Mad Scientists Embassy

[IamJohn]

Remember though that leaving things less defined can be a good thing, if we leave things open and don't expose their relationship with kaz and cav, they still could possibly trade if they see it in their interest (I'm sure they feel threatened by Kaz and co as well...), but if we toss everything into the open that's going to be much harder to do...

 

[mostly-harmless]

Hmm, from civstat it is clear that MS are pretty active. They also have other players apart from HUsch logging in. So don't tell me there is not a lot of discussion going on in their forums.
That implies o me, that the delay in response is deliberate.

mh

 

[Ronnie1]

They are just stalling....

 

[General_W]

New note from Peter:

Hi Josh,

I just want to personally apologize for not having gotten back to you when I said I would. It's terribly rude, not to mention stupid in a game situation like this. But it is primarily my own fault for taking on too much, right when work happened to start to get uncommonly hectic. There's been time to write quick emails - that's not quite the problem, but I haven't had the time or mental energy to just sit down and think, you know? And this team operates in a much different way from The Council. So the letters went unanswered.

For now, DaveShack is picking up my slack. I hope to resume my prior activity on the team (and the forums in general!) soon - but it may still be a week or so before that's possible.

In hindsight, I feel strongly that this game is simply going far too fast for my taste.

All the best,
Pete

Translation: I've had time - but not enough time to think up a sufficiently slick response to stall you without making any actual deals. Instead we've just ignored you - please don't be angry!



mh and Ron are essentially right - they are deliberate stalling.
I believe they wish they had written to us - but not to make any deals.

All that said, Memphus and IamJohn are right as well. No sense in making an enemy.
Even though both of these letters are just nonsense wastes of time - we've proven that we can still rattle their cage!

If they were in full hostility mode, we would not have gotten these letters. So the Mad Scientists have given us some valuable information despite their best efforts not to.

We should write back with something friendly (but impatient) pushing them for clarification and details. Let's try to pump them for information and see how much they'll give up now that they're feeling a little guilty.

Here's my proposal:

Namaste DaveShack and Peter.
The Ninjas salute the Mad Scientists.

We thank you for both of your letters. We’ve heard of this “other dimension” called "RL" that sometimes affects other nations. Isn’t Max Tegmark a member of your clan? Perhaps he can help you with some creative solutions to this problem?

Regardless, while we appreciate the sentiment of your letters – you’ve still managed to studiously avoid replying to any of our previous proposals in either an affirmative or negative fashion.

We’re talking again, and that’s good.
But what, exactly, are we talking about?​

We’ve gone out on the limb to suggest extensive cooperation between our peoples. We’re pretty sure we’ve got your answer to that. But now that you’re talking to us again (we hope ) maybe you’d care to elaborate on how you see the future of our two great peoples?

We’d love to hear your take.

Yours truly, in this universe and any others,
General_W, Daimyo of State, SANCTA

Thoughts?

 

[Whomp]

you’ve still managed to studiously avoid replying to any of our previous proposals in either an affirmative or negative fashion.

I think rather than putting it this way maybe something like "do you think we can get something done regarding our proposals or are you avoiding our proposals because you can't get your bearings and we should consider trading with someone else".

Laying out a "take away" can be a powerful technique.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

me, I tend to believe peter. He has said in the turn discussion thread that he's having a hard time keeping up with the game, so that may just be the case.

How about something like:

We aren't sure what we are talking about, but we have talked about a peace treaty. Can we assume that you guys want the aforementioned treaty - ie, peace until at least 1 AD, then 5 turns notification, peace including not using spies or privateers vs the other? A simple yes, we agree to that would be sufficient - we can worry about making a pretty treaty later...

 

[Memphus]

you can add in i got my appendix out and am back. haha just kidding.

 

[Krill]

I like Whomps' idea...

 

[IamJohn]

The issue is that I'm sure they know quite well (if they talk at all with Cav and Kaz) that neither of the other teams will trade with us without it being well into their side's favor, so I doubt they'd truly care if we threaten them.

Edit: The issue though is that we do need to change things here, right now we are right where they want us trade wise, in a swamp of nothingness. Obviously, something needs to change.

