Talked to Nakor and Locke... they both agreed to stop putting espionage into us for now.
Nakor seems to have indirectly expressed an interest in extending our NAP, which is fine with me if that's the case. Waiting to hear back from him on that.
Meanwhile Locke has asked for suggestions as to how to slow down Plako against WK a bit, so I suggested we could send metal WK's way. Conveniently, Locke actually has a spare source of Copper, so we'll see what happens there.
Just out of curiosity, what did Locke and Nakor say about allocating espionage towards us? I guess it's to be expected with our demographics, but it'd be interesting to see what they said.
Any other ideas on evening out the war between WK and Plako? Beyond giving him metal I can't really think of any help we can give him that falls within the spirit of the game.
I've copied the recent diplomacy with Nakor below. It's rather text-heavy, so I've bolded the parts relevant to espionage and the NAP.
From me:
Hi Nakor,
It's been a while since we last chatted... how have things been going for you? Hope it's all well over there... you certainly seem to be keeping near the front of the pack in expansion, despite the unenviable situation of being squished between Plako and Locke. It does suck a bit that the random chance of who your neighbours are can influence the game so much, regardless of how well you play (I've said as much in my own spoiler thread). Everyone would agree that having an Adlain next door would be far preferable than having a Plako, for instance... but oh well, nothing that can be done now.
Seems that multiple interesting things are going on around the world lately. Luddite's still at war with Mackoti of course, and judging from the power graph it seems he's just dealt a massive (and possibly decisive) blow in that conflict. I'm guessing he'll be capturing Mackoti's capital along with the Pyramids soon, which combined with his Great Library built this turn (I'm guessing via Great Engineer) will put him into quite a powerful position.
Meanwhile, Locke just bulbed Philosophy and founded Taoism last turn. He also researched Alphabet, revealing in the F4 screen that he has quite a tech lead - at least relative to us; not sure about yourselves. Certainly he seems like one to keep an eye on techwise.
Then of course there's Plako and WarriorKnight's conflict. I actually have a scout over in WarriorKnight's land at the moment, and I can report that it's most definitely not going well for him. Plako has a stack on the forested hill next to WK's capital, and last turn pillaged his only source of metal. Unfortunately every mistake he WK makes (and there's been a few of them) only serves to make Plako stronger, which is certainly not in anyone's interests except Plako's. It doesn't help either that Plako's already fielding Catapults, while I haven't seen any from WK - from what I can tell he may not even have Construction. My guess is that at the present rate, in a dozen or so turns Plako will be close to completely absorbing all of WK's land and cities into his empire - not to mention all the unfounded future city sites he'll gain from the conquest. I guess we'll see.
So, definitely a lot going on in the world right now anyway. I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you may have about all of this, or about anything else. One thing in particular is the Mackoti/Luddite battle zone - I'm not sure if you have a unit in that area, but I'd be very curious to hear about it if you do (I don't).
I noticed that you've recently started putting a lot of espionage points into us. Obviously this is about the time that everyone is finishing getting demographics on all the other civs and thus needs to redistribute their espionage - so a point added here and there is completely understandable, as they have to go somewhere. However, putting what appears to be everything you have into us does appear to be somewhat of an aggressive move, which seems to be against the spirit of our NAP. Maybe you didn't intend it to be taken that way, but it just seems a bit odd to perform an overtly passive-aggressive action while a long-term NAP and friendship is in place. Perhaps I'm simply reading too much into this and it was just an error or temporary spurt of EP's, but I just thought I'd check anyway. So many misunderstandings can be avoided by simple conversation, after all.
One other random note - I see that you have a Warrior hanging around our borders at the moment. I've got my own Warrior out exploring which will be heading back through your territory at some point. If you're interested, perhaps we could arrange a Warrior swap at some point to save on travel time for both of us? I'll have to check how long it'll take to get back, but it could be an option anyway - let me know.
