What do you think of this message to Asterix? It's long because I included a bunch of earlier messages (copied and pasted in) to refresh our history. We can cut out most of that if needed.
Quote:Asterix,
I apologize for taking a long time to respond to you. As a college senior, my life has been extremely busy lately, with preparing for next year and a tougher-than-usual course load. As a result, in order to preserve my sanity, I had to give up some time that I was planning on dedicating to this game. Thus, I've been out of touch with diplomacy, so with this message I'm hoping to get us back on the same page. I am sorry for the length of this message, but I felt like it was important to get everything together in one document. (Part of it contains old messages we've sent to each other, which may inflate the length.)
Here's my recollection of what happened. We first started to want to work together because Care Bears were rapidly expanding towards your land (and we were concerned about their city count). Here's an old message from you dated September 30 (over a month ago!) that may indicate the start of us working together:
Quote:Hi, in reply to your email, I also think that Care Bears got better resources - their copper is so close to their capitol, while mine is where they can grab it.
We finally agreed with NAP with Care Bears to Turn 80, although they refused not to settle further towards me than half a distance towards my capitol.
[...]
It is indeed strange that he did not improved his gold yet if he planted a city near to it. Mine gold is worst of all I saw so far - cow is very far away, impossible to have the cow and gold in the first ring
--Asterix
After that, we repeatedly exchanged messages and screenshots to each other in the first half of October, and discussed the possibility of future action. We never actually agreed or confirmed to early war, though, but we were at least committed to keeping each other informed on updates regarding Care Bears. For instance, we were thinking about not extending our NAP with Care Bears beyond turn 75. Here's the relevant part of a message we sent to you on October 10:
Quote:We are extended our NAP with them untill T75 at the moment. As you said, your team has NAP till T80 (is it still so?) with them. How about both our teams avoid another NAP extension with India for the next 10-12 turns? Lets both see how India will expand first.
What do you think?
We are certainly don't want to be forced into early warfare, even 2 vs 1, but lets just keep this option open for now and reevaluate later?
And your reply the next day:
Quote:Hello TeddyKGB of Eggheads,
Thank you very much for being so open with me. Frankly, I have no idea how to deal with Yuufo, but I do agree that taking coordinated actions would be to our advantage and will make our position stronger, so I am all for it.
Yes, we currently have NAPs with them expiring T80. I completely agree with you that early war - even 2 vs. 1 is far from ideal. But I understand that what you are suggesting is not giving Yuufo the luxury to expanding in peace the way he does, making him realize that he either has to reach some land settling deal with us - or have to invest in some army instead of this enless settlers - seem like an excellent idea. BTW, I did not do any demohacking - and Yuufo suggested to me he has axes already - but based on his graphs I think his army is just a couple of warriors. Do you have exact data on population of his cities?
[…]
BTW, the city he settled this turn will clearly encroach on my natural sphere of interest - and what is worst, I have a settler on the way to settle almost exactly in the same area, which will probably be not possible now. So far, in spite of Yuufo's action, I settled on his side only in my capitol's culture. Should I settle aggressively towards him now? Or is there still a chance for amicable solution and somehow convincing him to cooperation? I have no idea what to do with the settler and will have to decide within a turn, most likely. BTW, do you think he is likely to start a war over me settling aggresively towards him? I hate what he is doing, but am still not inclined to take military action, at least not just after our NAP would expire. BTW, Yuufo seems very nice as a person, but difficult to reason with in-game, he even denied he moved toward us on T1, although seems obvious from his capitol placement...
[...]
Best Wishes,
Asterix
Then we immediately sent this:
Quote:[...]
What if we both decide to war 2vs1 against India?
What is your timing to be ready to take their city#7 in case both our teams go full military mode right now?
What is combination of units you are ready to deploy? I'm assuming you have Horses and/or Copper by now.
Would you like to avoid early wars and let India keep expanding in peace? They has 7 cities already and probably will keep produce settlers.
