Saturn Embassy & Intelligence

I would agree with the provision that it only applies during the one game. New game, new teams, new situation. When it's apparent that you're on the outer of a 3 man alliance, and your only hope for an ally desperately wants to keep a tech away from that alliance, desperate moves are made that normally wouldn't be considered. Especially when the only potential ally is actually working with you, and is constantly in contact with you.

Once a backstabber always a backstabber...once a deal braker always a deal braker.

Personaly I would never trust again someone who broke a deal in any future game.
 
Once a backstabber always a backstabber...once a deal braker always a deal braker.

Personaly I would never trust again someone who broke a deal in any future game.

Yet members of your team was considering a fake attack on Cav to get SANCTA to trust you, and then backstab us.

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
 
I for one can understand Saturn's position on the tech trade. It might have been better for our bilateral relations if Saturn had just told us their decision once it was made. We heard about it from SANCTA which a) made us think Saturn was merely a ninja puppet and b) really made us quite upset with SANCTA.

What Saturn missed though was the opportunity to join the alliance against SANCTA. The Kaz/Cav alliance was very rocky at the time and it was quite possible Kaz/Cav would have gone to war after SANCTA was defeated. That would have given both Saturn and MS an opportunity to profit. In any event, I never understood how being on the short side of a 3v2 alliance was better than being part of a 4v1.
 
The problem is, we thought you and Cav were practically married. Missed opportunity, I guess.
Yeah, we were seriously looking at making it a 4v1 at that stage (although I was against the idea) so you kind of sealed your fate by breaking the deal.

Yet members of your team was considering a fake attack on Cav to get SANCTA to trust you, and then backstab us.

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Just keep an eye on which people suggested that for future reference then! :mischief:
 
What Saturn missed though was the opportunity to join the alliance against SANCTA. The Kaz/Cav alliance was very rocky at the time and it was quite possible Kaz/Cav would have gone to war after SANCTA was defeated. That would have given both Saturn and MS an opportunity to profit. In any event, I never understood how being on the short side of a 3v2 alliance was better than being part of a 4v1.

AFAICT you never gave Saturn the option of a 4v1. Instead you messed about with some tech trades. If you had come straight out with the offer you'd probably have gotten it. Lesson to be learned: being forward isn't necesarrily bad
 
Actually... Looking at the Saturn forums, I see that I personally contacted Lord Parkin almost right after we met Saturn with a very simple straightforward request for an alliance... He blew it off in their forum as "weird" or something like that because he didn't like that the message was in all Caps... :confused:... And then I could not do any follow up because our team had huge internal disagreement over how to conduct diplo... Ah memories ...

If you read the very first post in Saturn's Kaz embassy you can see that Parkin/emperor's (and thus Saturn's) attitude was poisoned against Kaz from the get-go.

So we tried and failed on that. Still... I was pushing hard all game for a 4 way though... Alas to no avail:(
 
Yeah, we were seriously looking at making it a 4v1 at that stage (although I was against the idea) so you kind of sealed your fate by breaking the deal.

Just keep an eye on which people suggested that for future reference then! :mischief:
I know you were talking about something else :mischief: but point taken... I have taken note of...
1. The First to come up with the Feudalism deal-breaking plot.
2. The First to go along with it.
3. The second to go along
4. As well as the two principled players who resisited the plot.:)

Oh keep in your mind
Six-Eighteen Oh-Nine
The Feudalism treason and plot
I see no reason
The Feudalism treason
Should EVER be forgot...

:clap: Thank you, Thank you ver' much. :clap:
 
Actually... Looking at the Saturn forums, I see that I personally contacted Lord Parkin almost right after we met Saturn with a very simple straightforward request for an alliance... He blew it off in their forum as "weird" or something like that because he didn't like that the message was in all Caps... :confused:... And then I could not do any follow up because our team had huge internal disagreement over how to conduct diplo... Ah memories ...

If you read the very first post in Saturn's Kaz embassy you can see that Parkin/emperor's (and thus Saturn's) attitude was poisoned against Kaz from the get-go.

