Niccolò Machiavelli's Thread

[darrelljs]

Sent this:

We are indeed working on our reply. Basically the problem we are in is that our micro plans already revolve around settling a city in your direction. Our opening is...unconventional to say the least and we have not found a great alternate plan. The silver lining we are trying to emphasize is that the city is well within our sphere of influence. To prove our intentions we'd be happy to work out a mutually acceptable border agreement, would that satisfy?

Darrell
Tropical Trolls

I took out the line about "willing to settle away from you afterward" in case we go NW next instead of tGL location.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

scooter dialed me up on chat:

scooter: Hey Darrell. quick question about the demogame if you have a second?
scooter scooter is online.
Darrell: sure what's up?
is this RB demogame or CFC demogame?
scooter: RB demogame
I'm on Gillette
Got your last email. the idea is possibly ok with us, but are very curious if you're aiming at the gold or not.
cards on the table: we're not opposed to you guys getting that gold. but that seemed like the location you'd be most likely to reach for that would be fairly close to us
Darrell: Given that we are the only non-FIN team your hypothesis is most reasonable
We've basically sacrificed a lot to get that spot pretty fast, so we can try and keep up in tech
scooter: Ok. we're not necessarily enthusiastic about it being your first spot
Darrell: Yeah, that's why we came up with a border agreement (coupled with a NAP makes sense) proposal
scooter: but we aren't too surprised or upset either.
Darrell: we figure that would be the best path forward
scooter: right
Darrell: so that you had goo assurances we weren't going to just spam in your direction etc.
scooter: right, that's what we're mostly interested in.
Darrell: That's what took so long in the reply, lots of discussion on where your head was at and what would be a good balanced reply
Good to see our conclusion was accurate
scooter: right, yeah we figured that was the case
Darrell: how about we draw up a border agreement then? or conversely you can take the lead on it, if you prefer. We'd also need to discuss NAP duration based around it.
scooter: yeah, that's what we'd like to explore next. I can't really make an offer now without talking with the team more, but up to this point we only theorized you were aiming for gold but didn't know for sure
Darrell: okay, well I'll post this chat log in our forum
scooter: where are you planning to plant it?
Darrell: we haven't done any discussion on the border either because we weren't sure where you head was at
unfortunately I don't recall exactly, I'll check with novice/plako (as you can imagine they are the micro team).
Assume its the optimal spot, wherever that might be
scooter: ok
Darrell: I think they posted shot of it upthread too, if I can't reach them I'll dig around our forum and try and find it
scooter: ok. yeah if you could get that to me that'd be great. that way we can see where that would fit into a potential border agreement
Darrell: sounds good, I'm actually in a meeting right now so it might not be until after lunch
what timezone are you in?
scooter: eastern
about to go to lunch too
Darrell: oh okay, that'll work fine then
scooter: so just as well
Darrell: just didn't want you to be in asia or something and keep you up
scooter: hah, yep, no problem!

I was kind of hoping to keep the diplo to e-mail only for my own sanity (many bad memories from PB2), but I guess its not to be. I didn't see any point in not confirming we were going for the Gold spot, they aren't idiots. Where exactly are we settling again?

Darrell

[plako]

Not totally set in stone, but 2E from gold has seem to best spot. In general I would urge for caution in chats. Now they know where we're planning to settle, but we've no idea where they intend to settle. We've given way more info out than received. In exchange of giving the exact spot they should be giving roughly their 1st settling spot.

[pling]

[url="http://ninecats.org/margaret/CivStuff/demogame1/turn10exploration-large.jpg"]
[/url]

Yanked this out from the history thread - I think we're currently planning on the purple dot.

[Ichabod]

I'd say we want the pink dot to them. It's roughly the same distance from each capital. Maybe I'd give away the corn in their side, but we definetely want that deer.

This "cards on the table" talk about the gold sounds fishy. Maybe I'm seeing too much, but I think they want us to think that we need to give some compensation for the exclusive rights on that gold.

Best thing we can do, IMO, is just say something like this: we figure out what tile goes for each team or something and afterwards the teams settle their tiles when they want to. Then I'd make an offer that gets more land for us than for them, like the pink dot one. I don't like the "where do you plan to settle your second city talk".

[darrelljs]

I'm going to say I've been banned from chatting due to giving too much away .

Darrell

[plako]

I'm going to say I've been banned from chatting due to giving too much away .

Darrell

Don't worry. You did ok. Being forthcoming is pretty good diplo startegy that might work ok in the end assuming we really want to befriend with team Gillette. However we should keep in mind that this team is #1 candidate to win this game.

[zakalwe]

This "cards on the table" talk about the gold sounds fishy. Maybe I'm seeing too much, but I think they want us to think that we need to give some compensation for the exclusive rights on that gold.

Totally agree. Scooter

[darrelljs]

Darrell: hey
so apparently I'm banned from chats
I guess I gave too much info away, but we'll reply via e-mail
scooter: hah that's funny. too much info? i don't think you said anything surprising..?
Darrell: yeah that's what I said
its not like it wasn't obvious
Oh and Zakalwe says you are a werewolf
scooter: reason I caught you in chat was because the gold thing was so obvious, so why dance around it. just get to the point real quick.
of course he does. and I'm sure novice agrees and Ichabod isn't so sure.
Darrell: indeed
lol
Ichabod isn't sure, that's true
novice hasn't posted in a while but you are right no doubt
of course uberfish is a wolf too
scooter: oh right, he's on your team. you are the werewolf team
Darrell: yeah we really are

As I mentioned before "no chat" diplo is my preference so this doesn't bother me...its a nice, polite excuse =). For the e-mail response, do we want to specify the dot at all or just jump straight to the border discussion? I like pling's picture a lot...I'd be willing to share it but then I apparently like to give away free info .

Darrell

[Ichabod]