Kind regards,
Lord Parkin
From Nakor:
Hey Lord Parkin,
Things have indeed been a bit quiet. We try to keep up expanding while getting the techs to be in better shape later.
We're still pretty far from you big leaders there but we hope to catch up a bit. We do hope that the wars will give us time to catch up.
So you're impression is that Plako will eat up WK and that Luddite will take out Mackoti. The first is to be expected, but the second I'm not to sure off. I think Mackoti will prove a tough nut to crack and it might hold up Luddite long enough for his other neighbours to make some good plans.
I'll take a look at the tech screen once the game is back up to see how far away Locke is. Must be quite an impressive lead.
With all those big and impressive neighbours, all we can do is not annoying anyone big time.
Guess we made a mistake with the EP's and annoyed you a bit. It wasn't meant that way (Gaspar is doing EP adjustments) and I'll make sure we'll distribute them evenly again once we can login again. With courthouses being build and therefore more EP's and with all graphs visible, we have to do something with those EP's. Maybe you can think of something interesting. We could agree to put EP's on neighbours of the other party and share tech info, for example. How does that sound?
We are very happy with the good NAP we have with you untill T160 and hope that our peace will last a lot longer then that.
The warrior swap sounds like a good deal, so let me know if you have one around to change hands.
And maybe there is someting else we can do. I'm not sure if you have happy resources to trade. We lack Ivory but have Fur to trade for it. Would you be interested in such a deal? Or maybe you have another luxury spare?
Hope to hear back from you soon,
Nakor
From me:
Hi Nakor,
Good to hear from you. It does indeed seem from my perspective that it's likely Luddite will take down Mackoti and Plako will consume WK fairly soon. You may be right that Mackoti could take longer to crack, although given the immense power disparity that's developed since Mackoti experienced huge losses a few turns ago, I think his demise might start speeding up soon. I guess we'll have to wait and see, anyway.
I'd be interested to hear how far away Locke is from you in tech, if you're willing to share that. He's 4 techs ahead of us, so he's definitely got an impressive lead there.
Thanks for clarifying about the espionage situation, I thought it might have been a mistake but just wanted to check. I do like your idea of focussing our espionage points on other civs, and reporting tech info to each other (and perhaps city info once we get to that stage). I guess the logical choices are the civs that border each of us - namely, Plako, Locke, Rego and Luddite. Plako and Locke are probably the two more pressing targets at the moment, although Luddite's got quite a fierce espionage rate at the moment (due to earlier Ziggurats I guess), and Rego's quickly developing into a juggernaut empire himself. Anyway, I'm definitely open to focussing our espionage and sharing info with one another - we just need to sort out the details of who focusses on who. Anyone in particular you'd prefer to take? For the moment I'd probably prefer to put a bit into Luddite just to counter his espionage rate a bit, but I could switch to someone else after that.
I'm also very happy with the good NAP we have between us until turn 160. Not sure if I'm reading you right, but if you do hope for our peace to "last a lot longer than that", I'd be more than happy to extend our NAP whenever you want to ensure an even longer friendship. I don't really mind at all how far we extend it (30, 40 or even 50+ turns), as you've proved yourselves as good and reliable friends and I don't see either of us having any need to fight one another in the forseeable future. In fact, it seems more than likely that we'll have a great opportunity for cooperation against Plako or Locke at some point, so formally agreeing to our peace lasting a lot longer seems to make perfect sense. Anyway, if that's something you're interested in, feel free to let me know and I'd be more than happy to agree to a longer NAP to ensure our mutual security (and perhaps to allow for us to begin more long-term plans against other nations).
Just checked up on my Warrior, and it seems he's further away than I thought... will be at least a dozen turns until he gets to your land even without any detours. I guess your Warrior will probably be long gone by then. Ah well, never mind... it was just a thought. If you do happen to still have a Warrior around our lands later on, we could still arrange a swap if it suits.
