Octavian X
is not a pipe.
This thread will be used to discuss and keep record of our contact with Team M.I.A.
Team M.I.A. Official Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Octavian X
- Start date
Octavian X
is not a pipe.
On to the first order of business - we must plan a greeting to MIA. A nice little greeting message extending a hand of friendship to hopefully open the way for future tech trades should do nicely.
killercane
Deity
How do we go about diplomacy in PBEM games? Send an email or PM or ?
We can make contact if we decide to this turn, and I think we should negotiate some things right away. I think we should ask for an extension of time if we need it to discuss since the early game is so important in this context.
We can make contact if we decide to this turn, and I think we should negotiate some things right away. I think we should ask for an extension of time if we need it to discuss since the early game is so important in this context.
Emp. Killyouall
EVIL Emperor
How about "Hi lets gang up on any smaller nation"
In the MSDG and ISDG, we used several different methods including emails sent to the team's email address, messages sent using the in-game message system, mutually agreed upon chat rooms, and person to person contacts in chat and on MSN Messenger.
Provolution has already passed turn 28 to MIA. I'm going to take the precautionary move of sending a greeting email so they don't get offended by seeing our galley without an accompanying note of some kind. Sorry about treading upon Octvaian X's perogatives but I really didn't expect them to get the save just 30 minutes after I sent it. 
Text:
Greetings to the people of MIA, from the people of Doughnutia. This communique is just a quick advisory that a curragh bearing our flag has sighted your fine city of Athens and approached, to open a dialog. Our Foreign Minister is feverishly drafting our formal greeting and commencement of diplomatic relations.
Sincerely, DaveShack
Doughnutia Turnplayer
Text:
Greetings to the people of MIA, from the people of Doughnutia. This communique is just a quick advisory that a curragh bearing our flag has sighted your fine city of Athens and approached, to open a dialog. Our Foreign Minister is feverishly drafting our formal greeting and commencement of diplomatic relations.
Sincerely, DaveShack
Doughnutia Turnplayer
killercane
Deity
The save is in our inbox already and MIA has sent us the following message:
Salutations from MIA!
Our Foreign Ministry team is also now working to craft a proper hello.
But from one turn-taker to another - looking forward to working with you!
All the best,
General_W, current President of MIA
Not much info. We need to pump them for information imo, and we need suggestions on how to do that. I opened the save in CA II and they dont have writing yet. Surely they did not go for mathematics to get the SoZ??
The whole "handle diplomacy outside of our turn" is not going to work if the other teams are going to just zoom the save right back at us within 14 hours. Doesnt leave much room for discussion. We should take our time and do whats best for our team.
Edit: NOT a got it.
Salutations from MIA!
Our Foreign Ministry team is also now working to craft a proper hello.
But from one turn-taker to another - looking forward to working with you!
All the best,
General_W, current President of MIA
Not much info. We need to pump them for information imo, and we need suggestions on how to do that. I opened the save in CA II and they dont have writing yet. Surely they did not go for mathematics to get the SoZ??
The whole "handle diplomacy outside of our turn" is not going to work if the other teams are going to just zoom the save right back at us within 14 hours. Doesnt leave much room for discussion. We should take our time and do whats best for our team.
Edit: NOT a got it.
We have received the next message from MIA.
Robi D
Minister of (Dis)Order
killercane said:
Well they have ivory right there, so they might have thought that might be a good idea if the others teams were close by. And if they have gone for maths for the SoZ, then that's to our benefit, since there will be more techs to trade between us.
If all this is the case (and its a big if) then we can go about the trade by saying we wont go for SoZ if you don't go for Philo, but we trade each other the techs for these, making it a win-win situation
killercane
Deity
dl123654 said:
Hmm didnt realize that. They are probably just a few turns behind us on writing.
Lets come out and ask them to be our trade partners. Finding out their current research path is what we need to do; I dont think we should particularly care to tell them we are multiple turns into philosophy. Bronze for writing would be equitable if they are getting close to it.
They want maps and direction help? They can give us a non aggression pact until an arbitrary date for that information. Or information on other continents/civs.
Octavian X
is not a pipe.
