RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[WarriorKnight]

A4, as Ilios said I was away for some time, but the delay was worth it as we have important info for you. We now know Korea, which was eliminated, would have been your neighbour to the W. We on the other hand met our E neighbour last turn. This makes it even more in our mutual interest to keep heading in the direction we're currently going, i.e. strong friendship + a secure border, so we can expand - you into the empty space vacated by Korea, us racing our new neighbours. We still have no idea whether their intent is friendly or not. Like I said, great news for you.

Korea was to our W?

Great, that means we have more space without any diplomatic problems, of course we might be neighbors to Egypt and India someday but that's par for the course.

Anyway, I agree with ad hoc. Let them have marble, while we get red and the 2 greens while REXing west. I'll draft something later today we could send back.

Message to Nice Shot sounds good, I would probably send it like that.

In other news, looks like 3 other teams have settled their 2nd city this turn so far . Seems that Krill, Kyan and Jowy have them now. Still, as long as we are one of the earlier second city sites, I don't really mind.

[Sockboy]

Ok after a bit of spirited discussion we reached the following conclusions:

1) Blue isn't a deal breaker for us, it's a low priority site and we're not in a hurry for it. Unlike team DIM.

2) The spice site they've offered us is rubbish.

3) Thus we need a different sort of compensation for ceding the blue site.

4) We're going to settle 1W of the horses anyway.

So we discussed a couple of types of compensation, the best being either a low value tech (i.e. Mysticism) or a worker (they're expansive so cheap for them). Probably the worker would be better, but I doubt they'll go for it. Anyway here's a draft of what we should send to them.

Greeting mighty DIM!

Well your counter offer sure gave us something to discuss, we haven't had this much team debate since the snake pick We've gone through it and whilst we can live with most of it, we're less happy with one or two parts. Essentially we've come up with a counter-counter-offer.

As much as we would like the marble site, in the interest of common friendship we can cede this to you in exchange for one or two minor concessions. Our major issue with the proposal you've offered is the city site you've made available to us, whilst much of the land is riverside grass and it does include the spice tile, it lacks food resources of any kind. At this stage of the game we can't accept a city site like this. Food as you are probably well aware is power I fear we must reject this generous offer.

We will concede the marble site in return for the use of the marble resource whenever it is not needed by you to construct a wonder, however we feel that since the site is essentially equidistant from both our capitals we need some form of compensation. As mentioned we feel the city site you have offered is not what we are looking for. We would accept compensation either in the form of a worker at some time in the not too distant future (we feel by turn 70 is fair, but are happy to negotiate), or a low value tech (probably one of the religious techs, that are pre-reqs for Monarchy) once Alphabet becomes available (hopefully around the same time).

As a gesture of good faith I inform you that we will be settling the red site in the next couple of turns on our original tile. We thank you for your advise but feel in the end that next to the horses is better for our civilization. In conceding the blue site we will retreat it to the NW. Likely 1E of the sheep tile.

It probably goes without saying that we would view this as our final borders and would expect you not to consider any city sites further W of the marble site, likewise we will not be looking E of our proposed cities. We could probably make an exception if you want another city SE of the spices in the space you offered but we won't be using, we're not unreasonable Please let us know if you have something in mind here

We've also informed team Nice Shot of your interest in meeting them and have offered to help direct you towards each other when either of you have units in the area. We are awaiting their response, but I'm sure they'll be interested in meeting you too.

I hope that we're close to an agreement here, please let us know what you think of our counter offers.

Enough Talking!
A4.

Ok guys, tear it apart Seriously though, we should send this very soon. Like either this turn or the next.

[WarriorKnight]

I think the message looks pretty good. Only problem I see is that you should take out the last 2 sentences of the 4th paragraph. These doesn't make much sense and should probably be re-written to something like "Given that you will have the marble site, we wish to inform you that our border city to your NW of the marble will probably be 1E of the sheep."

We shouldn't include our current dotmap, but we might want to make a new one given all of these changes.

[WarriorKnight]

Turn rolled over.

Kull and settler move to proposed city site, lion there but too far away to reach us before city plants. worker keeps chopping.

We did 1st whip of the game .

Settle Nemedia next turn.

[Sockboy]

Message to team Nice Shot sent.

