Idea for a Grand Alliance

[cav scout]

So here is what I came up with based on what know about the map, the layout of the teams, the Amazon proposal and our previous discussions:

A Grand alliance between Quatronia, Sirius, Amazons and CDZ

An alliance of 4 teams vs. 2 would be a very good and stable way for the first phase of the game to unfold. We all agree to share techs and cooperate with the goal of getting ahead of and then removing Merlot and Mavericks from the game.

The benefits are many-

1. CDZ becomes our friend and focuses their energy against Merlot.

2. We get the take the spoils of India with our flank secure.

3. Merlot and Mavericks both have skilled players and it would be good to remove those teams early.

4. Merlot and Mavericks are isolated from each other and have to face 2-front wars, making them fall that much easier.

5. The map will be balanced for the 4 remaining teams moving into the next phase of the game.

 

[Earthling]

I like this idea immensely - I would be very enthusiastic about this or an alliance as close to this as we could get. The four team symmetry is great and very fair for the teams involved at least - it could leave MERLOT and Mavericks really pissed at the rest of us but hey it's a game

In particular, we need to consider how quickly we want this information up and running and what to say about things, and the paths teams should be on. Obviously, if we trade among these four (three and us) then we want to tech things mutually to get the most beakers. But we won't all have contact and this won't all be feasible for maybe 30 turns more at least. So in the short term, here are some ideas I have:

-Be as open and honest as we can with CDZ, we need them to like us and they are a crucial part of this plan as far as we are concerned. Working with Amazons and Sirius I hope would work regardless - but I just don't know all too much about how opportunistic CDZ is. We need to avoid the early war, and then by the point that's off the table hopefully they are annoyed or just ready to attack MERLOT. So we probably do need to reveal more about other teams' contacts and get the ball rolling, maybe looking at 10-15 turns but we can't "hide" things from them. They only one exploring workboat and it'll only meet India anytime soon so we can't rely on CDZ to fall into place just on their own.

-Get India to utterly waste their military and expansionist potential. If we just let them think they have room to expand, build wonders etc... they could fall behind quickly, and I really do like how this alliance would isolate them, and give ourselves and Sirius of course a fair shot at gains in land and so on.

-Domestically, make sure we have decent expansion and lands claimed around us to be solid no matter what, but that's a given. I'm ok with going for a straight period of settler booming - I don't particularly think we want another wonder right now, we will hopefully work towards Alpha/Math/Calendar/Currency and techs which all are great for economy. So we make do with military against barbs and then we should just settler and worker things up, get Resonance and Asymptote and Cosmos and Axiom and basically just all those clam cities, they should grow nicely enough. I'm not extremely worried about great people affecting our tech, we are set to have a prophet first which works for a shrine, and then maybe we work on a scientist second, but tech trading is more useful right away and if we have enough cities it's not like we will be seriously behind.

 

[Bowsling]

Yes, I like this idea. We can isolate the teams early on, so that our landing forces won't be encountering musketmen.
There's even a chance the we can knock out the Mavericks early on, using open borders to cross their culture bridge and hopefully land on an unsettled corner of their island.

 

[cav scout]

I don't think the culture bridge works for other teams. And even if it did there is no way we could get enough troops close to their island without them seeing was we were attempting. What we can do it remove them from the mainland and keep them bottled up until Astro when we finish them off.

 

[TyBoy]

Is it within the rules of the game to act as a go-between for communications between two teams who have not met? It seems like it would be, but for someone who wasn't benefitting I could see them convincing themselves it was a problem.

Settler booming, with the caveat that any border areas should have a few troops watching out.

Getting across that bridge to attack their mainland before astronomy is not realistic in my opinion. By the time we could realistically get such an army up and running I would expect them to have settled their home island. Plus I don't think they would have any trouble seeing us coming in time to cancel the open borders. I can't think of a plausible explanation for sending 4-5 galleys to their home island. Now that I think about it, didn't we discover that we wouldn't be able to cross their cultural bridge anyway?