Proposed reply:
killercane
Deity
The correspondence looks good to me. We need to do a lot of back and forth with them since the save will zoom right back to us in 12 hours or so. I assume we are going to send it on asap since we have been formally asked to do so.
Hopefully we can get it all worked out by next turnset. We havent even voted on going for republic or maps yet. Republic would be such a huge advantage Im going to continue to push that as much as possible. Are there any other suggestions besides plans 1, 2, and 3 in the other thread?
Im leaning towards Plan 1 (philo for us, stop research to accumulate gold until Greece gets CoL). But what to do with the 200-300 gold? It could be taken by an errant barb and normally I would like to stay at max research to lessen those kinds of chances. And it might take Greece 30 turns to get CoL, who knows until we get some info from them.
A possibility is to use the gold to upgrade some vet warriors to swords and send them to attack. We are either on a horizontal continent or a pangea looking at the minimap, and one of our opponents is probably due north. A city 3 tiles NE of the capital would make a solid warrior factory, and if we are on a continent, we could get some galleys out of a city 3 SE. We would probably have both of those cities down in 12 turns. We would need to scout the north with another ship soon to ascertain civ locations, but looking at where Greece is we are probably all on the 4 corners of the map. We also do not know if we have iron nearby, but based on the rich start we probably will have all resources nearby.
Why attack so early? For one, Persia and the Celts will have at best spears, warriors, and their UU. Warrior Code is a priority for neither civ. A stack of 5-10 swords will force them into an early golden age just for survival (IF they have even hooked up iron, and arent building up warriors to upgrade to their UU). Any cities we burn would further ****** their growth. Any techs we get is a bonus. They do not know where we are to counterattack. The window for something like this will be closed by 1000 BC. We wont be hurting expansion at all since we will be maintaining the settler factory in the capital and the worker factories.
Pros: little risk to us, but big benefits. Can severely hurt another civ and further our northern expansion, and get us some free techs/gold. Puts us in a position to dictate terms to the other team.
Cons/investment needed: a barracks that we will need anyway at some point, 100 shields in warriors +600 gold or some combination of shields/gold. Shields/gold towards 3-5 ships if the other civs are offcontinent. Dont know if we have iron yet. Lots of ifs, ands, or buts with this strat at the moment.
Sidenote: I dont think we are being absurdly tardy with the save, as the other teams are (probably) doing simple MM while we are trying to adjust some important strategy and vote on the same while getting to know another team. And Im thinking Provolution is running a limited dictatorship with his team so that probably adds to their speed. Im not complaining about being told to move along, without those constant prods we would probably hold up everyone for too long and ruin people's fun; there is certainly room for us to improve our efficiency.
Hopefully we can get it all worked out by next turnset. We havent even voted on going for republic or maps yet. Republic would be such a huge advantage Im going to continue to push that as much as possible. Are there any other suggestions besides plans 1, 2, and 3 in the other thread?
Im leaning towards Plan 1 (philo for us, stop research to accumulate gold until Greece gets CoL). But what to do with the 200-300 gold? It could be taken by an errant barb and normally I would like to stay at max research to lessen those kinds of chances. And it might take Greece 30 turns to get CoL, who knows until we get some info from them.
A possibility is to use the gold to upgrade some vet warriors to swords and send them to attack. We are either on a horizontal continent or a pangea looking at the minimap, and one of our opponents is probably due north. A city 3 tiles NE of the capital would make a solid warrior factory, and if we are on a continent, we could get some galleys out of a city 3 SE. We would probably have both of those cities down in 12 turns. We would need to scout the north with another ship soon to ascertain civ locations, but looking at where Greece is we are probably all on the 4 corners of the map. We also do not know if we have iron nearby, but based on the rich start we probably will have all resources nearby.
Why attack so early? For one, Persia and the Celts will have at best spears, warriors, and their UU. Warrior Code is a priority for neither civ. A stack of 5-10 swords will force them into an early golden age just for survival (IF they have even hooked up iron, and arent building up warriors to upgrade to their UU). Any cities we burn would further ****** their growth. Any techs we get is a bonus. They do not know where we are to counterattack. The window for something like this will be closed by 1000 BC. We wont be hurting expansion at all since we will be maintaining the settler factory in the capital and the worker factories.