As for resource trades, I'd be happy to work out something there if you'd like. Unfortunately I already have Fur (it should be visible in the diplo screen), so I'm afraid a Fur-Ivory trade wouldn't work. However, gold trades are possible since we've now got Currency, so if you'd really like the extra happiness I'm sure we could work something out there. If you're interested in a trade of gold for Ivory (or something else), feel free to let me know what you'd consider fair.
Right, assuming you managed to get through all that, I think that's everything. Sorry for the length... as you may have noticed, verbosity is kind of my speciality.
Kind regards,
Lord Parkin
From Nakor:
Hey Lord Parkin,
Thanks for the message. Due to time issues I try to keep my messages a bit shorter and hope you won't take offense.
I really forgot to take a look at the tech screen in-game but asked Gaspar to take a screenshot. No problem in sharing that with you, although I guess Locke and you are both teching faster then us. But we are getting there.
About EP's, what if we focus on Luddite and you focus on Locke, that gives us insight in what they are doing without antagonizing our neighbours.
Then there is the NAP, how about an extension untill T185 for now? Though we'd be happy to sign an even longer one.
Guess we'll try to trade our furs/gems elsewhere then. Just wanted to give you the first choice!
Kind regards and gonig back to work,
Nakor
From me:
Hi Nakor,
No worries, I don't mind at all about the shorter messages. I should probably try harder to cut my own down a bit.
Will be interested to hear about your tech position relative to Locke. I actually suspect you're not far behind us in research, maybe even at par with us.
As for espionage, the idea of you going for Luddite and us going for Locke seems like a reasonable one for not antagonizing our neighbours. Although the downside is that it means our neighbours get relatively more EP's into us if we're not concentrating on them. I think I'll still need to put some espionage of my own into Luddite in order to counter his espionage, but after that I could switch to Locke.
Regarding the NAP extension, if we're both okay with going to at least T185 anyway, how about we just bump it up to an even T200? (I guess I have some "thing" for nice even numbers. :P ) Let me know what you think, anyway.
No worries about the Fur/Gem trades, hope you can find some other takers. Maybe later on (post-Calendar?) there'll be other options for trades between us. As it is right now, this map seems to have just about distributed every single resource to every single civ, which unfortunately rather limits trading options.
One more afterthought... I noticed that you have a spare Copper source, and WK is lacking one at the moment. Perhaps you could consider sending the spare source on to WK to slow down Plako a bit? Just a thought, anyway. I'd consider it myself but I don't have a spare metal source.
Kind regards,
Lord Parkin
Summary:
- Our NAP will be extended until at least T185, potentially T200.
- Nakor has switched espionage off us, and we're working out details of some other arrangement. (Although I'm not sure I'll actually want to put them on Locke so I've chosen my wording carefully. It's possible I will though.)
Exchange with Locke, also text-heavy so I've bolded the parts relevant to espionage.
From me:
Hi Locke,
Congratulations on netting Philosophy and Taoism for yourself last turn. I noticed you just recently got Alphabet, so now we can directly compare our research levels - and you've definitely got an edge on us there. Well done.
It's a shame that some people didn't want to go ahead with the proposal for closing borders with Plako. I'm particularly perplexed as to why Adlain wouldn't have been interested, being in one of the worst positions in the game. I guess not everyone thinks the same way, but his stance on this really confuses me. Perhaps later on once Plako's lead expands even further, people might be more willing to do something about it. Hopefully by that time it won't be too late.
It seems that multiple interesting things are going on around the world lately. Luddite's still at war with Mackoti of course, and judging from the power graph it seems he's just dealt a massive (and possibly decisive) blow in that conflict. I don't actually have a unit in the battle zone at the moment to see what's going on, but I'd be interested to hear about it if you do. I'm guessing that Luddite will be capturing Mackoti's capital along with the Pyramids soon, which combined with his Great Library built this turn (I'm guessing via Great Engineer) will put him into a fairly powerful position later on.