Would you agree to close borders with them (once trade routes available) if we do the same? You should probably consider SutOxy as a trade partner, and our team should start working with LP. We could establish our trade route hard way: You-SutOxy-LP-Us.
Would you consider to break a NAP with India? They are planted aggressively toward you, so its a good reason, imo.
[...]
So at that time, we were seriously considering war, but again, we never actually confirmed to do this. From what I remember, I felt a little reluctant when I saw this message (Teddy wrote this) because I thought that we were leaning towards early war too much.
Out of curiosity, I went back through our spoiler thread in the October 12-range, and I remembered that I post that I actually wanted to send a different message to you. I had drafted a long message to you that was less of the form "do you want to declare war" and more along the lines of "here's how I think we can better work together." Here's part of the message that I was planning on sending to you:
Quote:We think that now, it's best to avoid early war with Care Bears. Here's why:
1. We do not have a lot of military units to spare, and since we are #1 in power rating (turn 59), we assume the same holds for you.
2. We do not have a great economy at the moment, as we are only now beginning to work cottages. If we were to war, this would ruin our economic position relative to the other civilizations.
3. We would not be able to take many cities. Care Bears have had copper for a while, so they can easily whip spears in their central cities to counter our chariots. The gains of getting (or razing) some size 2 city doesn't seem worth the hassle of forming a long-term enemy who will still be in a strong position after losing just a few peripheral cities.
Again, we never sent the rest of that message to you since Teddy had already sent the other version that was more provocative. And throughout the entire early game, my stance was virtually always against war because I simply didn't see any way this could work out well; India simply had copper too deep in their territory and enough whipping population to counter whatever chariots we could throw at them.
So why is this relevant to the NAP renewal? That's the next part I'd like to address. Here's part of a message Teddy sent to you on October 16:
Quote:[...]
On a NAP extension with them. There is still time to decide.
We didn't start talking with them about NAP, as I promissed. You and me should discuss strategy together before any contact with India about NAP extension.
In case we both agree extend it, I would like both our NAPs with them ended the same turn. But its a hard sell to India, cause it screams that you and me will attack.
Anyway, if I get some offer from India about NAP, I'll let you know.
[...]
and then a few days later, on October 19,
Quote:Hi,
India just offer extend our NAP till T115?
What you think?
I'm ready to chat almost anytime.
-TKGB
We informed you that India had offered us an NAP to turn 115, along with other stuff as part of a "deal" between us and Care Bears.
At this time, you also had some conflicts with Care Bears, involving some sort of non-scouting clause, I believe. That caused you to close open borders, upon which time you asked us not to open borders with Care Bears.
At that time, however, we were at the stage where we can't simply rely on gold for our research, and we could see that as a non-financial civ, we were falling behind the tech race. As much as we didn't want to open borders with India, we simply felt like opening borders would help us more relative to them; after fall, they had more cities than we do, so we were essentially guaranteed of getting foreign trade routes in all our cities.
But we seriously debated about not opening borders, since we were legitimately interested in working together with you, and if you didn't want us to open borders with them, we were happy to reciprocate. We were a little torn here; do we want to play 'sub optimally' and respect Asterix's wishes, or do we want to do what's best for ourselves? We remember at one time you asked us to research Horseback Riding while you headed for Construction, which would have been economic suicide for us. Fortunately, a war plan never came to fruition.
Then, you suddenly reconciled with India after all, getting Open Borders. This made our job easier, but at the same time, India was offering us a NAP along with an open borders agreement, and they were willing to send workers over in our land to facilitate the road connection.
During this time, we were still in touch, as this message from Oct 20 indicates:
Quote:Hi, just have seen your message about NAP. I will try to catch you to talk this Sunday. I am starting a new mail thread, as the old one became difficult to read.
As wi discussed, we have to coordinate the NAPs. I was waiting to hear from you, as you mentioned you seriously consider attacking them T75. I will try to do some calculations by tomorrow and will let you know what I think.
