Negotiations with TNT

[Robi D]

You forgot the worker, and maybe we should ask for 2 workers now since the original ones must have multiplied by now. Also please spell check it first.

I'm not sure though that we should accept peace now. Perhaps we should let the CR squad do some damage first?

Done We had three days of over 40 C so the brain isn't functioning at full capacity.

Also i am sure we can drag out the negotiations long enough for the CR squad to inflict some pain, the letter hasn't been sent yet but when we do i'm sure it will take them a while to respond, besides they probably don't want Literature anyway

 

[Robi D]

I sent of the revisied letter to TNT and received this response for donsig

Greetings General Robi D,

My people and I were quite glad to hear from you. We are pleased that you are willing to accept your women back. They are old and grumpy now and we wish to rid ourselves of them. We are happy that you are willing to accept currency from us. This is indeed a fine technology. As we already have a large collection of Ironic literature we must pass on your offer of Iroqi literature, though I am sure your books are thrilling, especially the rewrites. My people are considering your offer of 25 gold and 1 gold per turn.

The establishment of these zones of control as you call them is unacceptable. The Sacred Jungle is not neutral territory, it is sacred territory. As for the areas north and south of the Sacred Jungle we might consider an agreement that forbids offensive Ironic military units south of the Sacred Jungle and forbids offensive Iroqi military units north of the Sacred Jungle. Offensive military units are horsemen, mounted warriors, swordsmen and immortals. We see no reason to place restrictions on the exploration and mapping of those parts of our continent which do not fall within either of our borders. This shall henceforth be known as the Strider Doctrine.

We look forward to hearing your reply concerning the Strider Doctrine. Until we hear from you about this we will table our discussion of the other terms you have suggested.

signed
donsig II
Grand Vizeer of the Ironic and Iroqi Peoples

They have agreed to giving the worker back.
They have partially agreed to the ZoC proposal, in that they want defensive units excluded from the conditions.
They argue that the jungle is not netural but sacred, but they don't say how that is different so i have sent a quick letter back seeking clarification on this issue.
Finally they are still discussuing exchanging Currency for 20g +1gpt for 20 turns.

My opinion on their reply is that it is positive, but i do not like the loop hole they want in the ZoC as it leaves them free to try to flood us with spears or even try to attempt to establish cities or our side of the jungle, which would just put us in the position of going back to war with them. I reserve judgement on the sacred issue until they send their clarification

 

[Rik Meleet]

lurker's comment: "Sacred" might mean that you have to guard the grounds with D'nut settlers and D'nut cities ...
Or: workers are not restricted and when chopped it is no longer jungle, thus no longer sacred.

 

[vikingruler]

It was our proposal for the ZoC so they should accept it. Also, they consider it sacred but if a NCU move there isn't anything they could do but explore. The whole sacred thing is very stupid. But the deal is good, but we should get 40 or so turns of peace before agreeing, that way they don't get money from us to rebuild and attack after 20 turns.

 

[DaveShack]

Take a peek at the KISS negotiations page.

 

[Robi D]

This was sent by donsig with the battle log

donsig II (4/4 horseman) attacked DS squad 5 (1/4 mounted warrior)
donsig II lost 0 hp, DS squad 5 KIA

Greetings General Robi D,

I am riding south in an effort to personally attend peace talks with you. Sorry for inadvertantly attacking DS squad 5. As a general you must know how difficult it is sometimes to control fighting men. If opnly there were a way to undo what has already been done.

Having ridden south of the jungle in plain sight of your mounted warriors we will now see how much you and your people want peace. If you truly desire to end this war I'm sure you will see you way to not attacking a single band of warriors that is greatly outnumbered. Let the truce begin now and I will ride back into the Sacred Jungle and we will make peace. Please send my salutations to your Grand Assembly. Your question is not easy to answer as we find it very difficult to define sacred. Maybe someday when we research something called theology ww will know this definition. In the mean time, to paraphrase a wise man, while we can't define sacred we know it when we see it. Perhaps we would make more headway in these talks if you could define neutral for us. We could then respond and let you know if what you call neutral fits within what we call sacred. How does your assembly feel about only restricting each other's horsemen, mounted warriors, swordsmen and immortals from your proposed zones of control?