Then of course there's Plako and WarriorKnight's conflict. I actually have a scout over in WarriorKnight's land at the moment, and I can report that it's most definitely not going well for him. Plako has a stack on the forested hill next to WK's capital, and last turn pillaged his only source of metal. Unfortunately every mistake WK makes (and there's been a few of them) only serves to make Plako stronger, which is certainly not in anyone's interests except Plako's. It doesn't help either that Plako's already fielding Catapults, while I haven't seen any from WK - from what I can tell he may not even have Construction. My guess is that at the present rate, in a dozen or so turns Plako will be close to completely absorbing all of WK's land and cities into his empire - not to mention all the unfounded future city sites he'll gain from the conquest. It definitely doesn't look good.
On a matter closer to home, I noticed that you've recently started putting espionage points into us beyond the demographics level. Obviously now is about the time that everyone will be finishing getting demographics espionage on all their rivals, so I thought this might be a good time to discuss a potential espionage arrangement between us. Would you be interested in an agreement either to stop espionage against each other completely for now, or to keep espionage at a fixed (low) level for a certain time? Obviously I can simply spend espionage points against you to counter any points you spend against me, but this seems to gain nothing for either of us. It appears to make much more sense for us to reach an agreement so we can focus our combined espionage on more pressing targets closer to home (such as Plako and our immediate neighbours), rather than wasting espionage points unnecessarily against each other.
Let me know what you think, anyway.
Kind regards,
Lord Parkin
From Locke:
Thanks much. I think we get all the late religions. You want Islam or we get? :D
Well I also wanted the plako thing to go through. We are next 2 teams and it would help us alot. But it was a dead idea I guess. plako is not too bad now while he is in war. We are worried about what happens after he wins his current war. He will be super big then. It is worrying. I'm not sure what to do. We are trying to make agreements with Nakor but I dont know how mcuh that will help.
We put 2 EP on plako and you as only teams ahead of us in score. If you want to make deal we can switch all points to plako. I would be fine with that. It is a good idea.
Locke
From me:
Hi Locke,
Heh, you're right that it seems likely it'll be one or other of us that founds the final religion. Of course I wouldn't mind founding it myself, but I guess we'll see what happens.
Yeah, it's definitely worrying just how big Plako will be after this war is done - and it seems that'll be pretty soon. His demographics aren't too concerning right now, but with all that extra territory from WK he'll soon start pushing well into the lead. I'm not completely sure what we can do either.
I guess one possibility is that we could supply WarriorKnight with metal to slow down Plako a bit. I'd do it myself, but I don't have a spare source of Copper right now. Perhaps you'd be willing to lend him yours, since you have two sources? Just one idea anyway.
Aside from that, trying to make some arrangements with Nakor might be useful. Certainly the worst scenario would be for Plako to move on to crushing Nakor after WK, leaving him virtually unstoppable.
I think it makes a lot of sense for us to concentrate some espionage on Plako, so I'd be happy to make an agreement with you there. I'll switch some points to him myself soon, and will share any information I get with you. It'd be great if you could do likewise.
Kind regards,
Lord Parkin
From Locke:
OK how about I send you copper and you send copper to WarriorKnight? I dont think we can trade directly with him. But we can send copper to you cause we have extra. Would that work? I turned off espionage with you since you asked. :D
Locke
So, Locke's switched off espionage against us for now. For now, we'll do the same with him. Could change later though.
That last part about him sending Copper to us so we can send it on to WK seems surprisingly cunning for Locke. He's trying to shift off the antagonization from Plako over Copper onto us instead of himself. I haven't replied to this yet, instead I'll see if I can't convince someone else to share their Copper with WK in the meantime. I mean, I want WK to slow down Plako, but I don't think the relatively small gain is worth the worsened relations, so I'd rather someone else did it. (Locke obviously feels the same way. )
Senseless Wrote:Just out of curiosity, what did Locke and Nakor say about allocating espionage towards us? I guess it's to be expected with our demographics, but it'd be interesting to see what they said.
