RBP4 [SPOILERS] - Shaka of Zulu (sunrise089, regoarrarr, and friends)

[regoarrarr]

Replied back to LP

Hi there,

Sunrise and I had an interesting conversation about the dynamics of this whole merchant situation. I know you think that I just use him as the "bad cop" but he really does exist, even if he doesn't really post in the thread :-)

The reason that it was especially interesting is that what he does in "real life" is somehow related to economics / game theory and so he said it's a particularly interesting dynamic for him to study.

First of all, my analysis agrees with yours - it would be a 200 gold difference. The variable part is 100 gold * what a trade route with your city and my capital would be worth - most cities are 2gpt trade routes while Parkistani I think would be 4gpt (it may only be 3 though due to some of the other factors).

Anyways, sunrise was pointing out that proper econ theory says that we SHOULD offer you like 199 gold (assuming it's a 200g difference). But then there is also the psychological effect of things given that the stakes are relatively low (it is, after all, just a game) :-). The other question for you is whether costing one of your nine rivals (and in fact the one that is in last place) 150 gold is worth losing 50 gold yourself.

But, having said that, I'm not opposed to splitting the merchant payoff extra amount with you. I don't think I like the you get 100 gold and we get the rest, since I think it's a max of 200 and may only be 150 depending on the value of a trade route with Parkistani. But I would be willing to do a 50/50 split, as well as extend our current NAP, if we could come up with a proper settling agreement, which is probably necessary somewhat soon as well.

If I recall, our current settling arrangement had us conceding building our original city at the clams site in exchange for the low low price of errr nothing ;-), as well as both of us agreeing to not settle the "islands" until we further discussed it.

We are probably getting close to wanting to settle at least some of those areas. I don't know if you are also, but probably before too terribly long. So my proposal is that we split the merchant gold 50/50, and the Zulus take the odd number "picks" of those "island" sites (so 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc) and the Parkinstanians take the even picks (2nd, 4th, 6th). What do you think?

[regoarrarr]

Also got a reply from Moogle

I'm still a bit mixed about the boycot. But the reaction was perhaps more telling; trust remains a rare commodity which makes alliances harder to arrange and maintain. Fortunately we have a near monopoly on that already. :-)

Religion-wise.. it's not too much of a priority right now, but Buddhism is the likely choice. It has randomly spread to a few of my cities, so by adopting OR missionaries can do their work fairly quickly. I'm not connected to luddite due to his war with Mackoti so Hindu spreads seem unlikely and I haven't seen any Juadism spreads (not to mention supporting plako's shrine is a bad idea). Securing the Buddhist shrine for ourselves feels like a pretty good possibility as well.

A medieval war sounds good, but that would mostly depend on how Adlain will react to our settling. He may well be upset we're taking his land when he thought he had a border agreement himself, which may lead to aggression earlier. I doubt it'll have a high chance of success, but it's still something we need to keep in mind. Inviting Locke along for the ride feels like a good idea at least. We haven't had too much to talk about, so relations are fairly neutral; that shouldn't pose any obstacle to cooperation though. :-)

Regarding settling; I haven't changed the planned locations yet, but they aren't quite set in stone either. When you mention a city next to the southern ivory, what exactly did you have in mind?

-SleepingMoogle

Ps. Did you really include that in the email? :-)

[spacemanmf]

Never mind all this - get PBEM17 moving!

[scooter]

So...you appear to be RBP now.

I'd like to see it changed between "RBP" and "RBPB" once a week just to mess with sunrise.

[darrelljs]

It would have been funnier if they got rid of the wrong "B".

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Never mind all this - get PBEM17 moving!

My bad - I thought I had sent it along

[spacemanmf]

My bad - I thought I had sent it along

No worries. Just saw you'd been online and thought "what the?"...

We'd made such ridiculously good progress recently that it was bit of a jolt when the turn went a while without being played. But I'm realistic to accept that we won't always hum along at that pace.

[sunrise089]

So...you appear to be RBP now. What are your thoughts on moving to the coast vs. staying in place? It looks like you've got a couple of deer and a cow if you stay put.

I'm going to have to run some numbers, but I think with regoarrarr's skill the only thing that makes sense is playing safe and planting in place. A high-risk high-reward play like moving seems like it would be better for a weaker team. Plus with Org and Ind civs in the game it isn't even clear that we could win a wonder race. Finally, just because we've seen a bit of coast on the map doesn't mean that there are that many coastal spots - I wouldn't be surprised at all if half or more of our cities were inland.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I'm going to have to run some numbers, but I think with regoarrarr's skill the only thing that makes sense is playing safe and planting in place. A high-risk high-reward play like moving seems like it would be better for a weaker team. Plus with Org and Ind civs in the game it isn't even clear that we could win a wonder race. Finally, just because we've seen a bit of coast on the map doesn't mean that there are that many coastal spots - I wouldn't be surprised at all if half or more of our cities were inland.

[regoarrarr]

I'm going to have to run some numbers, but I think with regoarrarr's skill the only thing that makes sense is playing safe and planting in place. A high-risk high-reward play like moving seems like it would be better for a weaker team. Plus with Org and Ind civs in the game it isn't even clear that we could win a wonder race. Finally, just because we've seen a bit of coast on the map doesn't mean that there are that many coastal spots - I wouldn't be surprised at all if half or more of our cities were inland.

indeed. For the record though, all of our current cities are coastal