Pros: little risk to us, but big benefits. Can severely hurt another civ and further our northern expansion, and get us some free techs/gold. Puts us in a position to dictate terms to the other team.
Cons/investment needed: a barracks that we will need anyway at some point, 100 shields in warriors +600 gold or some combination of shields/gold. Shields/gold towards 3-5 ships if the other civs are offcontinent. Dont know if we have iron yet. Lots of ifs, ands, or buts with this strat at the moment.
Sidenote: I dont think we are being absurdly tardy with the save, as the other teams are (probably) doing simple MM while we are trying to adjust some important strategy and vote on the same while getting to know another team. And Im thinking Provolution is running a limited dictatorship with his team so that probably adds to their speed. Im not complaining about being told to move along, without those constant prods we would probably hold up everyone for too long and ruin people's fun; there is certainly room for us to improve our efficiency.
zyxy
Warmongering Fool
Why tell them what techs we have that they don't have? Do we know they want to trade? We can also ask them what they have available for trade, maybe they'll tell us first.... my guess is they went either towards Math or Iron working.
I would choose Map Making as free tech, as it's the by far most expensive one available to us, and then research the Wheel, CoL, Republic in that order. Map Making enables galleys, they are a huge strategic advantage. The Wheel enables fast explorers (chariots) and shows us where the horses are. Republic is only really useful when we have reasonably large cities.
I would not stop research to wait for Greece to do something. How do we know we can trust them? And besides, even if we trade them writing (for what?), it will take them a long time to get CoL. We should play our own game, slowly build up a trusting relationship with Greece if possible, and not rush headlong into the unknown. If we can trade techs with them on an equal basis, all the better. But let's take this step by step, please.
About the attack plan: I think the map was made to be continents. As you say, to build swords we need iron working and iron, which deviates from our optimal research path. We don't know who is up north, if anyone, and what their position is. If it's Persia or Celts and they have their UU available, then an attack with swords could well backfire.
This kind of early attack may work, or it may not. We first need to know more about our world. Build more ships. Find out who is where.
I would choose Map Making as free tech, as it's the by far most expensive one available to us, and then research the Wheel, CoL, Republic in that order. Map Making enables galleys, they are a huge strategic advantage. The Wheel enables fast explorers (chariots) and shows us where the horses are. Republic is only really useful when we have reasonably large cities.
I would not stop research to wait for Greece to do something. How do we know we can trust them? And besides, even if we trade them writing (for what?), it will take them a long time to get CoL. We should play our own game, slowly build up a trusting relationship with Greece if possible, and not rush headlong into the unknown. If we can trade techs with them on an equal basis, all the better. But let's take this step by step, please.
About the attack plan: I think the map was made to be continents. As you say, to build swords we need iron working and iron, which deviates from our optimal research path. We don't know who is up north, if anyone, and what their position is. If it's Persia or Celts and they have their UU available, then an attack with swords could well backfire.
This kind of early attack may work, or it may not. We first need to know more about our world. Build more ships. Find out who is where.
zyxy
Warmongering Fool
Just thought of something: we can of course check what M.I.A. = Greece has, by comparing tech prices with the values in the editor, or as given by a tech calculator.
A reasonably fair trade is bronze working and iron working (research cost @ 2nd is 75+153=228) for writing (cost 204), or for writing and pottery (cost 204 + 51 = 255). The difference could be made up by a monetary payment.
Of course we don't need to tell Greece that we have a clue what they have researched
.
- as a check, bronze working (known by 1 civ that we know out of 4) should cost 75, and it seems to do so. (so Greece has it, as we already know).
- masonry and the wheel each cost about 120, which means Greece doesn't have it.
- warrior code costs about 90, and ceremonial burial about 60, again meaning that Greece doesn't have it.
- we can still sell pottery and writing to Greece.
A reasonably fair trade is bronze working and iron working (research cost @ 2nd is 75+153=228) for writing (cost 204), or for writing and pottery (cost 204 + 51 = 255). The difference could be made up by a monetary payment.