See above. Basically I just sent long friendly messages to both of them, and tacked the actual issue for us on as an "afterthought" near the bottom. Not sure if that helped at all, but we got the responses we wanted anyway.
Senseless Wrote:Any other ideas on evening out the war between WK and Plako? Beyond giving him metal I can't really think of any help we can give him that falls within the spirit of the game.
I think sending metal is about as far as we can go. I don't think I'd want to go any further anyway though - even aside from game rules, gifting gold or cities would only hurt our own position, and for no real reason. If WK was a better tactician I might think more seriously about trying to keep him alive, but I really don't think there's much point at the present. (WK, if you're reading this later, no offence intended against you personally - I'm just trying to do what's best for my civ based on the limited observations I've made. )
Brief chat with Plako about Locke. Nothing serious, just talking about potential options later on, as you do. I'm not actually that keen on a war too soon myself, but maybe it could be an outside option. Interesting to know he's considering joining with Nakor against Locke, although of course that could just be him throwing us off. I would have thought he'd want to go directly for Nakor instead.
me: Hi there Plako: hi me: Have you checked out Locke's techs relative to yours yet? He's 4 ahead of us, I think Quite a lead there... Plako: bulbed philo me: Yeah, he did bulb Philo and founded Tao... only one religion left now Plako: Classic Liberalism beline Me thinks me: Yeah, that's what I was thinking
Given his current tech rate I'm not sure if anyone can beat him either especially if he gets another GS for bulbing soon... Guess we'll see Plako: No one probably can
It is not too big of problem, if we just doesn't let him take something too expensive me: Yeah, I guess so Plako: So what he have. Apparently alpha+CoL+Philo I didn't check what else? me: Monarchy I think
something else I'm forgetting too I think Plako: Paper yet? me: no, he doesn't have CS yet either
fortunately though I imagine it won't be long that's what I'm (slowly) heading for at the moment Plako: CS is probably next yes
Are you thinking we should try to do something about it? me: ah well, I guess even if he maintains a tech edge it's nothing a superior sized army couldn't take care of later
well, I don't think we're in a position to do so in the near future, but in the long term - certainly Plako: We could assist Nakor Assuming he would be intrested me: Yeah, that could work... Yeah
Majority of the fighting would be in or near his lands that way, too Dunno whether he'd be interested or not though Plako: After the war I probably have some excess troops, but I'm not certain how intrested Nakor would be me: hehe
well I'll be reaching the limit of my expansion room soon, so at that point I'll likely be building up a military... timing might work out reasonably well, guess we'll have to see
I'd guess we should have Maces by then, possibly Knights and/or Trebuchets/Pikes too Probably no point in starting anything against Locke without them, since he'll be pretty close to them himself Plako: If he does SP beeline. Maces/Knights might not be too close me: hmm, yeah Plako: He would need MC-Feudalism-Machinery-Guilds IW me: It'd certainly be preferable to fight at tech parity (or superiority) rather than uphill anyway Hmm, yeah
Although he does probably have the best tech rate in the game, so it might not take him that long... though of course it's out of the way if he's shooting for Lib Plako: If he needs to switch gears it will slow him down me: true
Need to talk with Luddite next I guess, unless we want to consider a campaign against him. Personally I'm not that keen as he's proved a pretty good friend so far.
Thanks for the diplo posts. They seem pretty sincere about the EP's to me. It's a good thing we decided to ask rather than jump to any hasty conclusions.
Parkin, I'm curious as to what your eventual plan is for dealing with Plako. From your last post, it seems like by his assessment his victory over WK is all but assured. in fact, he's already making plans to move against another neighbor. We don't have any juicy targets immediately adjacent to us, and we'd have to make a pretty radical switch in production to pursue that avenue anyways. We need some kind of edge to keep competing with a rapidly expanding Plako, assuming we want to maintain some kind of peace with him.