While that alliance would be nice and even for everyone, I think we would benefit more from not including amazons if possible, even if it led to a 3v3. In order to keep things unbalanced, we could attempt to include Mavericks until we were prepared to attack them. If we were lucky, they would pursue an economic boom since they would be in the pocket of our alliance. Because of the shape of the map, I think it's likely that everyone will very nearly have a border with everyone else, so it may not be that difficult to create the appearance that we are developing our military to attack someone across the middle, and instead use it to hit mavericks.

 

[cav scout]

I would be weary of a trying to form an Alliance without Amazons at this point. They have already discerned that the game is going to be dominated by alliances and they are intent on forging one.

They have the same level of contact with other teams as us and they have already offered their well-drafted treaty to Sirius. They are going to find 4 teams for their alliance come hell or highwater. If we turn them down or stall then Merlot and Mavericks will quickly join them. I suggest we get in close with them now instead of risking it.

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

Great idea, I was thinking along the same lines. Our main obstacle might be our desire to get everything we can out of alphabet. We might have to share most, if not all, of the knowledge we get from other teams, maybe in exchange for compensation of some sort. It doesn't seem like Amazon is considering Merlot at this point, or Mavericks for that matter, so maybe we can suggest the technology deal between the four of us and go from there. It would be dangerous to suggest an alliance yet, we want to make sure they'll go against Merlot first.

The important thing here is figuring out when to bring this idea forward. We can probably wait for a little while, especially as nobody has even settled on the main continent that we know of. The best for know I think is to make sure Merlot remains friendless, without seeming overly aggressive towards them.

I think we should be honest and tell Amazon about the second workboat and that we've met CDZ, so we can suggest them as a fourth member.

 

[cav scout]

I think the Amazons would think its genius to get the most out of Alphabet before we slam the door on Merlot and the Mavericks.

Right now Mavericks are the only team that will have Metal Casting for a while. If we trade them Alphabet for it suddenly it is available to the whole ETTT (unbeknownst initially to the Mavs of course).

Mavs will then think they can then shop tech to other teams since they have Alpha... but surprisingly no one else except Merlot (who they might now even have contact with) will trade with them Poor Mavs! Their Forum would just erupt at the outrage of it.

And if we can pull another trade ripoff at the same time with Merlot all the better.

 

[Provolution]

I think the Amazons would think its genius to get the most out of Alphabet before we slam the door on Merlot and the Mavericks.

Right now Mavericks are the only team that will have Metal Casting for a while. If we trade them Alphabet for it suddenly it is available to the whole ETTT (unbeknownst initially to the Mavs of course).

Mavs will then think they can then shop tech to other teams since they have Alpha... but surprisingly no one else except Merlot (who they might now even have contact with) will trade with them Poor Mavs! Their Forum would just erupt at the outrage of it.

And if we can pull another trade ripoff at the same time with Merlot all the better.

This is exactly the strategy that should be devised with the highwire Alphabet deal. We deal with Mavericks and Merlot first (push them into non-complementary or the exact same path as one of our ETTT members).

 

[RegentMan]

I would be weary of a trying to form an Alliance without Amazons at this point. They have already discerned that the game is going to be dominated by alliances and they are intent on forging one.

They have the same level of contact with other teams as us and they have already offered their well-drafted treaty to Sirius. They are going to find 4 teams for their alliance come hell or highwater. If we turn them down or stall then Merlot and Mavericks will quickly join them. I suggest we get in close with them now instead of risking it.

Agreed. While I would prefer a three-way alliance with Sirius and CDZ, this would set us up to be against the Amazons. Do we want to play a game where it's us and our allies verses Amazon and theirs?

 

[Earthling]

Well, we could switch to that eventually, I mean a 4-way alliance isn't going to last forever. AMAZONs as a member now works though for two reasons - it ensures the other teams will be picked off, because at most the two of them could ally but they are far apart and can't defend each other. And secondly, AMAZONs are really far from us and pose no threat, so bringing them in for stability of the overall alliance means we are safe with respect to our neighbors, and they won't really be doing anything to us anytime soon.

I still favor isolating Mavericks, and they are almost shooting themselves in the foot too. The reason is that they keep going for religions/wonders and Gandhi-peacenik stuff. If we even wanted them as allies, it would be less valuable to trade with them (I mean, if they want first call on all wonders and so on, and religious tech isn't great without actual foundings and such perks). On the other hand, they'll just be so isolated, behind in expansion and military they make natural targets. I'm thinking other teams like Sirius could be reliably convinced of this too.