Asterix
Then Teddy sent:
Quote:Hi,
Right now our team leaning toward sign NAP with India until T100.
We were discussing in thread all kinds of options, but now I think if you and us (or just us) start early military actions against India, there will be LP who profit from it mostly.
T100 is in the timing you want for an earliest attack anyway.
We kinda made counter proposal to India's T115 original deal, its not sign yet, as I understand.
I think Yuufo wants to sign NAP with you. He need both our teams to trade right now, after his early expansion.
His city#8 planned to go in our direction, as he told me on T76.
Right now expences must be killing him.
I suspect LP and SutOxy working together closely. Maybe India is a better trade partner for you now than OS after all.
Once game progress we'll get some more info, like whos landing the Mids and GLH. And can decide.
I'm not sure going to Construction now is in your team best interest, but we could discuss our tech paths a bit later. I suppose you still at 0% for few more turns.
-TKGB
I think this was the start of when our team diplomacy began to deteriorate, as you asked us not to negotiate NAPs on our own. However, please understand this from our perspective.
1. India offered us a NAP and other aspects in a deal that was propose to last to turn 115; we managed to negotiate with them to turn things in our favor, e.g., by reducing the NAP a few turns. This shows that we were not just willing to "vassal" to India --- we are still legitimately annoyed that they settled a city so close to our land, but we simply didn't have enough to counter it right now, or to make any substantial gains (e.g., via an early war).
2. As mentioned earlier, we were badly falling behind in the tech race because, not only are we one of three non-financial civilizations, the map-maker seems to have decided not to put rivers in our land, so we couldn't get riverside, financial cottages that most civilizations benefit from. Thus, the open borders deal with Care Bears would have (and did) substantially benefit our economy.
3. At this time, we also gained some hints that Rome was to our south (and indeed, a few turns later, we found their borders!). They have not been responding to our messages at all, so we have no idea what they are planning. If it turns out that they are building praetorians and are looking in our direction, then we desperately needed the extra protection afforded by a NAP with India.
Trust me -- it was not an easy decision for us to extend an NAP with India, and the reason we did so was because we were in almost a lose-lose situation. By doing so, we went from lose-lose to having at least two safe borders in our empire. While this was happening, I had also not been keeping in touch with diplomacy and did not realize that you had already dropped NAP discussions with India.
So it turned out that I had missed that aspect of our diplomacy, so I apologize for that. Part of it was a simple oversight of what should have been a more close-knit alliance. Teddy pointed out after we made the deal with India that we should have tried to discuss with you more, so in addition, when we negotiated with India, we also made it fully clear that we wanted to help you and Care Bears work together. For instance, Teddy sent this message on October 22:
Quote:Hi Asterix,
How things going? Did you talk with India about NAP?
Any help we can provide to force India accept your offer?
Their score jump 17 points this turn.
Their holy city at size4 now and has granary in it.
Should we chat this weekend and clear things out, if needed?
-TeddyKGB
But then you immediately got upset and hinted that we probably shouldn't work together.
I'd like to try and roll back a bit and propose a fresh start. Here are the facts:
1. We have deals with India until turn 100, which is at the point where we could do any serious military damage to them.
2. We are still annoyed that India has settled so close to our lands.
3. With Rome to our south, we need to maintain a set of allies, and we really want you to be part of this.
4. We have a NAP with Team Orgynized (which we did not extend, based on your request), so that front is safe for now.
I believe there's still a chance we can work together and clear up what may have been due to a combination of a simple misunderstanding and a perhaps too-quick of a trigger to agreeing towards a deal. We already have a strong history of working together so I hope we can continue where we left off. At this point, India seems like they continue to want to settle cities, and with that, I can't believe that they're also trying to gear up for a war.
So what do we want to do? Our plan is to continue settling towards Care Bears (taking advantage of our the border deal with Team Orgynized) and maintain a neutral stance with them which gives us the flexibility of possibly gearing up for war in the Medieval era and the age of Cataphracts. At the moment, we badly need more cities an cottages.
