War with RB

[2metraninja]

The circus continue:

MZprox: i was afk
аз: better
MZprox: they told me they have too many workers and wanted to sell more. we bought 2 from them

 

[talonschild]

Ježiškove husličky. Somewhere I blinked and CP's suddenly a hostile ass.

I say we take MZ's proposal, in no small part to curry their favour. Us two vs the world, y'know?

 

[cav scout]

I agree with everything up to this point if the Aztecs give up Cutting Edge to us. Just because CP is being outrageous in their negotiating doesn't mean we have to roll over and give them everything. Tell MZ that the CFC team has instructed you that we will support his map with Cutting Edge included and wait until he comes around. Then we can press OT.

And of course in the meantime take every city we possibly can.

 

[Sommerswerd]

So he tells you he "needs" our FW to develop all the land but then tells MZ that he has "too many" workers and needs to sell some

If he has not the workers to develop the land he has then why does he try to bargain for more?

 

[Sommerswerd]

And of course in the meantime take every city we possibly can.

To me this is the most important thing. Once we take the cities they are ours, just don't take the crap ones, leave those to negotiate over.

 

[2metraninja]

CP took the RB capitol this turn. I knew about this possibility and wanted to close the negotiations before this turn rolls. Next turn CP could had been in Shrine city. If they took it without having our agreement, then it was huge problem, which would had escalated to a war. War, which we are not ready to fight. Not against CivFR and CP combined in the alien RB territory. War which independent of the outcome would had cost us the game for sure.

So I just went ahead and agreed on MZ's map and paying ot4e 400 gold once we capture Shrine city. We cant afford fifth war in a row. We take whatever we can and we stop warring for a while. We need development. God and all the people saw the injustice ot4e did to us today. He will get his punishment when the time comes.

 

[talonschild]

 

[2metraninja]

While on the matter, "When God closes a door, he opens a window."

After the sad way we lost an ally (we did lost him, right?), while logged in to finish turn, I was contacted by the Uciv turnplayer Zioun.

Spoiler :

In short, he admits they made wrong choice with giving money to RB and they ask us to not attack them, offering us long NAP. He said they only want to live in peace, but I wonder if we can benefit somehow from them and use them is our plans?

 

[Aivoturso]

Good call 2metra. I know that the deal might seem bitter and unfair at the moment, but at this point we must suppress our emotions and let logic guide our decisions. Our eventual victory will just taste that much sweeter after making all these necessary sacrifices.

While on the matter, "When God closes a door, he opens a window."

After the sad way we lost an ally (we did lost him, right?), while logged in to finish turn, I was contacted by the Uciv turnplayer Zioun.
--

--
In short, he admits they made wrong choice with giving money to RB and they ask us to not attack them, offering us long NAP. He said they only want to live in peace, but I wonder if we can benefit somehow from them and use them is our plans?

We must capitalize on this to the maximum extent. It seems to me that they might be interested in a real alliance at last. Can we safely play on us getting a raw deal on the spoils of RB war to convince UCiv that we really want to cooperate with them to kick some CP butt? I really hope that we can convince UCiv to join us and can keep the seeds of discord between Poly and CP alive and well. It would be so much better to have a 3 vs 2 war next rather than 2 vs 2 or even worse.

 

[2metraninja]

And quick mail from Uciv:

Lala Civilization

11:57 PM (1 hour ago)

to me
Hi,

Just to say that it was really interesting to talk with you. Hope that our differences of choices in the recent past won't ruin thousands years of cooperation and friendship !

We wait for your answer or propositions !

Zioun for Universciv

Uciv sound like peacemongers to me, so it might be difficult to get them to fight alongside with us. But we can have other benefits from their desire to get on the good side of us.

I wonder if they at least started talks with the other 2 nations?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Well we already know that UCiv are in the business of givign huge loans, so I think we should right away ask them for a huge loan to fund our tech to Rifling and whatever else we need to get an edge on CP/CivFr. This is a good test of their intentions.

If they say no then we know that all they want is to soothe us with some cheap sweet words rather than give us any real help. Tell them that the question has been raised on the team that we would like a loan, around 200% of whatever they gave RB. See what they say.

 

[Sommerswerd]

And ask them to borrow some workers too. The faster we can develop our lands, the greater our edge on our potential opponents.

Plus the thing about a loan is that they will be reluctant to work against us if they need us to pay back some huge loan.

 

[YossarianLives]

Yeah, great job there 2metra. I think Poly's nap is fine. It locks CP out of any WPC gains in the future.

As for UCiv, I agree with Sommers that trying to squeeze some money out of them would be nice.

