TNT Term 4

[Chamnix]

This is an excellent opportunity for us to make some money. We get TNT ot reearch Contruction for us while stop the research rate and we give them some techs that they do not have. I know they want Monarchy, but we have absolutely no need for that tech, so we can give them other techs that they need desperately, while we can say to Kiss that we are researching it ourselves. We must be careful though because we need to see what conditions TNT put on the sale of Contruction.

We also have to be careful with KISS - if we give techs to TNT, they will know.

Proposed letter to TNT:

Dear friends:

We apologize for the delay in responding to your proposed offer of Construction. We have few actives generally, and this time of year is worse, and our Foreign Minister's computer just had a meltdown, and, well, you get the idea.

Anyway, we are continuing to discuss possibilities. Do you know when you might have mastered this art? Several of MIA's participants are also diehard members of Procrastinator's Anonymous and need a deadline to focus their minds.

We do wish to bring you news of the barbarians to your south. We recently watched as they founded the town of "Glazed" on the western edge of your continent near some wines. The settler was guarded by a lone archer although there was one visible mounted warrior not far away. They also had 2 workers nearby performing unspeakable activities on poor defenseless forest animals with a spearman looking on.

We hope this information is useful to you, and we look forward to hearing more of the successful exploits of your brave military men.

Team MIA

 

[peter grimes]

....We get TNT ot reearch Contruction for us while stop the research rate and we give them some techs that they do not have. I know they want Monarchy, but we have absolutely no need for that tech, so we can give them other techs that they need desperately, while we can say to Kiss that we are researching it ourselves. We must be careful though because we need to see what conditions TNT put on the sale of Contruction.

We need to keep in mind that KISS is our primary ally (at least until our current dealings are complete). With that in mind, it would not be prudent to agree to any deal that gives TNT technology without KISS explicitly approving. However: It never hurts to ask!

Regarding the letter: Looks good!... I wish we could get something from them in exchange for the intel.... But anything we get from them only weakens them. If we pass off three (or so) of these intellibits, maybe we could ask for ten gold (or so).

 

[Chamnix]

Letter sent to TNT (the language changed a little, but not much):

Dear friends:

We apologize for the delay in responding to your proposed offer of Construction. We have few actives generally, and this time of year is worse, and our Foreign Minister's computer just had a meltdown, and, well, you get the idea.

Anyway, we are continuing to discuss possibilities. Do you know when you might have mastered this art? Several of MIA's participants are also diehard members of Procrastinator's Anonymous and are unable to think clearly without an approaching deadline.

We do wish to bring you news of the barbarians to your south. We recently watched as they founded the town of "Glazed" on the western edge of your continent near some fish and not far from wines and iron. The settler was guarded by a lone archer although there was one visible mounted warrior not far away. They also had 2 workers nearby performing unspeakable activities on poor defenseless forest animals with a spearman looking on.

We hope this information is useful to you, and we look forward to hearing more of the successful exploits of your brave military men.

Team MIA

 

[Kentharu]

Dear MIA,

Good to hear from you again, I love discussing trade deals and war. Now concerning the deal for Construction. We are now 9 turns away from discovering how to build large buildings, such as Walls and Aquaducts. Please offer something concrete in your next message, whether it be gold or technologies. We believe this deal will greatly benefit both our nations.

Also, we would like to thank you for the news on the Donuts. It is good to know what they are up to on their side of the continent. We don't have much news to offer, except we are gathering our forces to prepare for a huge attack on the Donut core. Our "Stack of Doom" will hopefully end this war for us.

Well, that's it for now. Goodbye.

greekguy,TNT Greek Ambassador

YEA COOKIES HAPPY NEW YEAR WOOOOOOHOOOOO

 

[General_W]

Oooooh!
A stack of Doom!

Very exciting - and good to know!

Thanks Ken!
Hopefully we won't have to stall TNT too much longer.

 

[peter grimes]

I'll post the obvious:

How much is that information worth to Dnuts?