If there's anything you'd like to discuss in further depth, please do so. We can continue to discuss our plans in more detail for the upcoming turns.
-------------------
Now that we've gotten this through, there's one last point I'd like to talk. That point is about your comments regarding Lord Parkin, which you presented mostly in two messages. Here is the first message, from October 2:
Quote:Hi DMOC and Teddy,
there is one more thing I wanted to share with you, but please keep it completely confidential. You will surely meet Orgy Nized, your another neighbor, sooner or later. As you know, Lord Parkin has a reputation for being extremely good player and also for his ability of making diplo deals that turn up to be extremely profitable - for him- although they may seem the other way initially.
What Orgy Nized other neighbors - Native Americans (Suttree/Oxy) are telling me sounds rather concerning. They say that Orgy Nized forced them (?) as a part of their NAP to establish trade routes with Orgy at their cost and that their used repeatedly the argument (?) that Maga will not answer to their emails at that time as she was going through this difficult situation in her life. Anyways, they now have writing but based on their deals with Orgy will open borders only with them.
This is not a practical concern for me - for me open borders with you and Yuufo makes more sense and i will have Writing myself soon. Just wanted to give you heads up what you can expect from negotiating with Orgy Nized
Anyways, Yuufo is interested with Open Borders with us, based on my communications with him. He has so many cities that we will be both OK with Open Borders with each other even post currency. Lord Parkin is obviosly concerning just because his skill, MP experience and easy access to wonders but apparently he is also attempting to isolate the rest of us and deny us trade routes. It seemed that Native Americans had no idea how close to Writing I was - and definitely they have no info about you.
So what would you think about having our own free -trade zone of our three civ - and leave Orgy and their followers, Native Americans, to their own devices?
Lord Parkin's GNP is insane as it is anyway, I see no reason to contribute to it anymore, especially with their attitude of never doing anything that would not immediately benefit them. Please let me know and please keep the matter confidential.
As I said, Yuufo is willing to cooperate on that - so we could have land-trade routes going through him very soon. As you know, he is already very close to me, and just announced that his next city will be even closer
Cheers,
Asterix with Maga
and the second one …
Quote:Hi,
cannot talk at the moment, but i think I have a proof Orgy Nized are plotting against all 3 of us. Do not extend NAP with Orgy Nized no matter what and try to make OxSuttree not to extend NAP with Orgy Nized, too.
As I said, what I wanted to tell you is very confidential and can put us in mortal danger if leaked. So before e talk, I wuld like to revisit our NAP. So far it is only till T90, your NAP with India may be soon longer and probably your NAP withOrgy Nized is also longer now.
I understand that it may be difficult to talk about specific turns, but we understand we are allies at least until we will deal with India and Orgy Nized?
So we formally propose a NAP between our civs lasting until India and Orgy Nized (Netherlands) are in game, with possibility of extension. We hope that we will have no problem with accepting it. Once this issue is out of the way, we will tell you very concerning info about Orgy Nized plotting we have just learnt.
Regards,
Asterix on behalf of M&L
I'm not quite sure what to make out of this. First, in many of your messages, you refer to LP as the 'biggest threat to win the game' and 'one of the best players in the world'. I've played several games with LP, and while he's good, he's in no way the clear best player who's playing in this game. yes, he won Pitboss 4, mainly because he had the best land/geographic position and his rivals signed ridiculously long NAPs.
Second, LP has not been aggressive to us in deals at all. We managed to agree to a fair deal, including a border agreement, that may have actually been in our favor (given how we wanted to (and still do!) settle towards India). And from what I can tell, he hasn't been too active lately, so whatever he's doing must be behind the scenes.
If you don't want to disclose information about him, that's fine; it's your decision. But I just feel a little uneasy when reading these messages since they seem so far from reality.
Please keep information from this message confidential.
Sincerely,
DMOC of Team EggHeads