May all your doughnut holes be small,

signed
donsig II
Grand Vizeer of the Ironic and Iroqi Peoples

I will write a response and post it shortly

 

[Robi D]

This is the message i have written to send.

Grand Vizeer Donsig,

Here is a full explanation of our Zones of Control (ZoC) and Neutral Territory proposal.

Part 1a. Entry into the National Borders of the other party is strictly forbidden in the absence of a Rights of Passage (RoP) agreement between the two parties and will be considered an automatic declaration of war.

Part 1b. In the event a unit enters the other parties territory via a expansion of borders then that unit must leave the territory on the next turn without incident, otherwise it will be considered an automatic declaration of war.

Part 2a. The continent will be divided into ZoC with the continent North of the (sacred) jungle to be the TNT ZoC and the continent South of the (sacred) jungle to be the Doughnutian ZoC.

Part 2b. Any unit entering the other parties ZoC without prior agreement of both parties will be considered an automatic declaration of war.

Part 3a. The (sacred) jungle will remain Neutral territory with both parties able to move its units in the any part of the jungle without restriction except in the event it violates Part 1 of the agreement, in which case Part 1 takes precedence over Part 3.

As to the request of the TNT people for non-attacking units to be exempt from the ZoC (ie units with an attack value of 1 or less) the Doughnutia people have rejected that proposal. However as a show of good faith Doughnutia is willing to make one exception to the ZoC rule. This exception is that a party can enter the other parties ZoC with a maximum of two warrior units (ADM 1-1-1) for the purpose of exploration. These units must be disclosed to the other party before entering the that parties ZoC (ie a message advising the other party).

While this may not be to your satisfaction, do keep in mind this agreement is for twenty turns. I am sure you understand that the nearly sixty turns of war has eroded any trust between our peoples. This trust can only be rebuilt slowly, not only with lasting peace but also with both of us acting in good faith towards each other. If you choose to except our proposal of ZoC, then this would be the first step toward normalising relations between our people and not the end of the road. Continued actions of good faith will lead to more open relations in the future.

Finally you ask for an immediate truce and state that if we are serious about a peace agreement we will not attack your horseman. I would counter if you were serious about a peace agreement you would not have attacked with your horseman in the first place. We are happy to agree to an immediate truce once both of us have agreed to a peace settlement, but not beforehand.

I hope this has answered all your questions and look forward to hearing from you soon

signed

General Robi D
Representative of Doughnutia

 

[Nobody]

I think this is just making peace with us so they cant hurt KISS, we need to work with KISS to defeat the Forces of Darkness

 

[Robi D]

I have just received this "private" message from donsig

General Robi D,

As you can now see we already have a city in the Sacred Jungle. We were unsure of how this would affect your proposed nuetral jungle, however we did not wish to tell you about the city. This of course made negotiations difficult. Now that you can see our borders within the jungle am I free to speak plainly. Please note that I am sending this message off the record, so to speak. You are of course free to share it with your people but I am breaking with tradition and not including my people in on this. Please do not share what I have to say with the Greeks or Galls. If word of this gets back to Iron my political situation would be untenable to say the least. If you choose to keep what I have to say between the two of us, so much the better.

My people are a warmongering lot and I have been unable to convince them to give up this madness. In order to maintain power I have had to continue to put up an agressive stance towards Iroq. I had hoped that by avoiding a serious invasion of Iroq we could eventually make peace. Alas, even after suffering terrible losses my people still cry out for war!

I am currently facing a difficult election. I have argued for peace and a republic. My opponent argues for war and knights. Meanwhile, the Gallic Republic has been established and the Greeks will also soon have a republic. I fear that unless we make peace very soon I will be voted out of office and this war will go on and on.