 

[Krill]

MS aren't of any use to us right now though. They have the potential to be useful allies, but they currently have nothing to trade us that is required (except masonry, which really, is as close to nothing as you are going to get).

They don't have maths, alphabet, or CoL; so while we want to be speaking with them, even if they did speak with us what could we ask them to do? We are gambling that Saturn will trade us CoL, so MS are a complete irrelevance to our choices, as Cav and Kaz hold the other techs, and MS seem to accept the reasoning that if they get the techs then we know there is a 3v1; do they honestly think that we wouldn't suspect something was up when they have dropped the ball as often as they have?

Gotta admit that I'm either impressed by whoever managed to persuade MS to completely give up any hope of winning this game, or exasperated by MS' stupidity. I look forward to finding outt which one is which.

Also gotta say that I'd probably give up any hope of getting a decent trade out of MS; either they are making sure they don't get any techs from Cav (while still in a tech alliance, and will be gifted all of the techs later on) so we can't ask for them, or they are just vassals and are having to earn any tech trades, but would have to gift anything they earnt back to their masters.

 

[IamJohn]

3 thoughts here:

-Remember that we need to be looking to the future, the more we push them, the more they are cemented into their vassleship, I'm certain they see us as a threat. Eventually kaz and co and us will be at war, and potentially being able to drive away the scientists could prove useful (as a distraction if nothing else...).

-Of course rattling our saber now might help that, power at the moment is something that is felt, not seen.

-Ultimately as well, do we care about this team? We need everything we can get, but our conversations could be a source of information for kaz, just as this is to us.

 

[Krill]

We can talk all we want at MS; all we have to do is agree to send it, and off it goes. Any meaningful conversation requires MS to want to reply to us though.

So, what would make MS want to speak to us? Possibly a tech trade, though I wouldn't bet that anything productive would come of that unless it involved MC or a monopoly tech. They aren't going to want to trade a tech to us, looking at their tech situation, and the current diplomatic lay of the land.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to talk with MS, just showing the futility of it. Until we show them what we know, and give them a deal that is much better than any deal they currently have, we should not expect a change in the status quo.

On the whole, I would consider that telling them what we know is not a good idea at the moment, as we don't have much to offer them, and a whole lot less than everyone else. I do agree that we don't want to be pushing them away from us right now.

I like Whomps' idea, but maybe it isn't that wise atm. Currently, from the other teams perspective, we are in a 3v1 situation with no team to trade with, and it appears like we are trying to get MS to trade with us (and thus it appears that we do not know the size of our problems). If we tell MS that we are going to ignore them, then they all know that we are betting that Saturn will trade with us, and they know that they can screw us over by giving Saturn a deal that includes a no trade clause with us (they'd probably take it for enough tech).

G_W is pretty much right that we don't want to appear too smart right now, but if we change our game too much, then we might tip them off. Need to be careful...

 

[General_W]

Excellent discussion going on here!

It looks like the team consensus is coalescing around my basic read on this: we need to talk to MS, we don’t want to say anything specific, we want to try to stay friendly & try to get them talking, we don’t expect anything to come out of it.

Sound about right?

I like the sentiment of Whomp’s proposal – except for the part about “trading with someone else” – on that I tend to agree with Krill. We shouldn’t start making threats we can’t fulfil. Until we meet Saturn and find out if they’re willing to work with us – threatening to go somewhere else is totally hollow.

I have modified the line Whomp called out a bit to make it less hostile.

I therefore propose we send out version 2:

Namaste DaveShack and Peter.
The Ninjas salute the Mad Scientists.

We thank you for both of your letters. We’ve heard of this “other dimension” called "RL" that sometimes affects other nations. Isn’t Max Tegmark a member of your clan? Perhaps he can help you with some creative solutions to this problem?

Regardless, while we appreciate the sentiment of your letters – you still haven’t actually responded to us on anything of substance.

We’re talking again, and that’s good.
But what, exactly, are we talking about?​

We’ve gone out on the limb to suggest extensive cooperation between our peoples. We’re pretty sure we’ve got your answer to that. But now that you’re talking to us again (we hope ) maybe you’d care to elaborate on how you see the future of our two great peoples?