So we tried and failed on that. Still... I was pushing hard all game for a 4 way though... Alas to no avail:(

Writing a message in all capitalized letters gives the impression of yelling. It also, to me, gives an impression of not being serious. I mean, this is just a random thought, but I guess that documents for the White House in the US (very important) are not typed in all capital letters. Other important documents that pertain to foreign relations between countries are probably not capitalized either.
 
True, all Caps does look like yelling... but I was able to send a message explaining that the caps were just a mistake right? IIRC I quickly typed the message w/caps on, pasted it to my forum, then pasted it into a PM...

I think I remember now why I was so rushed. At the time it seemed like PMs and chat might soon be banned on our team. I wanted a 4 way but some on my team did not. I was worried that once we went to only-email diplo we would never get a 4 way so I wanted to get some small statement on the record from Saturn that they would consider an alliance. I was hoping that having some small indication from them that they would ally with us might sway some of my team... Oh well... missed opportunity.

Anyway, I was just responding to Krill saying we never offered Saturn a 4 way alliance. IMO we did but got brushed off... That was my point.
 
I think part of the problem was the conflicting and confused messages that Kaz's multiple diplomats sent us in the early stages of the game, as well as the blunt way in which they often delivered these messages. Take this for example:

sommerswerd@live.com sent 23/03/2009 7:25 p.m.:
Will you guys tech Aesthetics for us?
When you're as blunt as that, without even offering a suggestion of what might be offered in return, let alone a greeting, it doesn't help to improve someone's opinion of your team. Just saying. ;)

Anyway, like plako I was surprised by reading some of the posts in this thread - apparently you guys had a lot of good intentions towards us. The problem was the fact that we were confused by the conflicting messages we were getting from all different members (one moment a conservative treaty, the next a request for a full alliance while it was blazingly clear you were many techs up from trading with other allies), and that caused us to think you were playing us for fools. I guess having a unified voice in diplomacy helps a lot in having people take you seriously. :)

As to the whole Feudalism thing, that was certainly a desperate move for a desperate situation. I don't think any of us at Saturn really liked doing it, but we didn't really have much of a choice. At this point in the game, Cav/Kaz/MS were running away with an absolutely insane tech lead. Moreover, we never heard from Cav or MS unless it was an enquiry about when our tech trade with Kaz would go through. The fact that the alliance was so powerful that Cav could be so blatantly obvious and arrogant to enquire to us about our tech trade with Kaz, coupled with the ridiculous lead you guys all had, made us very depressed at the situation.

Even so, we probably would have gone through with the trade were it not for the fact that we were being pressured and begged by our only ally and friend not to feed the dragon by giving you three Feudalism. Tell me, what would the rest of you do in that situation? Either way, you have to betray someone. But if you would betray and doom your ally and only friend, for the sake of keeping an agreement with a mega-alliance which has consistently been blunt and arrogant in a lot of diplomacy, then I do not want to have you as my ally. Just saying. ;)
 
Actually... Looking at the Saturn forums, I see that I personally contacted Lord Parkin almost right after we met Saturn with a very simple straightforward request for an alliance... He blew it off in their forum as "weird" or something like that because he didn't like that the message was in all Caps... :confused:... And then I could not do any follow up because our team had huge internal disagreement over how to conduct diplo... Ah memories ...

If you read the very first post in Saturn's Kaz embassy you can see that Parkin/emperor's (and thus Saturn's) attitude was poisoned against Kaz from the get-go.

So we tried and failed on that. Still... I was pushing hard all game for a 4 way though... Alas to no avail:(
Our attitude towards you was "poisoned from the get-go" because you so obviously had a huge tech lead from at least one and possibly two trading partners. If you had gone ahead with sending us a small gift at the outset to get on our good side (as I see many of your members suggested), we would very easily have warmed up to you. However, it's just a fact that the natural attitude when meeting a civ that's far superior in tech and obviously in an alliance is not to say "hooray, how can we help these guys?". You can't expect to forge an equal partnership when you aren't on equal ground to start with.