As for what to offer for Construction, I don't think we could offer anything other than GOLD without causing a major fracas with KISS. And even with gold, we MUST consult KISS on this. Even if we feel they would agree to the trade, we lose nothing by consulting with KISS; we only stand to gain trust, which is severely lacking right now.

 

[Chamnix]

Please offer something concrete in your next message, whether it be gold or technologies.

Think they recognize stalling when they see it?

I don't know what to tell them. If it comes to it, how do we tell them we do not want to trade for Construction at any price? KISS won't let us? A condition of our trade for Republic is not to trade anything to TNT? Or do we just make a ridiculously low offer that they will refuse and deal with the bad feelings?

In any case, if nobody objects, and if nobody else talks to KISS or sends them a note within about 10 hours, I will ask for clarification on Construction trading then.

 

[peter grimes]

Lets just see how much gold they'd want for it. That's a good way to stall them for another turn, and we can talk with KISS to see what they think of trading for gold.

 

[classical_hero]

That is a good Idea, but remember that we should not commit ourselves too heavily on money because we will want to research fast enough when we get to the middle age.

 

[peter grimes]

Please let BCLG100 join TNT! we are desperate for people, as our forum is not very active...

He posted this in the UN... I wonder which TNTers are active? Certainly Donsig and Greekguy. I think Provo isn't around all that much anymore, but I could be wrong. I wonder if the other teams are suffering as well.

 

[General_W]

So - anyone else want to speculate on WHY ON EARTH would TNT build the Mausoleum???

I can only come up with 2 guesses…

1) They don't think they can hold the jungle luxury resources and want to get a big city.

2) They are just horribly mismanaging this game and built the Mausoleum because it was a cheap wonder they thought they could get.

Either way, thank goodness they didn't put those 200 shields towards something useful – like the Great Library, the Pyramids, or 5 more Gallic Swordsmen.



Re: The trade for Construction.
If we could work out a good deal that KISS approves – I'm in favor of giving TNT whatever.

I still maintain that a strong TNT is in our long-term best interest.

If we end up with a Everyone vs. Dnuts war going on, then we should at least get our fair share (1/3) of land. Then when it comes time to crush TNT, we can focus on consolidating and conquering south of the Jungle, Leaving the much more difficult cities in the North to KISS. After we take a couple cities, we may even be able to sign a secret "truce" with TNT where we stay at war, but stop attacking them, leaving them to focus on KISS.

If TNT is strong enough, and all goes well, KISS will have much tougher meat to chew, and expend a lot more resources than we will. (Allowing us to get even further ahead in domestic matters)
Also, in an eventual KISS/MIA war on TNT, KISS faces a much greater risk of facing an invading TNT counterstrike on their homeland. (may not be possible, but would be sweet if it happened.)

Anyway – if TNT is too weak to even present a challenge, then none of this hopeful scenario matters.
Therefore – I'm in favor of keeping TNT in the game by making trades we otherwise might not.

(Dnuts, of course, should be shut out from getting anything good from the KISS/MIA alliance as much as is possible)

 

[Chamnix]

It is hard to believe they actually wanted the Mausoleum considering they are backwards and at war. I guess they could really want that town to grow large figuring they would get more immortals long-term, but here are some other hypotheses:

They were planning on building something more expensive (Great Library?) but decided they needed shields sooner for military, or they couldn’t get Literature in time, or Donuts would beat them to it, so they decided to dump the shields they had accumulated into something.

They were planning on building the Forbidden Palace but thanks to their Golden Age, they reached 200 shields before they had enough towns to build the Forbidden Palace, so they dumped the shields to something else and started over.

They were worried that their immortals would never win a battle, and they wanted a cheap scientific wonder to get halfway to their Golden Age.

They misread the civilopedia and thought that the Mausoleum killed all enemies within 3 tiles.

TNT’s last turn was played by a secret operative planted on TNT by Donuts.

Aliens abducted the save and when it was returned the Mausoleum had been built.

I give up.

 

[peter grimes]

At the risk of stating the obvious: KISS has made it clear they don't want to see us trading with TNT.