I am writing now to ask if peace is possible now. We are willing to agree to your zones of control as long as we both have the right to settle cities in the Sacred Jungle.

I will be sending a formal in game peace offering including your captured worker and currency. I will *inadvertantly* mark this as accepted when I send it. If your original proposal is still on the table then please accept the offer I send so we can have peace. Any remuneration due us for currency can be sent along seperately after we sign the formal agreement concerning zones of control.

I see that your people do not yet have republic. In the interests of peace and countering the Gallic / Greece republics I am willing to try to push through a nice deal for you for this fine technology. Are you interested? Please respond soon. I will be using our whole grace period for our turn and may even request an extension if I do not hear from you. I do this because our best prospects for peace (and my best chance of remaining in power) are now. I do not want this to slip away.

signed
one in a long line of donsigs
Holder of the honorary title of Grand Vizeer of the Ironic and Iroqi Peoples

Personally i don't really know what to make of it. I don't know whether its genuine or a double bluff or something in between. If i am to take the letter as a geniune plea it still leaves me with a lot of concerns, because even if donsig himself wants peace there is still a large group within TNT that continues to want war. This means that even if peace is agreed to it could be a very short one. Basically now i need everyones opinion on where we go from here, accept peace or continue the war. We need to make our decision quickly

 

[Emp. Killyouall]

accept! everyone is runnning over us. We don't have to be stupid about it, but we train more defense and less offense.

EDIT well, accept after you burn for carbonperoxides and anything else to the ground...

 

[vikingruler]

we should take the deal. The fact that TNT but a city in the jungle really is quite bad. Since only two warriors can go into the jungle but we can't go into their borders, they effectivley increased their ZoC and border line. We should force them to disband the city or increase our Zoc as far as their city is in the jungle.

 

[Robi D]

Well as far as there jungle city goes i am not fussed. They have taken the gems, but if you look on the path they have expanded we are a lot closer to and could easily take the silks, for which MIA has expressed interest in trading for. But fear not if their is a peace settlement then we will expand into the jungle to.

On the other hand if a bit of retribution is what everyones after before signing the treaty then we have troops in position to take out two cities at opposite ends at the same time. Although taking a couple of cities off TNT might make them not want to sign a peace deal, it would leave us in a much better position then them regardless.

Finally i sent donsig a quick message that our we wont have our decision for this turn and that he should play it.

So far from what i'm reading the vote is for attacking some cities before accepting peace, however i would feel happier if there was some more opinions on the matter before making the final decision

 

[DaveShack]

This is a tough decision all around. If we have surprise at one of the attack points, we stand to be able to knock them down some and then maybe get the same deal. They might have even taken a peek at the NW stack and know they can't defend in time, and are using the peace deal to gamble that we'll take it instead of continuing the attack.

A potential counter offer is to require them to voluntarily drop any embargo they might have placed on deals with other teams. Word this demand as though we don't know if any such deal exists but that we understand there could be such a deal.

Lastly, we need to look at the worst case scenario for both peace and continued war. If we take the peace and then everyone stonewalls on future deals, have we sealed our own doom? If we stay at war are TNT or MIA on the verge of an advance which renders our MW's impotent? Let's not throw the game on this decision, whichever way it goes.

 

[Nobody]

I intended to send this letter off, any objections

Greetings President Donsig

Please accept my apologies for this belated reply, I have meant to disrespect moreover I need enough time to give your proposals full consideration they deserve.
On too matters of business, we may be willing to pay our part towards a Continental Road Project (CRP) if we both of our nations were willing to pay and “equal and fair” amount towards the project.

As far as military cut backs are concerned it is possible that Doughnut military could make cutback on troop number in order to increase efficiency and mobility. But such reforms are mere speculative because as you can understand matter such as that are classified because of National Security.

