[SPOILERS] Catherine of China

[antisocialmunky]

When does our NAP with Nakor expire?

While I'm confident that the Barbs can hold their own (they say they have a 1 tile wide choke city like ours) and won't need our intervention, I would like to see if we can make our relations better by leveraging the mutual distrust of Nakor. Also, a Nakor/Barb war would greatly benefit the safety of our pushing of WarriorKnight off the continent. Guess we have to make sure that Nakor goes for Barbs instead of us.

Do we have any idea of what the alliances are shaping up like? We should ask Luddite and Parkin. Parkin specifically about his southern neighbor. Maybe Nakor has someone who

[plako]

Our NAP with the Viking last until T80.

Meanwhile I got this from Rego.

Hi plako,

Been awhile since we chatted so I thought I would drop you a note and say hello. We'd actually been meaning to send something for a few days but just hadn't gotten around to it.

First off, sunrise asked me to ask you to please not send your scout 8=) further west to scout near us. There is no outlet if you go further west (or north) - everything is blocked off by either coast or peaks, and we would prefer to at least have SOME secrets after all. Wouldn't want you sending one of your hordes of settlers towards our rolling expanses of floodplain corn / grassland gold :-D

But that kind of brings me to what we had been meaning to chat you up about - it will probably not surprise you that nearly EVERY person that we've come in contact with has brought you guys up. Talking about how you have a huge advantage in food / prod / GNP / cities / etc, and how something needs to be done about you. And given that one of your neighbors is pretty crippled, I don't know if people are just looking at us as one of your other nearer neighbors (though I'm not really sure how close we are to you anyways...).

So anyways, like I said, I'm sure that doesn't come as a huge surprise. That is one of the downsides to having such a good early start ;-). But I guess it beats the alternative - I'm sure you wouldn't want to swap places with WarriorKnight, right?

But anyways, just between you and us, I am not really interested in attacking you, either now or in the foreseeable future. It is much closer to my preference, generally speaking, to ally with stronger players, rather than play "gang up on the leader". And as I know you know, in dogpile situations sometimes it just takes one "friend" to turn things from a nightmare into a survivable situation (like you being Sullla's friend in PB2).

Anyway I just wanted to throw out some thoughts. At some point we'll probably want to figure out where borders make sense between us, but it's probably way too early for that.

Talk to you later

dan.
regoarrarr
zulu

[plako]

I think I'll set our research Archery next. Archers on hill counter pretty effectively both chariots and axes and we save quite a bit of hammers when building city garrisons to backline cities. It also brings horse archers a bit closer.

[plako]

Message to Nakor. I decided to tone down hostility.

Hi Nakor,

It seems you're threatening us, even if we were willingly giving up land that rightfully belongs to us. Not really what I expected to happen. I even don't know what are your exact wishes. Care to elaborate?

Best regards,
Plako

[plako]

Messgae to Rego:

Hi Rego,

Ok. I'll turn 8=) around to check other places. I doubt our borders will touch in the near future, but I'm definately going to be very flexible when negotiating a border agreement with a friend.

The dogpile aspect of the game is a bit frustrating indeed, when you manage to play well or get lucky. I'm really glad that you've signed out from dogpiling bandwagon. I'm sure we could find a ways to co-operate that would be beneficial to you. Care to share the names of biggest agitators or the least hostile ones ;-). I'll definately pay back when opportunity arises such a big favor.

Best regards,
Plako

[antisocialmunky]

Want to talk to the Barbs further about Nakor? It would be nice to have someone else that's less likely to dog pile us though I wouldn't count it out.

And yeah, dog pile alert in the ancient era w00t. Atleast its a not some sort of ridiculously wrapped donut so we won't be hit by people walking 1/2 way around the world. It can't be helped I guess. We should get a trireme/galley or 2 in the water sooner or later to see if anyone has the capability to land behind our front lines. That's the biggest threat. Archers are definitely needed now.

I wonder how fast we can get Lbows?

As for Rego... That's definitely an interesting offer and I don't really see how we can turn it down if they really intend to help us. I'd like to ask them about graphs.

Also, we should talking to and get a NAP until like 150 with Adlain and in fact start locking in long term NAPs with people that aren't our immediate neighbors. I'm not really satisfied with our passive diplo. It's shades of Spullla. :\

[plako]

I'm bit in a hurry, so here is screenshot and next turn we get 3 libraries up and could consider starting to research something.

[plako]

Some activity in the diplo front and I agree that I'm relatively passive in that front. I don't want to be worn out and since I'm not native English speaker diplomacy can potentially consume quite a lot of time.

Just to let you know I've had some chats also with Adlain. Based on those my gut feeling is that I don't need NAP with him. It is highly unlikely he'll send troops against me. I've a feeling that main agaitators are The Vikings and possibly Lord Parkin and Luddite from the north.

So here are latest messages. I got a message below from Nakor and quite frankly I don't like thir tone at all. Somehow they think the area belongs to them just based on early conversations.

