[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

Sorry for the delay; I just finished up a brutal complex analysis midterm, and now I have to LaTeX it up, so I'll be up for a while doing so.

In the meantime, I had a little time to think about their proposal:

Official offer from Yuufo via mail.
Something isnt right here:

Treaty proposal :

- NAP until 1 AD
- Open borders
- Care Bears don't settle west of Cheer
- Egg Heads don't settle east of Cornell
- Care Bears build a road on Cornell's cow and 9 from there
- Egg Heads move Warrior to grassland hill for fogbusting. Care Bears will found a city there about T78

Yuufo

Just learned 1AD=T115 on normal.

My official stance is that I am against this proposal. Long story short, I think they benefit from this more than we do.

• They are asking us not to go east of a city that is located 5 tiles from our capital, while they are promising not to go west of a city located 8-9 tiles from their capital. That's quite a difference, and it also means they have essentially unrestricted access to the green lands north of Cheer (I'm assuming that's their city, since we don't appear to have visbility in the city center).
  
• Right now, they are running a paper-thin military (as expected) and with 7 cities, their defenses will be spread out thin. A long NAP thus benefits their style of "spamming settlers" while we build chariots for barbarian protection. I would prefer to keep them honest, which would force them to build more military. If Asterix does the same, then that's all better for us.
  

Here is the kind of message I am thinking about (a draft, so don't send yet):

Dear Care Bears,

Upon review of your proposal, we unfortunately decide to decline it. While the deal has benefits for both of us, it seems clear that your team benefits more from the deal than us. One reason has to do with the respective distances of Cheer and Cornell from our capitals.

That doesn't mean, however, that our nations cannot work together in the near future. In particular, we still are interested in open borders. Furthermore, we can keep one aspect of the proposed treaty: if your worker can road the cows tile between Cornell and Cheer and the tile 9 of that, then we can move our warrior over to the grassland hill to fogbust for your projected city site. After it is founded, we will move that warrior back to Cornell.

We will continue to be in touch with you regarding plans such as possibly resource deals, city settlements, and wonder plans.

Sincerely,
Team EggHeads

[TeddyKGB]

I sent Asterix, that Yuuso asking for T115 NAP, didn't mention other deals.
Asterix confirm Yuufo reopen borders with him.

Still no reply from LP.

Oh, forgot to mention, I did chat wit Sut right before Yuufo.
- He also meet Pony's scout.
- He said last whip was 'just a worker'
- They have fur close. In 2nd cities ring from capital.

[TeddyKGB]

Sorry for the delay; I just finished up a brutal complex analysis midterm, and now I have to LaTeX it up, so I'll be up for a while doing so.

No rush, good luck with midterm.

I kinda agree with you about borders. Its no good long term.
Their city#8 expected in 10 turns 2E of stone, I think we agree on that plant? Not much we could do anyway.

I was talking short term expansion with him. We may talk about full dotmap land between us as a border deal.

What about NAP? Are you willing to play without NAP with them after T75? This could hurt both of us or either of us.
We have CRE to protect, but they have UU.

[TeddyKGB]

While waiting LP's reply, login to see some things in game.

T69.

Forest grows on a bad tile. I was planning to kill barb warrior there, if he choose go that way. Now we won't have 99% odds.
78,3%+2.2% maybe not good enough, but we could simply put new chariot on top of the worker for 99,1% odds. Would be fun to lose that one...

'retep' found seafood. T76 for new silver city still actual. But we can't produce workboat from CM, need fort 1st.
And now Sailing won't give us connection to empire. We need roads toward short river north first. Its 7 more workerturns.
Should I move 'retep' on silver?

India offer OB again, I decline in game. Short chat with Yuufo, told him I'll talk with him later today.
India's worker on cows. Action canceled, but I assume they put 1t into road.

Slider at 100%. Demos kinda fun. Math in 6 turns if we put 2sci in MIT (did it just to take our 70GNP screenshot, we are set on Sailing, I suppose). Note that we are keep respectable (almost top) position in Food and MFG, while working 4sci.

[DMOC]

I am happy if we send this message to Care Bears:

Dear Care Bears,

Upon review of your proposal, we unfortunately decide to decline it. While the deal has benefits for both of us, it seems clear that your team benefits more from it than us. One reason has to do with the respective distances of Cheer and Cornell from our capitals.

That doesn't mean, however, that our nations cannot work together in the near future. In particular, we still are interested in open borders. Furthermore, we can keep one aspect of the proposed treaty: if your worker can road the cows tile between Cornell and Cheer and the tile 9 of that, then we can move our warrior over to the grassland hill to fogbust for your projected city site. After your city is founded, we promise that we will move that warrior back to Cornell.

We will continue to be in touch with you regarding plans such as possibly resource deals, city settlements, and wonder plans.