Can we reach out to WK? I'm curious as to what he thinks his chances are, exactly. If we're considering sending him a source of metal, or acting on his behalf to convince someone else to do so, it seems like we should get a good idea of his military situation. Can we contact him, and express some concern? Get his thoughts? Maybe a screenshot of the battlefied as he sees it?
Senseless Wrote:Thanks for the diplo posts. They seem pretty sincere about the EP's to me. It's a good thing we decided to ask rather than jump to any hasty conclusions.
Yeah, I was quite pleased with the results there too. Definitely pays to initiate a friendly conversation to try to encourage the best outcome rather than making assumptions or judgments too soon.
Senseless Wrote:Parkin, I'm curious as to what your eventual plan is for dealing with Plako. From your last post, it seems like by his assessment his victory over WK is all but assured. in fact, he's already making plans to move against another neighbor. We don't have any juicy targets immediately adjacent to us, and we'd have to make a pretty radical switch in production to pursue that avenue anyways. We need some kind of edge to keep competing with a rapidly expanding Plako, assuming we want to maintain some kind of peace with him.
It's important to note that conversations like the one I happened to post with Plako are actually not that unusual, and probably shouldn't be interpreted as having that much intention behind them. I've talked with quite a few different players in the game about potential attacks on other players, and I'm pretty sure most of it should be taken with a grain (or handful) of salt. If everyone went through with every potential war they mentioned they might consider, the world would already have erupted into a bloodbath many times over.
Still, it's possible something could happen between Plako and Locke, so let's assume that it does for the sake of argument. Even if that happens, I'm really not too concerned. Locke strikes me as a guy in a position to hold his own against even a 2-on-1 without breaking too much of a sweat. It would actually be great for us to get those two fighting if at all possible, since it'd stagnate them both and put us ahead. Although, without us on board, I'm not sure if Plako would really go through with that.
I think I'm more concerned about the possibility of Plako moving on to Adlain after WK. If he just has his lands and WK's, I think we'll still be able to hold our own with the expansion room we have. If he shifts his attention to a second soft target, we'll need to either join him and take some of the spoils for ourselves, or start a war of our own to keep up. It's just unfortunate that both of our nearest neighbours are playing fairly solid games... Plako has it much easier than us just because of the sheer luck that his neighbours happen to not be quite as strong players as our neighbours.
Senseless Wrote:Can we reach out to WK? I'm curious as to what he thinks his chances are, exactly. If we're considering sending him a source of metal, or acting on his behalf to convince someone else to do so, it seems like we should get a good idea of his military situation. Can we contact him, and express some concern? Get his thoughts? Maybe a screenshot of the battlefied as he sees it?
I've already chatted to him a fair bit, but I guess I could see if I could get a screenshot out of him. I really don't know how much good it would do though; I get the feeling WK is quite keen to get out of this game, so he simply wants to get it over and done with rather than prolonging his misery. I can understand that from a psychological perspective, it's just unfortunate from a game balance perspective if he folds more easily than he otherwise could.
Irgy Wrote:If you can do it without being patronising, tactical advice is a way you can help WK without Plako knowing anything about it.
The trouble is, I'm not sure that's even possible to do. It probably depends completely on the person as to whether it's even possible. You'd have to approach the subject extremely lightly - and even then, as soon as you mention the possibility of offering some tactical advice, there's every possibility that person will be mortally offended by the implication that you think you can do better than they can. I'm not sure if WK would be one to take that view or not. I guess you could argue that it doesn't really matter if he's on his way out of the game anyway, but I'm still not sure.
Even aside from those issues, it seems slightly hazy in terms of the game rules if I somehow end up semi-controlling WK's units through discussions with him. Mind you, this kind of thing happens all the time when two allies are fighting a mutual enemy - communication is necessary in order to coordinate where and when strikes will take place. The difference here is that I'm not actually at war with Plako, although I'm technically supporting WK's side more than Plako's (I'm sending him multiple resources for free and am privately rooting for him to win against his bigger neighbour, even though it's not going to happen). I guess GES's input might be useful to have here before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