Of course we don't need to tell Greece that we have a clue what they have researched
.
killercane
Deity
I guess the landform is continents, good point. So the Q is are they vertical or horizontal? Our brave curragh going west will soon tell us. If Greece is on another continent, we'll know we share a continent with another civ, who will surely be due north. Logically, a "fair" map created by the mapmaker would leave each civ room for expansion and would place them all in disparate corners so that battles and such would not come at 3000 BC.
We would have to get an agreement in writing to "trust" someone else. Everything outside of that writing and the ruleset is fair game (can you tell I moonlight as an attorney?).
I agree that I would not like to stop research in any particular direction, but I do see some benefit in Plan 1; Im really on the fence between Plans 1 & 2. I would like to change to CoL, and have Greece do the 40% cheaper philo or do CoL and philo while Greece does MM. Thats if they want to be our trade buddies; I mean we could convince them through diplomacy we are a lock for philo, agree to nothing, switch to CoL, and then do philo, counting all the while that they wont try to beat us (with our headstart) to philo, but thats probably too risky for some people's tastes here.
I also agree that deviating to IW is not optimal, but I would rather do that than settle for Mapmaking as a free tech.
I didnt plan on being that active for this game but the competitive urges kick in, and you just cant help it. Balls out aggression and thinking outside the box will win this game. Nothing is "for sure" until it happens, and if we operate on the sure thing the whole time we are not going to win. We have the strongest starting civ in the game, lets use our strong start!
All the players on the other teams have read the war academy, strat guides, SGs, etc. and know how to play the game to differing extents; we should strive to use their knowledge against them by doing unexpected things (like the philo slingshot or marching a stack into the uncharted fog where we think they are). "Be bold, be bold; in everything be bold" is a good RL or civ strategy if you can apportion risk properly.
I like the idea on keeping tabs on tech costs, and we should use that to its full advantage.
Sorry for the longwindedness but we need some pep in our step and thoughts/counterthoughts on the board to succeed!
Why not tell them? Why wouldnt they want to trade? I doubt they'll tell us first, but if we open up and tell them and dangle something out there, I have a feeling they'll bite and give us their info to do with what we will. If they dont, damn them, and we can drop a few warriors off by their capital to initiate their golden age ridiculously early as payback.
Thats one vote for philo-MM.
Simply not true, sorry. Even with our setup now, we would be gaining extra food at each of our 3 cities, and loads more commerce from the gold hill we are on, the wines, and all the river tiles we are working. Even with garrison (insurance) units, we would be getting a 50% increase in our gpt capacity. Every turn we are out of despotism while the others are despotic is a turn towards dominating the world.
We would have to get an agreement in writing to "trust" someone else. Everything outside of that writing and the ruleset is fair game (can you tell I moonlight as an attorney?).
I agree that I would not like to stop research in any particular direction, but I do see some benefit in Plan 1; Im really on the fence between Plans 1 & 2. I would like to change to CoL, and have Greece do the 40% cheaper philo or do CoL and philo while Greece does MM. Thats if they want to be our trade buddies; I mean we could convince them through diplomacy we are a lock for philo, agree to nothing, switch to CoL, and then do philo, counting all the while that they wont try to beat us (with our headstart) to philo, but thats probably too risky for some people's tastes here.
I also agree that deviating to IW is not optimal, but I would rather do that than settle for Mapmaking as a free tech.
I didnt plan on being that active for this game but the competitive urges kick in, and you just cant help it. Balls out aggression and thinking outside the box will win this game. Nothing is "for sure" until it happens, and if we operate on the sure thing the whole time we are not going to win. We have the strongest starting civ in the game, lets use our strong start!
All the players on the other teams have read the war academy, strat guides, SGs, etc. and know how to play the game to differing extents; we should strive to use their knowledge against them by doing unexpected things (like the philo slingshot or marching a stack into the uncharted fog where we think they are). "Be bold, be bold; in everything be bold" is a good RL or civ strategy if you can apportion risk properly.
I like the idea on keeping tabs on tech costs, and we should use that to its full advantage.
Sorry for the longwindedness but we need some pep in our step and thoughts/counterthoughts on the board to succeed!
zyxy
Warmongering Fool
killercane said:
I don't know what they want or don't want. I would simply be cautious, and try to get an advantage everywhere. We can always send them a message like "we would like to trade technologies. Do you have any techs that we might like?". Sounds innocent enough, and puts them in the position of opening up first or being impolite. Anyway, it's not very important. I agree that they will probably want to trade.