I'll make those changes you suggested WK and send off the mail with the following image. Hopefully that makes it clear.

As a gesture of good faith I inform you that we will be settling the red site in the next couple of turns on our original tile. We thank you for your advise but feel in the end that next to the horses is better for our civilization. In conceding the blue site we will retreat it to the NW. Likely 1E of the sheep tile.

I think I'll change it to:

As a gesture of good faith I inform you we will be settling the red site next turn on the original tile. We thank you for your advise but feel that in the end that settling next to the horses is better for our civilization. In ceding the original blue site, our new border city with you will be on the tile 1E of the sheep.

EDIT:
Message sent.

[WarriorKnight]

New message from DIM

To the glorious empire of A4,


Thank you for your counter-proposal. While we still need to discuss it, I'm sure we are very close to an agreement here.

I would like to take this opportunity to inform you of the somewhat odious interaction we had with the team we met most recently, Morgan of France.

His warrior appeared on our eastern border last turn and we exchanged greetings. Then a team member sent them a request for a short NAP to free our warrior for escort duty to cover our soon to be finished settler, and that's when it got bad...
France basically took this message as a show of weakness, and started making unreasonable demands, which even included a forced settler agreement, basically ceding them pretty much all the land between our capitals (they are to our south east).
It was only after we threatened all-out-war and we sent a screenshot of our capital showing our defending warrior (still leaves a foul taste in my mouth having had to do this) that they backed down, and signed a 25-turn NAP. You can understand we didn't want to get bogged down with a warrior harassing our workers and pillaging our improvements.

Anyway, they seem to be on your way, and I just wanted to give you guys a heads up so you know what you're dealing with when you two meet.


Highest regards,


Ilios for DIM

Well, nothing mentioned about the border agreement, however an interesting story nonetheless. I don't blame DIM for telling us since I probably would do the same, we should probably ask France about this when the time comes.

Still, this always calls for. Never underestimate the power of more contacts (we hope to fix this shortly).

[WarriorKnight]

Here is a draft to DIM.

Honorable Triumvirate of DIM

That is an unfortunate tale regarding France. Maybe they will have to be taught some manners someday. You are rather fortunate that you have some more agreeable neighbors to your W. We will indeed be cautious with them when we meet.

A quick question, how does the search for other trade partners go? You mentioned that you had discussed with India about it and you have also met Krill (and France but we doubt you will want to trade with them). Have they expressed any opinion with you about forming a Trade group?

Enough Talking

WarriorKnight of A4

Basically re-affirm that we are on their side of this cold war, and have a follow up on the search for tech partners.

[Sockboy]

You are rather fortunate that you have some more agreeable neighbors to your W.

This feels a bit heavy handed to me, maybe change it to something like:

We are both fortunate to have a reasonable neighbour on at least one front.

Otherwise, I like! Particularly the part about teaching manners

I'm quite curious about the French now, sounds like they're being a little belligerent

[ad hoc]

i like sockboys change

with regard to trade partners, perhaps mention we haven't discussed this with team NICE yet

[Sockboy]

Turn 38 came round! Exciting stuff this turn, a new worker(Brutos) to welcome and a new city(Nemedia) added to the fold. Ok so we're not first or even second to the second city, but we're one of the earlier ones, looks like 6th.

Anywho, Castranno will finish next turn then we can get another warrior out as a military garrison for Aquilonia. Then we'll finally have a unit sitting in our capital, not bad for only 38 turns

Here's a couple of screenies of the action!

Here's the view from above of Nemedia.


And the city advisor screen, we're working the horses and hooking them up is priority number 1! Note the city maintenance is up around 3 cpt. That's much higher than in our test game, presumably that means we're on a toroidal map (Question for Lurkers: Does anything else affect this?). I've dialed research down to 0 for the current turn, but we might need to run it for two turns at this rate, I'll have to check how it affects the ETA of Pottery.


I've posted demogs for the last two turns in the usual place. Micro for next turn should have Alcazar and Brutos heading for the plainshill NW of Nemedia where they'll road the following turn. Costranno will finish roading the sheep before joining the others on the plainshill. We'll also want to dial research back up to 100% i think. Hopefully the road to be built, which connects the two cities will help ameliorate the cost of city maintenance!