Also, maybe you have different ideas, but to me diplomacy is more than saying "hey, do you want an alliance?" and replying "yep, let's go!". (Now, if you'd come to us saying "hey, want an alliance? We'll give you all our tech"... that would have got a difference response. ;) ) But seriously... just like real life, you can't expect to become instant bestest buddies with someone with a one-liner. Especially when you're so obviously already in another alliance and there's such a disparity between us that needs to be addressed. You've got to work up to requests like this, building trust and stuff. We couldn't possibly take you seriously when you're already in an alliance with someone else, many techs in the lead, and then say "do you want an alliance?". Things need to be talked out first before you can expect a friendly partnership.

No offence intended towards you Sommerswerd, just trying to help by explaining things from my (and apparently several other peoples') perspective. :)
 
If you had gone ahead with sending us a small gift ... to get on our good side... we would... have warmed up to you.
But we did give you a gift:lol:... We gave you techs up-front for nothing... But that was not enough to get on your "good side." Saturn just took our tech and reneged on the agreement... so our gift/gesture of goodwill was just met by a :backstab:, not the "good side" as you suggest.
 
But we did give you a gift:lol:... We gave you techs up-front for nothing... But that was not enough to get on your "good side." Saturn just took our tech and reneged on the agreement... so our gift/gesture of goodwill was just met by a :backstab:, not the "good side" as you suggest.
You're talking about a tech trade that was completed in several stages, but balanced in beakers overall. Most peoples' definition of a "gift" is something that is given without expecting anything in return, except perhaps goodwill. You were in a far superior position in the game, and you were expecting us to continue working for you on a tech for tech basis. In that position we could never hope to catch up with the mega-alliance.

Even so, we would have gone through with the trade were it not that our friends on SANCTA - who had been far more open and generous with us from the outset - had begged us not to doom them by continuing to feed the dragon of your alliance. If you had got us onboard as allies earlier with a token of goodwill, or if we had not met SANCTA when we did - then your alliance would have got Feudalism, and we would have resigned ourselves to a quicker death. It was out of obligation to the one team that had been kind and generous towards us during the course of the whole game that we finally (unhappily) decided we had to break our agreement with you. It was never something that we had planned or even thought about from the outset.
 
You're talking about a tech trade that was completed in several stages, but balanced in beakers overall. Most peoples' definition of a "gift" is something that is given without expecting anything in return, except perhaps goodwill.
Well the tech trade was not "completed" (Saturn reneged) and there was 2 parts not "several stages" but you are right that we were expecting something in return... What it basically boiled down to was in part 1, we gave you extra tech up-front and expected Feudalism in in return in part 2.

The gift/ goodwill/ trust, whatever... was that we gave up-front and trusted Saturn to honor the deal they made. That is why we gave more up-front and took all the risk, as a sign of generosity and goodwill, and as an acknowledgment that we were in a better position techwise.

Essentially, Saturn broke their deal with us because SANCTA convinced them they were getting a better deal from SANCTA. I think Saturn would have been better off in a 4 on 1,... but that's just me.
 
Sorry, I should have said "was to be completed". Either way, the tech deal that we arranged (and fully intended on going through on, up until when the game circumstances dramatically changed) was not a "gift" per se, it was a loan. There's a big difference, especially when one team is vastly ahead of the other in a mega-tech-alliance.

And I think that Saturn would have been screwed either way due to our poor start, but in the end we were a lot better off going 3 vs 2 with SANCTA. Better to have a fighting chance against the three of you, than to commit suicide by killing the only friendly team to us and then waiting for the rest of you to march on us (the "spare wheel" to the alliance).

Also, there was the problem of you never seriously offering the 4 vs 1 in the first place (read: offering the tech equality required for a serious equal partnership). If you had offered a serious deal, we would have had a chance to think about it. As it was, that didn't happen.
 
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