 

[cav scout]

Well i'm a bit disappointed we folded so quickly on the negotiations over RB land. It almost feels like the other two teams colluded together at our expense. 1.) Ot4e's started the negotiating in a truly outrageous fashion and then 2.) MZ offers his "compromise position" (where the only one who compromises is us by making a bunch of concessions). 3-way negotiations like this often play out with two teams working together at the expense of the 3rd team. Even if there wasn't active collusion I still think we got played.

Oh, and Ot4e's previous (and very whiny) complaints about MZ are starting to ring very hollow to me by the way.

 

[2metraninja]

It almost feels like the other two teams colluded together at our expense. 1.) Ot4e's started the negotiating in a truly outrageous fashion and then 2.) MZ offers his "compromise position" (where the only one who compromises is us by making a bunch of concessions).

Yes, it felt a bit like this to me too. But I dont really think there was any cooperation between ot4e and MZ. I feel MZ is annoyed at ot4e too. Which was what I count as the biggest and most serious outcome of this negotiations, even a bit out-weighting the actual land division. If we manage to make ot4e outsider while keeping MZ close and cooperative, this will be great achievement with a lot of potential to come I think. We might end with us and MZ against CP and Civfr with Uciv as somewhat passive supporter to us. Which can be huge I think. See what impact on RB Uciv's money injections had. If played proper by RB, we could had been completely stopped.

As for ot4e's complains and mocking over MZ, I believe they are genuine. Last night MZ and Bemep were in the game and it seems there was some serious discord between them. MZ claims it started as simple misunderstanding, but then it went bigger. So, MZ asked Bemep to attack first the RB stack killing the top defender, because he did not wanted to risk a rifle at 40% and then MZ would continue. But Bemep took it as MZ refuse to attack at all and went full force attack. He did killed all RB defenders, but eventually was left without any mounted units capable to advance to the next city this turn, which of course ruined CP's plans.

Another interesting thing MZ said to me is he refused to move towards Mansa's Muse, which is in our part of the deal, as Ot4e asked him. When asked why would he want to go there, Ot4e said he is not going to break any deal, but still he wants for some reason to advance towards Mansa's Muse. MZ declined to Ot4e and asked me that we can take care of this on ourselves.

Ot4e is playing some dirty games. Lets hope we wont get burned.

 

[vranasm]

seems to me like the game starts to be really dirty now.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if there are already some plans between CP and CivFR regarding us, especially if we plan longer rebuild phase now.

For how long we have NAP with CP, CivFR compared to our plans of recovering from war?

 

[2metraninja]

Yes, same feeling here too.

I did just checked this info this morning. So, we have NAP with ot4e with 20 turns warning-in-advance. Which is good. This means at least t201. With CivFR we have to t210. With Uciv to t200, but they came to ask us for extending to t240 at least, so we must be safe from there. With WPC we have to t200. At least this is what they asked us for. I really searched for and the closest to accepting this NAP with them in our answer to them is that "we WILL sign NAP with them despite what they tell us of their future plans with RB". Technically, we are not signed this NAP, but if we must be 100 fair, we cant say that we dont have NAP either. Now I remember I formulated it like this so we are able to do something about WPC if they decide to help RB somehow.

Interestingly, we have NAP with Apolyton to only t200. We must try to correct this at first possible occasion.

 

[2metraninja]

Now thinking of it, ot4e planned all this. He came to make his outrageous demands, acted as complete jerk, and he knew this will be the end of our friendship. We did him what we were needed for, so he can show his true intentions now. But he went ahead and asked us for loan long ago, which loan we will be started giving him money and we will wait for him to return our money, so we somewhat depend on him. This guy owing us 1650 gold close to the date which our NAP can be cancelled I dont feel comfortable with.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Let's not lose sight of how much of a smashing success the main goal of the War was. RB is defeated and they will be utterly destroyed and gone from the game. This was far better a result than we originally planned... Remember when we were talking in terms of never being able to defeat RB, just trying to contain them with armies parked on the border?

RB are goners... the others we can outplay, of this I am confident. So we should be pleased about that. TBH we are acting like guys who just wanted a slice of bread, and instead got a large pizza ... but now we are complaining that we dont get enough slices... Sure we are getting shortchanged, but remember, we don't want to be the score leaders. Last place gets scavenged, score leaders get dogpiled... Let's stay in the middle but close to the leader as long as we can.

However, I do agree with cavscout though that either CP planed this or CP and Poly planned it together.

 

[2metraninja]

Let's not lose sight of how much of a smashing success the main goal of the War was. RB is defeated and they will be utterly destroyed and gone from the game.

That is true. I am not forgetting about this.

And it is true that all went better than expected.

Uciv asked me "arent you afraid of dogpile now when you are the leader?". We are not the leader yet. We are great in each aspect except science. There we are fifth or sixth. Hopefully we can improve this in the following regrow period.