Hey Plako,

I'm not threatening you, I'm just stating the facts as I see them.
From what I know about the map you have land to the north of your capital giving you an access point there.
The access point we have to our north is on your side of the "border" we discussed about 60 turns ago.

During that time you said in a message on feb 6th:

What about short term agreement so that we've time to scout and and no
need to fear being aggressively settled ;-). That could be e.g. Short
NAP and no settling on the horizontal middle line (5th tile) or past
it. This would give us time gain more map info and we could finalize
the border agreement after that.

So now that we have more map info, we are not happy with the border we earlier discussed and would like to discuss a deal that gives us an access to the north by land (like you have to your north as well).

All I've said in that earlier message is that if we don't have that access point, we have to change our strategy since from our POV such an access point is a must-have on this map. And that could mean a lot and could be interpreted as "hostile".
It is not meant that way, it's just me trying to be honest with you and tell you where we stand.

We hope to get a deal with you that profits us both and gives us both what we want.

Kind regards,
Nakor

I sent them this:

Hi Nakor,

I'm glad this is now sorted. Just for the record. If we would settle the area in question, we're not an agressor. Disputed area is closer to our capital than yours. The spices in question are just 6 tiles from our capital.

Now I need to know what you exactly want so we can start negotiating. e.g. where you want to settle and what other terms would be incorporated tot he deal.

Best regards,
Plako

No response to this so far and I'm sure they've received it and consider what to do.

After this I received this from Locke

I sorry I not get back to you until today. Let me tell you whats going on with Nakor.

He offer us a better land deal and NAP. We felt we had to accept cause we dont have as much military as Nakor does. Could maybe fight now but it would hurt us a lot. So Nakor may try to come after you now that he has NAP with us. However we do not trust him. Something still feels off with him. Like I still not sure if he is not straight lying to us about NAP. Have you played online game with Nakor before? Maybe that is something he would do I dont know.

So we are going to try to sign OB with Nakor and scout his land. If he is hiding military in lands we will let you know. We would also be happy to sign NAP with your team. Nakor never write us and I just do not trust him. We would rather work with your team. We do not want to fight right now cause there is so much land to expand into. But later we will be very interested in military cooperation. Lets come back to that later when we both done expanding peacefully.

If you want to set time for chat that sounds good. Cervantes and me are on American east coast, GMT -5. Where are you? I am free to chat on weekends or evening my time. We can send screenshot in this game now if thats something that would help, do not need Paper tech. Let us know and stay in touch.

Locke

So I guess the Vikings are building the military to be used against us. This requires some consideration. Archery maybe 1st and then we could go for Horseback Riding.

[plako]

My response to the Barbs:

Hi Locke,

Thank you very much for keeping us informed. That is highly appreciated. Can you tell us the length of the NAP?

I've played with Nakor before and I think he'll keep the finalized deals, but he has a tendency to play quite sneakily. If you don't have a deal, he might very well look exceptionally friendly in diplo while planning your demise and lying directly on your face. In this case I suspect they want some leverage against us so you should be safe. Our NAP is ending on T80.

I'll find a way to repay you, if you can keep us infomed about their military or basically any other info you can provide about their movements. In previous message you mentioned that they're building Axes. How sure you're about theit troop composition? I think they've also horses hooked up so Chariots migh be a possibility.

I would also be very intrested to hear, if there is a dogpile group forming against us and who would be the main architects of that or even the ones that are keeping the highest voice concerning us being #1.

Concerning NAP. What about a one lasting until T130. If it is alright to you, we've a deal immediately. Just let me know.

I'm GMT+2 so finding common time to chat is a bit of a challenge, but emails seem to work quite alright also.

Kind regards,
Plako

I've also got couple of messages from Lord Parkin and we had a small chat also, but there wasn't anything too significant:

Hi Plako,

Just to let you know, we happened to bump into a scout of WarriorKnight's up north, so it's just Locke that we have left to meet now. Thanks so much for your help anyway though, it's still much appreciated.

From what we've seen so far of the map, there seems to be a complete coastal route north-south between us. The lake that's north of you extends right from the very top of the map near us down you. (It's the same lake that blocks us off from Rego.) So as long as you found a city that's on the coast to the north of you, we'll both be able to get trade routes very easily. We actually already have a city on that lake ourselves... perhaps you do too, actually.

Anyway, just thought this information would be useful to you. It certainly seems good for both of us that we should be able to get trade routes with one another relatively easily - that'll improve both of our economies. It'll also be nice to trade resources we might be missing with one another when the time comes, if you're up for that.

Kind regards,
Lord Parkin

Actually, quick note - turns out we bumped into Locke up north as well, so that completes the set at last. Good to be officially able to post in the UN thread at last.

- Lord Parkin

[plako]

My quick response to Lord Parkin

Hi Lord Parkin

Congratulation for meeting everyone.

We don't actually have a city yet on that inner sea, and actually not Sailing either so it will take a while to establish trade routes. I'll let you know when we've a city there. I'm also intrested in trading resources with you.

Kind regards,
Plako