We’d love to hear your take.

Yours truly, in this universe and any others,
General_W, Daimyo of State, SANCTA

Again: the point here is not that we expect (or even desire) a trade with MS at this point. But we want to see if we can shake some good intel out of them… and the more we can keep them talking, the more we increase our odds that they’ll come running to us at the first sign of strain or trouble in their alliance.

That’s the goal, imo.

Thoughts?

 

[Memphus]

send it!......

 

[Krill]

I think the letter does its job admirably. I'm happy for it to be sent soon.

You do need a haiku though...

 

[IamJohn]

and the more we can keep them talking, the more we increase our odds that they’ll come running to us at the first sign of strain or trouble in their alliance.

This isn't something that's particularly aimed at this letter but at something more general- How aggressive do we want to be about this? It's good on our end to be mysterious, what Cav and Kaz doesn't know they have to prepare for even if we don't have it, but some minor rumblings about this might help push things along the direction we want them to go alliance-wise. They have to be nervous, they have 3 other teams quite a bit above them in power, and right now at least they see 2 teams as safer to ally with then 1, and that's something we have to do something about if we expect to be able to squeeze anything useful from them at somepoint.

 

[General_W]

@IamJohn - yeah, we want to plant doubts in their mind... but if we try to do that too much it comes across as desperate and contrived.

Spoiler PBEM :

I'm looking at you, Memphus!

We already told them in our previous official letter that we think they're going to end up as the very junior partner in the Kaz-Cav alliance.
Now we need to wait for something to happen that we can spin that way - and then try again.

But until we have some justification, we need to wait.
Pushing too hard will only push them away.

= My take anyway.

I've got 3 votes in favor (Memphus, Krill, myself) and none opposed.
I'd like to send this tonight before I go to bed (about 5 hours from now). Are there any more votes or comments?

 

[Ronnie1]

I am good with it as is....

 

[Krill]

This isn't something that's particularly aimed at this letter but at something more general- How aggressive do we want to be about this? It's good on our end to be mysterious, what Cav and Kaz doesn't know they have to prepare for even if we don't have it, but some minor rumblings about this might help push things along the direction we want them to go alliance-wise. They have to be nervous, they have 3 other teams quite a bit above them in power, and right now at least they see 2 teams as safer to ally with then 1, and that's something we have to do something about if we expect to be able to squeeze anything useful from them at somepoint.

We already told them in our previous official letter that we think they're going to end up as the very junior partner in the Kaz-Cav alliance.
Now we need to wait for something to happen that we can spin that way - and then try again.

But until we have some justification, we need to wait.
Pushing too hard will only push them away.

= My take anyway.

The other time that we can push is when we look like a safer bet than Kaz and Cav. This would be, more specifically and in an ideal world, when we have Saturn and a straight tech alliance with them, and Pyramids/Collosus/GLH and are teching like fiends. At that point we point out that not only are they junior partners (which they will be) but they have no room to grow if there is a 3v2 war against us and Saturn, and if they join us in an aliance and then war they can get a good quantity of land off both Kaz and Cav, giving them a shot at winning the game, instead of coming in third.

We'd have to show that from a tech PoV there would be no/little difference between the two sides, and that we would be offering a greater chance of winning the game. Now, that might take a while to get to tech parity (eg 40 turns at best) but the rate at which we can tech with the pyramids and Collosus is so good that we need to sell them on our tech pace being better than the rest, and that we would gift it freely.

That's the theory, anyway.

 

[IamJohn]

I'm agreeable with the letter

We'd have to show that from a tech PoV there would be no/little difference between the two sides, and that we would be offering a greater chance of winning the game. Now, that might take a while to get to tech parity (eg 40 turns at best) but the rate at which we can tech with the pyramids and Collosus is so good that we need to sell them on our tech pace being better than the rest, and that we would gift it freely.

If we can do as well as you say we can (no doubt in the team's abilities, it's simply inexperience, I don't play civ4 much), then that seems like a sound plan, but that plan seems to assume peace, what happens when the 3 of them declare war in honest?