About the beakers/gold and tech rates of the proposed ETTT from AMAZONs - I do think it's worth recognizing that teams could stockpile gold, however we could certainly do so too, starting after Alphabet for instance. The one thing that's clear is that as a group of 4 we'd outpace any other teams, but I'm pretty sure we can work things out where it's not like we are paying additional beaker costs just given away to the other teams.

 

[cav scout]

So it seems like the people in favor of Pursuing a Grand Alliance as proposed are:

Cav Scout
Earthling
Bowsling
CharlemagneXLII
RegentMan?

Those we prefer a different alliance set-up or are undeclared:

TyBoy
Provolution

 

[Provolution]

Well, I am for the grand alliance as proposed, but with the exception we milk some techs from Mavericks first.

 

[Earthling]

Seems right to me, at least yes, I am in favor, and for Provo's concern I don't think there even really has to be a conflict in those plans- the Grand Alliance probably isn't finalized until 20-30ish turns anyway, and at the very least to any team really being picky we have a really reasonable case to milk tech out of Mavericks/MERLOT first anyway. I really hope AMAZONs like that idea anyway, but even if not, we probably have some time to get alliance negotiations finalized, most teams still will not all have each other's contact.

 

[galdarian]

I'm for what ever wins us the game ;-)

Assuming that we can arrange this deal long term would we be looking to backstab Amazons first? It's probably a bit early to know how it would play out yet; Ideally how do we see the game playing out?

 

[CharlemagneXLII]

So, major decision time! Take a look in the Amazon embassy; Sirius apparently has alphabet already. I see two options:
1) Join the ETTT and get alphabet off Amazon. In exchange we give up techs we get from the other 3 teams. This route keeps with the grand alliance, so we'll want to put CDZ forward as team #4.

2) Ally with our neighbours and get alphabet ourselves for a 3v3.

I think option 2 has a fatal flaw: Amazon will soon meet Mavericks, and will get MC off of them and likely draw them into the ETTT. The only good we'll get out of alpha is whatever CDZ or Merlot has.

 

[TyBoy]

Amazons will be a poor target for backstab as we'll be in the worst position to reap the benefits. We would want Sirius or CDZ to get ganged up on.

 

[Provolution]

After some reconsideration, I think a 3. vs. 3. is not a bad at all, and it requires us to backstab the deal with Sirius and Amazons, as they cant reach us. What we need now, is to accelerate the gains based on our traits and UUs as well as coordinating wonders.

Maverick want an exclusivity agreement for Metal Casting, and if we pick this, we cannot pick Sirius and Amazon. If we betray Sirius and Amazon, they wont be able to reach us anyhow, on tech trades. Yet, we need Alphabet asap.

 

[MrBanana]

Very... evil. We should plan to btreay the strongest part of the alliance with the remaining three.

 

[Earthling]

I can't see a 3v3 working without us going with Mavericks or MERLOT most likely, both not my first preferences. I don't think MERLOT will be worth all too much as an ally overall, if we need them to keep CDZ off our backs. Mavericks could be economically strong and if Sirius/AMAZON were our enemies, they could be a good buffer, but we run risk of backstab regarding the alliance with us in the middle of Mavericks and CDZ.

I also very much agree that Mavericks could be drawn into AMAZON's and Sirius' deal, and little reason their team would not do so (their team doesn't have much culture besides a bunch of folks who are going to want to win the game, and that's cool of course, just saying)

So my vote stays on supporting what I said in other threads, if we need to have a new thread for an overall team vote that's doable too. If we are looking for a 3v3, though, I think the most important first step is going straight to CDZ and trying to tell them as much as we could, and get them onboard, then choosing our third ally appropriately; we can't do a 3v3 where CDZ could be enemies or backstab us, and we'd have to start cooperating on tech quickly. If things were to be a 3v3, I'd go with Mavericks and CDZ, unless we could pick off Sirius or AMAZON to join us and CDZ, but those teams just appeared to make an agreement with each other.