That said, in their last trade proposal, there was an explicit clause releasing both KISS and MIA to pursue any trades we want. (Personally, I think that is a disaster for KISSMIA) Therefore, if we agree to the current KISS proposal, after we recieve Republic and give them everything we have, we'll be able to trade anything at all for Construction.

I think the best thing for MIA is KISSMIA, the best situation for KISSMIA is one where techs don't cross from our side of the water to the aggressive side, therefore MIA should only offer GOLD for Construction. Of course, I'm saying all of this without KISS' input, so I may be way off base. I;m not sure I agree that we want TNT to get much stronger than they are. They are playing a terrible game, and should rightfully be weeded out. I would rather lose to KISS in any victory condition than assist a team that has made such wildly inappropriate choices.

Which leads me to the second part of this post: The Mausoleum of Mausallos.

It is possible they were planning on building something else, and were forced to end it early (for military reasons), so dumped the shields in to the Mausoleum.

It is possible they are playing more like a succession game, and there are some people even less experienced than I - in other words, "asleep at the wheel"

Is it possible they are already having happiness problems, cutting into research spending, and reducing the effectiveness of their war effort? Immortals are only 30 shields, and I can't imagine not just building some workers to bleed off excess population if necessary.... Or maybe this is part of a grand counter-intelligence scheme whereby they are planning on crushing us under the weight of their confusing game-play!

I just don't know. It only serves to reinforce my stance that TNT really isn't worth helping at this point, no matter what our fears of KISS' expansion. We have/are successfully competing with KISS on their own terms.

EDIT: xpost w/ Cham. I like his ideas better.

 

[Chamnix]

That said, in their last trade proposal, there was an explicit clause releasing both KISS and MIA to pursue any trades we want. (Personally, I think that is a disaster for KISSMIA) Therefore, if we agree to the current KISS proposal, after we recieve Republic and give them everything we have, we'll be able to trade anything at all for Construction.

This is the confusing part. We are free to make any trades, but it also said MIA will research Construction, and it said that KISS will pay MIA for Construction. It is obvious that if we trade for Construction using techs, then KISS will want it given to them and not pay for it (understandably). I would think it would also be obvious that if we pay gold, then KISS should reimburse us for half.

The question is, is KISS OK with MIA giving TNT anything, or does the "MIA research Construction" clause override the "make any trades we want" clause?

We really need to find an idiot to discuss this - I am unlikely to be at home much for the next few days, but I will keep trying when I am home. If anyone else can get them first, please do.

It only serves to reinforce my stance that TNT really isn't worth helping at this point, no matter what our fears of KISS' expansion.

The worse TNT plays, the more we want to help them - it's all part of their master plan .

 

[peter grimes]

I think it's time we seriously reconsider helping TNT as part of a 'Grand Strategy'. I'll try to let some of my concerns take better shape over the next few days, then publish an essay in the Grand Strategy thread.

If TNT wants us to help them, we need to be crystal clear about why we are willing to help out, and what we hope to gain from it. I think the current situation viz-a-viz KISS and DNUTs has changed enough over the last two terms that our estimation of TNT's utility to our game may be out of date.

 

[General_W]

I'll look forward to that essay peter!

As you think about it... remember - KISS's buildup against Dnuts could very well be a ruse. It may be MIA that faces a joint attack from KISS/Dnuts.

Not to kill us with paranoia - but let's not lose friends for no reason. TNT, no matter how stupid, seems to get along with us and isn't giving us any reason to fear... unlike KISS or the Nuts.

The worse TNT plays,...

... the more easily we can manipulate them for our ends.

 

[Chamnix]

Anyone want to put together a proposal for a trade for Construction?

 

[Chamnix]

Proposed letter to TNT:

Dear friends:

We are interested in learning the technique of contructing large buildings you described. Since you expressed an interest in the "Monarchy" path, we are willing to teach you of the many gods we have discovered. Since there are no additional techs that will make the trade completely equal, we can offer you the secrets of Literature to make the deal as fair as possible for both our great nations.

Let us know what you think of this proposal.

Team MIA

 

[peter grimes]

I say send it!

 

[General_W]

Looks Good Chamnix!