I beg to disagree. Republic is nice, and I would switch to it asap, but it doesn't make a lot of difference early on. More food is nice, but we're not exactly short of food. You don't get a 50% gpt increase, you get 1 more gpt from every citizen (before corruption). Currently our unit level is very low, but it needs to get higher. Very soon we'll need more explorers, more defenders, more workers, and a few sentries as well. This could easily amount to 3-4 units per city (something like 1 worker, 1-2 defenders, 1 sentry or ship). Republic can pay for this, but you need large (>= 7) cities, possibly first-level improvements. Republic also needs more lux tax usually.
I think I read these plans somewhere, but can't remember where...
I wouldn't trust an agreement in writing, for that matter. As soon as we sell writing (the tech) to Greece, and tell them we're waiting for them to finish CoL before we complete Philo, they control us. They don't even need to betray us and research other stuff (perhaps Philo?) instead of CoL, just the 20 or more turn pause in our research is enough to set us back. And what will we do if they keep telling us that "researching CoL is taking them longer than expected"?
If we trade writing to Greece they should give us IW in return, so no need to research that.
I would agree on taking Republic as free tech if there was a reasonable way to get CoL before Philo, but there isn't. Map Making isn't so bad. It's quite expensive, and galleys appearing at enemy coasts may cause some panic, diverting their resources towards countermeasures.
I agree, in particular with the last half-sentence
. Simply marching an army off into no-mans land guessing that there will be a rival there somewhere sounds a bit too risky to me. In any case, that army should be composed of Mounted Warriors, not of swords
This was found in our gmail inbox. We really need to get our act together like right now. If Octavian X doesn't pick up the negotiations then we need to designate an ambassador (other than me) and get things going.
MIA said:
woxxa
Chieftain
roit! lets just go over there and show ourselves from our best side, it's no sign of weakness. This is just creating some kind of tension between us thats not really there.
killercane
Deity
I would volunteer if Octavian doesnt show up today. I dont want to step on his toes but we need some things worked out and need information to work them out. I'll send this with any revisions the team deems necessary in 6 hours.
Draft proposal: I dont think it gives away anything, but speak up if it does. We can still say we changed our minds if we dont want a partnership.
"Hail the Great Civilization MIA!
The Doughnutian people would like to extend an invitation to be research and trade partners and would like a friendship pact with the Greek people. A coalition between the MIAs and Doughnuts would be feared by any and all other people in the world.
We propose to sign a treaty between our two peoples to solidify a partnership if this is mutually desireable. We seem to be a bit ahead of your nation in research, but a partnership could benefit us both with your military might. Any such treaty would have to include information exchange on tech paths and ability, maps, etc. to speed each of our civs into a new age. Non-aggression pacts and war plans are all negotiable.
What is your current research path? We may be able to help further you along immediately by gift or exchange.
We feel that the closer we work together, the further along we will be in relation to any and all other nations in the world. Let us open up a new era in our nation's history!"
We're not REALLY going to gift them anything like writing or whatever, we'll just see what they say.
Draft proposal: I dont think it gives away anything, but speak up if it does. We can still say we changed our minds if we dont want a partnership.
"Hail the Great Civilization MIA!
The Doughnutian people would like to extend an invitation to be research and trade partners and would like a friendship pact with the Greek people. A coalition between the MIAs and Doughnuts would be feared by any and all other people in the world.
We propose to sign a treaty between our two peoples to solidify a partnership if this is mutually desireable. We seem to be a bit ahead of your nation in research, but a partnership could benefit us both with your military might. Any such treaty would have to include information exchange on tech paths and ability, maps, etc. to speed each of our civs into a new age. Non-aggression pacts and war plans are all negotiable.
What is your current research path? We may be able to help further you along immediately by gift or exchange.
We feel that the closer we work together, the further along we will be in relation to any and all other nations in the world. Let us open up a new era in our nation's history!"
We're not REALLY going to gift them anything like writing or whatever, we'll just see what they say.