Sincerely,
Team EggHeads

Sorry for the delay; I just finished up a brutal complex analysis midterm, and now I have to LaTeX it up, so I'll be up for a while doing so.

No rush, good luck with midterm.

I kinda agree with you about borders. Its no good long term.
Their city#8 expected in 10 turns 2E of stone, I think we agree on that plant? Not much we could do anyway.

I was talking short term expansion with him. We may talk about full dotmap land between us as a border deal.

What about NAP? Are you willing to play without NAP with them after T75? This could hurt both of us or either of us.
We have CRE to protect, but they have UU.

I am perfectly fine to play without an NAP. Our plan is to have a sufficient garrison of units by Care Bears' cities, right? Every turn that passes when neither of us build military is another turn that they can use their financial and rivers (which we don't have!) to build up their economic advantage.

(And we want the flexibility just in case something can go on with 2 vs 1 with Asterix.)

------

Now for some other stuff:

While waiting LP's reply, login to see some things in game.

T69.

Forest grows on a bad tile. I was planning to kill barb warrior there, if he choose go that way. Now we won't have 99% odds.
78,3%+2.2% maybe not good enough, but we could simply put new chariot on top of the worker for 99,1% odds. Would be fun to lose that one...

'retep' found seafood. T76 for new silver city still actual. But we can't produce workboat from CM, need fort 1st.
And now Sailing won't give us connection to empire. We need roads toward short river north first. Its 7 more workerturns.
Should I move 'retep' on silver?

India offer OB again, I decline in game. Short chat with Yuufo, told him I'll talk with him later today.
India's worker on cows. Action canceled, but I assume they put 1t into road.

Slider at 100%. Demos kinda fun. Math in 6 turns if we put 2sci in MIT (did it just to take our 70GNP screenshot, we are set on Sailing, I suppose). Note that we are keep respectable (almost top) position in Food and MFG, while working 4sci.

Retep on silver is fine. I'm not sure if the seafood changes the location of our city, though. Will have to think about it.

Meanwhile, we got a response back from LP/Orgynized:

Greetings EggHeads,

Apologies for the delayed response, I've been rather busy IRL this past week (and still am). To quickly address our agreements:

1. Confirming we're agreed on a NAP until T90. Our offer to extend it further by a convenient amount remains open (e.g. to T100, ..., T130, T140). We'd be surprised if you didn't want more than 20 turns of security on your western border right now given the larger threat of the Care Bears to your east.

2. Confirming we're agreed on Open Borders, which will remain in place for the length of our NAP. We will not send units into each other's territory (without the other's consent) for the length of our NAP.

3. Confirming we have a settling agreement in place: no cities are to be founded more than five tiles east/west from our respective capitals.

4. Confirming we have an agreement to limit espionage spending to demographics visibility only (i.e. to a ratio of 43/43 EP).

5. Confirmed confidentiality on all exchanges.

We're a bit surprised at your request to send a scout through our land only a few turns after making a no-scouting agreement. However, we'll accept on the condition that he sticks exclusively to the northernmost possible tiles at all times during his journey east. (This is presumably close to what you'd want to do anyway to uncover the coast.) We trust you'll also return the gesture by granting passage to an exploratory unit of ours at a later date.

Sorry for the short reply, rather pressed for time right now. Will address the less urgent stuff later.

Kind regards,
Orgynized

So we can move our scout and stick up to their north.


---

On a final note, what do you think of shifting back our silver city 1 tile west, so it's at my originally proposed spot? We get the city 1 turn earlier and the silver is still in the first ring (and still connected via sailing to capital) but this leaves a decent Globe Theatre city 8-9 of the crabs. I like GT in cities that have some food but are pretty bad overall. Putting the silver city 1 west of the "City 6 here?" sign also means we get 2 extra forests in the initial BFC. This might help us divide the grasslands better.

[DMOC]

Actually, Care Bears probably won't feel comfortable if we fogbust without a NAP. Do we want to send this message instead?

Dear Care Bears,

Upon review of your proposal, we unfortunately decide to decline it. While the deal has benefits for both of us, it seems clear that your team benefits more from it than us. One reason has to do with the respective distances of Cheer and Cornell from our capitals. We are also generally wary of signing NAPs in general, as can be justified by seeing the recent history of NAPs at Realms Beyond pitboss games.

That doesn't mean, however, that our nations cannot work together in the near future. In particular, we still are interested in open borders. Furthermore, we can keep one aspect of the proposed treaty: if your worker can road the cows tile between Cornell and Cheer and the tile 9 of that, then we can move our warrior over to the grassland hill to fogbust for your projected city site. After your city is founded, we promise that we will move that warrior back to Cornell. If you're worried about our NAP expiring (on turn 75), we can always extend it to turn 80 just to ensure your settler is safe from our fogbusting warrior.

