms Beyond is sending a Scout through our territory, so we will let them know how to meet up with your team once they leave our borders. Of course, we will let you know if we meet any other teams, in accordance with our agreement.

Team comments / suggestions are very much welcome.

 

[RegentMan]

I like it. Keeps the conversation flowing without giving away anything.

 

[Caledorn]

Looks very good, Yossarian.

 

[2metraninja]

Yep, very good message, Yossa.

 

[2metraninja]

We should seriously think and make Spaniards to have Open Borders with us. They are the closest and we can build trade route to them the fastest. +7 commerce from the air (from the dusty roads actually) wont be bad at all.