Most crucial to any trade Proposals is our continuing Peace. Hasn’t 20 turns gone so fast? The People of the Doughnut have no wish to return to the dark days of war. As such I hereby propose we Sign a Formal Peace Treaty*. This treaty would include the following points:

1. Guaranteed Peace for the next 20 turns.
2. Automatic Continuation for further 20 turns, unless notice is given 5 turns Prior to the end of principal term.
3. Recognition of Sovereign Territory, i.e. we will not settle north of the Sacred Jungle, you will not settle south of the Sacred Jungle.

Hopefully we can come to some sort of arrangement based on the above outline. Of course we are always willing to Negotiate on any point.

Also as a side note, we both know how long these Processes can take, during such time our current agreement lapses before we mange to sign a more permant peace treaty. As neither of our nations wishes to be engaged in a war for such a silly reason I propose we immediately Sign a Peace Extension Treaty allowing for another 5 turns of peace after our current treaty expires. Just so we can get the finer points hammered out.

I leave you now you may consider my proposals; we need to work together to ensure both our people can live in harmony without fear. Ill leave you with a quote that I find Appropriate:

“Blue M&M, red M&M, they all wind up the same colour in the end.”- Homer J. Simpson

Most sincerely, always you’re most obedient Servant

Nobotti Nobadazine
Foreign Affairs Consulate of the Republic of Doughnuita

 

[Nobody]

And they replied this

Greetings Consulate Nobadzine,

We are happy to hear of your proposed peace treaty. We will work with your people to arrive at an equitable agreement. In the mean time we have decided to accept your proposal for an immediate extention of the current treaty for five turns beyond it's current expiration date.

As for the three proposed items for a more lasting peace treaty, they seem acceptable on the surface but we feel there is more that should be included in the treaty. We are particulary interested to broaden the clauses of our treaty pertaining to the Sacred Jungle. As you know we have a few settlements there and we are wondering if you would be agreeable to the idea of a modified zone of control extending one tile from each other's cultural borders. Under such a modified zone of control we would agree not move units next to each others cultural borders. We feel this would serve to prevent small border incidents from escalating into larger unkindlinesses. We are also wondering if our treaty should have any clauses regarding each others actions should one of the green countries from across the sea initiate war on our side of the world. We are interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Lastly on this matter, we are interested in formalizing this treaty in game. Any thoughts on how or if this should be done?

As for the CRP we are quite interested. We are quite interested in hearing where you think our repective roads should meet. Once we agree on a route we will be able to tell you how soon we can begin work on the project.

Hope to hear from you soon,

signed
donsig
President of the Republic of Iron
Hereditary Grand Vizeer of the Ironic and Iroqi Peoples

ANyone got anything to say

 

[Robi D]

Interesting response, however I'm unclear on the ZoC one square from cultural borders, is this for the jungle only or for the whole continent?

 

[killercane]

The one space from their borders thing is bs, as it removes our two movement points for our UU or knights. In other words, they dont want us to park ourselves right outside their silk city or whichever city, and cause them alarm. We should reserve that right in any treaty, if nothing else than to draw their attention from where we eventually attack. We need to get rid of them before Nationalism comes about.

 

[Kuningas]

We do not sign a peace treaty, nor declare war on TNT?

From TNT:

When does our peace treaty expire?

Greetings!

As you know we are currently fighting off an unprovoked invasion by the Galls. Due to the heavy fighting around our capital we have lost track of when our peace treaty with you expires. Can you tell us when our war is set to resume? (We wouldn't want to be late.) If you'd like to postpone a resumption of the recent unkindliness we will gladly sit and talk with you about that as well as various trading possibilities that now exist between our two great nations.

signed
donsig IV
President of the Republic of Iron
Hereditary Grand Vizeer of the Ironic and Iroqi Peoples

 

[Robi D]

Well the peace treaty end on turn 123.
I don't know if we should sign another one or not, but if we are not and are instead going to enter the war then we should at least pretend to be interested in signing a continuation