We will continue to be in touch with you regarding plans such as possibly resource deals, city settlements, and wonder plans.

Sincerely,
Team EggHeads

[TeddyKGB]

Sorry for delay. But game is paused for 1-2 days at the right moment.

Silver city location could be decided after chariot complete move on silver.
On one hand, I don't like to ignore sea food for our city#6.
On the other, we want to connect silver to the empire asap. City#6 planted one turn faster won't help us, because we are depends on workers action. But planting city#6 withour Crab in BFC requires 7 less worker turns to connect. And it could be we prefer city#6 working improved silver at size1 for several turns anyway.

More important issue now is diplo.

I agree with you about borders agreement with India. We need another one.

I like the idea playing without NAP(s). Its pretty bold.
But is it the best way to play for our team?
While India and us investing in ancient military, other teams, like LP, will keep run farmer gambit, building almost every wonder they want and working same riverside FIN cottages you refers. Every turn LP not builing military is:

another turn that they can use their financial and rivers (which we don't have!) to build up their economic advantage.

Same goes for SutOxy team. As I understand they are and LP working together closely and like each other very much.

Could we slow down India by no NAP extension? Yes, even if we risk our own safety every turn and shoud invest more time in C&D.
Who will profit most from India and our team slow downed? All the other 8 teams. Certainly not ours.

Would you like to not extend our NAP with LP as well? How many turns you think will pass before LP and Yuufo talk with each other and decide to dogpile us before knights?

And we not even asking something in return for sacrificing our own development from the other teams.
Yes, we dont have many rivers and FIN trait, but we still can invest hammers in something else beside military.

Another aspect is our ally Asterix. Would he willing to play without NAP with India after T80? His risk to be attacked by CareBears is bigger than ours, I think. Is that a good idea to sign defensive pact with him and announce it to the world?

Saying all this, I agree with your message to CareBears. It may backfire on us, but most likely just forced India to negotiate a better deal for us.
Keep them uncertain about our intensions could be a good thing.

As we decided from the start, all diplo and general strategy is up to you.

[DMOC]

Since the game is paused, I guess that gives us more of an excuse to delay our diplomatic intentions.

I said I'm leaning towards not extending the NAP with India, but I never said anything about Orgynized. In fact, if we go the route towards not extending the NAP, the first thing I'd do is ask Parkin for an extended NAP. And SutOxy. And any other team we meet from the south (if any). We just can't accept the Care Bears proposed deal as it is due to how far their city of Cheer is relative to both of our capitals.

As far as city 6 goes ... I agree, let's see the chariot, and maybe we can sim out some starting scenarios for the cities in different locations.

Sent a quick message to Asterix to touch base.

I don't think we'll be attacking them; not extending our NAP doesn't necessarily mean war as we just want Care Bears to put more focus on military and slow them down. We were fog-busting in exchange for them building a road in our territory to get trade routes set up.

We're still thinking about whether we should extend our NAP with Care Bears or decline. I am leaning towards no extension, but this would require us to talk to other teams to ask for longer NAPs for security. What are you thinking of doing?

DMOC
Team EggHeads

as well as to Yuufo:

Care Bears,

Sorry for the delay -- we'll try to get back to you within 24 hours.

-DMOC
Team EggHeads

[TeddyKGB]

I understand, so you prefer long NAP with LP and some military escalation with India.
Maybe its just a certain mindset I had from the start, but I'm still think LP is more dangerous longterm.

I believe border agreement with India is our main concern now.
What cities we want to plant beyond our city#5 east in near future?
Do you think planting a city north of their city#6 would be a good plant (in a screenshot below its possible location marked as number '6')?
What counter offer we could send to CareBears about borders agreement?

We may as well send our reply to India now. And wait for their and Asterix's reaction while game is paused.

[DMOC]

I'm not sure why you (and Asterix) think LP is the more dangerous threat long-term. I don't see anything in the game now that makes me see that way. His score is high because of Stonehenge but he has been slow in expansion. If things change, then yes, we can adjust accordingly, so that means signing a medium-length NAP instead of a super-long (i.e. 80+ turn) NAP.

As for the above map, they will definitely hate a city we plant located at 6. Same with 5, though 5 seems like it could actually be a nice Hanging Gardens location, if we choose to go that route, since there are 5 other forests to chop (assuming we can keep control of that spice tile).

Border agreement: Let's have them agree not to settle west of Cheer, but how about they let us settle up to 2 (or 3?) tiles east of Cornell and we can promise to only do this in the southern part of our empire if we do so, i.e. not near Cheer. To be specific southern part means a city located on a tile that lies below the capital's tile (in the horizontal direction). Will need to see the map a bit more, though. I'm still not liking the idea of a long NAP, though.

Let's give it another few hours to think about our official response. I'm going to sleep now and will think it over soon.